Rick Bupkus of Chicago will be leading a coalition of Second Amendment activists to Saint Paul this September to picket the Republican National Convention.
“We need to convince the Republicans to join with the majority of Americans who support Second Amendment rights”.
GOP spokesperson Anna Elk responded “Er…the GOP was supporting Second Amendment rights long before it was politically cool to do so…”
Bupkus, undeterred, promised “A 4,000 gun salute” outside Saint Paul’s XCel Energy Center, site of the convention.
———-
OK, I made that whole bit up.
I had to, just to illustrate how ridiculous this bit here sounds:
When a [trucker-protest organizer Mike] Schaffner-organized truck rally comes to St. Paul on September 2, he hopes the [currently 150-truck] convoy gets even larger, the better to send a resounding message to those assembled for the Republican National Convention: Skyrocketing fuel prices are threatening the livelihood of truckers, more than 80 percent of whom are independent owner-operators, according to Schaffner (pictured). Further, while oil companies continue to post soaring profits, it’s consumers who rely on the trucking industry for shipping the food and clothing that end up paying the tab.
“I’m tired of the rhetoric,” he adds. “Tired of being like the little child and the government is the mother giving us a spoonful of medicine and telling us we have to take it.”
So – you protest at the convention of the party that’s actually trying to do something to increase the supply of fuel, thus lowering prices (and, by some indications, succeeding at it, at least on an initial psychological level)…
…and…
…and…
…oh, never mind. The “intricacies” of the Tic mind never cease to baffle me.
Dr. Sigmund Berg diagnosed: “at least on an initial psychological level”
Dear Dr. Berg: I have this recurrent dream that I’m in a car, driving to the gas station and paying more than $4 a gallon. Do you recommend psychoanalysis to lower the cost? Cognitive therapy?
“Every day in every way, gas is getting cheaper and cheaper.”
Maybe your pals in the drug industry can come up with a medication to fix the psychological disorder that manifests itself in high gas prices?
You don’t need Freud for this. You need William of Occam. Everything is the fault of Republicans. It’s pretty much axiomatic, at least in certain quarters.
AC,
Maybe you should move. 3.64 a gallon for regular at three stations near my work this morning.
I realize being happy about 3.64 is kinda sad, but it is better than the 4.00 just 2 weeks ago.
Angryclown prefers to stick with the specific, Mr. D, and to avoid reductionist stupidities like yours.
You are lucky, Loren. Perhaps somebody dumped Prozac into the local water supply. In any case, it appears your psycho-economy is improving!
When all the specifics boil down to the same thing, using a reductionist approach makes a lot of sense, AC. I know you treasure your Bertrand Russell in size 45EEE brogans pose, but this one doesn’t require semiotics coursework from Columbia to figure out. These guys are getting their butts handed to them because of the price of diesel fuel. One party is currently making a belated effort to help. The other is telling them to eat their spinach. These dudes need to go to Denver.
As usual, the Republican plan is to help consumers very little by helping U.S. oil companies a lot. Oil is a fungible commodity. You want to pretend you’re getting your gas from Alaska instead of from a world market that will continue to include Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia and lots of other countries, friendly and not, well you go right ahead, Mr. D. But you’re merely planning to throw a shot glass of new production into the market swimming pool. In ten years. Great for the guys who produce the gas, all but irrelevant to the rest of us.
We have limited leverage with the Saudis, the Russians and the Venezuelans, AC. We can control what we do with our domestic supply. When these guys get to St. Paul, we’ll make sure to tell them that you recommend spinach. Thanks for playing!
I like the idea of a trucker protest at the RNC. McCain needs to have his feet held to the fire on this (and many other) issue(s). Would love it if were also done at the DNC in Denver.
AC – of course, is right. Mr. D, if you can only control your 1 slice of bread in a grocery store, claiming you can cure hunger by controlling your slice of bread is silly. Maybe, just maybe, you look for a way to make other kinds of grain-based foods.
But let’s go to Mr. Berg’s silliness – the gas companies didn’t say 10 years back – GOD, there will be a supply shortfall!!! Do SOMETHING!!!!
Oil men, who became the President and Vice President, didn’t sound any alarm bell (and let’s be clear, it’s not about refining capacity, which was your meme of the day two years ago – that’s been completely refuted by the oil industry experts and executives themselves).
Mitch, your President passed a 100% tax cut in 2001 for vehicles over 6000 pounds GVW. It helped to spike consumption – they weren’t worried about supply, or usage, they wanted to throw the US car manufacturers a bone, while increasing gasoline consumption. Pretending they didn’t have a role in creating this mess is absurd – and pretending they were trying to solve it is absurd. Their solution today, shale/sand oil, was unviable 5 years ago, so saying they’ve tried that is absurd, ANWR is a band-aid on a geyser, and off-shore drilling isn’t viable if the price of oil falls below $60/bbl, which is why it wasn’t pushed 5 or 10 years ago, meaning, again, you have no claim to saying the price of today – which is determined by the actions of 5 to 10 years ago, is somehow NOT the fault of the GOP – which stood in teh way of alternative fuel development for decades, which helped to spike consumption in the early 2000’s, and which did nothing when it probably SHOULD have seen this shortfall coming.
Should we drill in ANWR, perhaps, given the crisis we face, but it won’t make a damned bit of difference today, or in 2 years. Claiming you have a solution to that problem TODAY is absurd, and other than ANWR, you didn’t have a solution 5 years ago. This is just more hyperbole. The GOP DOES deserve the blame, because they stood in the way of moving to other fuels, claiming oil was endless, that global warming was of no concern, so don’t change to other fuels, and showing no regard for the impact of emerging consumption in China and India. This is nonsense. The Dems are hardly guiltless, but you guys have your hands covered in oil.
P,
Well, you can’t cure hunger with one slice of bread. But what the Democrats are proposing is to withhold the bread entirely. I would imagine that in the meantime we’ll continue to pursue other forms of energy. Heartless Republicans understand that there’s money to be made in this pursuit, so they’ll do it.
I’ll let Mitch point out the panoply of strawmen in the rest of your argument, especially the one where you say that the GOP was claiming oil was endless.
Clearly you don’t know much, D. It’s a global market. Nobody buys U.S. oil or Russian oil. They buy oil. We do have influence with the Saudis, though it was purchased and is maintained at huge cost to our economy and ability to act internationally. We have historically asserted our influence to get the Saudis to keep production high and to undercut OPEC’s price-fixing strategies.
Within limits, we can directly control two things: U.S. oil production and U.S. oil consumption. A barrel of increased production simply goes into the global pool, where prices are set by worldwide demand and affected by decisions made by a cartel we don’t belong to or control. A barrel of oil not used similarly affects the market price only incrementally, but is a one-to-one savings for us. In other words, we save the money we didn’t spend on that barrel of oil and get to use it for something else. And if that extra barrel of oil is being used not to make farm machinery or refrigerator magnets or something else we can turn around and sell (more likely to fuel big, inefficient cars you hefty sausage-fed midwesterners can manage to squeeze your fat asses into), than it’s pure savings we can put to some other productive use.
Looking over the above passages, I fear that Angryclown’s analysis is missing some small thing.
Got it. Please append “…you ridiculous meatheaded wingnut.”
I say, AC old sod.
You may not realize it, but grease paint is made of petrolium by-products too. I suggest that you, yes you, should be doing your part by switching over to an organic source of face applique.
Do it for the children, old bean.
Thanks for the unnecessary economics lesson, AC. I fully understand that we buy oil out of a global market. As it happens, most of the oil we currently use comes from Canada, but it could just as easily be Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or Planet Zorf. Oil is oil and my car (which averages about 28 MPG on the highway the last time I checked) can’t tell where it comes from. We can increase the overall supply by pumping more of our own oil. Will the oil produced in the US be used here? Maybe, maybe not. That’s not particularly relevant. There will be more oil in the market, though and that’s relevant. The fundamental dance between supply and demand hasn’t changed at any point in human history.
And you’ll have to show me where we burn oil to make farm machinery, AC. The workers at the plant use it to power their vehicles, but in large measure the power that they use at John Deere could come from a coal-fired plant (most likely), or a nuclear facility, or even from the wind (Ted Kennedy hasn’t stopped us from building wind farms in the Midwest). And while you seem to share the romantic attachment to heavy equipment manufacturing that so many on the port side have, as a practical matter the U.S. economy generates a hell of a lot more money by processing information and generating knowledge than it does from welding mild steel. That’s the way the economy has been going for most of my lifetime (I’m about the same age as Mitch). It always amazes me how reactionary you progressives are.
Good Christ you are stupid, D. You are merely proving my point. Angryclown doesn’t give a rat’s ass about heavy machinery or the steel industry. Or the refrigerator magnet industry either, numbnuts. It is simply that every barrel of oil we can avoid buying, by using another form of energy or by not using the energy in the first place (make sure there are no children nearby, wingnuts, Angryclown’s gonna use a bad word: “conservation”) we decrease the cost of oil incrementally and, more important, reduce the geopolitical problems that have been caused by accident that so much easily accessed oil has been put in the middle east (“through millenia of decaying organic matter”, if you’re a normal person; “by Jesus,” if you’re a wingnut. But we can both agree there’s a lot of oil there.)
To the extent that the resources saved can be put to better economic use, conservation is all to the good. You wingnuts love to make fun of fuel-efficient cars, but it’s kinda like making fun of somebody cause their computer runs faster. More for less is better, you ignorant kooks!
AC,
You want to reduce demand. I want to increase supply. Both will help. And you’ll have to show me where I said we shouldn’t reduce demand. That’s fine. Go right ahead. Cram as many clowns in your little car as you’d like. Conserve away. Ride on the subways, walk, ride your bike like Mitch does. Go right ahead. We’re all for it. And meanwhile, we’ll let the scientists and engineers beaver away on finding alternative sources of energy. Those will be crucial someday – soon I hope. But for now, we use oil and it would behoove this country to both reduce demand and increase supply. If you have more than one tool at your disposal and both are useful tools, there’s no good reason not to use them.
If you have more than one tool at your disposal and both are useful tools, there’s no good reason not to use them.
Unless of course, it increases the size of Chimpy McBu$hitler’s and Haliburton McCheney Weathermachine’s portfolios.
D said: “You want to reduce demand. I want to increase supply. Both will help.”
Yet as I’ve explained, increasing supply is less effective and will take years to come on line. Reducing demand is more effective and can start tomorrow. Only one of ’em makes the U.S. oil industry money. Guess which solution you wingnuts back and which one you ridicule.
Bill C: You’re not even trying. Or you are, and you’re just too stupid to participate.
What happens when someone else adds to the supply… or even starts the process which eventually leads to increased supply?
Plus, what is the advantage to waiting or putting it off?
AC lectures,
Reducing demand is more effective and can start tomorrow.
Actually, it started some time ago. Which is why some people have parked their SUVs and bought clown cars. And more power to ’em. You insist on propounding this strawclown argument that “wingnuts” are somehow eternally opposed to conservation measures. I’ll admit that that I’ve ridiculed people like Al Gore, but he richly deserves it for living in a gilded warehouse and traveling the world in SUVs and private jets while asking the rest of us to wear a hairshirt. Bet I have installed more CFLs in my house than you have in yours, AC.
Look, if people want to pay Lexus prices to drive a Prius, that’s their deal. They could buy a Cobalt, still save a lot of gas and also save over 10 large on the cost of the vehicle. But if they feel better about themselves, perhaps it’s worth getting fleeced. Not my concern in the end.
And you haven’t “explained” that increasing supply is less effective. You’ve asserted it. An important distinction.
Lost in the debate over “increase supply vs. decrease demand” is the basic reality that it’s not Congress’ job to control supply. Good grief, didn’t we learn ANYTHING from New York City rent control, oil regulation in the 1970s, and 70 years of the Bolsheviks that couldn’t even grow wheat in what had been Europe’s breadbasket?
As Reagan noted, if you got socialism in the Sahara, pretty soon they’d have a shortage of sand. Why are we so darned slow to figure out the obvious?
Bill C: You’re not even trying. Or you are, and you’re just too stupid to participate.
Since I actually work for a living (as opposed to seltzering the pantalones regions of unsuspecting wingnuts), I don’t have the time to sit and research all the minutiae of the oil industry and the related economic theories and trends.
You’re not worth any redirection of effort required on my part to change that.
Plus, what is the advantage to waiting or putting it off?
Another simple one: Oil, gas and energy prices continue to rise, people continue to drive less, people continue to buy less because things become more expensive, the US economy continues its downward slide, environmentalists and socialists (6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other) cheer louder.
??
I wonder what keyword triggered that comment to get held for moderation. I don’t think I said anything controversial.
??
Bill C alibied: “I don’t have the time to sit and research all the minutiae of the oil industry and the related economic theories and trends.”
Gee, Bill C, here’s a timesaver I bet you haven’t thought of: if you don’t know what you’re talking about, shut up.
Bike Butthead said: “Lost in the debate over “increase supply vs. decrease demand” is the basic reality that it’s not Congress’ job to control supply.”
Ah, so Congress has no business opening up ANWR to increase supply. Thanks BB!
AC is notably silent about which conservation methods he wants to see implemented by the American body politic.
Gas rationing? Improved cafe standards? Thermostat locked at 64 deg in the winter?
So far his conservation plan is about as detailed as my own ‘make gasoline and heating oil cheap and widely available’ plan. What’s not to like about that?
if you don’t know what you’re talking about, shut up.
(Berg pages through countless threads about gun control, economics, life between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre, awash in the ringing sensation he gets from unearned irony…)
“GOP stood in the way of moves to other fuels.” Total bullshit. If somebody has a different fuel, the world will beat a path to his doorstep. Sure, that sounds like us- keeping somebody from developing something and making billions in the process. How about this- “Democrats stood in the way of moves to fuel that`s right underneath us.” “You wingnuts make fun of fuel effecient cars.” No, not really. Just what we see as the Libs wanting to tell us what cars we should drive.
The GOP DOES deserve the blame, because they stood in the way of moving to other fuels,
Jesus Christ on a surfboard. For decades the GOP has been in favor of expanding nuclear power generation.
“Senator John McCain said Wednesday that he wanted 45 new nuclear reactors built in the United States by 2030, a course he called “as difficult as it is necessary.””
That’s one of the few policy positions McCain has taken that is in accord with the rank & file GOP.
Everybody would like to “move to other fuels.” Oil is environmentally unsound to obtain, transport, and use, but its use has coincided with the greatest creation of wealth the world has ever seen. Even at $140/bb it is still so useful and cheap (compared to the alternatives) that every drop that is produced is sold. Ethanol produces about as much btu/gallon as gas but it’s still so expensive it has to be subsidized to make it worthwhile to manufacture the stuff and to make sure it’s used we’ve had to put laws on the books that require that it be blended with gasoline.
Criminy. Penigma is even more of an ass than PB was.
angryclown is just full of the “you’re stupid” comments today. Kind of low-test for the “smartestest guy evar”, don’t you think? 😉
Gee, Bill C, here’s a timesaver I bet you haven’t thought of: if you don’t know what you’re talking about, shut up.
Advice noted and filed appropriately, AC.
Blow it out your ass.