4,000 dead Americans

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Eric, air travel is a fact of life. It's long range mass transit and it's efficiency sure beats a whole lot of Toyotas and Fords driving across the country. Furthermore, it's a must for cities that are isolated in the middle of nowhere (like mine) and the best speed/price ratio option for those of us for whom driving is not an option.

 

Do planes use up gas and pollute? Yeah, but I don't drive myself around anywhere so I don't think it's too unreasonable that I can occasionally fly somewhere when I need to. The point is that we need to get people to stop thinking of transportation as a personal thing where they go along in their own little vehicle, and more of as a group activity.

 

People like Czar, who seem unwilling to think that transportation should be some personal thing where they take their own vehicle everywhere, are the problem.

[EricMM 0]

I'm just saying that its far less efficent to fly somewhere than it is to drive somewhere.

 

It takes more energy to keep a plane moving at the speed of flight than it takes to keep a car moving 65 mph...

[Guest Vitamin X]

As it was mentioned before, the real issue is with urban planning and not so much with gas. Then again, people choose to live where they live, so they can choose to drive or not to, however, I'll tell you that as much as I love bicycling and taking mass transit here in Portland, where the transit system most likely bests Chicago, and rivals that of San Francisco and New York (particularly with all the expansions Tri-Met continues to make), if I were to start a family, I would most likely have to move to the suburbs here as well, such as Beaverton or even Hillsboro, because it's more affordable there. The problem with Beaverton is that it's very car-friendly and not very bike-friendly so even if I'm all for bicycling and transit, I can take the transit, but most people drive their cars to the transit station to go to downtown to work.

 

Now getting gas to fill up $71 tanks to drive for the fuck of it? Sorry guy, I feel no sympathy for you. Cry me a fucking river complaining about how expensive gas is, and look at yourself as the source of the problem, and that goes for anyone else who feels the same way but doesn't give enough of a shit to change the way they look at their own personal transportation. I understand Invader3k's problem, and maybe even snuffy's- you live in a rural area, you have to drive, especially with no public transit option. Agent also lives in a rural area from what I understand. But driving doesn't have to be costly on your wallet, the environment, and your life. Biofuels are being worked out, and being put into the mainstream more and more these days, and soon enough they'll be importing cars that run on diesel, which can run some biodiesel and others which can be converted to run fully biodiesel.

 

Corn is this country's greatest resource. We've used it for years now to fatten up Americans, among many, many other things, but now that a significant portion of it is going to go towards fueling our cars, our food prices will go up on a lot of things- and that'll hopefully change the way industrial agriculture does their business as well as how Americans drive.

[The Niggardly King 0]

But I want my gas at $1.09 a gallon and my burgers at $1.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

That $71 fill-up gets me to work and back, the store, etc. I'm not just cruising around for a lark.

 

And the problem is the fact that we're not sucking Iraq dry and covering it in refineries. We're already there! It's FULL of fuckin' oil! Bomb their asses and take the shit!

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Eric, air travel is a fact of life. It's long range mass transit and it's efficiency sure beats a whole lot of Toyotas and Fords driving across the country. Furthermore, it's a must for cities that are isolated in the middle of nowhere (like mine) and the best speed/price ratio option for those of us for whom driving is not an option.

 

Do planes use up gas and pollute? Yeah, but I don't drive myself around anywhere so I don't think it's too unreasonable that I can occasionally fly somewhere when I need to. The point is that we need to get people to stop thinking of transportation as a personal thing where they go along in their own little vehicle, and more of as a group activity.

 

People like Czar, who seem unwilling to think that transportation should be some personal thing where they take their own vehicle everywhere, are the problem.

 

 

I may be misreading you here, but it looks like you're saying you don't even have a car. If that's the case, you're a complete jackoff with no right to even participate in this discussion.

[Guest Vitamin X]

But I want my gas at $1.09 a gallon and my burgers at $1.

You want $10 computers and $5 TV's, too? Have the food man drop off those $1 burgers?

 

That $71 fill-up gets me to work and back, the store, etc. I'm not just cruising around for a lark.

Right, but do you need a truck that costs $71 to fill up? That's kind of ridiculous. Obviously it's not for you, but my old Chevy Tracker used to cost $35 or so to fill up before I went car-free last summer, and I think gas is more expensive here than it is over there. And it got me to work and back, the store, etc. just fine when I lived out in the `burbs in L.A. and Miami. Except for the fact I didn't have air conditioning. Man, that fucking sucked.

 

And the problem is the fact that we're not sucking Iraq dry and covering it in refineries. We're already there! It's FULL of fuckin' oil! Bomb their asses and take the shit!

I will agree with you that we need to go one way or the other with this shit. But the profits are going to the guys who are rebuilding this shit, so I don't think you're going to see anything happening with that. The best solution is to get out, honestly.

[NoCalMike 0]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/t...ar_b_92775.html

 

 

In the past 24 hours, Dick Cheney has been in Baghdad, calling the Iraq War a "successful endeavor." John McCain's there too, and actually uttered those four magic words, "the surge is working," which only differs from Cheney's analysis in the scary possibility that McCain might actually believe it. Then again, maybe Cheney's pronouncement can be chalked up to youthful exuberance -- after all, he's almost 5 years younger than McCain.

 

And then there's that other possibility, the one that's starting to scare me: That by a certain neocon definition, Iraq is a success.

 

What if the war in Iraq did go on for 100 years, as McCain suggested it might? What are we looking at? An entire century of ever-increasing military spending, necessitating deep cuts in all other government programs -- like public education and health care and all that other sissy stuff. A staging ground for ten decades of warfare with Islamist militants, for whom the place is becoming a terrorist fantasy camp ("Come to Iraq and fight real Americans in your own back yard! Get your picture taken with real al Qaeda pros! Learn the fundamentals of blowing yourself up!"). And endless, lucrative contracts for American companies that support the war effort, from Grumman to Raytheon to -- of course -- Halliburton. Companies that in the absence of a Cold War might otherwise see their prospects dwindling.

 

What about that is not a success, by neocon standards? I've been scoffing at it for so long that think I missed the point. It's not a question of if the surge is working -- it's about whom it's working for.

 

 

 

[Jobber of the Week 0]

mass transit here in Portland, where the transit system most likely bests Chicago, and rivals that of San Francisco and New York

SF's transit is actually kind of miserable. MUNI sucks and is always late, and BART isn't so bad but isn't citywide (that's what MUNI light rail is for) and isn't something you're supposed to use on a daily basis because there's no monthly pass.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

I may be misreading you here, but it looks like you're saying you don't even have a car. If that's the case, you're a complete jackoff with no right to even participate in this discussion.

Yeah, I don't own a car. So yeah, I don't get to gripe about THE PAIN AT THE PUMP~! Though I can discuss urban planning and alternative fuels. If more things went to diesel, for instance, you could even have a similar car to what you have now that's better for the environment and won't cost you as much as unleaded.

 

And Eric, once airplanes get in the air, they don't require nearly as much energy to stay up there. It's like the space shuttle, which spends a lot of energy to get out of the gravity field, but once it's in orbit, can move around a lot easier on less energy.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a more efficient vehicle. Sadly, seasonal work I do in addition to my job makes the gas prices pretty tolerable when unleaded is at its worst, and that requires that I own a full-size pickup.

 

I'd be tickled if alternative fuels were nationally available and affordable. I don't like polluting like fury and spending an arm and a leg in gas. It's necessary for now.

 

What really burns my ass is the fact that the oil companies are raking in record profits while everyone squirms.

 

As someone who has worked in distribution his entire adult life, fuel costs matter. When DCs, transportation companies, and manufacturers get burnt on their transit budgets, the end result is higher prices on the shelves, and that goes for everything from socks to sauerkraut. The place I work has spent hundreds of thousands to streamline transportation to minimize their getting raped on $4 diesel.

 

Maybe I'll start taking the space shuttle to work.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Isn't what you described, though, why many (if not most) business-related transportations are actually fueled on diesel? More milage for the same amount of gas and all that?

 

I understand the truck thing, when you need one nothing else will do. My point is to reduce demand so that gas is affordable for those kinds of situations. If you're going to haul trees around in a truck or whatever, you don't have a lot of options. On the other hand, if you're just returning a disc to Blockbuster, that isn't totally necessary.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Have you seen the cost of diesel lately?

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

dies nuts

[EricMM 0]

Diesel will still get you further per gallon.

 

I dunno if the MPG vs. $PG equals out, however.

[The Niggardly King 0]

But I want my gas at $1.09 a gallon and my burgers at $1.

You want $10 computers and $5 TV's, too? Have the food man drop off those $1 burgers?

 

I just remember the good days as a child riding around with my dad when gas was 92 cents a gallon and you could get Micke-Ds cheeseburger at like 39 or 49 cents... I couldn't wait to do that when I grew up, and now I'm left with $3.39-$3.59 in gas that is only getting higher, and those burgers suck ass now, and a good burger is like $1.30-$3.00 all because we wanna try and put some democracy in some towel head country that doesn't even know about it... fuck that, this ain't the America I grew up and learned about... this is Bullshiterica, might as well call it that now.

 

Realmerica would of bombed that motherfucker and have hundreds of refineries in that bitch by now. I want Realmerica back

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Bullshiterica.

 

The next Czech name?

[Guest Beastalentier]

Affirmative, if you don't mind.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

KOAB is a fountain of hilarious nonwords.

[snuffbox 0]

Four fucking thousand. Christ.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Yeah, but how many US troops wounded? Anyone know?

[EricMM 0]

magnitudes more, at least 10x...

 

BY the way, how old is the TITLE for this thread, hmm?

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

That better?

[EricMM 0]

No.

 

I was talking about the Iraqis.

 

But it's not bad.

[snuffbox 0]

We've had at least 30,000 wounded so far. Contractors add another 1,000 dead and 10,000 wounded. The numbers that will exhibit emotional/mental problems will be in the hundreds of thousands.

 

Including contractors, even if the next president ends this war within the first year of their term the numbers will probably top 6,000 dead and 50,000 wounded.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

The level of Iraqi casualties is even more embarrassing. IraqBodyCount has it at 82,349 – 89,867 right now. That's using an extremely conservative standard of estimation, too--only reported deaths connected to insurgent or Coalition involvement. I guess they're all just worthless Muslims who deserve death anyway, huh? Go 'murrica.

 

I actually do believe that the situation in Iraq is "improving," but that's kind of like the moment on Arrested Development when the Bluth Company gets upgraded from "Sell!" to "Don't Buy!" What a retarded disaster.

[Red Baron 0]

The sad thing is all those oil fields still have oil in them, especially in Texas. They aren't dried up as everyone claims it to be, its just the oil is useless to make because its sludge. If there is a product out there to use the grind down the sludge and turn it into useful oil, then prices of gas should go down.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

[snuffbox 0]

Wow.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

This made me really angry...

 

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what effect the grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths in the five-year Iraq war might have on the nation.

 

Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, who made the decision to commit US troops to war, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.

 

Oh, poor George. Who's Cheney kidding? Bush will walk out out the white house next year into a lavish retirement full of golfing and writing his memoirs, rarely troubling himself with thoughts of the damage he's caused.

 

It's so terrible to me when you hear these families that have lost people talking about their greif, and how, particularly in the case of child, that person was their world. But to Bush and co their lives meant nothing, really.