This is a short term spike caused by supply disruption from Libya and other Mideast turmoil. If Libya goes the way that Egypt did (a left wing, pro-Islamic radical takeover) then scratch about 9% of the world's available supply off the market. Egypt has no oil, but Libya certainly does.
The Saudis could ramp up production to take advantage of the higher oil prices to generate additional hard currency reserves and thereby drive the price down eventually. Of course, any worldwide economic downturn caused by higher oil prices would depress demand and send prices lower.
Meanwhile, we have decades of useable, exploitable reserves righ under our feet here in the U.S.-- namely, northern Alaska and in Colorado. But, the environmentalist whackos block any attempts to increase domestic supply to offset foreign import needs.
They want us run vehicles on inefficient ethanol, or not drive them at all, without presenting any alternative that isn't at least decades away. Electric cars, for example, have to use electricity which must be generated somehow, and blocking additional use of coal and nuclear sources to power the power plants to generate the electricity doesn't appeal to their statist motives.
Ethanol production diverts corn production away from food and derivative uses, which drives up food prices and hurts consumers. Again, shortsighted environmentalist irrationality.
Well, one damn thing's for sure, I am not here to spew forth illiterate nonsense like that Danish poster who thinks that Barry Hussein Obama is the Messiah reincarnated.
To answer your question, I was offering advice to the young man who started this thread. Obviously, he is discouraged. I am providing my expertise based upon several decades of dealing with the feminine mystique. (Mystique is an understatement).
I am not as cynical as you may think. W.C. Fields once stated: "Women are like elephants. They're nice to look at, but I wouldn't want to own one."
I should have added to the young man that he needs to get a credit card with rewards points. Based upon the $$$ I have dropped over the years on dinner dates, trips and whatnot, I could have earned several roundtrip flights across the globe. Had I done so, I could have flown to Prague and literally "picked up the Czech."
I was out skiing last weekend here in the Midwest and there was a group of Suomi folks there. One of them had a blue-eyed toddler named Raisa and she was one of the most beautiful children I had ever seen. Fast forward twenty years and she could be Miss World, hands down.
Someday I will make it over there to "hiito" (I can't recall what the first part of the word was for "cross country"--sorry)
I hear the area around Kuusamo is excellent. Regrettably I don't speak Finnish, but I would give it a shot, just to show some respect for your country (unlike the hordes of illegals that come to the US and are here for decades and refuse to speak English).
I might ask what time of the winter is best to go...at that latitude that far north, I can't imagine that you get more than 6 hours of daylight until the end of January. What about early March? Do the temps stay below 0º C that late in the winter?
Any advice is welcome. My regards to Myllyllä, Itsometsä, Kirvesniemi, and all of your other Olympic nordic heroes. (Everyone knows about Paavo Nurmi in the Summer Games).
I would tell you to continue to stay out there and keep trying, but at the same time don't have high expectations for online dating success, since many women on this site are married or separated and are looking to manipulate or tease men as a way to vent their frustrations. Women are extremely reluctant to make the first move, since they have an innate desire for attention, but understand that attention does not equal interest. And finally, what a woman tells you and what she means are two completely different things.
There is no substitute for face to face encounters, so keep that in mind and increase your accessibility to females by more traditional methods. Just get out there and meet them.
How can anyone talk about "peace" while Barry Hussein Obama kowtows to the Chicom premier Hu Jintao? Timid in his approach, Obummer won't dare go after the Chicoms on their human rights abuses, or demand that they release their Nobel Prize winner.
Kenyans and Mandarins make great bedfellows.
Say, Hu, when are we going to get a list of our MIAs from the Korean war, anyway? What about those POWs who disappeared into your gulags?
Oh, well, you lost over 1 million-plus Chicoms dead in that war. At least our heroes took a lot of your Maoist minions with 'em.
I washed the dishes for the first time since the presidential election...I wanted to see how much filth could pile up in my sink. I tried to be politically correct and not use the dishwasher, figuring that it was an exploited working class item of machinery. So I let it go on strike....
Unfortunately Barry Hussein Obama accumulated more crap than I could have since he spent the country into oblivion, so I realized that I could not win the contest.
Looking for Joy, I found some at the supermarket in the dishwashing detergent section. I used 1/2 a bottle just creating enough suds to cut through the grime, which resembled a welfare housing project in a city in a Blue State, like Detroit.
Joy finally came through and I was able to see the bottom of the sink for the first time since the days when we had a responsible man in the White House.
Since Joy resides on the lower cabinet below the sink, I don't have to jump for Joy. I bow to her greatness, instead.
Intelligence relates to an individual's capacity of exceptional knowledge, reason and highly developed skills.
This is why it is such an alien concept to liberals, socialists, anarchists, altruists and other feeble minded creatures. Particularly that poster from Denmark, where the high taxes have drained his reasoning ability. He's forced to live on a low-protein diet due to the confiscatory revenue system, and the fact that he is on government handouts.
Whatever happened to that Peruvian Antjo? I was scrolling through the posts and he disappeared. I figured out why...he is one of those Shining Path Marxist guerrillas that came out of the jungle and just embarked on massacres of innocent folks...similar tactics to the Arizona nutcase.
People that criticize the USA criticize us because of our successes, not our failures. They despise our wealth and our track record of economic progress over the last two plus centuries. The litany we have heard over that time is that we have been "enriched" by all of these huddled masses that washed up on our shores like so many dead fish. If the USA is so bad, why did millions come here to begin with?
For them, the common denominator is mediocrity, not achievement. In their twisted minds (mostly Europeans, who believe that they have a cultural superiority based upon their elitist social democracies) it's ok, for example, to tax the wealthy to subsidize the healthcare of the lower class moochers who live off the system and don't carry their own weight. And they wonder why now their suburbs (outside of Paris) are smoking from the burning cars, courtesy of the Muslim hordes from Algeria, Morocco, etc. Perhaps they are finally learning the hard way, like the Germans did after putting up with thousands of Turks who came there to work, since their "sick man of Europe" didn't have jobs for them at home. Any surprise why they have to rely on skinheads to defend their honor?
This idiot that did the shooting was anything BUT a conservative. He was delusional, paranoid and irrational. But because liberals seem to think that they have a monopoly on thought and are immune to criticism, naturally they had to blame the incident on the opposition.
If you are denying the existence of Christ, then you would also deny the existence of historical proofs of his matyrdom at the hands of the Jews and the Roman secular authorities in the first century. There is ample historical evidence of this, Pontius Pilatus was a procurator in Iudea (Judea) and inscriptions referring to his presence have been unearthed in archeological excavations. He was recalled by the Roman authorities in 36 A.D.
In addition, there are numerous historical writings from later in the century that attest to the events surrounding the life and death of Christ. These exist apart from the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, St. James, and St. John. One needs only to look at the martyrdom of St. Peter in Rome under the reign of Nero in AD 64, and later on the writings of St. Ignatius later in that century who was a contemporary of St. John and whose writings are still extant. We have a wealth of historical documentation in the Church which has been safeguarded throughout the centuries.
I do not need faith to supplant or to co-opt my reason. The burden of proof rests on the agnostic and the atheist to refute the historical evidence.
Too many appeal to emotionalism vs. reason. That argument fails repeatedly as it has done for the last 2000 years.
Oh ye of little faith, try to work on developing faith. It is a process...faith seeking understanding. Not an easy task, but there are plenty of historical antecedents to help you on the journey. I might suggest studying the early Church fathers, along with St. Thomas Aquinas.
"Sicut enim corpus sine spiritu emortuum est ita et fides sine operibus mortua est." (Iacobus 2:26) Latin Vulgate
"For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead." (James 2:26) NAB
Kudos to you for moving on. It took my a long time to get past my last relationship, too. But no baggage like many folks out there since I never took the honeymoon flight like the married ones did...hahaha
Regarding the weather, it seems that God sent plenty of garnish from the sky these last few days for me to ski on. He understands.
Now if I could only get away from work in the next week or two and take advantage of it...oh, well, one thing at a time!
I would have to agree with you on this point (regarding WW I) based upon personal observations in France and discussions that I had with several elderly Frenchmen about ten years ago.
When I cycled around northern France and passed through villages, no matter what the size, I always would see a memorial (usually an obelisk or tablet) that inscribed the names of the war dead from both WWI and WWII. The number of dead from WWI was endless...always 5-10 times greater than WWII...the largest memorial I saw was near the train station at Versailles. The WWI dead occupied an entire panel on one side (the long side L-shaped) while the WWII, Indochina and Algerian war dead were on the other shorter side.
From time to time, in my miserable French, I asked a few elderly men what they thought of all this. These men had been in WWII and were too young to have been in WWI, but some were young boys at that time whose fathers served, and some were killed. They didn't really want to talk about it.
Considering what they endured as a country, and the losses that they sustained, it was easy to understand why.
Thumbs up to the American Battlefields Monuments Commission, as well as the French authorities, for keeping our US military cemetery there in the Argonne in impeccable shape. It is the largest US military cemetery in Europe. Requiescat in pace.
What one really needs to be concerned about are those who fear life and take advantage of others. Since they are selfless and have no real life to begin with, they derive their existence from what harm they can do to others.
This is far more of a challenge to us since these cretins continue to go unpunished. Ironically, it is only when they die that they will get their punishment. At least we can derive some satisfaction from that.
Personally, my objective is to avoid Hell at all costs. Can't imagine a worse punishment than spending eternity with people that don't agree with me. Hahahaha
Are you so blinded by your staggering tax rates and your "cradle to grave" socialist nonsense that you actually believe that intelligent people would want to put up with that?
As I recollect you have the ignomious distinction of surrendering to the Germans in WWII the same day that you were invaded. Speaks volumes about your competence. And let's not forget the 1860s when you gave up Schleswig-Holstein with nary a fight.
You talk about two armies...the two armies that you should be worried about are the hordes of illegal aliens and the Muslims. Of course, you've seen enough Muslims in Scandanavia to finally make you wake up.
If you ARE still asleep, ask someone from Paris why Paris is burning. It's the Muslims in the suburbs torching cars at night.
When you say "third language" you need to better define your terms....do you mean the ranking of which ones I learned 1, 2, 3 etc. or which ones I am more competent?
Since I speak five of them, I never considered the "second" or "third" ones as that at all, I simply use English and the others as needed.
As far as despising white men, any Obama worshipper by definition despises us. (Just ask his worthless wife what she thinks if you can't ask him directly).
I'll give you credit for at least attempting to speak English if you are not a native speaker. Since you are from Belgium that would make you either "Flemish or "Walloon" so there are significant lingustic differences between speakers of Flemish or French compared to English.
I have visited your country and have witnessed the schizophrenia of having two competing languages and cultures attempting to coexist. At least I will give you credit for learning the "other sides" language...in the United States we are besieged by millions of illegals who have been here for DECADES and refuse to learn or speak English and to assimilate into the fabric of American society.
We are witnessing the unravelling of the American culture and the mutual contempt and suspicion of having two completely different cultural and linguistic mindsets existing side by side, akin to Quebec and of course, your beloved Belge/Belgique.
Give my regards to the heroes buried near Ypres next time you venture near there. I certainly will on my next cycling trip.
I am NOT a "bible thumper" as you allege. It is correctly spelled as Bible, not bible. (Bible must be capitalized; refers to a proper noun vs. common one. Please check your grammar. If you are going to use bible in a common noun sense, then don't refer to Scripture. Using bible in the lower case refers to some sort of a publication that allegedly is authoritative, for example a statement such as: "Karl Marx's teachings are the bible for liberal college professors.")
Bible thumpers are Prods (Protestants) who have a delusional thought pattern called "sola scriptura" which alleges that only Sacred Scripture is the basis for authority. Since they have no authority, (no apostolic tradition) they have to appeal to something. Sola scriptura is nowhere mentioned in the Bible. Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are both bases for authority.
I have a right to despise anyone that I please, in the same manner that you despise white men, apparently, or those that believe in God.
Hell by definition is eternal separation from God, that is clearly elaborated in the Bible as well as Church teaching. No need to elaborate on that. It existed long before the advent of books, TV, or Barry Hussein.
Please don't spew garbage about conservatives not taking care of the elderly or disabled. I looked after my parents until they passed on, and sure as hell am not a liberal.
They happened to be old school New Deal Democrats, in case you are curious.
One thing that my parents did believe in, which cut across all party lines (at least until 1930 or so) was that everyone pulled their own weight.
If and only if, you paid into an entitlement program should you be able to collect from it. After all, with the exception of the military (compensation, pension, healthcare), all entitlement programs are coerced by the government through taxation (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security). The military volunteered for duty (no one has been conscripted since the early 1970s) and therefore "paid into" the system by taking the risk of engaging in hazardous duty for the government. Although they may not have paid into the system for the same length of time that a civilian did, they run the risk of getting killed while on duty, which would eliminate their drawing benefits. As such, they have earned the right to receiving healthcare benefits, or compensation for diabilities incurred. Even their healthcare benefits are subject to income restrictions which may trigger co-pays or other restrictions. (In short, no universal freebie applies like Obamacare).
By definition, if a conservative earns more money (an evil outcome, according to a liberal) he will regrettably for him pay more in taxes, and therefore contribute more to the entitlement pool than his povery-is-a-virtue liberal.
The problem lies in the lower tier of incomes, who pay nearly nothing in federal taxes (through "child credits" "dependent care expenses" and "earned income credits" that are either nonrefundable credits that reduce their taxable income to zero, or refundable credits where they actually get a refund without paying ANY taxes) or the people that are paid in cash and do not pay any withholding into the entitlement pool. These individuals will pay little or nothing in contributions over their working lifetimes, yet draw out enormous benefits on the back end when they retire.
If I didn't have the time to reply to this post, I would have said "don't care" in my poll response. As it was, I voted with the majority, it seems.
However, I would have added to the list above "hates success and exceptionalism."
A liberal wants equality of outcomes for all (which means that the losers become winners and the winners become losers). Net result: Mediocrity at best, interminable class warfare in the meantime, and misery and injustice for all. (Misery because excellence is cursed and over time things go from bad to worse, and injustice because in a scarcity of resources--who wants to invent or innovate when success is penalized and the lowest common denominator rules the roost?--society becomes a contest for who can steal from whom and live to tell the tale.
Or, as Ayn Rand once said, "in a society of thugs, the murderer wins out over the pickpocket."
A liberal believes wholeheartedly in entitlements. Unearned ones. Which means that if you earned money legitimately, then screw you, you don't deserve it, since there are others out there that are "less fortunate" (a term not defined by the liberal that utters it) that deserve it instead.
A liberal's best weapon against a productive individual? The guilt trip. "You SHOULD pay more taxes because you really don't need all of that money that you have earned." Give it to the libs so that they can redistribute it in a more inefficient manner. Who cares if it's wasted. You can always eat Ramen noodles if you get in a pinch. Many of our comrades live only on rice and beans. You should be so lucky!!
I find it amusing how a liberal will defend to the death the right of an illegal to come here, violate our nation's sovereignty, deal drugs and engage in criminal activity, mooch off of our economy and not pay any taxes, etc. but won't lift a finger to prevent the murder of an unborn child. Illegals count more than legals, I suppose.
Liberals don't have to take a joke...the joke is already on them. And they know it.
No events in Illinois? The problem is that this is a notorious Blue State.
People in Blue States just can't have any fun, because they are saddled with the guilt of knowing that they don't deserve to buy themselves a drink, they should have given their money to the worthless street bum who wants to mooch off of them for a freebie. Coming up on the short end is a virtue, you see.
Just ask the Cubs.
So the reason that you are not "getting any" is because someone is "getting some" off of you. Pickpockets can be overt or covert, you see.
We men are double cursed because whether or not we live in Prague, we still have to pick up the cheque (Czech??) before we can pick up the chick.
Of course, no one mentions that the state owned institutions were the result of the Marxist governemnt of the socialist Allende, who sent Chile into an economic tailapin during his regime from 1970-73. His worthless hijaputa had the audacity to show her face during the miners crisis.
It was Pinochet who brought in the "Chicago Boys" from the school of economics (Friedman disciples) to convert the economy into a free market system to allow Chile to recover economically during the late '70s and throughout the 1980s. Augusto salvó a Chile.
But you'll never hear this from the anticapitalist libs, who still believe that governmental compulsive redistribution of wealth is the answer to the world's ills. They're continually making excuses for the economic basket case of Latin America, Castro's Cuba, which hasn't seen the light of day in over 50 years. Great place to go for junkyard auto parts if you have a vehicle from the 1950s, though.
Right wing authoritarian regimes have concluively shown better economic growth than their leftist counterparts. Spain under Franco, Chile under Pinochet, and South Africa under the Afrikaners. Even Vladimir Putin couldn't deny that more blacks owned cars in South Africa under apartheid than whites in the USSR did.
Os felicito a todos vosotros que el rescate de los mineros ha tenido éxito. Cómo ha dicho uno de ellos, fue una lucha entre Dios y el diablo, y Dios ha ganado, como siempre.
Es lamentable que vuestro ilustre presidente, Augusto Pinochet, no ha vivido para ver este momento de triunfo, pero estoy seguro que él ha pedido a Dios para ayudarles.
Enhorabuena a todos. ¡Viva Chile, y viva Pinochet!
(As for us up here, we have our own continuing crisis, but as you will see next month after the midterm elections, we will start the ball rolling back in the "right" direction).
The Iraq withdrawal timetable was established by Bush in 2008, so it was going to happen no later than 2011, irregardless who won the election that fall.
As far as the elections this fall are concerned, look for the lefties to lose the House, and probably the Senate, too. Even if the GOP only picks up 7 or 8 seats in the Senate, with the split in the Congress, the Afrosocialist won't be able to shove his collectivist agenda down our throats any longer. Republicans can simply stop funding the socialist health care, block any attempts at amnesty for illegals, and put the brakes on the insane spending spree that Barry Hussein has undertaken.
I won't predict that we will gain as many seats as we did in 1994, but it will be a sea change. The leftist media will call it an "anti-incumbent" reaction, but we know better than that.
Obama won't dare extend the Bush tax cuts which got us out of the 2000-2001 recession, so the economy will continue to be a basket case until we can get a GOP president and Congress to enact a pro-business and pro-jobs tax and economic agenda. In the meantime, look for stagnant to nonexistent growth, high unemployment, banks unwilling to lend on collateral that is tanking, a disinflationary to deflationary general decline in the price level.
It's funny how the media shouts with joy every time the stock market indices finishes up, but when it tanks, they say nothing. The Dow broke below its 200 day moving average last week and any rallies continue to fail, since there isn't enough technical momentum to buck the trend.
Joe Bite-me said that the stimu-not plan would guarantee unemployment wouldn't go above 8%...the official rate is 9.5% but many just gave up looking, many states are in the double digit range.
Especiallly the Blue States. Be careful what you wish for...you just might get it.
He sure has achieved major changes in national policy!
Forced nationalized healthcare Unemployment rate double what it was under Bush Letting more illegals in the country so that he can grant them amnesty for votes (that's next on the agenda) Tax increases in 2011 as the Bush tax cuts expire (goodbye 10% tax rate for you lower income folks...it goes up for EVERYBODY across the board)
No, the Afrosocialist won't get reelected. Look for a few serious contenders for the Democrap nomination. Should be quite a show between the Obamas playing the race card, the Clintonites who will try to act as moderates to attract independents, and enviro whackos and pro-Islamists who comprise the lunatic fringe on the Left.
Public employees get COLA raises like clockwork every year. Municipal employees are insulated from economic shocks like this one because they feast off of property tax assessments.
ILLinois is a classic example. Cook County and City of Chicago (Daley Dictator's town) keep raising property taxes in spite of declining property values. Their excuse? Just don't reassess annually while values are declining like other states.
Local police and fire officials DO perform needed services...BUT there is no reason why they should be receiving pensions (defined benefit plans) when they could be contributing to 401k programs (defined contribution plans) like the rest of us in the private sector and assuming the risk of funding their retirement instead of foisting that risk onto the taxpayer.
As bad as that is, the worst culprits are the public school systems which eat up 70% of a property tax bill, on average. Why can't folks pay for their kids educations instead of making others do it? It is not my responsibility to pay for your kid getting educated...especially when he/she is being taught by liberal teachers that the USA is at fault for 9/11, God is bad but Allah is good, socialism is fair and capitalism isn't, yadda yadda yadda.
I used to live in a Chicago suburb of $500-$700k homes in the '90s...people had Lexus and minivans in their driveways and mortgage payments of $2500-$3000 a month...yet they were too damn cheap to send their kids to private schools. Property taxes were and still are outrageous. I voted with my feet and sold out and left. Good riddance.
You have a lot of love in your heart: for pickpockets, wealth confiscators, terrorists and the like. Welcome to the Obamajungle.
You can be your brother's keeper. Your "brother" doesn't like to work, anyway: just see how many of your brothers are hanging around on the street corners during the daytime.
"In a society of thugs, the murderer wins out over the pickpocket." --Ayn Rand
Of course Einstein believed in God. After all, he was a Jew, and he knew that after Caiphas and Co. handed Jesus over for execution in the first century A.D., all hell was bound to come down on his head. Eventually.
And who can send Hell down on someone's head when Hell is down below to begin with?
NordicSkier Forum Posts (54)
RE: world cup final
¡Arriba España! ¡Viva España!Franco os felicito, y yo también.
Dios os saludo por haber conquistado a los holandeses, herejes como son.