Pangloss

Do you think he meant something else? If so, what would that be?

Doesn't that support what I said? He said he would take public money, and now he's decided not to. What am I missing here?

Allow me to continue addressing the issues. Americans are already responding to high prices by buying more fuel-efficient cars. SUVs are disappearing faster than they swept into the marketplace just a couple of decades ago. But even more revealing, a new study out today being widely reported in the media shows Americans drove four billion miles less over the last 12 months than the previous year. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/business/19gas.html?ref=business The percentage is small, but it's the sixth straight consecutive monthly decline, and the dramatic turn has been described by one researcher as "like falling off a cliff". I thought this quotes was also interesting: That suggests to me that the current economic situation and overall public perception are as much factors here as anything else. In short, the tide has changed. There's no need for dramatic societal upheaval. We don't need to stop polluting tomorrow, because we're already going to stop polluting in the very near future. All we have to do is keep going like we're going. I don't think we should be working towards lower gas prices -- that's a HUGE mistake. We should stop the ridiculous oil company subsidies, but we should continue drilling every domestic source of oil as long as it doesn't cause a dramatic lowering of prices. To be honest, I'm actually concerned that speculation on the commodities market will decline prematurely and lead to a resurgence of demand. This is the time where we need to keep this momentum going in the right direction. But I'm not TOO worried about that, because the speculation-driven price, as I understand it, is far in excess of what's been passed along to consumers (the barrel price has increased something like 70% faster than the pump price, but that was a stat I read several weeks ago, if I even read it correctly, so don't quote me on that). Sorry boys, no apocalypse this time around.

To steal a quote from a recent television show, there's probably not a heart doctor on the planet who doesn't carry nitroglycerin tablets in his black bag. Exactly, you want it stopped, right now, by any means necessary. Regardless of the cost. That's not an argument to ween us off oil, that's an argument that society as we know it needs to be destroyed and remade as some kind of left-wing utopia. Which of course has to be sold as "We need cheaper gas!" (a total contradiction with years of left-wing energy policy) just to get the ignorant red-staters on board. I read one of your own quotes right back to you in conclusion:

From what I've seen from these articles he doesn't even PRESENT an argument. He just makes the statement that Iraq was "largely about oil", end of story. So correlation would seem to be the entire basis of his argument, and it's the simplest one possible: Oil drives the economy, therefore the war in Iraq must be about oil. Do you think he meant something else? If so, what would that be? His insider status means nothing when it comes to Iraq -- as the article says, he was not part of those policy decisions (why would he be? the idiots believed it was gonna cost $50 billion tops, remember?). There are probably people who work in the GAO who have more inside information about the run-up to war than Alan Greenspan. Perhaps he's trying to deflect the history books from giving him a bad accounting for his mistakes leading to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. But hey, another nice try at framing the argument.

Rofl, indeed. Not exactly the kind of change Obama is supposed to represent, especially since he specifically promised not to do this, and going back on a campaign promise (this one before he's even elected!) is the very hallmark of a moden politician. Oh well.

Alan Greenspan obviously hasn't looked at the actual arguments waging in the Bush administration between participants in the decision to go to war, which are well-documented by independent authors like Bob Woodward (the only liberal journalist who's actually brought down a Republican administration). And maybe he could also read up on how correlation does not imply causation.

It doesn't, it doesn't, and it doesn't. All of which is a straw man, because it isn't why I propose and support it, as you well know. Completely beside the point.

Well now wait a second, the peak oil people are telling us that we're about to run out, "within the next few years". And clearly we're not going to be weened from foreign oil during, say, the eight years Obama is president. So are you saying Peak Oil Man is wrong? Wow, that's really off-message! Did you forget to run this by the Ministry of Information? Anyway, even at "years" it sounds to me like a very GOOD idea to get the ball rolling on this kind of drilling.

Nonsense, "catastrophic environmental impact" was a definitive statement, not the raising of a scientific inquiry. So get off my back. I agree with both of those things' date=' and I disagree with my state's delegation's bipartisan opposition to offshore drilling. I don't see any (or at least not many) birds dying on the European shores due to North Sea drilling, and sure as hell nobody's talking about ending that drilling, and yet we can't even START drilling off the Florida coast without every environmentalist screaming end-of-the-world scenarios and shouting about "catastrophic environmental impact". Accidents happen and that's likely with nuclear as well, but that makes it an endeavor to be endured and learned-from, not something we should cast out in ignorance. That's what science is all about. Nuclear should [i']never [/i]have been abandoned, IMO.

Well I for one welcome our highly qualified overlords!

Why would drilling for all domestic oil represent "catastrophic environmental impact"? Makes sense.

So every country that is drilling for oil is guilty of "catastrophic environmental impact"? It's not possible to drill for oil without "catastrophic environmental impact"? I see. I think off-the-cuff reactions like that are why we don't have a nuclear power program like that of France, which would have put us light years ahead of the situation we currently find ourselves in. This is exactly what I meant by "self-flagellation" -- our inability to take positive steps forward that other countries seem perfectly capable of doing without all the muss and fuss.

Thanks for starting this. One of the thing I thought was so interesting about the story was the fact that it appeared all of a sudden on several major news outlets. The guy is under house arrest and previously had no communication with the outside world. Suddenly he was able to do live interviews. I've not yet seen a reason for that, and I suspect that there's more to this sudden flurry of AQ Khan news than meets the eye.

We should drill for all domestic oil. We're probably the only country in the world that doesn't do that, thanks to our dire need for self-flagellation. I don't think drilling is any kind of solution, but it's silly not to do it.

Do you mind clarifying here? You seem to be jumping to conclusions here (i.e. Non-Sequitur). Sure, but I'm not jumping to any conclusions here, I'm just bracketing the problem really. And to answer Phi's question as well: These statements were in response to the suggestion that it's not the fault of black fathers that they don't stick around to raise their kids. I.E. it's not daddy's fault he's not around, because he's in prison on drug charges; it's not daddy's fault he's not around, because of the "ravages of poverty". But I do understand that both Rev and Phi support the general concept of personal responsibility, and the arguments they're making don't automatically obviate all personal responsibility. You're just adding additional variables to the mix. That's where liberals and conservatives often clash, when (for example) conservatives misinterpret the expansion of variables to mean that the ones already understood to exist are no longer relevent. But that doesn't mean that some liberals don't actually feel that way. The world is full of idiots. And Obama has to win their votes too.

Semantics and statistics, guys, none of which any of you collected anyway. What's relevent is that a lot of black children are growing up to single working moms. Anyway I think you got your answer there, Sisyphus. This conversation actually made me re-think my assessment that conservatives are off base in suggesting that liberals eschew responsibility -- just look at all the rationalization going on right here. Was I wrong, guys?

Getting back to the subject of who could be our first female president, an amusing meme began floating around the Web last week putting forth the notion that, just as Bill Clinton was our "first black president", Obama may usurp that role for women. The notion has appeared in several blogs, and most recently in op/ed pieces in the New York Times and the New York Post. Here are a couple of links. http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=06&year=2008&base_name=whos_your_daddy http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/opinion/15faludi.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=828c01f0d3a1e547&ex=1213761600 From the above article:

It's an interesting suggestion, but WV is not really considered one of the main potential swing states this year, although it is usually included in the second-tier group of 20-25 states that could swing with a few interesting developments on the campaign trail. It only has 5 electoral votes, though. Interestingly, many political observers have been talking recently about how this election has a good chance of being a blowout, but the twist here is that it could be a blowout for either side. I can see the angle there -- both candidates are moderates and the 20-40% middle ground voters seem very undecided at the moment.

GTA4 was a gaming landmark. A real achievement. I'm not playing anything at the moment, having just got back from vacation, but I'll be checking out Metal Gear Solid 4 soon. All praises to the Playstation!

Don't rush me, I'm memorizing a one-time pad. Don't rush me, I'm factoring a prime number. Honk if you know my private key!

I for one welcome our Mormon overlords.

It is a disproportionate problem in the US (far more serious for blacks). So serious is the discrepency that in fact most (more than half) black children grow up in single homes in this country. (We've talked about this here before but I can dig up a reference if needed. Can probably google it pretty quick.) But Obama actually presented it as a problem facing all races, just a particular one for the black community. The underlying premise of the criticism from the right is that he's just telling conservatives something they want to hear, and offering no real change in this area (but what would he propose, a law against family abandonment?). One conservative post I read on another board said something to the effect that the black vote is all sewn up, so he might as well go this route. I think there's some truth in that; he's a politician, after all. But the art of politics is finding common ground with people who are inclined to hate you while stopping short of outraging your supporters, and in that sense this is an excellent choice. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is, I suppose, in the eye of the beholder.