Libya

In the end it is all about money/oil. We have put up with 40 yrs of rule of this ass. We killed one of his kids and almost him and it made no real difference inside his country although it seemed to have made him a slightly better neighbor. But we are staring down peak oil anywhere from now till a couple of decades and that’s scary to a country without the resources(us).
You want a large military? It uses a huge, huge amount of oil. You think your SUV gets crappy mileage, try a ship. Destroyer I was on during Vietnam would take on 20,000+ gallons every 2-3 days. There were over 600 ships in the navy at the time. (As of today 288 ships, 152 underway)
I’m sorry people this is about oil. Yes we are willing to pay for it but we want it, no 2 ways about it. We are not willing as a nation to conserve so we need a pretty large supply of oil. If it were about the crappy government of an asshole there are plenty of those around. Some have our stamp of approval on them, some do not. But we are going after the ones with the oil and doing nothing about the others.

It’s not about oil prices. Not in the way of controlling them. It’s about oil availability. Can we get what we want and can we maintain that for the foreseeable future?
Certainly there are political factors at work here. But with us foreign policy works in the realm of oil. My next door neighbor growing up was an 85 yr old retired Standard Oil executive who spoke 5 languages and traveled around the world securing oil access. He did this for most of the first half of the last century. From his stories I would say the only thing that has changed is some of the players and the amounts of the oil. Standard Oil knew 50-75 yrs ago that the US would in the not too distant future, not be an exporter of oil. And that has come to pass sometime ago. (We import over 13 million barrelsl/day. #1 in the world of oil importing)(We export 1 million barrels/day # 17)
Why do you think oil is not the issue?
We have all of a sudden gotten the freedom/democracy bug for everyone else? Our better angels are singing louder? Sorry I don’t buy it. World trade and world finance depend on oil. Oil for the freighters and planes that carry all the goods. Oil for all the plastics that the crap we buy is made from. Oil for all the cars, tanks and planes. Oil for the medicines. Oil for the fertilizers to grow the food. We cry about the rich/poor ratios here but the truly wealthy take a global view. They don’t just want everything of ours, they want everything.
And in our modern world oil is everything.
Oil touches everything. A hundred years ago it was railroads and oil was plentiful, in our back yards even. Today oil is what makes our world possible. Oil is what creates world and especially US security today. And it is getting worse for a couple of reasons.
1. For all intents and purposes the US does not conserve in any meaningful way.
2. With a good portion of the country being batshit crazy, number one will not change in the foreseeable future.
I asked the other day what if history doesn’t repeat itself? There are things drastically changing in our world that were not counted in the mix in the not too distant past. Peak oil for one. Freer travel and communications. Better health care.(not everywhere, like here, for sure) These are all things that have or should have affect on policy. What if all the short term thinking in the financial markets is because they don’t see the markets growing for much longer. Why do long term if you see long term as bad/non existent? Wouldn’t you then feel short term would be the only solution? I am of course talking short term in the relative sense of 10-30 yrs.
So history may repeat it self because people keep responding the same way to different stimulus. But the reaction may be different because the rules are changing.

Life in America

We rant about history repeating itself but what if it actually doesn’t? Do you think the Kochsuckers don’t have a pretty good idea about how much oil is in the ground or how many trees it takes to make toilet paper? These are not stupid people, although they are evil. If they know approx how soon we run out of oil and they know the rest of the rich know what is keeping them from working with the rest of the rich to control resources? Getting as much as they can now, knowing that when the brown hits the whirlies they will have control and you and I will have nothing. That is different than history. We are at some point going to run out of the stuff that makes our lifestyle possible if we don’t get better at not using it up. These guys know this as well as you and me. Probably better because they own/control a lot of what is left. And they know very well how fast we are using it.

Hidden Taxes

How Republicans Could Dramatically Undermine Health Reform Law Without A Fight

Read the above link. Read it and think about it. Read it and understand that this is not about taxes, adding or cutting them. It's about getting rid of the 1099 reporting. In other words it is about removing one more place to collect taxes from. It will lower tax revenues. So to offset this the republicans want to tax health care. Specifically they want to tax provisions of the new health care law that is being phased in over the next 3 years. From the middle class.
More tax for you, less tax for them. And the democrats seemingly want to go along.
Call. Call now. This is how they win. They beat around the edges long enough until there is no center left. You will be screwed. This is how politicians work, they seldom attack head on, that creates a fight. Chew at the edges, remove the benefits, until they get their greedy hands on every fucking thing.