US consumer gasoline consumption rose by 12% between 2000 and 2008. We went from a gas price of $1.27 a gallon to a price of $4.06 a gallon over that span. We ran wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that consumed gasoline at a heavy rate for 5 of those years. Then we got the big crisis and people definitely cut back on the gas they were using, with usage falling back to pre-2000 levels and the price of gas fell all the way back to $1.64 in Jan of 2009. Gas was less than half as expensive in January '09 as it was in July of '08. That was demand for the product falling dramatically and pricing falling in it's wake. Since then we've used the same amount gasoline, due to industry standards rising, but we've traveled more miles by vehicle in each calendar year. The US travels 800 billion miles more per year by vehicle than we did in 1990. That's because there are more vehicles and those vehicles each produce upwards price pressure on gasoline. In other words we're expanding vehicular use in the US at the same time that improving mileage standards decreases the amount of gas it takes to travel. The rise in gasoline prices is because we're addicted to car usage. At the point where increasing mileage standards would work in our favor by causing us to consume less gasoline overall we are instead expanding the amount of driving that we're doing and that's driving prices up. The peak for gasoline usage was actually in 2005. That's when gas broke the $3.00 a gallon barrier for the first time and when the year averaged more than $2.00 a gallon as a whole. The way to get it cheaper is to drive less. When the oil companies cannot reliably produce windfall profits at a given price level due to consumer indifference to their product they will lower prices dramatically to try to get people consuming gas heavily again. The way to keep prices lower is not to give in and consume gas heavily. So far we're 0-for-2 on that. The only dramatic price fall for gasoline was when everybody was scared out from behind the wheel of their car by the crisis in 2008. That worked. Gas prices fell by more than half. That's what we need to figure out how to do cooperatively at this point. Giving your teenager a $100 a month gas allowance is part of the problem. Driving to work instead of taking a commuter train is part of the problem. Eating food that is produced at a distance and trucked or flown in is part of the problem. Not carpooling with other families to handle the 25-50 miles of transport needed per week during the school year is part of the problem. We're addicted to gasoline and it's causing us all to pay the dealer the high price for our drug.
Not only that but you would have to think that our invasion probably led to places like Libya, Egypt and Syria blowing into hell in a handbasket. You'd have to think Qaddafi is still in power today in Libya and Egypt maybe or maybe not under the thumb of Mubarak. The philosophy is simple.... when you have a dictator in charge in the Middle East you leave him be, he might not be our friend but he keeps his crazies under control.
Nobody has the crazies under control. Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi, Mubarak and company were all in power on 9/11. I'm in total agreement that the invasion of Iraq was an unmitigated disaster that we will still be paying for in our grand children's generation but to argue that it caused the US to become a terrorist target is completely false. Our presence in the Middle East caused us to become a target for terrorists based in the Middle East. If we wanted to avoid being the target of Middle Eastern terrorists this is the list of things we would have to undo or not have done: 1. Avoid entanglements started by the British and the Dutch in Saudi Arabia. Never have allied with or promoted the House of Saud over other factions in the country. Never have signed oil leases with anybody in Saudi Arabia. 2. Stay out of the Palestine situation completely. Not have been the first to recognize Israel. Not have taken body blow after body blow because the British conquered the area and then threw their hands up and left it in disarray. 3. Not have overthrown the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 and installed a failed monarchy as its successor. 4. Not have dealt with the European solution in Iraq during the 60's at all. Had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein and his government under any circumstances. 5. Not have created Al-Qaida out of thin air in the 80's to combat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski wanted to give the Soviets their Vietnam and succeeded in that but they and later actors turned Afghanistan into Cambodia and birthed the Islamic extremist terrorist movement in the process. 6. Not have invaded Kuwait in 1991 to liberate it from Saddam Hussein. 7. Not have stationed troops anywhere in the Arabian Peninsula at any time. If we'd done steps 1 through 7 the Europeans would be bearing almost all of the brunt of Islamic extremist's wrath at this point. A wrath born out of colonial adventurism and fully deserved. Unfortunately we stepped in the way of all that and in the process brought a lot of it down on our heads.
Let's say you were born in NYC in 1965. The US was broken up into 5 separate countries at that point as a result of a war fought in 1918 that your father had not yet been born to fight in but your grandfather remembers very well. What he remembers and tells you about at every opportunity is the Russian colonial powers that be that strutted around in their white pith helmets and forced all the locals to bow down to the few Russian Orthodox churches in the area. Most of Brooklyn is Russian Orthodox to this day because the colonial authorities split off the borough as a sanctuary for Russian Orthodox and many such immigrants came into the country under their protection. Most of the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish places of worship in Brooklyn were torn down during this period and their congregations forced to move across the border into Queens and Long Island by the combined forces of the colonial authorities and the new immigrants. Your grandfather still has the key to the family home in Flatbush and vows that some day you will be able to live in that home, occupied for 3 generations now by a Russian Orthodox family, in peace. You have little say in the NYC government or in the government of New England which is one of the 5 countries that the US was split into by the victorious powers in WWI. You do get a "vote" in local and national elections but those elections all go 80-20 by the time they are done and the same corrupt politicians that have been in power, working with the Russians (no longer in occupation but pulling the strings from Russia) for 70+ years now, get re-elected over and over again. Your "representatives" constantly tell you they are working to make things better but they support the status quo every time things come to a head and the generational rebellions all get put down. There are few good jobs and the only way to get ahead is to bow to the powers that be, tacitly supporting the broken political system in the process. Your fellow New Englanders look at you with eyes of distrust and hate when they see you in the street because they know you have capitulated and are supporting the system. However you're mostly safe from the thugs that pass for a police force in the area you live in. Most people aren't safe because the powers that be like having the population divided and so they constantly stir up trouble between Protestants, Catholics and Jews. If anything like a united front ever appears the authorities arrange for a few martyrs to keep things stirred up and the people divided. Divide and conquer. That's the world you live in. You'd love to get married and there's a girl you have an eye on but you know your parents and family will say no. She's Catholic and you're Protestant and both groups hate each other with a vengeance, almost more than the Russians at this point. Her brothers would kill you if they caught you looking at her. No county clerk will issue a license for a Catholic and a Protestant to marry because they have strict instructions not to break the status quo. Practically speaking they also know somebody will likely die if the marriage license is granted so they just don't do it. You don't really have a say in much of anything and it's easy to follow the cultural meme that it's all the Russians fault. Without the Russians and their lackeys you could go kill all the Catholics and make the country so much better. And you're just living in the equivalent of Lebanon. Things are much worse elsewhere in the old US of A. Well, the former US of A. Edit: ask yourself why a formerly Muslim-governed area the size of the Middle East now sees violent Islamic revolution everywhere on the map as the lackeys of the former colonial powers hold on desperately to power.
Holy mother of fuck. Less than a half hour to come up with that that boolshit? You keep that in the fridge ready to roll as needed?
Man..Don't even know where to start with this logic...but lets just start and stop by saying your belief is that the major drop in pricing in Jan of 2009 was ONLY because we as Americans cut back because of higher pricing? Now you are giving the Oil companies too much credit bud. There is NO business in the WORLD that would cut prices like that because of lack of purchase. From a business standpoint, your claim is that the big Oil companies and the Royals got all worried about us cutting back and dropped prices....dropped prices...almost $2.oo a gallon? Business lesson...I own a hamburger place and it costs me $3 to make my burger that I charge $7.00 for. Business goes down so I don't drop my prices for the burger to $6.00..or even $5.50....I drop my prices more then half and charge $3.25. Bottom line is if Im paying too much for a product I don't picket the front of the place charging me...I find another place to purchase from...like my own backyard...my own backyard. To believe the sole reason for the prices dropping is because of usage? I mean..your kidding me right? Did the Oil companies really believe that we greedy American fucks would stay at home the way you proposed? No..they knew eventually we have about a solid 60 or 65 years on this planet and if we want to get in our car and drive the kids down to the beach and we have ability? We will do that instead of packing the kids into a bus and travel 4 hours stops included for a 5 hour day. This bullshit that we live our lives too comfortably is total friggin nonsense. If you want to blame the way we get our power sources...cool...Im all in. Me staying home this weekend instead of taking my boys fishing or to the beach or to a Yankee game so Oil companies will drop their prices? No fool here...and only a fool would believe that temporary drop in prices was because of ONLY the cut back in usage. That's flat out nonsense. If prices had gone from 3.50 to 3.20 during that time period..maybe...that drop? Anyone that thinks if our usage had stayed the same during that period...that prices would have stayed at around 1.70? Come on...what the hell are we doing here. Finally....do you drive? Have you looked at the cars you are passing lately? See all those hummers that were all over the road? All those gigantic SUV's that took up half the road? Dinosaurs. This country has cut down dramatically from the gas we used just 5 to 7 years ago. quote]
If you don't understand people's legitimate grievances you don't have a prayer of understanding the crazy, maniacal stuff those people will wind up doing in response to those grievances. Obviously none of us would strap high explosives to our chest and walk into a crowd and detonate them. Put us in the whacked out society we have fostered in the Middle East and that might wind up seeming like a sane way out.
Okay, and if Finland decided to spend four trillion dollars to meddle in the situation but accomplish absolutely nothing everybody would say "What the f*ck is wrong with them?"
Bah. People have had legitimate grievances against the stronger and more powerful since the day the first guy got tossed out of his cave. You are perilously close to justifying criminal acts targeting innocent civilians.
Good one. "Deliberately" targeting civilians, maybe? Not much of a distinction, but that's all I got right now.
