The federal government raises in excess of 25 billion dollars a year by putting an 18.4 cent tax on every gallon sold. Some of our geniuses in DC now want to raise that by 12 cents over five years. I say eliminate that tax altogether. Am I nuts? Probably, but that's not relevant to the question at hand. The war in Afghanistan alone is estimated to cost us four to six TRILLION dollars by the time it is done and all the ongoing veterans benefits are paid out. Now figure what the last exercise in futility in Iraq cost and add that in to the total. We can ELIMINATE all federal gas taxes and absorb increased gas prices from OPEC and not even make a dent in what keeping Americans in the Middle East costs us in dollars. Not good enough? Fine - let's start talking about the kid around the corner with no legs, your dead distant cousin and the next PTSDed veteran who shoots up a nursery school.
Jokes aside, they have it Japan and has been successful. They are a lot safer to, cant knock em off the track.
Left alone the situation will degenerate into a sorry mess but nobody will win the ongoing civil war. The Saudi's and the Iranians can't afford to have the other side win so they'll both keep pumping in resources to prop their side. Under normal circumstances you'd say that's going to turn into a Saudi win eventually but the Iranians have the Russians on their side. So the thing will just remain degenerately nasty forever, like Syria. We have two choices that will work for us in the situation we find ourselves in. We can either stand on the sidelines and watch the thing turn into the big mess for everybody involved or we can join the fray and have it turn into the big mess for us as well. If we choose to join in and don't make a 100% commitment then we'll just bleed intermittently and further destroy America's image in the region. If we make the 100% commitment we'll stabilize things a bit over there and completely destabilize US politics in the process. I just don't see how having us get involved is the lesser of two evils. Sitting on the sidelines is that unenviable but better position to be in.
The gas tax has very little effect on the price of gas. We could raise the tax to a buck a gallon and the price of gas would still be set by consumption and market-rigging.
Therein lies the issue , we have never been 100% committed. We allowed many of these animals to go free when we held them in captivity. This isn't the normal POW situation. These animals aren't going home to a defeated Germany looking to start new lives. They are going back to their terrorist buddies more radicalized then before looking for new ways to spread the religion of peace to the free and unfree world.
Not true; NY has prices about forty cents higher than NJ due to the difference in state taxes. In fact if you look at global gas prices, with few exceptions in the heavy oil production countries, prices are virtually the same everywhere exclusive of taxes.
Can go back a few decades over this country and what we have done there and blame this president and that president...its just come to the point with that entire area that...lets put it this way. What town does everyone live in here in the US? What are your neighbors like? How many people live there. If you take the population of your town..lets say its 10,000 and you are rumored to be overrun by 3% of that...lets say around 300 men, not sure about your community but mine would grab steak knives and anything we could get our hands on to defend our kids...our wives...our land. Point is...Im not sure about everyone else but over 4 thousand of our finest young people died over there to give them a new life...freedom. Now? They cant even take care of themselves. It has happened all over that part of the world when we put our young ones to fight and die over there. Fuck them. Seriously fuck them. If someone sticks their arm into a burning fire to save you and pull you out..and if that person decides to laugh at you..not say thank you...and dives head first back in the fire and then sticks their arm back out to be saved? Burn baby burn. As our country choose to save a few Caribou instead of making us energy self reliant and would rather kill our young people over there...IRAQ and the rest of those countries? They really can go fuck themselves. I would give them nothing except the weapons to kill each other with.
But that's the point Barry..none of them are our allies! I mean...are you kidding me? You think if we succeed there, they will not try to "come to New York" anyway? Does anyone really believe that we will succeed in any of those countries? What stuff are you guys smoking if you think we will succeed anywhere in the Mideast. The only way we will succeed there is the people there want to succeed. Period. Those that want to do harm to us on our soil will do it through Iraq or any piece of land they can get their hands on. I was watching a news channel and they were interviewing a mother of 4 in Iraq and she was crying over what was happening and then she followed it up by saying the ground troops? We do not want that...and from the sky? There is so much damage...and of course we really do not want American troops on our soil....HUH? Then what exactly do you want? If anyone thinks you can win a religious battle between factions, you are on drugs. Let them go at it...lets see who is standing...and then continue to protect our borders..hopefully better then we do along the Mexican border.
Yeah Brad because we are doing so much more driving then we did back around 2000 when prices were just over a dollar. So, I guess we have 3x the amount of cars on the road compared to back then..when getting over 20 mpg was rare. I have oil heat in my home and back in the good old days of just over a dollar a gallon, we would use on average around 1250 gallons a year. Since the increase, we use about 1000 just by tightening up a bit. Im sure Im not the only one that uses less then they did back then. You cant explain this increase by what we used just 14 years ago. Maybe you might want to look at yes...the GREED..but also the what our government asks of us just to get the oil to our pumps through taxation..through policy.....the list goes on and on. If everyone cut their usage by 20 percent, you would see a quick drop until that number would slowly increase back to where it is today...because the number we pay now is just below....JUST BELOW..the screaming point. The screaming outrage point. Right now that number is $4.00 in my area...anything under that and we stupid Americans bitch and complain...but pay it without asking many questions...like how can we get it CHEAPER.
So some little country in the middle of the desert has been able to basically manipulate both sides of the world for decades. Reminds me of this guy:
Why is everybody ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room? We can all thank Bush/Chaney for this mess. Invading Iraq was one of the worst, most shameful, and dumbest the US has ever done. Instead of channeling our military resources to finding and defeating Al Quada in Afghanistan, we were lied to by the Bush Adminstration so we could invade a country that no only posed no threat to us, but stabilized the region and was run by a government that was mortal enemies with Al Quada. We lost 4000 men for no reason, poured Billions of dollars into a useless war, killed 500,000 Iraqis, created more enemies in a region the world where we were already hated, and immediately tiurned world opinion that was behind us after 9/11 completely against us as we went from victim to villain. The money we wasted on that war is the single biggest cause of our budget deficit today because it created bills we cannot pay. Saddam Hussein was a bad person and a vicious dictator, but so are 50-100 other leaders around the world. The war led Al Quada to Iraq. Iraq is not a "real" country. It is a region where it's people identify with historic tribes and religious sects rather than "Iraq." When we entered the war, we were told that toppling Hussein would creat a vacuum that would incite the centuries old rivalries among the Shia - Suuni-Kurds. All we accomplished was destabilizing this "country" and we would have had to remain there as occupiers to avoid that. So just like every decision we make in he Middle East, we end uppaying dearly for something we did 10-15 years prior. The current situation is a direct and predictable result of the decision to invade in 2002. Mission Accomplished. Thank you George Bush.
You can't ask older men to fornicate and then claim ignorance about NAMBLA. It's okay, we don't judge.
