Look, I'm kinda busy this morning. Use this thread to discuss ewww "politics." Now I need another shower. We are in the Middle East because the US is in the twilight of our Imperial Century. It sure isn't the oil because look at the damn price. And just to stir things up, without a worldwide US military shadow the price would be higher as cartels could operate with impunity; therefor the US military overseas is a cost positive endeavor.
The picture is Platform "Grace" just off the coast from me.
23 comments:
Casey would be a great politician... Deceiving people, telling them what they want to hear, then doing whatever the hell he feels like.
F I R S T :-)
... if only we could invent an engine that runs on deception and lies, the energy contained within a 20-foot spherical radius of Casey Serin would be enough to power the planet for the next two or three centuries. :-)
Let's talk about the governator, yah. He's gone as high as he can in politics because he wasn't born in America, yah. That's okay, it's all good, the PTB has no trouble getting toads like Bush into the WH, yah.
Ahnold can be Senator. Heavans knows we can't do any worse the the twin tree stumps we've got now.
Meanwhile Da Governator is going along with the Dem Legislature on some truly horrific budget lies.
True, dah governator could be a senator, yah. I don't think that is a move up for the Austrian Oak though, no. California is screwed, yah. Keep that private prison money headed to middle America, yah.
Sorry Rob Dawg...I got a little worked up when somebody tried to insinuate that Bush is somehow better than Clinton (who was equally useless) because he's saving us from the big bad terrists.
I agree that Iraq had something to do with oil, but not because we were going to get cut off. Currently, the oil in the Middle East is traded using the PetroDollar (based on US Dollars). Iraq was about to open a new oil market using PetroEuros (and Iran has now taken up that endeavor). The US currency cannot take a hit like that right now, and the gubment knows it, so they are doing everything in their power to keep all oil traded with Dollars instead of Euros.
@ Dan and Dawg,
True, but there is another twist.
Oil production in Saudi is on the decline as it is an acient source (discovered in th 1940's).
There is oil under the Arctic North, which Russia (already the #1 Energy World Power), has claimed. New contflict brewing there.
So, THE LAST Mammoth, King Kong, lightly tapped oil fields in the world are in IRAQ!
We are witnessing a Global OIL GRAB and the next bubble, in real time.
China, India and Brzile are emerging oil consumers.
Watch oil go to the moon, price wise, imo.
At work so gtg, no time to proof and spell check.
LTR.
Hi Edgar!
Hi back monkey girl!
It might well be for the oil, but to keep the price UP not down. More likely itz what it appears to be, another zog grab for imperial power.
I know this is late, but the first here should have been MINE!
Unfortunately, I am not sure what happened with my blogger account, but I was temporarily not able to sign in.
Sorry I missed the Orlando meetup FMW, but I had just got back from vacation, and forgot about it until after 9 PM that night when I saw a post again here. Hopefully next time...
I still catch flak from the folks back East about the Governator. They can't believe we voted him in twice.
Hey Kidz,
Don't forget to submit your 6 Degrees of Casey Serin to Albert Einstein entries before voting begins tomorrow!
We have some sweet entries this week. Woohoo! Win-Win!
Slightly OT, but we've discussed the impact of the RE market on pension funds before. Some good news for my wife and I, considering over half of our retirement savings are in CalSTRS.
CalSTRS posts spectacular annual return
07/23/07 Sacramento Bee
Fueled by big paydays from international stocks and real estate investments, the California State Teachers' Retirement System posted a 21 percent return for 2006-07, officials reported Monday.
The gain, which boosted assets to a record $170.4 billion for the fiscal year ended June 30, was fourth-straight double-digit annual return and the largest since 1986 when the fund posted a 26 percent increase. CalSTRS, the nation's second largest public pension fund with 795,000 members, beat its benchmark of 17.5 percent.
"By any measure this will go down as one of our most spectacular years," chief investment officer Christopher J. Ailman said in a statement.
By far, the biggest winners were the real estate portfolio with a 32.9 percent gain and international stocks with a 30.2 percent increase. Venture capital and other alternative private investments gained 27.6 percent, U.S. stocks grew by 20.9 percent increase and fixed income increased 6.5 percent.
Every investment category outpaced the fund's targets.
http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/287128.html
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My concern is that those RE holdings will retard growth in future years. But for this past year, it hasn't been the albatross one might have expected.
archiving:
"Hey Kid:
"But I never felt like I should be the “whistle blower”, since I didn’t really know what I was doing and what is right and what wasn’t. There was A LOT of reliance on certain “professionals”. I didn’t do any of this in a vacuum."
No, hobbit, there was a vacuum...the one inside your skull.
Y'know what I'm smelling, Mursebearer?
Desperation.
Your scam fell apart because lenders tightened up after Congress changed the bankruptcy laws.
Then your "Corporate Credit/Getaway Vehicle" got 4 flat tires and a seized transmission when your guarantor woke up to what you were doing and said "Nyet!" to any more of your shenanigans.
And this is your last, wild-eyed pitch to somehow get yourself out of the mile-deep cess-pit you jumped into with that anchor handcuffed to your wrist.
I got news for you, sonny...you're going down. All the way.
Reading between the lines of your little "aw, shucks-golly" screed, I very clearly perceive a stated threat by you to drag as many names down into the whirpool of dung that your life has become.
T'ain't gonna work, either.
You got a taste just last week of what happens when people even think that you've damaged their reputations and libelled them.
You didn't seem to enjoy your little pas-de-deux with Loss MitPro...and he let you off easily.
Wait until some of the other people learn that their names and businesses are falling from your vagina-like lips...hoo. boy!
Hobbit...nobody but an utter dullard is going to believe anything YOU say."
How did the subprime mortgage fiasco ripple out to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon?
The doctor, Raphael Nach, bought stock last October in Moody’s Corp. What he didn’t know at the time, he says in a lawsuit filed July 19, was that Moody’s had given “excessively high ratings” to bonds backed by subprime loans. He claims Moody’s stock price, which has been on a gradual slide in 2007, was inflated because of the ratings.
http://tinyurl.com/38h8nv
"We are in the Middle East because the US is in the twilight of our Imperial Century."
It is to laugh.
America is not in the twilight of its Imperial Century; it is about a half-generation before the Western Second Transition to genuine postmodernism and the imperium mundi.
We're in the last century of the Roman Republic, after the murder of the Gracchi but before the rise of the deamgogic Marius and the reactionary Sulla. We're in the last century of the Era of Warring States, as Qi futilely tries to muster an alliance against Qin. We're in the last century of the Hyksos Period, as the princes of Thebes gather their strength to drive out the barbarians.
"We are in the Middle East because the US is in the twilight of our Imperial Century."
Not sure where that quote came from, but pretending to understand in order to play along:
I think we are only going to get an Imperial Decade...
Let's enjoy it while we can!
Other than mentioning the 6 Degrees of Casey Serin to Einstein game, I'm not commenting on this thread because the topic pisses me off so much and I have other issues to focus on.
A snippet:
A pullout from Iraq may be the event that pushes oil to $100 a barrel, according to Boone Pickens, the Dallas hedge fund manager who has joined Forbes Magazine's list of billionaires because of his bullish bets on energy prices. Pickens predicted a year ago that $100 oil would probably occur by now. Today he is looking for $80 within six months, and he says growing chaos in Iraq would be a bad sign. ``That could run prices pretty high,'' he said.
Source: Bloomburg
URL: http://tinyurl.com/2cqwhy
Yeah right, ExxonMobil and Halliburton have been weeping bitter tears over the price of oil.
Oh sorry, they been making record windfall profits instead, haven't they?
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