Unless posted:

Interesting piece of news came through my feed this morning: If domestic production of oil continues, Saudi Arabia's cash reserves will be completely depleted in five years.

Rygar201 posted:

This is disingenuous. Sanders went on a city trip to a city in the USSR, his wife was one of many other attendees, and it fell shortly after his their wedding. Suggesting it was some glorious communist honeymoon paints a very different picture.

RuanGacho posted:

Obama is quietly saving America from itself with the everything and the kitchen sink energy policy.

Short term its not ideal but if it stays on course in the long term no one will have to give a poo poo about the middle east anymore except for humanitarian reasons.

AtomikKrab posted:

Ok so I did a quick check because that graphic on its own does not compute. The details are very important.


That price listed is the price needed to "balance" the budget of the state in question, not the price per barrel of their production costs. Saudis are like 20 bux or less a barrel for their oil but they simply have massive massive spending programs and a lot of infrastructure construction as well. They will simply cut back the excess.

AtomikKrab posted:

Ok so I did a quick check because that graphic on its own does not compute. The details are very important.


That price listed is the price needed to "balance" the budget of the state in question, not the price per barrel of their production costs. Saudis are like 20 bux or less a barrel for their oil but they simply have massive massive spending programs and a lot of infrastructure construction as well. They will simply cut back the excess.

AtomikKrab posted:

Ok so I did a quick check because that graphic on its own does not compute. The details are very important.


That price listed is the price needed to "balance" the budget of the state in question, not the price per barrel of their production costs. Saudis are like 20 bux or less a barrel for their oil but they simply have massive massive spending programs and a lot of infrastructure construction as well. They will simply cut back the excess.

Mitt Romney posted:

Having to cut their budget by ~50-70% will cause massive instability.

RuanGacho posted:

This is even more interesting then because if true it means that if internal spending is a way to keep down civil unrest you could have more of these rigid governments ( looking at you Iran) facing greater internal pressure if there isnt any outside sources of income to keep things running.

Magres posted:

All I'm hearing is that Bernie Sanders went to the USSR and it collapsed shortly after

happyhippy posted:

I heard Romney went to France during Vietnam doing Mormon Missonary work instead of dying in a rice field. And this is why France is a major Mormon stronghold today.
oh wait

JonathonSpectre posted:

Yeah, I know if I had the chance to gently caress a hot woman 20 years younger than me I'd turn it down in a heartbeat to prove my superior morals.

pathetic little tramp posted:

How to go as Jeb Bush for halloween, hmmmm, how to go as Jeb Bush for Halloween?

AtomikKrab posted:

Ok so I did a quick check because that graphic on its own does not compute. The details are very important.


That price listed is the price needed to "balance" the budget of the state in question, not the price per barrel of their production costs. Saudis are like 20 bux or less a barrel for their oil but they simply have massive massive spending programs and a lot of infrastructure construction as well. They will simply cut back the excess.

happyhippy posted:

I heard Romney went to France during Vietnam doing Mormon Missonary work instead of dying in a rice field. And this is why France is a major Mormon stronghold today.
oh wait

Washington Post posted:

A hotbed of communism, atheism, anarchism and socialism, 1968 France represents the opposite of 2012’s Mitt Romney. And yet Romney walked the streets of Paris in 1968 during the revolts. He debated the Vietnam War with the French and had countless doors slammed in his face because of his conservative beliefs. He engaged in long conversations in cafés and bars with people who not only hated America, but hated God and everything else Romney had come over to sell. It certainly would have made him aware of a larger, wilder world. We should not underestimate the effect of this time on him, even if it may have served to galvanize Romney permanently against such views. Picture a well-coiffed (if somewhat stiff) kid in a suit handing out flyers about Joseph Smith, as Gauloise-smoking crowds fling paving stones and cry out, “Même si Dieu existait, il faudrait le supprimer!” (“Even if God existed, we’d have to get rid of him!”).

Kobayashi posted:

This is something I haven't paid much attention to and don't know much about. What happened? Are we producing that much more domestically? Is demand down dramatically? All of the above? Something else?

NYTimes posted:

United States domestic production has nearly doubled over the last six years, pushing out oil imports that need to find another home. Saudi, Nigerian and Algerian oil that once was sold in the United States is suddenly competing for Asian markets, and the producers are forced to drop prices. Canadian and Iraqi oil production and exports are rising year after year. Even the Russians, with all their economic problems, manage to keep pumping.

There are signs, however, that production is beginning to fall in the United States and some other oil producing countries because of the drop in exploration investments.

On the demand side, the economies of Europe and developing countries are weakening and vehicles are becoming more energy-efficient. So demand for fuel is lagging a bit. China's recent devaluation of its currency suggests the economy of the world's biggest oil importer may be worse off than expected.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

The problem is that this "excess" is the only thing keeping their political order running. They are a welfare payment away from an uprising.

e: gently caress, beaten like a Saudi woman who attempted to drive.

sullat posted:

Like most autocratic regimes, they will probably get rid of health care and food subsidies and other stuff before they cut back on boarding schools and Rolls Royces for the family.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Problem is "the family" is a significant portion of the population.

quote:

In a 2014 report, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime says the amphetamine market is on the rise in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria accounting for more than 55% of amphetamines seized worldwide.

quote:

Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.

Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "gently caress the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.

You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night. So, when they look themselves in the mirror, they convince themselves that "Those people are undeserving. They're . . . lesser." Some of these guys on the extreme right are more cynical than Paul Ryan, but he seems to really believe in this stuff. This unbridled rage against those who have the least is a cornerstone of the Romney-Ryan ticket.

But Rage's music affects people in different ways. Some tune out what the band stands for and concentrate on the moshing and throwing elbows in the pit. For others, Rage has changed their minds and their lives. Many activists around the world, including organizers of the global occupy movement, were radicalized by Rage Against the Machine and work tirelessly for a more humane and just planet. Perhaps Paul Ryan was moshing when he should have been listening.

My hope is that maybe Paul Ryan is a mole. Maybe Rage did plant some sensible ideas in this extreme fringe right wing nut job. Maybe if elected, he'll pardon Leonard Peltier. Maybe he'll throw U.S. military support behind the Zapatistas. Maybe he'll fill Guantanamo Bay with the corporate criminals that are funding his campaign – and then torture them with Rage music 24/7. That's one possibility. But I'm not betting on it.

quote:

@daveweigel: Reps from Graham, Santorum and Jindal campaigns say they’ll argue for two debates of 7 randomly chosen candidates at tonight’s meeting.

Joementum posted:

Fred Thompson is the handsomest District Attorney on TV

Joementum posted:

Fred Thompson is the handsomest District Attorney on TV

haveblue posted:

SpiderHyphenMan posted:

My favorite part of this is the placement of the farmer/klansman in the foreground suggesting that Kelly originally drew the cartoon without him before his editor told him he needed to add a white guy getting violent about racism too.

SpiderHyphenMan posted:

My favorite part of this is the placement of the farmer/klansman in the foreground suggesting that Kelly originally drew the cartoon without him before his editor told him he needed to add a white guy getting violent about racism too.

Beamed posted:

Hoping this is a joke post.

Joementum posted:

Thompson was minority counsel to the Senate Republican during the Watergate hearings.

SedanChair posted:

He finally stopped caring hard enough even to stay alive.

Joementum posted:

Fred Thompson is the handsomest District Attorney on TV

Joementum posted:

Thompson was minority counsel to the Senate Republican during the Watergate hearings.

Rollofthedice posted:

Why did Nixon decide to record all that poo poo anyway? Tradition or some weird belief that the tapes could be useful to him? I'm rather ignorant about Watergate stuff.

Rollofthedice posted:

Why did Nixon decide to record all that poo poo anyway? Tradition or some weird belief that the tapes could be useful to him? I'm rather ignorant about Watergate stuff.

OhFunny posted:

I think it was something FDR or JFK started and Nixon thought he was above the law.

Joe the Strummer posted: