The 2012 US Presidential Election - Who will run, Who will win???

I think Obama is still a strong candidate.

 

Being a strong candidate was never his problem. His problem is that he's a lousy president.

I'd vote for any viable candidate, even another democrat, before I'd give him 4 more years to posture and blame others while throwing bucketfuls of money to his friends. He's been in place just under 3 years, the first two during which Dems had control of both the senate and the house, yet somehow blames his predecessor or the GOP for his inability to do more than blow the deficit up like a toy balloon.

He's opposed drilling our own oil, either because he doesn't want a caribou to have to take a detour or he thinks getting oil from people that want to hold us financially hostage is a great plan. Now he's shut down the oil pipeline project aimed at relieving dependence on the middle east... For political purposes. What a goob.

Every time I fill the gas tank I'm reminded that if this dweeb wants another chance he needs to ask the freaking caribou or middle easterners, either of which he's done more for than his constituents.

 

Speaking of pipelines, can someone clarify the oil pipeline deal? Is it for US to import oil from Canada who imports from Iraq? I read that somewhere earlier but after all that denying surely that's not the case is it?

 

No. We import Iraqi oil directly by boat.

The pipeline is to import Canadian oil, harvested from oil sand. It would make us less dependent on Middle Eastern oil, create American jobs, and likely lower the price.

The problem for Obama is, oil harvested from oil sand consumes a lot of energy to harvest, and has other negative environmental impacts. The rub comes from the fact that, if America doesn't buy it, China will. Canada is going to tolerate the environmental impact no matter what.

 

Aah, that's why the protest... Do you think that's why Canada dropped out of Kyoto?

 

There is also another problem which is money. For USA to explore it´s own oil, it costs about $25/ barrel. The sand oil from Canada is even much more expensive and with the latest investment from Stats oil of Norway, they are talking about price over $50 for it be viable financially. May be people still remember that price of oil was under $25/ barrel before Bush started all the wars and without the wars, the price will go to the $20-$25 /barrel again. This economic facts make it necessary to have continuous state of war to make it profitable for oil companies to explore American and Canadian oil fields.

 

No idea. Canadians are inherently evil, so the answer is probably yes.

Yes, but the green movement in America, who Obama is obviously subservient to, doesn't issue new oil exploration permits. In fact, after the gulf leak, he shut down offshore drilling as well. $25/barrel oil is great, if your president will let you get it out of the ground.

Right about now, $50/barrel would be half price. As I pointed out before, if the US doesn't buy it, China will.

 

Yes, one of the sites I read said that for the 3 trillion spent on the war the US could have switched every factory / house to solar & wind five times over. The change could have been spent converting transport / industry to electric.... Isn't hindsight wonderful?

Cost of Iraq War: $3 Trillion;
Cost of Solar Plants to Power all 105 million U.S Households: $500 Billion

 

The solar and wind can not generate the same profit. In the last 10 years the American oil companies have made about 100 dollars extra profit on each barrel of oil since the cost of production has not gone up and only the price has increased. Oil companies only in USA produce about 5,000,000 barrels per day.

Extra profit for oil companies only from U.S. production= 5,000,000(barrels)*100(extra profit)*365(day)*10 (year)=1,825,000,000,000

 

If only I could put sunshine in my tank. Question: The French and Japanese went entirely nuclear, rather than coal fire, solar, or wind.Why didn't they go with Solar and wind?

 

Yeah, the old profit above people motive seems to work often.

Land I guess, USA has plenty of room to put them, just like Australia. We're anti-nuke here. We just mine the stuff & ship it out.

 

I have no idea about France but this is true with Japan they have limited natural resource like this.

 

Holy smokes... That post doesn't call anyone names and addresses the convo in progress! I'm torn between giving a green (actually I doubt any of us can throw more than gray in p&r) or reporting an account has been hijacked.

Lol. Good post Julian. Not often I get to say that, so it'd be rude not to acknowledge it. ftr- gotta feeling the American public is largely warred-out and tired of donating the lives of our kids to others problems. Hopefully the whole constant state of war thing will not be a continuous trend. It'd be a nice habit to see die. On that score we agree completely.
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That said, the simple fact is the sensible thing for the US is to break the shackles and drill our own oil (screw the caribou, they've never done anything for me) WHILE attempting to find alternatives to the need for it. Holding out on drilling in Alaska leaves us cutting deals with the devil far too often, and less dependency on others would be a plus.

I credit obama for having at least made steps to look at other energy sources, we need to develop alternative energy to get away from the heavy dependence on oil anyway, but the efforts made by the current administration have been sadly mishandled.

The soylendra fiasco looks more like a glorified money laundering scam given how fast it folded once collecting a boatload of tax dollars. The fiskar fumble was a matter of throwing money without reading the fine print. Biden was right in his public pronouncements about it creating jobs... But they might have considered stipulating up front that the tax dollars handed out be used to create jobs HERE, not in Finland. Darn that fine print.

Hope the next administration has people with a little business sense involved in the effort to seek alternative energy ideas. It sucks that so much money was wasted on a good objective persued via misguided or cronyism-inspired implementation. Just shows the presidency is, as I said before Obama was elected, a really bad place for on-the-job training.

We need a president that has pertinent experience, not a dilettante. I'm not sure who is going to get the GOP nod, but any of the top contenders have better experience on that score than Obama.

 

Politicians are very cheap to buy compare to amount money involved (look for my calculation above) and therefore the continuous state of war will continue. The problem is that without the war the price of oil will fall to $20-$25 and none of alternatives that you are suggesting makes economical sense for oil companies.

 

Actually, I have 3 greens + 2 greys from P&R showing in my settings right now so it is certainly possible.

LoL. See NOTHING is impossible.

Agreed. I think the ongoing war will be the main reason Obama might not return, though I think he will be.

Sounds to me like someone got a root last night. Giving praise twice in 1 post, you are in a good mood.

 

I'm not sure it will go down if war stopped. I think the stockmarket did that on purpose (to make a killing). I remember the talk, before the wars, of petrol prices needing to rise in order to make the other alternative energies more viable. In came the war and petrol prices skyrocketed, which was in line with what the scientists were asking for. They don't want it to go back down because of that will preclude the other energy sources they're pushing for. The Greens want it much higher again to price it out of the market AFAIK. (I have one car on LPG and another newer 4 cylinder on petrol.)

 

You have an extra ordinary talent to miss the point. They are producing for about $25 /barrel right now, do you think that they are selling to you at that price? Without continuous state of war, American oil is not profitable and you will see a wave of bankruptcies among companies which are involved in oil exploration industry such as companies that lease oil rigs. The cost of exploration in Middle east is too low compare to North America.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/npt02

Obviously on that time they didn´t know that they can make Bush president and through continuous state of war push the price to $150 per barrel.

 

I didn't miss the point. Production of domestic oil is cheaper, and high oil prices= higher profits. It doesn't change the fact the US, with the help of the office of the president, has legislatively prevented further domestic oil exploration, which keeps our demand for foreign oil high. And no, the cost of exploration in the US is not expensive, except for all the regulations we put on ourselves. Can't drill for oil close to shore so we end up with deep water rigs like the one in the gulf. Can't drill in ANWAR because of some mouse.

They do the same thing with our jobs. Any job that pollutes gets shut down so that the US is not a nation that pollutes. We then send that work(and associated jobs) to China where they are more than happy to pollute. When you think about it, the green movement can be indirectly tied to our recent economic failures and the state sponsored terror emanating from the oil rich middle east.

 

Here is a synopsis on the pipeline I received in an email from a blog I read:

The reason Obama gave for denying the pipeline was purely political. He admitted himself he didn't kill it based on the merit of the project, but because of a "deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans ".

In other words, he's killed a project that will help reduce our dependency on middle east oil and that would generate boatloads of jobs in the US while doing so... Because the mean old Republicans in congress placed a deadline on it to make him stick a dime in the phone or get outta the booth.

In case he forgets, congress is elected to office by their respective states, and he doesnt have to like them, but he is required to work with them. They are after all a duly elected body empowered to pass legislation. This guy couldn't make progress even when his party controlled both the senate and the house for most of his tenure, and now that the House is in GOP control he wants to blame everything he hasn't or won't do on them. He's hopelessly mired in the politics.

I seriously object to someone elected to the office putting his desire to piss off the opposing party over the well being of the US. Turning this thing down is ridiculous, and if he can't learn to work and play well with the other children that should be his problem, not ours. This is petulant politics, not statesmanship.

 

You are contradicting yourself. On one side you admit that price of oil is manipulated and on the other side you say that it will not go done. The price of oil is high because of uncertainty and it will go done if wars stop but it will take time since many oil producers in middle east are used to higher income and their governments budgeted accordingly which will cause civil unrest in those countries and keep the price up for awhile. There are many ways to push the price of oil up to make other energy sources attractive, for example adding tax to oil based energy or giving tax breaks for other energy sources. You don´t need to deliver sh*t load of money in extra profit to oil companies to achieve those goals.