Butthurt white guys, an Asian virgin and an angry lesbian walk into a bar...

Araysar_sl said:

no no

women should be holding the door open for me

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As if they have the physical or mental capacity to hold a door open for anyone, amirite?

So crass.

Funbags.

Araysar_sl said:

so you'd have no problem with forcing women sign up for the SSA when they turn 18?

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It's a good idea. The military can use some more shitty cooks.

Mist_sl said:

Uh, isn't the US getting almost all of its oil from this hemisphere now? And most of those fields are on the new side? And natural gas from fracking making even that oil less relevant every year? The fucking euros can police the third world shitholes if they need their oil.

I can see some extreme possibility of having to occupy Venezuela or something for oil, but unlikely to the scale that we'd need a draft.

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Check out all the Iraq oil contracts; there is a grand total ofoneAmerican company on the exploitation list. China, Russia and Europe are all digging in (Of course, the drilling contracts are all American, but not the oil contracts.) Every wonder why that is? It's obvious we have loads of influence on our puppet, but we've let everyone else have a seat at the troth. Well, it's because we make money from oilregardlessof who it's end user is. And that's because the vast majority of oil sales have to happen in dollars--hence the term petrodollars (And Iraq's profit range per barrel produced is quite small). Even countries like Russia and China, who do a lot of their BRIC commodities in their own currencies just because they want to flip us the bird, eventually slosh those funds into American bonds and then into American finance markets. In the end; everyone becomes tangled in American markets that are built off the liquidity of the petrodollar--some of them through basic commodities, others through the financial voodoo of betting on those commodities, but in the end, it all comes here. And it all starts,there, in the middle east--with the petrodollar.

That's why we protect it; our personal use is peanuts compared to how much we make controlling the market it's built on. An analogy would be like you looking at how much NBA or NFL players make, and never seeing the obscene amount the owner of said players is making from the marketing--we are that owner, everyone else may be playing on the field but we are making the money offthem. And the amount of money U.S. companies makejustdue to their position because of the dollar' status is obscene; and we retain that status because we ensure that everyone can sit at the table and eat (Everyone who matters--which means, everyone who can cause a world ending war.)

In other words, our primary job, is to make sure a country like France, or Britain or China, finds it more beneficial to trade and buy oil (And really all commodities)--than have it's army take it. And by doing that, we pretty much get, for our private industries, what is essentially a "tax" on everything. A Tax plenty of financial executives collect but are loath to pay taxes on. (This, really, should be the primary argument for taxation of the super wealthy, their benefit from America and Europe's control, but that's another post.)

Anyway; that's the reason we have bases all over the middle east. It's not for the oil for our own use, not really. It's so everyone can get the oil, and we can keep our place as the tax man, taking a little of everyone's pie. And the world runs along smoothly--with no world ending wars, because none of the people that actuallycanend the world are upset enough to start one (Putin got a little dicey but I think he's calm down now that he's marked his territory). But that's a tenuous peace, and it's an active peace, and it's also a "one sided" peace (Third worlders aren't included). We like to believe the reason, for example, France isn't collecting the skulls of Arabs is because they've "evolved" beyond their savage nature--but in reality, it's because it's cheaper right now to just buy what they need. So, in the end we'll keep control of those countries for those two reasons; to prevent the various "real" world powers from getting pissed off and deciding to go full Hitler, or Napoleon or Elizabeth. And because we make LOADS of money being the Oil-Wal-Mart of the world--ensuring the "wealthy" (Powerful) world gets the goods it needs, for the price it wants, by exploiting the people who don't matter to them.

You're quoting the Hodj slayer there, Mist. Tread carefully. Sometimes men do know what they're talking about.

Mist_sl said:

1) Makes some sense but doesn't really pass Occam's Razor. Or Hanlon's Razor for that matter. We're in Iraq mostly because some neo-cons thought it would be easy, having not really understood just how factious and tribal their society really was. The oil part seems like a distant second to plain old hubris.

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1.) I brought up Iraq not to explain why we are there--but to illustrate how we're cutting up the resources among different partners, and not sucking them down. Mainly to illustrate an example of how we protect oil, and even procure it, without the need of it personally. We don't need Iraq's oil, but Iraq's oil will make us a lot of money. (Nothing there about why we went in though.)

2.) But lets talk about why we went in---What malice is attributed in the idea we went in to continue our status as a reserve, what grand complexity? The reality is, it's very simple and lacks any malice what so ever. Cheney understood most of the premises I discussed; he was a conduit for many of the forces which control wealth in this country, and the war was an outcome to those two realities. And that outcome? Was a win, win, win for everyone with enough wealth to exploit it...But lets illustrate.

We have military companies making weapons and getting huge fat government contracts. Then we contract out drilling of the fields (Themost lucrative part of oil field set up--which, btw, all U.S. companies wonHalliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford International and Schlumberger). Then we contract our rebuilding efforts (Another Haliburton windfall woot woot, Cheney doing WORK), we then make money on the oil commodities and the derivatives built off them.

How is that NOT Occam's Razor; literally money was being made HAND over fist in Iraq. I think your problem is you confuse "America" with some unified entity; or the government. Lets be clear, Iraq was a huge win for the people who actually make the money in this country. It was only a loss for you, tax payer.

Mist_sl said:

2) Not sure where a draft fits in there. A war that would require a draft would be so costly that it would negate the benefits of this supposed tax, especially considering the 'tax' (more of a toll really) never really gets into the hands of the country, just a handful of bankers. To follow this line of thinking is to believe in the most extreme of radical interpretations of elite theory.

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Once the price of oil breaches a certain amount, control will be more difficult; we've seen nationalizations before due to inability to produce a profit margin on fields. That won't happen in places where we have bases; and control over such faction based territories will require more troops. Hence comments on the "draft"--it will probably go down something like X country attempts to nationalize fields. We spin it as a "teh communists" attempting to take over the "free" people of X shit hole; and then we side with "the freedom loving" faction. Instant war. And we will keep control over the fields--but wars where territory needs to be held, take a lot of men. Hence the draft. (This might never happen, too. Depending on drone tech, and how we approach peak oil with things like renewable and other materials that will make oil consumption less.)

As for the "radical elite theory"--you've spent this thread espousing the believe that a cabal of rich white men are pulling the strings on everything. And that our campaign system gives them incredible influence over things. Here, lets go through a few greatest hits.

Mist_sl said:

Except there is a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Well, except for the fact that it's really none of those things. It's really just an evil cult of money, and the fact that the membership is mostly a bunch of white capitalist patriarchs is just a coincidence.

OR SOMETHING. I don't even know anymore.

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Mist_sl said:

As long as a tiny handful of people get to pick who gets to run, you're frequently going to be stuck with options like Palin, who are literally worse than any man or woman off the street.

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Mist_sl said:

It's not arbitrary. The US's campaign finance system is the most rigged in the world, and we're WAY down the list on representation of women, damn near the bottom.

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Mist_sl said:

Watch the fucking video. 132 people gave 60% of ALL SuperPAC donations in 2012.

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Okay, so a very small set of wealth people have an extreme about of influence on elections and people in office. And, as per your statements, it's credible to believe these white men hate vaginas with such a fury that they quash female candidates before we even see them at the polls BUT it's RADICAL to believe these men wouldn't use the U.S. government to dramatically increase their own profit margins. Mist, are you being contrary just to be contrary?

Also, I know I argued against you on "white men blocking women from politics"--but I didn't argue against you on the fact that there ARE a small group of men and companies controlling campaign finance in this country. Instead, I just argued that it's silly to assume they wouldn't buy a woman as readily as a man. However; it's not silly to assume that these people would whore out the U.S.'s power, on the tax payers dime, in order to increase the capital they have to work with, I don't think anyway--it doesn't require some big stretch to believe people are greedy.

As for a small group of bankers collecting a toll; well, that's not exactly it. Yes there is a "toll" for transactions using our financial--but the actual full on profit we make comes from, mostly, control over assets. Capital being held by our financials is critical to underwriting and leveraging in the market--the more assets you have, the more profit you can make. And we store assets on both sides of the oil trade; the wealthy oil Saudi Prince keeps his money and oil futures right next to the Chinese high end party member who is taking delivery on said contracts--I mean, you don't think these guys keep their money in their mattress do you? Even Drug Lords use our banks now.

That, right there, is the key--Drawing money here, to our markets, so we can create all the lovely instruments that power our ridiculous financial industry. That's really our number one goal in controlling the petrodollar and being a reserve. By being a reserve, our dollars and bonds are the only ones accepted enough around the world to take advantage of the very fast market fluctuations that these guys live and die off of it; so all the money comes here. But the key to all of that, maintaining that key commodity exchange that says our dollars are as good at gold to buy actual, physical goods--like oil. Only through that basic wealth of currency, can we attract assets here in order play our financial games. And those games, are run, essentially by 14 banks world wide, but mostly by the "big 5" here.

Or let me put it like this. If the world's finances were like a giant milk shake, and we have a long straw that reaches into everything--then we drink it up. We drink their milk shake.



And lastly, about the "cost" exceeding the profit? Well; the "cost" isn't on their tab. That's why I put in that bit about taxes. The "cost" for maintaining world order is on the tax payers tab, and these guys drink up the profits. If you were extremely wealthy, would you argue against such a system? I wouldn't. I mean, if we're looking very long term, then yes, the ruin of the "West" is probably bad--but most of these guys don't even look past the collapse of their own companies, much less the U.S. government. They will gladly use it all down to a nub for the next penny. These guys fancy themselves as "Citizens of the world" and will gleefully move like locusts from one country to the next--they do it with their own companies all the time, devour it until it collapses, then move on to another. (Fuck, Romney got rich doing EXACTLY that)--what makes you think they won't do the same to a country?

I feel smarter for having read Lithose's posts.

Prescription: sammich

Prognosis: cleavage