Posted on 06/18/2010 2:39:45 AM PDT by Scanian
President Obama has a solution to the Gulf oil spill: $7-a-gallon gas.
That's a Harvard University study's estimate of the per-gallon price of the president's global-warming agenda. And Obama made clear this week that this agenda is a part of his plan for addressing the Gulf mess.
So what does global-warming legislation have to do with the oil spill?
Good question, because such measures wouldn't do a thing to clean up the oil or fix the problems that led to the leak.
The answer can be found in Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's now-famous words, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste -- and what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
So your irrational behavior regarding oil and trains is due to a personal vendetta and not facts or logic?
That's apparently what politics is all about.
They went out of their way to alienate my support.
Ain't got no good reason to forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones.
It's laissez-fair, dude...
I'm not gonna intervene on their behalf...
Let the Obama Boogy Monster feed on 'em.
See if I care...
Boy, do you have a problem.
Most of it due to ignorance.
For instance, you apparently have no idea why we are drilling in remore areas and in deep wells under one mile of water and 3 miles of rock.
We are drilling in places like that because people like you with no understanding of how the world really works have made it impossible to drill in places where the oil is easier to get to.
Like Alaska, the coastal waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific, just to name a few.
We reached our levels of comfortable living when we developed in tandem the many uses for oil and the gasoline engine.
Before that, we heated with wood cut with a cross cut saw. You should try it sometime.
We hitched a horse to a buggy and took all day to travel 25 miles. Did you ever stop to wonder why east of the Mississippi, towns are invariably 25 or so miles apart?
Because that is all a horse or a team could make in a day.
If you want to live with windmills, I would suggest you go to Lancaster County, PA and study how the Amish live.
That is how we lived before the discovery of oil and the development of mechanized transportation.
Oil is eeven more involved in our every day lives but spending more than a few minutes on your education is a waste of time on my part.
I would advise you though, that you could afford to spend a lot more time on it than you obviously have.
Well, that explains your beyond-logic-support of high speed rail and steadfast refusal to deal in anything relating to facts. You’re letting your emotion run yourself because of hate. A rather liberal thing to do, and quite self-destructive.
Like Alaska, the coastal waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific, just to name a few.
Well if that oil was off limits before the BP spill,
there's not a snowball's chance of drilling it AFTER the spill.
It doesn't matter whether it's actually there or not.
BP screwed the pooch.
That oil is going to remain off limits for at least another generation, maybe two or three.
I probably won't even be alive another 20~25 years from now, so there's no sense wasting my time ranting about oil that they won't let us drill in my lifetime anyway.
Kiplinger’s reports that U.S. territorial oil reserves are 2.5 times that of all OPEC countries combined. That is enough oil to fuel our current economy for almost 300 years.
I do not recall whether shale oil was included in those reserve estimates or not. Regardless, we are nowhere near depleting our own oil reserves. That 2% of the world’s reserves number that Zero through out the other night is a lie.
But like explaining that Obama has fully 1/3 more people to do the census than is required to man and staff the entire United States Navy worldwide, a good illustration goes a long way.
Ask the person that sees no harm in promoting Green Energy with this sort of bill if he is in favor of allowing the Federal Government to increase taxes by introducing a new tax that will generate 68% of the tax taken by the entire Income Tax. When he says that seems like a terrible amount to tax us, explain to him that that is the best estimate of the taxes to be generated by Cap and Trade and he will pay it in every utility bill cost, every product cost that uses energy or transportation to get it built and delivered and in every gallon of gas he buys and in the electricity he uses to charge his electric car.
With good illustration we can explain the complex.
A rather liberal thing to do, and quite self-destructive.
No, forked tongue is a genetic mutation that afflicts political vermin on both sides of the aisle.
I've merely come to the conclusion that their different labels don't matter a hill of beans.
Coming from the man who's admitted his irrational positions, ignoring of facts, and refusal to use logic stems from some perceived wrong by an industry years ago...
Best to check your own tongue for bifurcation!
With good illustration we can explain the complex.
Nielsen says that "Hot in Cleveland" starring Betty White has emerged as Wednesday's most-watched show on cable TV.
I don't think that you can find an illustrator who can overcome obstacles like that.
A quote I read the other day, "Most people in 1930 didn't realize they were in a Depression either." Made a lot of sense to me, seeing how today many people are approaching current events with their heads in the sand.
Congratulations,
Ciao.
You DON’T debate. You simply state “you’re wrong” and proceed as normal. For example, shale oil. You simply state that my conclusions are wrong, but never say why. The facts are there, I link to them, and you ignore it.
Or your insane support for high speed rail. I say it’s $2 trillion, and you swear I’m out to lunch. Then you admit that yes, it’s a plan for 17,000 miles of track. And yes, it runs about $150 million per mile. But insist it won’t be anywhere near $2 trillion. Hmmm - 17,000 times 150,000,000 is 2,550,000,000,000 - over $2 trillion.
Here’s what I posted on another thread and you’ve ignored it, because you simply cannot refute the facts:
Willie,
Here are the numbers:
Assume from day 1 we have 15 MILLION riders a day (right now, Amtrak has around 70,000 riders a day; this is a 20,000% increase from day one).
We invest the $2 trillion over 20 years.
For 20 years, we maintain 15 million workday riders - 5 days a week, 50 weeks (vacations/holidays) a year.
When we’re done with the 20 years, we have spent our $2 trillion. And we have racked up 75 BILLION rides.
Meaning we spent - on just the capital costs, not including bond interest or operational costs or maintenance costs - $26.67 PER TRIP. For each of those 75 billion rides.
So if we assume an astronomically high, totally unrealistic increase in ridership (20,000%), and zero costs other than the capital costs, we end up spending $26.67 per rider per day.
THIS is the reality. If operational costs are zero, and maintenance costs are zero, and interest paid on the bonds is zero, tickets would have to cost $26.67 each to just cover the capital costs of the track.
Operational costs would be on top of this.
So again, how do you pay for it? If it’s going to be funded by user fees - like the Interstate Highway System - then tickets will need to start at $60 and go up from there. And that’s with the totally pie-in-the-sky estimate of riders.
If the number of riders are only 1.5 million per day - just a 20 times increase in rider - we pay $266.67 PER TRIP in capital costs. You ride the train 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month? Your cost would be $5,333 per MONTH.
It just doesn’t pencil out. Period.
Tell me where the numbers are wrong.
I’ve added zero interest, zero operational costs, zero maintenance costs.
I’ve given you ridership levels beyond what you could imagine.
Ridership that is 50% HIGHER than total ridership in all of Europe (10 million total rides). That’s for high speed, low speed and commuter trains combined. In a continent with 35% more population. With a multi-generational history of riding the rails. And I’m giving you the benefit of adding another 50%.
I’ve tilted the field so far to your favor in every aspect that you could not ask for anything more.
And it still doesn’t work.
Where are the numbers wrong, Willie?
“We are in a depression now. We just do not recognize it because of the government’s smoke and mirrors.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Amen, I grew up on a farm like the one you spent two years on. I plowed with a mule up until I joined the Navy. We had pigs, chickens, a milk cow, sometimes killed our own beef, canned huge quantities of vegetables, wild blackberries, wild blueberries etc. We made homemade jelly, froze a huge freezer full of vegetables and meat, had salt cured hams and shoulders, dried peaches, apples etc. We hunted small game, there were no deer left in the area at that time. We caught fish, we hauled corn to a water powered mill and had corn meal and grits ground. We were in a much better position to withstand a bad economy than most people are now, we didn’t even have a mortgage, our little farm and shack were owned outright. We were what people now would call dirt poor farmers but owned forty acres, a house of sorts, all our livestock, barns, tools and a pickup truck free and clear of debt. How many people have that now?
What it boils down to is that as long as we could pay our tiny property tax bill every year we could survive on some level even without my father’s job as a carpenter and we could sell enough eggs to pay that, a couple of acres of watermelons or cantaloupes would bring enough cash to buy salt and such things that had to come from the store. We had electricity but we could live without it. The annual utility bill, ANNUAL I say, was less than a hundred dollars.
Two hundred watermelons could be sold wholesale for enough to pay for a year’s worth of electrical service and that many melons can be grown on a quarter acre or less.
It was a tough life with a lot of hard work, often working in blazing sun or freezing cold but much more secure in many ways than what we have now.
Tell me where the numbers are wrong.
You didn't collect any fares, you stupid moron.
You calculated $26.67 per rider per day for costs, but you didn't sell any tickets.
Charge them $26.68 per ride, and Amtrak operates in the black!!!
And THAT is why this is really the LAST time that I'm responding to you. LOL!
OK, so in addition to being irrational and living on hatred, you cannot read.
I didn’t add ANY operations or maintenance or financing costs. This is just the capital costs.
So if the tickets are $26.68 each, we cover just the capital costs. NONE of the operational costs. Or the interest paid on the bonds. Or the deferred maintenance costs. You’re still heavily in the red.
You cannot show where the numbers are wrong, you don’t even understand the numbers.
Let go of your hate, Willie. It’s not Christian, it’s not Conservative, it’s not good for you.
I didn’t add ANY operations or maintenance or financing costs.
You cannot show where the numbers are wrong, you don’t even understand the numbers.
How am I suppose to "understand" numbers that you openly admit that you didn't present???
Sheeeeeesh, you really don't know when to crawl back under your rock and hide, do you?
Willie, I explicitly stated I did not include those costs! I explicitly stated I was talking about deployment costs only. And even without those costs it doesn’t make sense. How will it make sense when you add even MORE costs, and cut ridership by a factor of 10?
So rather than take a look at it, because you read wrong, you slam me for “hiding” something that I didn’t hide at all. The costs are insanely high, and I’ve proven it here. You want to argue semantics about irrelevant information because you cannot defend your choice.
You are being totally irrational. You are, in essence, being an idiot.
How will it make sense when you add even MORE costs, and cut ridership by a factor of 10?
Simply keep increasing the ticket price to cover whatever other costs you want to add in.
Ridership isn't going to drop one bit as long as the fare is still cheaper than the airlines.
So let's see...
You're "deployment" costs are $26.67???
And that Amtrak ticket of yours was $134???
That must mean you need to come up with another $107.33 in costs before we have to start worrying about losing money. LOL!
Willie,
So to cover the deployment costs - assuming we have 50% MORE RIDERS than all of Europe (a smaller, more interconnected, and much more populous continent), we still lose money.
Add $26.67 to each of the fares currently paid. That $709 train from LA to NO becomes a $736 ticket. Triple what I can do on the plane.
You never want to talk costs or expenditures because you cannot make your case. It falls apart. Trains are too expensive and too slow for long distance runs. Shorter distance and they lose to cars and buses.
They just don’t work.
Argue the numbers, Willie. Put together a financing package that will work. And tell me how many riders you figure will use the train. Put the numbers out there; I bet you won’t because you either cannot prove your case or you use numbers that are so unbelievable you blow your case.
What’s the cost Willie? How many will ride?
Add $26.67 to each of the fares currently paid. That $709 train from LA to NO becomes a $736 ticket. Triple what I can do on the plane.
But with the state-of-the-art high-speed technology that you've deployed,
now you've cut the travel time so you don't need to buy a superliner roomette to sleep in.
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