Wow! Gas for just $.05 per gallon!
 

...of course, you have to move to Iraq to get that price, compliments of the U.S. taxpayers.

Funny... because of this war, we're paying $2+ per gallon here, we get lose hundreds of servicemen, and our taxes get to pay for the war itself. Not to mention the fact that most of the world now hates our guts. And Osama bin Laden is camping somewhere, unmolested by the U.S.'s short-lived manhunt, no doubt bending his destructive creativity towards some new horror.

Maybe this happy news will put a smile on your face next time you drop $50 at the gas station. Doesn't this sort of thing just make you want to give George W. a big, wet, sloppy kiss?

Re: Wow! Gas for just $.05 per gallon!
 

Eh, not really. Thank OPEC and the refiners.

Maybe this happy news will put a smile on your face next time you drop $50 at the gas station.

You bet it does. Ever see what the average Iraqi salary is?

$50/month (in mid 2003)

I feel just fine paying $2/gal.

when is the last time we increased our refining capabilities in the US?

Oh, come on! What kind of fun would that be? Its so much easier to send someone else's sons out to kill each other, use someone else's money (the US taxpayers') to do it, and award your best friend $30 billion of someone else's money (US taxpayer, yet again) to clean up the mess you made and pretend that you're not getting a single thing out of the deal (only your off-shore banker knows for sure). On top of it all you get instant Sainthood because you were THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (look at how everyone is creaming over Bonzo boy in the other thread).

Or you could build an oil refinery.

Pulleez!;)

well, except for the tree huggers. why don't we blame all of this on the tree huggers who prevent us from building new refineries, nuclear plants, and drilling in anwar?

Sure, we're an easy target and no one pays attention to us, anyhow (look at the shape the planet's in). Now, if you'll excuse me, me and my tree would like to be alone right now.:p

This has little to do with OPEC if you actually look at the situation. OPEC are already well over their production target and everyone aside from Saudi is running at close to or at maximum capacity, the problem is a combination of massive increased demand by particularly China and oil speculators running wild as free. There are shorter term issues of refineries being close to capacity and (this is partly a factor of the previous situation) little things going wrong affecting output because there is simply no slack in the system.

Build yourself an understanding of oil futures and you'll see what's going on, estimates of the terrorpremium that's being run by these guys runs from $5-8pb. To dumb it down a fair bit (lets face it, when you're buying a few million barrels of oil for a week, there are a fair few things going through your mind, commodity futures is a funny game.) people are trading on whether there will be attack on Saudi oil infrastructure.

My personal feeling is that this is less likely than the hysteria makes out and the pattern of recent hit and run attacks bears this out in my opinion but that doesn't stop the trading. Terrorists realized that the markets are by their very nature, utterly spineless and risk adverse, fucking them up is dead easy compared to national moral.

edit: Can you tell it's pre-morning-coffee time? Hysteria with an I.

So why shouldn't you have to pay $2+/gallon. We pay about €1/liter over here. Maybe you shouldn't drive cars which need 15liter/100km. Would be a nice gift to mother nature.

Tree Hugger! :D

Tut. Made me splutter orange juice everywhere.

Anyone who's basis for an argument involves the words 'taxpayer', 'by', 'paid' and 'for' is clearly very mean and shouldn't be allowed to make decisions.

AH! GODDAMN HIPPIES!!!

Ok, got that out of my system.

Now, we have some real problems here in America with confusing, contradictory and conciliatory environmental policy.

For instance, it's one of the reasons for California's energy crisis. They can't build any of the newer, much more efficient and clean power plants because of environmental restrictions. The new natural gas burning plants are far and above superior to the coal plants that they have now.

Cool, you think I'm a hippy! :) Now I can sleep at night after finishing a hard days work at the advertising agency where I participate in mass indoctrination, overconsumption and the general pursuit of unmitigated commercialism.

Assimilation complete.

Acquiring new target...

Try working for the other side, by nothing day is still a few months off, good marketing for it (how's that for irony) is always in demand.

No, they just build them in Colorado. We have the 4-corners power plant which pollutes the air in every direction, and outside the teeny town of Nucla, Colorado, we have the ever popular Tri-state power plant, also a real polluter, as well as a major road hazard since the thing is supplied by a never-ending stream of coal trucks which drive over the trecherous mountain roads and hair pin curves at a gazillion miles an hour. Nothing like trying to negotiate Norwood "Hill" - a very steep pass with few guard rails on an icey winter day and see one of these coal trucks bearing down on you in your rear view. The energy these plants produce go straight to LA, as the direction of the power lines attest. The population out there (about 1 per square mile - and the Navajo don't count since most don't have electrified hogans) hardly requires the massive electrical output of these two monsters, and the utility lines from them head west to California, not east to Denver. I shed no tears for California, and the state is hardly hamstrung by enviromental restrictions. They've just put their power plants in areas where the population is too small and too disenfranchised to protest.

Yes, I am a bona fide, "tree-hugging" hippie, and the reason I am is because I spent 6 years studying biology at the graduate and post graduate level. Most people who complain about environmental restrictions are so ignorant of science that they wouldn't know the 1st law of thermodynamics if it hit them with a stick.

Jag, am I being dumb or did that not make any sense at all??!

TS, don't shoot yet, I agree if there is a cleaner, less hazardous plant structure it should replace an older, more pollutive version. But at what environmental cost to knock it down and replace it? Does this equal the cost of continuing with the old one?

And the reason for California's energy crisis is not befuddled environmental claptrappers but as Pi quite rightly said overconsumption of energy in the USA as a whole. Did you know you use and waste the most electrical energy per capita than any other country?

That didn't make any sense.

Let me rephrase.

Buy Nothing Day is a campaign run by Adbusters, you should look into it.

Re: Wow! Gas for just $.05 per gallon!
 

Still cheaper than sugar water (Coke).

Not that I'm happy about $2.00+ per gallon ($2.25/gal here) but just thought I'd add some perspective. Your point is valid.

Will do.
http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/bndfaq.html