Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

OakRidgeStars wrote:There is some serious doo-doo about to go down in the Middle East. Now would be a good time to check the tires on your bicycle.

I went ahead and invested in a bicycle built for 2 for the wife & I. Her seat has the pedals...

VBshooter wrote:Acccording to Obama ,,He wants to wait until after the 2012 election to rule? on the pipeline thing,,But he will currently support another Unemployment Money appropiation because he says it will create jobs, HMMMM that pipeline is capable of creating 20,000+ or more jobs in its lifetime.. and to our Chief Knucklehead UE is better?? Man does not know his ass from his elbow and in that order for sure. But coming from a man? that has never had to actually work I'm not surprised

The word is his union bosses are leaning on him on this one to Ok the damned thing, since its largely their people who will get the jobs once all the backroom deals are made.

By the time this thing even got past the planning stages it would be what, 2050?

VBshooter wrote:Acccording to Obama ,,He wants to wait until after the 2012 election to rule? on the pipeline thing,,But he will currently support another Unemployment Money appropiation because he says it will create jobs, HMMMM that pipeline is capable of creating 20,000+ or more jobs in its lifetime.. and to our Chief Knucklehead UE is better?? Man does not know his ass from his elbow and in that order for sure. But coming from a man? that has never had to actually work I'm not surprised

*************************************************************************************It's amazing how facts that are suspect become a normal part of a narrative. So please VBshooter elaborate on the 20,000 plus jobs that Keystone will create? Is that estimate from the builder of the pipeline? Or somewhere else? If somewhere else please share that source. Hopefully, it will be a non-partisan source.

Further, while this will send the dirtiest oil on the planet to the Gulf Coast. Refining this the heaviest of oil increases green house emissions by 10 to 45 percent.

Finally the pipeline builder agreed to take another look at the proposed route, which is opposed by some states, farmers, businesses, citizens and even some petroleum representatives, while labor, the biggest petroleum corporations and the Chamber of Commerce supports. How do you now approve the pipeline when there is no approved route even by the builder.

Finally, the pipeline will not make us energy independent. What it will do instead is continue to make us the most slovenly users of a finite resource the world has ever seen. Btw what is the guarantee that every barrel of oil refined on the Gulf Coast will remain in the U.S.?

Gat6

widefat wrote:Nah, we don't need the keystone pipeline.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/12/13/iranian-official-threatens-military-drill-sealing-off-strait-hormuz/

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Keystone is irrelevant to that report. Let's give you this. Keystone exists today, right now with sand oil flowing freely to the Gulf.

Now, let's say that tomorrow the flow of oil from the Middle East was shutdown. Questions: That cutoff would have no effect on the price of a barrel of oil, or the price of gasoline? Or the U.S. would be minimally affected thanks to the Keystone Pipeline?

Bear in mind oil is a fungible product, it also has no nationally. It's sold on an international market to the highest bidder. Unless it's in the National Petroleum reserve, undiscovered, or in an un-leased location, we the people do not own any oil. Oil flowing through the Keystone Pipeline will not be ours, it will in all likely-hood belong to a multinational petroleum corporation that can do with it whatever turns the most profit.

So Keystone is no argument at all for a potential closing of the straits.

Gat6

SHMIV wrote:What we dropped on Japan worked, though. The Allied forces won.

Ten years ago, we should have made and dropped those same bombs. Diplomatically speaking, though, it's a bit late for that.

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We should have made the same bombs and dropped them on whom to what end?
Gat6

thekinetic wrote:The world seems to forget the war machine we were, you know the one that's not been started since Korea. Since Vietnam was not a war, neither were any that followed. If we actually mobilized the country, by that I mean if you ain't fighting you're working to support the fighting iran would stand a snowballs chance in hell!

But it would be over oil so the whiners...er I mean the left wing puss....er I mean the democrats would be what they are.

So the solution is we get our top scientists to create a new fuel and then tell the middle east to go **** themselves, sit back and watch the east go to hell!

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What on earth are you suggesting? that we mobilized and conqueror the entire Middle East? During WWII, 16,000,000 million served in the U.S. Armed Forces, of which 11,000,000 served in the Army. By any measure that's a helluva lot more than 1% of the existing population then, not to mention the people at home involved in the war effort.

Today we will have the 1% all volunteer force. So where do you find enough among all the Chicken Hawks to volunteer for this new conquest, and who will pay for it?

I assume this forum is well populated with veterans, so it's stunning to find that at every opportunity the answer to any international problem is: "Yesssssss let's go to war". Can anyone imagine a President Eisenhower saying, yep let's conquer the Middle East? Or let's use nuclear weapons in a surprise attack against a country that does not threaten our national survival?

One would think that veterans since they know the real cost of war would allow themselves to be stampeded into war by usually chicken hawk politicians.

Btw, what will you do with the 100s of millions Persians, and Arab subjects you would own after your conquest?

Gat6

gunderwood wrote:

Kreutz wrote:Yeah, I wouldn't swing at Iran with anything less than a few hundred nukes. Which as Gunderwood pointed out is stupid and illogical, so its best we don't pick a fight we won't win.

Won't win is kind of a bit strong, but is technically correct. As of now, winning with Iran is probably something like this in most Americans minds:

1. Iran doesn't get nukes.

2. The Iranian government is replaced with a "democracy" like we have/are trying to do with Iraq/Afghanistan.

3. If 1 & 2 are accomplished than there isn't any problem with them closing the shipping lanes and jacking up the price of oil, etc.

The problem is, that #1 would basically require a war right now and even then it may be too late. During that war you would have to kill all the scientists who worked on the program and confiscate or destroy all facilities, documents, etc.; in short, anything and everything with their nuclear development must be destroyed. Otherwise, at best you're simply delaying the inevitable by a few years...even if you did destroy their program, it would only set them back a decade or two unless #2 succeeded. Furthermore, we've seen how expensive and time consuming #2 is twice and the results are anything but certain at this point. Ironically, during the Muslim Spring it's arguable that the Iranian resistance was about to do #2 for free until Obama cut the legs out from under them.

I have no doubt that we could "win," but winning wouldn't look anything like what most people are assuming today. Kind of like Iraq and Afghanistan, if we want to win we probably have the capability and resources to do so for now, but what is it going to cost us and will we achieve anything like the goals the war would likely start with...that I'm not so sure about.

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gunderwood, I was right with you until your claim that President Obama cut the legs out from under Iranian protestors. Since we have no influence with Iran, what are you suggesting that the President could have done that would have forced the Mullahs to fall? That was short of prolonged military action.

Gat6

We never "declared war" on anyone. Not Afghanistan. Not Iraq. Not the Taliban. Not on Bin Laden.

Should the U.S. Congress have declared war? IMO, yes. Presidents have abused their position as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces without Congressional approval far too many times.

I don't disagree with your sentiments, Shmiv. The problem is that our current military is not set up to fight an enemy that is not wearing a uniform. This is a tactic that worked well for us in our fight for independence.

VBshooter wrote:Acccording to Obama ,,He wants to wait until after the 2012 election to rule? on the pipeline thing,,But he will currently support another Unemployment Money appropiation because he says it will create jobs, HMMMM that pipeline is capable of creating 20,000+ or more jobs in its lifetime.. and to our Chief Knucklehead UE is better?? Man does not know his ass from his elbow and in that order for sure. But coming from a man? that has never had to actually work I'm not surprised

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There's that mysterious 20,000 plus jobs again figure. Who did you say are guaranteeing that number? Of the 20,000 how many will be in the U.S.? In case no one checked I did. That number comes from the TransCanada Corp. the prime pipeline contractor that employed a Texas group who came up with the figure. The report the group produced is so vague as to be unverifiable. Why was I not surprised by that?

1: Why should anyone believe TransCanada? The American Petroleum Institute (API) or big labor about the jobs to be produced by the Keystone XL Pipeline (KXLP)?

2. The State Department which was fast tracking approval of KXLP stated the figure at 6,000 or so "temporary jobs", not all of which would be in the U.S. Other sources go from 2,500 to 6,500 jobs.

Pipeline proponents claim the following:
a. Increased jobs
b. Reduced dependency on foreign oil
c. lower energy costs
d. Increased national security

3.We know that (a) is a fuzzy, plus that figure does not account for the potential long term job losses in the Mid-West. The same politicians who opposed stimulus spending because as they said it would only create temporary jobs are apparently loving these temporary jobs.

4. Politicians and others favoring KXLP are making an energy independence claim that makes no sense. 900,000 barrels of tar sands oil (TSO) will not in any way bring energy independence to the U.S.. When you examine investor filings of the 6 corporations involved in refining TSO, you'll find that most of KXLP's product is destined for export to Europe as diesel fuel. Not even a single barrel is guaranteed for the U.S. domestic market. OPEC will still own the most proven reserves by far.

5. OPEC, oil producers, the situation in the Middle East and other OPEC nations, and oil speculators will still control the price of a barrel of oil with one exception. Does anyone doubt that the price of a barrel of oil would spike if anything happened in the Straits of Hormuz, or if Iraqis were too stupid and wasted the opportunity we gave them to be a unified country?

6. The last time I filled up it was just over $3.00 per gal. Why? It's not because energy extraction, or gasoline production went up, it was because "DEMAND" went down. In fact we exported energy last year. We are getting better at conserving and energy efficiency. Since we are the world's energy "whores" our DEMAND is another major driver of oil costs.

7. As for lower energy costs because of TSO that belies investor filings from those corporations involved. They are telling investors that profits will rise. Besides why would anyone go after the most expensive oil extraction process to lower product costs? Clearly they expect prices to continue to rise, because they estimate that the DEMAND for cars and trucks will increase in China, India and in the rest of the developing world.

7. We're still going to be involved in the Middle East. Our 12,000 person Embassy in Iraq is not scheduled to close. We'll still have boots on the ground in the Middle East. We are still committed to keeping the straits of Hormuz open. If any Republican other than Ron Paul becomes President we will be involved in another war in the Middle East, this time against Iran, which we will start with a surprise attack.

8. An election year is a terrible time to make such an important decision that could have negative consequences for that other critical resource in short supply, fresh water.

There is really no need to be stampeded into another ill advised decision that is based on faulty and incomplete information. There are no risks if we wait. However, we all know that the hydro carbon industry gets it's way with the best Congress that money can buy. The Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of multinational and healthcare corporations. As "PEOPLE" those corporations have the loudest and most influential voice with our political class (i.e. they have the most money to buy Congress).

The corrupting influence of oil money is bad enough normally, but that influence is magnified in an election year. I doubt that the Congress, or the President will be able to resist the influence of Big Oil and Big Labor combined, so consider it a done deal, the consequences be damned.

BTW is this how you refer to all Presidents? Or just this one?

Gat6