quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

dawg, I have not conflated anything.

Oil is where gasoline comes from.  You will note that gasoline is a synergistic multiple of crude since about what?  20% or so can be cracked into gasoline, which begs the question why a gallon of diesel costs more than a gallon of gasoline.

You impute and impugn me with things I never said.

In any case, as I thought you havent any proof that we use all canadian and north dakotan oil internally, nor have you proved that most of the offshore we lease is used internally.

You ain't changed nothin but the name.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marini

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

You want to talk about riots and what affects people, research Watts.

And people just wont get that pissed these days.

Lady tazzy, I disagree with you on this point.

You might be surprised what "people" end up doing, it is still very early yet, and things are going to get much, much worse.

When things get worse, we can discuss what "people" will do, when many, many people's backs are up against the wall.

quote:

ORIGINAL: samboct
Neither plan is workable- but Krugman's comments on Ryan's plan I think are accurate.

From my perspective we've got two choices-

1) Not make any hard choices and finger point as Ryan and Obama are doing. This will wind up with perhaps not nuclear armageddon, but a likely default on the US debt, inflation, and probably reissuing a currency. This has been the path since Ronnie Rayguns, in a fit of pique that he couldn't get rid of social security- did an abrupt about face and decided to raise the amount of taxes going to these programs from 12% to 15% in an effort to "bankrupt the beast". This has now been 30 years in coming, but was foreseeable from the time these new taxes passed. This has been a disaster since small businesses are being wiped out by these taxes- its probably one of the main reasons why new business successes have been declining. The second problem is health care costs which neither Obama nor Ryan addresses. These are the elephants in the living room..

2) We actually do make some substantive changes in the budget, taxes, and health care because we're forced to and enough politicians are scared off by option 1. This however, would require intelligence on the part of a bunch of the members of Congress and while I have certainly met some smart people in Congress, it seems that the dumb ones get more traction and shout them down.

Military costs are a current problem- but the military has seen its budget rise and fall over the years -but health care costs have only continued to rise.

quote:

It's possible that if we lower health care costs enough, there may be sufficient revenue to maintain programs like Medicaid.