The Obamanation

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Remember just a few weeks ago when Obama was being criticized for the high price of gasoline.
Where are those screeching critics now ?

Western Oregon had prices of $4.49 / gal for regular back then.
Today, on the price has dropped to $3.51.
Should Obama be praised for this ?

Obviously not... just as the earlier charges were outside of his control.

Today, a story is emerging that the "shortage" of gasoline back then was phony.
The story is that the price hike was artificially caused by an announcement
that two refineries were "off line", and it was just a matter of "supply and demand".

The same source that helped bring down Enron is saying that "pollution" records
show that these refineries continued running and producing gasoline.

The Dept of Justice is being asked to investigate...

P.S. Today, the lowest prices for regular gas in PDX are at $3.41 / gal

[BigV]

*buckles up*

[Happy Monkey]

Not a joke.

Originally Posted by Mother Jones

President Obama is using a Cold War-era mind-control technique known as "Delphi" to coerce Americans into accepting his plan for a United Nations-run communist dictatorship in which suburbanites will be forcibly relocated to cities. That's according to a four-hour briefing delivered to Republican state senators at the Georgia state Capitol last month.

[Lamplighter]

a Cold War-era mind-control technique known as "Delphi"

My understanding and experience with the Dephi Method is almost the opposite of that description.

I believe that instead of mind-control, this method of decision-making
removes the influence of the more authoritative or well-known leaders,
and eliminates any "appeal to authority" by the reputation of individuals in the group,
It allows equal weight to the idea or proposal of each individual respondent in the group.

Here is a description from Wikipedia:

The Delphi method (play /ˈdɛlfaɪ/ DEL-fy) is a structured communication technique,
originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method
which relies on a panel of experts.[1]

In the standard version, the experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds.
After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts
from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments.
Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies
of other members of their panel.

It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease
and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer.
Finally, the process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds,
achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores
of the final rounds determine the results.[2]

But then, re-defining words to mean just their opposite is a traditional tool of right wing extremists.

[BigV]

it's about $3.25 / gal out here

[Lamplighter]

I did a bit of Googling, and found that this questioning of the refineries did come up last July.
I'm sort of surprised the media did not make more of it, but instead fed the attack-Obama frenzy.

Even the isolated coastal towns in Oregon have gas prices in the low, low $3.4X's now.