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OK, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are genuinely ignorant and not just trying to be a troll. You do know that the US is a net exporter of oil right... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The war in Afghanistan was because a few monsters over there murdered 3000 US civilians, and the ruling body in Afghanistan sided with those monsters, so we killed them. You remember that right? There is/was no oil in Afghanistan...

The war in Iraq happened because Saddam Hussein had a huge stockpile of chemical weapons (previously well documented in the 80s and previously used on the Kurds in 1988 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared... ) and had Uranium (550 tons http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2554...), was trying to buy more and refine it (we found the centrifuges buried in a civilian district of Baghdad http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/... ) and he kicked the IAEA/weapons inspectors out of Iraq. He thought we would blink because we were already involved in Afghanistan, but we didn't and that was what triggered the Iraq war.

We didn't take over any Iraq oil fields and we don't import it. We spent $2,000B on the Iraq war http://www.reuters.com/article... while the Iraq oil production is worth a piddling $25B/year. http://www.theglobalist.com/ir... If you think the Iraq war was about oil or for profit, you are either ignorant or a moron or both.

We need the US war machine so that the Russians and/or the Chinese (or Iran for that mater), don't try to subjugate the rest of the world. I suspect under Trump, a lot of other modern countries who have been getting a free ride as far as protection via the US military will start shouldering their fair share of expenses, so we may well have more cash, but that will probably go to actually building things like power plants, transmission lines, roads and airports, rather than more "green jobs." We already tried that under BHO and we got Solyndra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Yep, and this is why businesses rather pay for damages and lost lives than redesign faulty parts.

Sometimes this may be appropriate, yes. It is all about costs — and a cost of a Westerner's life is under $10 million today. So, for example, raising the cost of 20 million cars by 50 cents each to save one life is stupid, but may make sense for two or more lives.

Before you denounce "putting a price on human life", that is the criteria government agencies use to issue their rulings... They just aren't as good about it on average, as the business-owners themselves would be.

Dumbass.

Yes, you certainly seem to be... Read more, write less — there is hope for everyone...

Recently I learned that black people from Africa have a very different end result when they move to America compared to black people raised here. Even if they were disadvantaged in all the same ways before coming here, they do better. They end up in jail less, they get a better education, and make more of their life once moving to the "land of opportunity".

To me it sounds like they grow up in a certain mindset. Nobody else can fix that for them, they have to change their mindset to get out of the disadvantaged beginnings they might start out with. If getting educated is looked at as a bad thing in your neighborhood, then you had better be strong enough to be an "Uncle Tom" or whatever your friends are going to call you. Otherwise you will just end up poor and in prison, if not dead from gang violence, just like all your friends.

This is More accurate than you know.

As a shell company registered in Delaware, Planetary Ventures LLC is just one way Google launders its enormous overseas cash hoard and uses it to purchase US assets tax-free.

How much is a death worth according to you, even in pure monetary terms? Conservative estimates are that a life is worth about 7 million dollars. 91 million dollars vs 800000 recalls. If the part is worth less than 100 dollars, which it sounds like it is, it is worth it.

This one isn't paywalled: http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=9505

The conservatives need to change their stance on global warming ... the only real way to solve global warming is through advancements in science and engineering to give us cheap reliable sources of green energy.

No, they all need to stop trying to legislate "solutions" to what hasn't been proven to be a problem. The "conservatives" came up with the Burn Our Food program (ethanol). The only thing that's doing is causing starvation and death. It certainly didn't accomplish the stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas. Of course, that never was the real goal. The real goal was driving up prices for El Presidente's friends in the corn belt.

The same sort of "solutions" are being offered up by the liars on the "left" too. Everyone is trying to get their nose in the trough. Everyone remember T. Boone and his windmill scam? When a politician preaches green energy, he's talking about the other kind of green. The green he wants to fleece from the American taxpayers.

Exactly. It's not that the US can't manufacture things any more - if you look, we're actually still the number one producer of manufactured goods in the world. We just haven't grown as fast as China has. It's that it doesn't make economic sense for us to make everything right now. If the supply with China dries up, suddenly it'll make sense again, and factories will start springing up all over the place. There is capital here to do it, there just hasn't been a reason to allocate it to those industries.

Can it get moving in six months? No. But industry movements are rarely measured in months, and it can definitely get done in a few years.

http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4763

Diamond put out this summary from Collapse just after the quake. It's definitely worth a few minutes.

http://www.martinrothonline.com/Christians&War/Christian_suicide_bomber.htm "If youâ(TM)re World War II kamikaze pilot Ichizo Hayashi you write a final letter to your mother stating that âoefor to me, to live is Christ and to die is gainâ and you vow to âoebe sure to sink an enemy vessel.â Then you fly off on your deadly mission with your Bible and hymn book." http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4223 "And consider the 19-year old Loula Abboud, a dark curl kissing her forehead and a golden cross around her neck. A Lebanese Christian, she was one of the first women to earn the title of istishhadiyah when she blew herself up in 1985 as Israeli troops moved in to capture her guerilla group near the town of Aoun in southern Lebanon." http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/821425/posts "The spokesman of the Orthodox Church praised suicide activities carried out by Palestinians deep inside the Hebrew State [Israel] in the name of religion (Ist'sh'had). He emphasized that 'the suicide bombers who carry out their activities in the name of religion are national [Islamic] heroes and we're proud of them."

Here's one:

[C]onsider the 19-year old Loula Abboud, a dark curl kissing her forehead and a golden cross around her neck. A Lebanese Christian, she was one of the first women to earn the title of istishhadiyah when she blew herself up in 1985 as Israeli troops moved in to capture her guerilla group near the town of Aoun in southern Lebanon

But that's rather beside the point. Suicide bombings are committed almost exclusively in defense of homeland against occupying forces (or, rather, the belief that such a thing is occurring), especially forces of a different religion, and especially when those doing the defending live in relative poverty. There are very few cases of countries with poor, heavily Christian populations that are occupied by people of other religions. Ergo, hardly any Christian suicide bombings.

Here's a start on the starvation data: we're at the lowerst worldwide wheat production in 34 years, and flour has risen 3 fold in cost in the last year alone. WEe're producing a lot of food, but the cost is being placed at a point where poor nations simply can't buy any. The USA is the worlds largest exporter of food. Record amounts of that going to ethanol mean less is going out through our borders. http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5518

Home battery storage is viable for PV solar, but 1: many homes don;t have an OSHA approved location to put a battery (not all of us have basements or garrages), 2: it increases the cost of the system dramatically, and the batteries require replacement about every 8-10 years. 3: fire insurance costs increase dramatically with home batteries, and several insurance companies refuse to provide fire insurance due to the potential of cascade cell failure. In the future, better batteries will hapopen, safer and cheaper, but today there is no economy of scale for it, besides that most homes won't be able to produce enough in the first place.

I do not disagree with the fact that many people needlessly spend money on gadgets and entertainment, but you're not going to get them to saccrifice that unless the ROI makes sense. Today, solar PV in may areas of this country, without government subsidy, doesn't work. In other areas, the ROI looks good enough, and 7 year terms, especially in NJ, are common turnarounds, and it's selling well. What people don;t realize is that if we simply took how much money is going into the subsidy, and insead invested that money in wind power, the effect would not only be much more 100% clean energy, but it would lower everyone's electric bills, not just the ones who both own a home and have finances available to install such a system.

Hybrid cars are a $2,000 or so extra investment, and financers understand the fuel savings alone nearly compenssates for the extra cost. Solar PV is a 20K investment with fluctuating rates of return, and non-permanant installation. Solar PV does not add equity to your5 home near its cost of install.

small hobby gardens, common? 1/2 acre plots for gardening, rare. Maybe 10% of america has enough yard to do that, likely less, and many that do are elderly and can't perform the labor alone. In other countries, less than 25% may even have a yard at all. Your aslo still ignoring the cost diference for ALL of us. Great, you can save a hundred bucks a year, but the rest of us still REQUIRE that system. If it is not a universal solution, please disregard it from this conversation.

MIT estimates a 12-15 year term before solar PV competes in even some markets as a more economical solution than wind. Call me in 12-15 years and we'll talk.

insulation requirements, I completely agree, are a joke. Since however, few existing houses can be properly upgraded, and imposing too strict of a building code on new homes will destabalize the market, we have to taker baby steps. I built my house 3 years ago, and had great windows, appliances, and insulation put in, within reason. I tipped the contractor $100 cash to add a bunch of extra blowfill insulation in the attic, and mu new house, which is larger than my old, has about 30% less electric bills. Going further was possible, but at diminishing rates of return (and would have raised the cost of the structure beyond appraised values, and thus would have prevented bank financing without a larger downpayment, making this even more impossible for most of America).

Conservation, I'm right with ya. outlaw Incandescent bulbs, increase the SEER requirements on AC systems, slowly over time tighten building requirements, make appliances meet ever higher energy standards, start making PCs and other appliances use less and less trickle powewr and more efficiently sleep when appropriate. We CAN do a lot there, and we are continually improving. That's not part of this argume

You actually allowed a colleague to be treated in that way, shameful.

A historical perspective:
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4 222

One book I picked up a couple of years ago was Robert Polidori's Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl, it documents though photos how nature is taking back the buildings and towns; and also includes shots from within the control room of the reactor.

http://www.theglobalist.com/photo/Chernobyl/Polido ri.shtml

Exactly. The man's name is Thomas Matussek, here's a text of his: http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/storyid.aspx?Sto ryId=3315
More stories on the topic:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,17811 40,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/wunderbar/0,1518, 359568,00.html (in German)

At what point is it OK now to not pay for the hard work of other people, or to begin to directly steal from them?

Until you have your own industry which needs those patents and copyrights enforced. There is even historical precendent for this.

Saddam was fine until he started trading oil for Euros instead of US dollars. That was his no-no.

The euro is finally taking its place alongside the U.S. dollar as a new global reserve currency. This has been further enhanced by the euro's recent gains against the dollar. But what would happen to the U.S. economy if OPEC decided to use euros, instead of dollars, to price oil? Hazel Henderson explores the consequences.

Completely off-topic, but the situation needs a clarification:

The Hezbollah are a group of Political activists not too much different from nationalist movents spawned around some part of Europe. And Like such movements, it's highly fragmented , and parts of it advocate the use of violence , like Hamas. There is no "Hezbollah Headquarter", like there is no " Nationalism Group Co." in Europe or USA. We in Europe have IRA, ETA and some paramilitary nazi groups in Germany. The Lebanon has Hamas, Some various Islamic indipendents groups,some bored sheik with the passion of guns, all of them separated and often in conflict between them.

Such terminology is misleading ,like the use of the "Communist" term during the Maccartism.

What is going on in Lebanon coud be compared to the France bombing the entire Ireland or Spain because of an attack carried by IRA or ETA.An entire nation of 3.000.000 people is going to be wiped out for the actions of the 5% of them. If you call that an "act of defense" from Isreael, well, I don't know,maybe I never understood the meaning of "defense" at all.

I can only hope that only the 5% or less of israelian population agrees with this madness.

The problem is that even if only the 5% of population is a danger for Israel population, the remaining 95% is surely not a friend of the USA/Israel. The actual "defense actions" are an attempt to balkanize the Middle East: fragmenting the territory creates small regions too weak to oppose the USA/Israelian positions regarding Oil Prices/currency (Iraq was about to change the exportation of Oil from Dollars to Euros when it was "freed".This article was written long before the "democratization" of Iraq ), Cultural education, the birth of "inopportune" political parties and so on. This is what happened with the balcanic states after the conflicts in Kossovo, Jugoslavia, and a good part of ex-communist states near the Germany after the fall of the wall.Read some '90 Uk newspaper about that, if someone still cares about.

If you think i'm a paranoid terrorist supporter,feel free to not trust me. Talk with an neutral professor or expert in foreign politics and hear what he says.

Google is great:

http://www.ewg.org/farm/findings.php
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr141f.htm
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?Sto ryId=3795%20#Box

The fact that most of the subsidies go to large agribusinesses makes it even more depressing.

It was most definitely about the oil. But not necessarily the United States getting the oil. The U.S. just needed to stop Iraq from selling oil in Euros and devaluing the U.S. currency even further.

Not from the "mainstream" press, but excellent articles detailing of how Iraq switching from the U.S. dollar (approved by OPEC in the early 70's as the official currency for oil) to the Euro for oil could seriously harm the U.S. economy.

Not Oil, but Dollars vs. Euros
Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro

IC is the integrated circuit.

I'm not belittling the rest of the world. But rightfully I am claiming that the US has done more to bring the world forward in terms of discovery, development, and freedom that any other. period. I am sick and tired of of the rest of the world getting on America's case. When they start pulling their own weight then I'll be more ready to listen.

As far as the EU, I believe that Japan has a bigger economy than Europe. Even after the EU adds members to make 25 the US economy will still be larger. Growth by acquisition may temporarily give the EU higher numbers in total growth when that occurs. But in the long run that will only hurt the EU's long term growth potential as these new member states are generally very under developed in terms of infrastructure, education, and economic development as well as other less tangible but very important assets like a sense of democratization and entrepreneurship.

In the list of country GDP notice that the US produces more than 20% of world GDP and that the first european country shows up is Germany which is behind China, Japan, and India. The top four european countries Germany, France, UK and Italy combined produce about %60 of the US GDP. Then notice the really long gap in the list before anymore european countries are listed.

Here are some sites that paint the economic picture which portrays American might.

World Economies ranked by 2003 GDP
Top Ten US Cities ranks by closest contry in GDP

From what I gather you are saying is that teachers should not be paid?

Uh, no, that's certainly not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that US could learn a thing or two from countries like Cuba. That is, if anyone in the US government was sill caring about education. Again, my point was: it's not because US are one of the wealthiest country in the world that it should be a model for everything. And actually, apart from the economy, there's not much to keep right now.

"I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software."

(Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, December 1995)

Oh, BTW, pound sand, telemarketroids.

You know the US gets involved in lots of humanitarian programs overseas. This pisses a lot of people off and makes us enemies. Should we stop all foriegn aid programs?

Maybe it would be a good idea to stop spending 30 times as much money for the military than for foreign aid...

Worldbank (Seems slightly out of date)

The Globalist

FHS Sponsorship

The average I supposed is really gained depending on how it is worked out (Mean, Median or Modal average perhaps?). From what I understand, many of the tribespeople in India earn at or around $7 a year, while others (as kindly pointed out by another poster who is from India, and I'd trust his word over mine :) ) earn far, far more.

IANA Economist, however.

McDonald's is a nice resteraunt in India, and it's not because it's a poor country. Thats just how the McDonald's corporation has it setup.

Take a look at the menu, keeping in mind that the average income in india is about 21,000 rupee's a year. (21,000 / 365 = 57.53 per day) When was the last time you spent more then a whole days salary on a McChicken with fries and a drink?