The babyjesuschristsuperstar on Board: filling the moral void of Clinton’s legacy

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Definitionally, wilderness lacks roads. So you can't assume that building roads into ANWR will leave it as wilderness.

(People who really believe in free markets ought to acknowledge the preferences that so many people have for wilderness, and think about how to structure things so that these people get what they want.)

I have seen debunking of the claim that developing ANWR will barely change it. It's out there on the web if you want to look for it. The game is do things like count only the few square inches of ground space taken up by the supports for the pipeline, rather than than the mass of the pipeline.

Perhaps I could live with opening ANWR if it were part of a deal that would do other things to promote conservation and energy independence. On it's own, the issue is a distraction from things that could make a real difference.

Wilderness with oil under it will be drilled. Maybe it won't happen now, maybe it won't happen for 100 years, but as other reserves dry up, it will be drilled. All your plan does is delay the day.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Wilderness with oil under it will be drilled. Maybe it won't happen now, maybe it won't happen for 100 years, but as other reserves dry up, it will be drilled. All your plan does is delay the day.

Wasn't Spanky saying that if you can put off a debt until tomorrow, you never have to pay it?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Definitionally, wilderness lacks roads. So you can't assume that building roads into ANWR will leave it as wilderness.

(

Unless George Will is lying, then if your definition of a wilderness is that it has no roads, then ANWAR is no longer a wilderness.

George Will said: "although there are active oil and gas wells in at least 36 U.S. wildlife refuges"

George Will said: "Those who have and who think it is "pristine" must have visited during the 56 days a year when it is without sunlight. They missed the roads, stores, houses, military installations, airstrip and school. They did not miss seeing the trees in area 1002. There are no trees.

George Will said: Ice roads and helicopter pads, which will melt each spring, will minimize man's footprint, which will be on a 2,000-acre plot about one-fifth the size of Dulles Airport.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I have seen debunking of the claim that developing ANWR will barely change it. It's out there on the web if you want to look for it.

I actually laughed out loud when I read this. Of all the people on this board, in my humble opion, your "cites" are the least reliable. So for you to want us to take your opinion on unammed information on the net is just a little ripe. As we have tried to explain to you before, opinions from blogs do not qualify as evidence.

[Ty@50]

Originally posted by Spanky


I actually laughed out loud when I read this. Of all the people on this board, in my humble opion, your "cites" are the least reliable. So for you to want us to take your opinion on unammed information on the net is just a little ripe. As we have tried to explain to you before, opinions from blogs do not qualify as evidence.

I would appreciate, when you take well-deserved shots like this at my younger self, if you would be so kind as to recognize that the more mature Ty no longer cites to unreliable sources.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Definitionally, wilderness lacks roads. So you can't assume that building roads into ANWR will leave it as wilderness.

Thats an overly narrow definition you're using to facilitate an argument that holds little water.

Other than in your absurd "definitional" sense, driving one road and a pipeline through the ANWR doesn't destroy its "wilderness" quality.

But enviros, like pro-lifers, have an all or nothing attitude toward every argument they make, which is why most people don't pay attention to them. We all know there can be environmentally conscious drilling performed in ANWR, but enviros won't let that happen because its a precedent they fear.

Now, in fairness to enviros, there is a case to be made that you can never let the fox into the henhouse, no matter how responsible he pledges to be. Thats a valid argument.

But your argument that we must protect the definition of ANWR is a non-starter.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Spanky
I actually laughed out loud when I read this. Of all the people on this board, in my humble opion, your "cites" are the least reliable. So for you to want us to take your opinion on unammed information on the net is just a little ripe. As we have tried to explain to you before, opinions from blogs do not qualify as evidence.

I'll take his word. Ty's own shit is usually very well reasoned. He actually sways me a lot with his observations.

It's his cites to shitheaded, biased pseudo-intellectual clueless lefties that lose me... That stuff is all Grade A Fancy Shiite.

... And George Will should be boiled in tar for that awful crap he wrote about Jerry Garcia after Garcia's death. And that crap he wrote about how Corp America should force its workers to start dressing like Brooks Borthers models was also offensive. Who the fuck does that pencil-necked twit think he is? He's a fucking political commentator. He should comment on the goings-on in DC and nothing else.

[Replaced_Texan]

Can we all agree that a political party that ideologically doesn't believe in social programs for the poor and elderly is never again allowed to design or implement a social program for the poor or the elderly ever again?

The fucking benefit is only 16 days old and it's already falling apart. My over/under was closer to 3 months. Diabetics are having to be admitted to the hospital because they can't get insulin. States are declaring public health emergencies.

And Tom DeLay told representatives that he would bury their sons' political careers if they didn't vote for this stupid, stupid drug benefit program. And CMS lied about how much it would cost. And everyone at CMS who advocated this stupid bill quit the second it was passed, leaving the burden to others.

The president was worried about fucking social security and let this travesty pass?

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Spanky
The estimated 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil — such estimates frequently underestimate actual yields — could supply all the oil needs of Kerry's Massachusetts for 75 years.

Flowing at 1 million barrels a day — equal to 20 percent of today's domestic oil production — ANWR oil would almost equal America's daily imports from Saudi Arabia.

Random thoughts -

If there are 10.4 billion barrels, and it flows at a million barrels a day, ANWR oil will run out in about 28 years.

You can't apply Spanky's Chevron in Guinea argument to ANWR, because remediation in the jungle is so much easier than remediation in the frozen tundra.

Of course, the way global warming is going, in 28 years ANWR may resemble Guinea anyway.

I would have thought Spanky would think more kindly of caribou, given how they look like big deer with beards.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
... And George Will should be boiled in tar for that awful crap he wrote about Jerry Garcia after Garcia's death. And that crap he wrote about how Corp America should force its workers to start dressing like Brooks Borthers models was also offensive. Who the fuck does that pencil-necked twit think he is? He's a fucking political commentator. He should comment on the goings-on in DC and nothing else.

2. Anyone who wears bow ties absolutely and immediately loses any right to tell anyone else how to dress.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Can we all agree that a political party that ideologically doesn't believe in social programs for the poor and elderly is never again allowed to design or implement a social program for the poor or the elderly ever again?

The fucking benefit is only 16 days old and it's already falling apart. My over/under was closer to 3 months. Diabetics are having to be admitted to the hospital because they can't get insulin. States are declaring public health emergencies.

And Tom DeLay told representatives that he would bury their sons' political careers if they didn't vote for this stupid, stupid drug benefit program. And CMS lied about how much it would cost. And everyone at CMS who advocated this stupid bill quit the second it was passed, leaving the burden to others.

The president was worried about fucking social security and let this travesty pass?

Exhibit 2764983355988989333366454547909237852872 why Govt Programs which seek to micromanage what people receive in the marketplace simply don’t/can’t work.

Certain people can’t afford drugs because those drugs are expensive. They are expensive because R&D for drug companies is enormous. It seems to me that the better outlay of federal money is in grants for R&D. Why doesn’t the govt give the billions it uses in this idiot drug plan to the drug companies as R&D grants to develop drugs. Subsidize the industry, with the trade being that the industry will lower costs to reflect the lower cost of R&D.

I know this is probably naive for reasons of which I’m not aware, but it seems much easier, at least conceptually, to control costs from the top down, rather than funding a byzantine impossibly expensive program at the much harder to control consumer level.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda


You can't apply Spanky's Chevron in Guinea argument to ANWR, because remediation in the jungle is so much easier than remediation in the frozen tundra.

Why is this true? I always hear about how delicate the rainforests are, and when you destroy them it takes a hundred years for the stuff to grow back. The Tundra refreezes every winter and there are no trees that have to grow back.

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda
I would have thought Spanky would think more kindly of caribou, given how they look like big deer with beards.

Since the pipeline increased the amount of Caribou maybe the ANWAR drilling will also.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda
Anyone who wears bow ties absolutely and immediately loses any right to tell anyone else how to dress.

I have to agree with that one.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Exhibit 2764983355988989333366454547909237852872 why Govt Programs which seek to micromanage what people receive in the marketplace simply don’t/can’t work.

Certain people can’t afford drugs because those drugs are expensive. They are expensive because R&D for drug companies is enormous. It seems to me that the better outlay of federal money is in grants for R&D. Why doesn’t the govt give the billions it uses in this idiot drug plan to the drug companies as R&D grants to develop drugs. Subsidize the industry, with the trade being that the industry will lower costs to reflect the lower cost of R&D.

I know this is probably naive for reasons of which I’m not aware, but it seems much easier, at least conceptually, to control costs from the top down, rather than funding a byzantine impossibly expensive program at the much harder to control consumer level.

1) Subsidizing corporations is never a good idea. Who gets to choose which drug companies get the subsidies? The one who bribes abrahamoff will. In other words it will have nothing to do with merit.

2) If people can not pay for medical care themselves you need to provide it for them. Same goes for medicine. Especially if it is lifesaving. Only souless sociopaths argue for the dismantling of the safety net.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
1) Subsidizing corporations is never a good idea. Who gets to choose which drug companies get the subsidies? The one who bribes abrahamoff will. In other words it will have nothing to do with merit.

2) If people can not pay for medical care themselves you need to provide it for them. Same goes for medicine. Especially if it is lifesaving. Only souless sociopaths argue for the dismantling of the safety net.

It's strange, but as much as we argue about the UMC, it seems more and more that we are very much alike in our thinking on many subjects.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Spanky
1) Subsidizing corporations is never a good idea. Who gets to choose which drug companies get the subsidies? The one who bribes abrahamoff will. In other words it will have nothing to do with merit.

2) If people can not pay for medical care themselves you need to provide it for them. Same goes for medicine. Especially if it is lifesaving. Only souless sociopaths argue for the dismantling of the safety net.

1. I don't like subsidies either. But subsidizing a massive, inefficient system which seeks to monitor what millions of people get at the point of purchase is just a foolish waste of money better devoted to a program which would lower the price of drugs, thus removing the need for the inefficient program. My thinking is simple - easier to fund and monitor companies than to develop, implement and oversee millions of people's purchase of drugs. You think the waste and damage due to fraud and lobbying for subsidies would outweight the waste and damage caused by a massive impossible-to-administer program which consumers can never hope to understand?

2. Like federal funding for overpriced drugs isn't a subsidization... We're arguing 6 versus half a dozen here. You like a ground-up model, I prefer going from top down. Either way, the money reaches the same drug company pockets. I think mine is a better model because its administration costs are smaller, and it can be monitoroed much more closely. I'm advocating the same safety net, I'm just throwing it differently.