My money says his response will have something to do with the conflict between Isaac and Ishmael 4000 years ago when Christianity and Islam were founded.

Then it will morph to all fault lying with the Soviet Union who were seeking to build deep water ports on the rugged granite shoreline of the Gulf of Thailand, assisted of course by the Khmer Rouge.

And finally... Yes! It will also be the fault of the liberal media...

Stlhd,

"I have made no accusation that I am aware of" "We have war and high prices (gouging). "

So gouging is not an accusation? is it a compliment.

From several investment news letters I get a few facts.

Oil companies have avg. 7.3 cents a gallon profit or 4.2% of revenues adjusted since 1997. Projections are the same for 2004.

By comparison Walmart and Microsoft average nearly 3 times the dollar for dollar profit as oil companies.

So does the president and his family have connections to Microsoft and Walmart? are they gouging you with high prices? or is does a lmisinformation benefit your postion on this admin?

salt,

I notice you have stopped debating the issues and just play dog pile. Is your google broken?
Overwhelm us with your knowledge on the issues please.

Bring it on libs ! B ring it on!

I know what I read elvis....and you know what you wrote.

That's enough for me and (I'm guessing) every single other person that reads this forum regularly, left or right.



Apparently its not safe to drink the water in Fall City.

1997? Hmmm, I wonder why that year was picked? Was 1996 a really good year that would skew the point you are trying to make? Or was 1997 such a bad year that it drags your numbers down? Try re-working your numbers for the last two years only. And use barrels of oil not gallons of gas. More spin. And, here's a typical TK response....you prove that my "gouging" comment is wrong. Haven't so far. I stand by it.
Tell us all why Bush is holding onto the oil reserves at such a time which we keep reserves for. Is it for some future crisis? In case things get even worse? Share your vast industry and financial knowledge with us oh wise mis-guided one.

AM...I didn't particularly like or dislike Hilary Clinton but my impression was that she was intelligent and aggressive. I think that's why so many righties hated her so much. An intelligent aggressive woman is very intimidating to them.

AM,

Anyone above the 3rd grade that reads that quote can clearly see no threat just an analogy. Regardless in my next post I apologized to you if it was taken at a threat.
Why do you bring H20 into this/ Is it to stir up trouble or does it make you feel that it would make your positon more valid? Why not stand on your own two feet on the issues or is it more comfortable for you in the mud? I grew up in too tough a neighbor hood for CS tactics like that to work. BTW I thought you said I deleted that post?


H20,

Check out AM's post she was able to come up with the post she accused me of deleting.

Stlhd,

Pick a date then the avg is close enough to be valid as far back as I can see to 1990. It even skews a little more as Walmart and Microsoft have more comp today and return a little less on the bottom line re same dollar revenue today than then.

Stlhd,


I thought you said you made no assertions? then you back pedaland not only admit that you did but stand by it. Talk about spin!
"you prove that my "gouging" comment is wrong. Haven't so far. I stand by it. "

you really do not understand what you are talking about do you? gallon, Liters, Barrels, Buckets, cups make no difference when you are discussin g profits. Dollars is all that matters, expenses minus revenue is the measure. Kinda like your bank account it makes no difference if you withdraw a $100 bill or 100 $1 dollar bills it's still 100 dollars.

Well if flat avg. profits per $ over 14 years with a projection for the same in 04 as of last week won't do it for you nothing will.

TK I believe you are talking gasoline not oil. Earnings on barrels of oil are up dramatically for all oil companies not flat as you imply. Or do you think US oil companies are no longer pumping oil? Do the math TK. It costs the same to pump a barrel of oil today than it did yesterday. Today the price you sell a barrel for is up. I don't know why I even bother trying to reason with you. You will go with a flawed stance until people tire of it and then call it a success. We have a president who's like that. And yes it gives the appearance of price gouging when the reserves are not being utilized for their intended purpose.

AM....yeah but Laura is such a stepford wife.

I like an aggressive woman ... on top. :p

... and Laura is almost a FLILF.

Stlhd,

Since foreign oil accounts for 70% of our consumption and is taken into consideration of the projection of profits you are still wrong.

Nope. (A TK style comeback)

TK-

You see the thing is, unless we copy and paste your every word for future reference(and I'm not about to waste my time doing that), if you delete something we can't go back and quote you. Worked out kinda nice for you, didn't it?

I saw the post in question and the context was 'having four miltary widows in your family'...ring a bell? Furthermore, the part aunty quoted is also altered from its original context.

Seriously dude, even grandpa has made a constructive comment or two on these threads, the temptation to go negative when it doesn't look good for your side is great, no ones going to begrudge you for going off the deep end once in a while.....

...but every thread and every post?

Take it from someone who had to learn the hard way, if you can't come constructive at least once in awhile, you won't be around long.

If you can't humble yourself and admit when you've made a mistake how do you expect even the staunchest of conservative posters here to take you seriously? If you don't care whether or not anyone takes you seriously, why are you even wasting your time?

. "We have a president who's like that. And yes it gives the appearance of price gouging when the reserves are not being utilized for their intended purpose. "

Actually I am skeptical about using the oil reserves just to lower the price. The reserves are there to prevent what happened in the Jimmy Carter 70's when we had gas lines and embargos. The reserve is really for serious emergencies and not just to make it easier to drive our cars every day.

In terms of the price of gas...There are alot of things at work here, not the least of which is the supply chain. We haven't built any new refining capacity in over 17 years I think. We use too much and don't have enough to meet our crazy demand. China is coming of age and is a big consumer on the same world market where we buy gas and oil. But mainly I think the shoot up in oil prices has more to do with the jittery market place anticipating disruption of supply. A serious person should not claim that president Bush is creating this shortage for his friends in the oil business. Just not a credible reason.
I admit to being part of the problem by driving my Suburban and towing my boat and running my big outboard too much. I use a lot of fuel torching all those crosses on weekends too.

We've enjoyed low gas prices for so long, we forgot what paying a higher price felt like. It's still a pretty good deal even at $2.50/gl. Have you checked lumber prices lately? Plywood up +200% in a year.

Take a look at this chart, it shows production/consumption of energy is the US in 1998...........click the link- http://eed.llnl.gov/flow/98flow.php

I'm pretty sure that Bush isn't losing sleep over it though.......other than the fact that if gas is still at $2.50/gl come fall, he's cooked.

gasoline is a commodity like lumber and steel, milk, gold...etc..

The Chinese are gobbling up the scrap metal at an alarming pace and that is why the price of steel products such as framing for construction has been skyrocketing...ask a contractor. Lumber wars with Canada and exporting so many logs overseas have helped shoot those prices up. Gasoline is also a commodity being used much more by China than ever before..and they have none of their own capacity...figure it out....Opportunism is commodity markets is nothing new and certainly does not operate along any party lines. If we were to get some really good news from the war on terrorism (heaven forbid) we would probably see some knee jerk price drops. Same goes for more bad news...the other way.

With as vulnerable as we are supply-wise, opening the reserve would be a mistake we could wind up paying alot more for down the road.

Maybe this'll teach all you city folk to start taking public transit more seriously...and I don't mean some kooky, go-nowhere monorail either.

Things are looking up..I sleep in a bit on Saturday..get up and check in here and I find myself agreeing with H2O completely. sheeesh

There are lots of things we could do to become less dependent on foriegn oil. But our politicians lack the will to ask any of us to sacrafice, even a little, and we the people are generally unwilling to make any sacrafices.

We could raise gas milage standards just a little and save a ton of oil. We could lower the speed limit to 60 in every state and save a ton of oil. (My new truck has a digital display of actual fuel economy. At 60 MPG I get about 20-21 MPG . At 70 it drops to about 18.) I think that just the savings possible from a slightly lower speed limit and slightly higher gas milage requirements would more than equal total Alaska oil production, which currently goes to Japan anyway. Both are easy to do and both are unpopular because folks do not want to make any sacrafices.

Politically we nead Bush to get a lot more agressive with our "allies" that produce oil. We should be able to preassure them to increase productiuon. After all, don't we give many of them millions a year in aid? But why should GW push for lower gas prices, until the election comes nearer. His buddies in the oii companies are getting rich. Remember GW was an oil man, until he screwed that up too and his daddies friends had to bail him out.