Obama '08?

Do you know there is a such a thing as planning? Are you aware that corporations have research and development departments? Unless we plan for the future, there will be no tomorrow.

Can you try reading some substantive matter? Perhaps, enroll in an adult education course?

Planning is good, but you must deal with today and the near future while making plans for the distant future.

America is planning to replace Obama in 2012 because if he is not replaced there will be no future.

I found lots of data on oil, almost all of which came from government sources. It is pretty mind numbing stuff, with the numbers being cited being in some cases from a couple of years ago and the quantities (like millions of barrels per day) hard to conceive of.
The U.S. is the number 1 consumer of oil: 20 million barrels/day and in terms of usage per 1,000 people (68.7)
The E.U. is 2nd at 14 million/day and per capita.
China is 3rd (7.6 million/day) but is 4th per capita.
Japan comes in in 4th (5.0 million) and is 3rd per capita.

It appears that we produce 45% of oil domestically while 55% is imported. Of the oil we import, 70% comes from Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela. Canada and Mexico are the biggies. If you add in Iraq, Algeria, Columbia, Angola and Brazil, the top 10 countries account for 89% of imports.

Despite rising pump prices, consumption in the U.S. actually rose 7% in March, 2011.

I stand ready to be challenged or corrected. Reading through the charts and graphs can cause my eyes to glaze over.

My position is that the criticism of Obama that will be forthcoming could well be effective but is probably misguided, driven by the oil producers to gain access to oil in sensitive areas. Supply is not the issue and, to a lesser extent, neither is demand, although I support steps to gradually wean ourselves from oil.
The issue, which Obama touched on yesterday, is excessive speculation. I have no problem with airlines locking in prices by contracting a price today for future delivery. I do the same thing with tomato soup. If Kroger has a sale, I will buy a dozen cans, figuring that the price I pay to store them in my pantry will be beneficial for me vs buying a can every week.
My betting, if I had any money to bet, is that the bubble will burst for both oil and gold.
$3.639 at the pump this morning in central VA, by the way.

rjb, Good report on oil and consumption. Your petro is still "cheap" compared to California where all grades are above $4/gallon. The reports that I've been reading that gas prices will exceed $6/gallon is probably more true than not.

Manipulation of oil prices by speculators will keep gas prices high and higher - even as oil companies profits continue to grow - IMHO.

Don't take a step with an intelligent, coherent plan.

POM, you are incoherent and you lack real world intelligence.

That's what I've been saying for weeks.

Also, our consumption in the US is high while our contribution to the worlds oil supply is very low.

If Obama was being honest about living in a world that is fair, the US should be contributing it's fair share of crude to the global supply.

But, you've accused Obama of raising the prices, as if he personally takes an extended straw out every evening and drinks the oil, causing a shortage.

Thirty years ago, the Chinese were happy to use bicycles, trains, bicycles, their feet, bicycles. I honestly thought they would teach the world how to live. Instead, American robber barons convinced them to be just like us and now they have abandoned their bicycles for cars.

POM, you're nucking futs, I have never accused Obama of raising gas prices.

Put down your crack pipe and step away from the computer POM.

A very strange statement.

The evidence suggests that the former restraint of the Chinese people was forced on them by a regime that murdered in excess of 18 million of them between 1948 and 1955 as it wiped out the class of landowners and merchants, and later several millions more during the "cultural revolution" inspired by their aging dictator Mao. Abject poverty and tyranny were the stuff of daily lives for all until even their socialist leaders recognized at least the economic folly of their misguided and inhuman system.

It wasn't "Americam Robber Barons" who inspired them to change - it was the people themselves who did it , en masse and without hesitation, as soon as their leaders loosened the economic restraints in the idiotic socialist tyranny they had imposed on the people for six wasted decades.

Strange ideas, from a strange mind.

Tax Hikes on Top Earners? Bloomberg Says Now Is Not the Time

For you liberals out there, 'Top Earners' is code for Rich.

George, you're use of facts and logic are only going to cause POM's head to explode... that's not a bad thing.

OUR NECESSARY OBJECTIVES

Our first necessary objective is to IMPEACH PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA FOR HIS VIOLATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USA AND THE LAWS MADE IN ITS PURSUANCE.

What if after Obama is impeached by a majority of the House, but the Senate doesn’t have the two-thirds majority required to remove him? The impeachment trial will nevertheless provide the voters in 2012 evidence that justifies Obama not being reelected. It will thereby motivate a huge voter turn out necessary to more than exceed the votes of the dead and the multi-votes of many living that the Obama gangsters aiding him (e.g., Soros, et al) will have purchased.

Our next necessary objective is to elect people to Congress and the presidency who want to stop “excessive government spending and taxation.” Their mission must be to secure public policy consistent with securing our Liberty, securing our Constitutionally Limited Government, and securing our Free Enterprise and Free Market System.

Our next necessary objective is to convince the new Congress and the new President to replace the current federal tax system with one that is necessary for achieving a government that actually shuns excessive government spending and taxation.

The tax system required is one which prohibits Congress and the President from buying their future elections from selected parts of their constituencies with government tax collections. A tax system which is necessary to achieve that is a tax system that taxes each kind of a thing that is taxed the same regardless of the quantity of those things taxed. Specifically, we must tax each and every dollar of each person’s annual gross income at the same rate (i.e., “uniform” rate) regardless of the size of that gross income.

Then if that uniform tax rate were for example 10%, a gross income of $1,000 would be taxed $100, a gross income of $10,000 would be taxed $1000, a gross income of $100,000 would be taxed $10,000, and a gross income of $1,000 million would be taxed $100 million. There would be zero pay backs, zero deductions, zero exemptions, and zero double taxations (e.g., zero corporate and inheritance income taxes).

Not only would such a tax system make it difficult to buy votes with tax deductions, it would comply with the Constitution of the USA, Article I, Section 8, 1st paragraph, which says:
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”

My disagreement with a consumption tax is that it effectively taxes high income individuals a lower percentage of their annual gross income than it does low income individuals. That is because higher income individuals invest--and do not consume-- a larger percentage of their income than do lower income individuals.

The so-called "fair tax" is worse. The low gross income individuals will not pay any tax--because of the fixed refund all tax payers would receive from the feds--and the middle gross income individuals will pay a greater percentage of their gross income than will the high income individuals. Again, that of course is true because the high gross income individuals invest a higher percentage of their income than they spend, than do the middle gross income individuals. Worse yet, fed politicians could buy more low income votes by their manipulation of the size of that refund.

You Reps are such bores -- constantly repeating the same old lies and distortions.

Oh, wow, Bloomberg is the last word on all issues. Then there is the issue of self-serving Bloomberg statements. Hey, let's shield Paris Hilton, Teresa Heinz, et al., from paying more tax. Do you know the meaning of "plutocracy?"

Of coarse, Bloomberg is the spokesperson for everybody. waterboy has no clue on what the wealthy are actually saying about paying more taxes; they say they can afford it - more so than the middle class or the poor. They also understand that the increasing national debt is not good for our country. waterboy has no clue.

In today's news.

I think that it is time to do what most of the other countries have done, which is to nationalize the oil companies. It is ridiculous to give them access to government lands and then allow them to charge world prices for the extracted oil, or to sell the oil abroad at those prices.

Yeah ! Then we could be like .... Venezuela.