An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:03 AM | Comments (282)
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The Price of Gas Around The World

So here's an interactive chart of the retail prices of diesel fuel (in cents per gallon) around the world which also gives you a pretty good idea of what regular gas would cost. Note that this data is from Nov. 2010 so it doesn't reflect the recent rise in oil prices.

The US comes in fairly low at 84 cents/liter (or $3.18 a gallon since 1 gallon has 3.79 liters). Turkey is the highest at 204 ($7.69/gal) and Venezuela is the lowest at 1.1. (4 cents per gallon). Why the huge differential? Mostly taxes - either positive or negative (subsidies).

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:22 PM | Comments (713)
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Dear Business Owners,

Nice place you got here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

As you also know, Scott Walker did not campaign on this issue when he ran for office. If he had, we are confident that you would not be listed among his largest contributors. As such, we are contacting you now to request your support.

Here's the deal: we looked up his biggest supporters, specifically, and now we're singling them out for that support, specifically.

We know you are a Walker supporter. Tsk, tsk. That turned out to be a bad idea, Sport. But look, just to show what nice guys we are, we're willing to assume it was all some kind of honest mistake on your part.

The undersigned groups would like your company to publicly oppose Governor WalkerÂ’s efforts to virtually eliminate collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin.

It's not enough for you to stop supporting Walker; we also want to get you on record renouncing him.

While we appreciate that you may need some time to consider this request, we ask for your response by March 17. In the event that you do not respond to this request by that date, we will assume that you stand with Governor Walker and against the teachers, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, and other dedicated public employees who serve our communities.

You have one week to comply. Ignoring this request will not go well for you, Chief.

In the event that you cannot support this effort to save collective bargaining, please be advised that the undersigned will publicly and formally boycott the goods and services provided by your company. However, if you join us, we will do everything in our power to publicly celebrate your partnership in the fight to preserve the right of public employees to be heard at the bargaining table.

We're the Police and Firefighters Unions.

If you don't accede to our demand, we'll put you on The Naughty List. And, um....boycott you. That's our threat. We'll boycott you. That's all.
Right.
...did we forget to mention that we are cops and firefighters?
Just checking. Making sure you caught that.

A .pdf of this remarkably honest extortion letter is available at the link.

Posted by: LauraW at 01:25 PM | Comments (637)
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A floridly profane trailer for a movie called Bad Teacher, which really seems like it's by the people who did Bad Santa, but I don't think it is. I think they're just, um, "inspired" by that movie.

F-bomb's galore in the unrated trailer below; a more family-friendly version is here.

Yes, of course she'll learn to be a good teacher who cares about her kids by the end of the movie. But until then -- it's cinema verite with a political angle. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:55 PM | Comments (76)
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Via Hot Air, former Foxer Major Garrett reports:

House Republicans have been winning the dollar debate but are dissatisfied with piecemeal victories. Senate Democrats have been retreating in billion-dollar increments and now want to battle over the big picture. The collision and a spring federal government shutdown—possibly lasting weeks—appear more likely than ever.

...

Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga., said he has only begun the fight to defund health care and attack funding for the White House’s environmental agenda. “If you think I am done, you are mistaken,” Woodall said. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., again declared now was the time “to pick a fight” as even House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., lamented that short-term spending bills constituted a “terrible way to do business.”

...

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said Republicans can and will pass the full amount of cuts originally sought, which is now $51 billion from current, fiscal 2010 spending levels the government is operating on. “We can pass that,” Simpson said, referring to the tattered budget process inherited from the last Congress as “a pile of crap.”

I don't mind a little spoiling for a fight (a shutdown). It's always useful to have part of the caucus threatening mutiny, even just from a negotiating standpoint. Anything that forces the Overton Window to the right is good.

The only thing is -- what got us in trouble last time, as I understand it, is that the House Republicans seemed eager for a shutdown, and the independents, being people who don't like clear, binary choices put starkly to them, got mad that they were being asked to participate in their own democracy.

Until now, the GOP has been fairly successful in conveying that it's the Democrats who are really pushing for a shutdown, because the Democrats can't help but keep offering quotes to the media about how much they'll profit politically from a shutdown.

We should continue playing the we-don't-really-want-to-shut-the-government-down game. But, if it comes to that, then it comes to that. Saving us billions a week. Oops.

Also at Hot Air, professional smart-guy Keith Hennessey says the death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy is a winning one. And if you want more, just start digging the knife in a little more deeply each time. But don't abandon a strategy that is, so far, producing tangible results.

Instead of threatening to oppose the next CR no matter what, impatient fiscal conservatives should demand that their party leaders ratchet up the the spending cuts in the next CR. Spending cuttters, pull the Republican team in your direction. Demand $3B of spending cuts per week rather than $2B. If policy-specific funding limitations are a priority, choose one funding limitation and insist that it be included in the next CR. (IÂ’d choose the EPA regs, which tend to unify Republicans and split Democrats.) Use House Republican control of the legislative text to put the President and Leader Reid in the position where they have to choose between a little more savings and shutting down the government. ItÂ’s hard for them to explain why $2B of savings per week is OK, but $3B per week is the end of the world. Use that to your advantage.

For decades those who favor bigger government have succeeded incrementally, by patiently layering one new program on top of another, and by pocketing incremental spending increases that build up over time. Over the next six months spending cutters are now perfectly positioned to do this in reverse.

I don't know if he's completely right, because until now, we have basically cut what Obama had proposed cutting anyway. This $10 billion in cuts was chosen specifically because Obama or the Democrats had proposed them in the past and would not be able to easily say no to their own meager cutting proposals.

From this point on, we dig into the stuff Democrats have on their no-go list.

The current strategy will probably not work for long -- the Democrats will dig in at some point.

Taxpayer-Subsidized Cowboy Poetry Slams are of course a central pillar of this nation. No Democrat can stand by and let such critical American institutions be assaulted by not having a meaningless $50,000 per year thrown at them.

That said, I think it puts us in a better position if we have a $3 billion in cuts CR on the table and the Democrats elect to shut down the government over that.

I think there will be a shutdown. I don't think we have to hope for it or try to speed it on its way; I believe it is inevitable and necessary. As Wyatt Earp says in the underrated Costner/Kasdan biopic, when asked if there's going to be a fight at the OK Corral: "I think there must be."

But it will help in the resulting murder trial* if it appears that the Earps were forced to draw on the Clantons.

* Yeah there was one. Or an inquest, at least. Some legal proceeding. Was in the movie and everything.

Washington Examiner: Let's Beat The Rope-A-Dope By Walking Right Into The Trap The Rope-A-Dope Poses: I don't think the Washington Examiner really understands the rope-a-dope.

The whole point of Ali's famous gambit was to frustrate an opponent by going into a defensive crouch, making him impatient and begin expending useless energy on trying to beat the hard-to-punch-through rope-a-dope, exhausting himself. So when Ali came out of the crouch (when he chose to), he'd be facing a winded opponent, and could knock him out.

How do you beat that? Well, you don't fall for the trap of whaling on someone in a defensive crouch. When the opponent picks a strategy of patience and frustration, you match it with your own patience and frustration-making.

To beat the rope-a-dope in boxing, you don't go berserk. That's what the strategy counts on. Instead, you play along, take what the opponent gives you, keep your punch count higher than your opponent's (that's not hard, since he's on defense) so you win the round on pure technical bias towards the aggressive fighter. Even when you don't actually land a blow, you win just by taking what you're given.

Similarly, here, we should take every billion the Democrats are willing to cede to us in their rope-a-dope crouch. Bank it. Put it on the scoreboard. Get those points.

And then strike when we decide we have the advantage. Not when your opponents have the advantage.

At the end of the day, if we pass, say, four CR's (I doubt we'd be so lucky), we'd have already banked some $12-16 billion in cuts, making the next round of cuts less difficult to get. If we're shooting for $61 billion (a low sum, I know, but that is where the party is), well, it's easier if we've already got $16 billion in cuts banked and are now pressing for $45 billion.

The Democrats are in the rope-a-dope. So's President Passive Prissypants. Fine. Just keep hitting them. Take what they give you. Make them go berserk in frustration.

Posted by: Ace at 12:25 PM | Comments (89)
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From the talented fingers of the ever-charming-yet-pungent S. Weasel. Her post is titled, "As least the Romans got fiddle music." (Be sure to go to her website and check out some of her other original semi-photo-creations.) If Obama loses next year, I suspect pundits will point back to the past week as the turning point. ..fritz..

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:23 PM | Comments (63)
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Heller (89 out of 100 ACU rating) is running for Ensign's senate seat. Angle is running for the seat he's leaving.

Video announcement below.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Comments (87)
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This is not a bash-Obama post. If a friendly allied country is engaging in spin, it's a difficult position for the US. It's diplomatically dicey to just call them on that publicly.

So they're putting out the word in sneaky sorts of ways.

The British government is also advising its citizens living in 100-miles-away-Tokyo that they might consider leaving.

I don't know if this is a panicky CYA from our government and the British government, or if the Japanese are right in believing that there is not a serious threat to anyone outside the immediate area around the plant.

But, on that point: I just saw Freakonomics, the documentary about the book. The most interesting thing about it wasn't even in the book -- it was about the Japanese police's response to murder.

In Japan, I was shocked to hear that police routinely cover-up murders. They call obvious murders other things, like the minor crime of "body abandonment," and not even because they're being bribed.

It's because the Japanese culture demands perfection, and to advance in the police as a detective you need a 96% solve rate for crimes, including murder.

Well, that's not possible. So what police often do is do some initial investigation. If there is a likely suspect and the case looks solvable, they roll the dice and call it a murder, and work at solving it.

But if no ready suspect is at hand, they will fight to call it death by natural circumstances or the like. Something that can be easily closed and pad that solve rate.

As I've heard some of the optimistic takes on all this, I keep thinking about that insight into the culture.

Below, some more stuff about the crisis from the cobloggers.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (422)
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This article calls him a "CIA contractor." I assumed that's what he was but I didn't know that this had been confirmed or that the media was freely printing this. (Wouldn't they be more protective if one of their own were captured?)

Be that as it may, a deal has been reached.

A CIA contractor was acquitted of two murder charges and released by a Pakistani court on Wednesday after a deal to pay "blood money" to the victims' families was reached, Pakistani and U.S. officials said.

The deal, reached just hours after the American contractor had been indicted, ends a long-simmering diplomatic standoff between Pakistan and the United States.

"The court first indicted him but the families later told court that they have accepted the blood money and they have pardoned him," Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah told Reuters.

"The court acquitted him in the murder case."

I think that's a good outcome. A better outcome, of course, would be if the Pakistanis were not tribal Al Qaeda loving savages and did not demand blood money when their criminals and terrorists are killed while attempting to jack Americans, but that is obviously not the world we live in.

The world we live in is one where we, as one old foreign policy guy put it, put a boot in their ass and money in their pockets.

Tom, who sends this, thinks it sets a bad precedent and calls it submission to Sharia, but we've always had this problem with the savages and we've tended to handle it this way.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (98)
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Really good FaceBook argument on one of the top three issues of the day. (Part of the top issue, if you consider energy to be part of the economy, which it is.)

I knock Palin a lot but when she's on, she's on.

The evidence of the PresidentÂ’s anti-drilling mentality and his culpability in the high gas prices hurting Americans is there for all to see. The following is not even an exhaustive list:

Exhibit A: His drilling moratorium. Guided by politics and pure emotion following the Gulf spill instead of peer-reviewed science or defensible law, the President used the power of his executive order to impose a deepwater drilling moratorium. The Administration even ignored a court order halting his moratorium. And what is the net result of the PresidentÂ’s (in)actions? A large drilling company was forced to declare bankruptcy, the economy of the region has been hobbled, and at least 7 rigs moved out of the Gulf area to other parts of the world while many others remain idle. Is it any surprise that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to fall by 240,000 bbl/d in 2011 alone?

But thatÂ’s just the Gulf. ThereÂ’s also the question of a moratorium on the development of AlaskaÂ’s Outer Continental Shelf. It seems the Obama Administration canÂ’t agree with itself on whether it imposed a moratorium there or not. The White House claims that they didnÂ’t, but their own Department of the Interior let slip that they did. To clear up this mess, Gov. Parnell decided to sue the DOI to get a solid answer because such a federal OCS drilling moratorium would violate federal law.

Exhibit B: His 2012 budget. The President used his 2012 budget to propose the elimination of several vital oil and natural gas production tax incentives. Eliminating these incentives will discourage energy companies from completing exploratory projects, resulting in higher energy costs for all Americans – and not just at the pump. According to one study mentioned in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, eliminating the deduction for drilling costs “could increase natural gas prices by 50 cents per thousand cubic feet,” which would translate to “an increased cost to consumers of $11.5 billion per year in the form of higher natural gas prices.”

I'd like to see more about this. If these are actually incentives -- tax breaks -- I don't see the need for them, as I'm usually in favor of "clean" tax codes, shorn of policy-pushing incentives and disincentives. If oil companies are getting some kind of a break here, not only do I think that's a political argument that can't be won, but I'm not sure it should be won.

However, I have looked into this stuff in the past and I've often found that what liberals term "special breaks for oil" is often normal accounting practices extended to oil companies. For example -- of course you have to be able to depreciate your oil source the same as you can depreciate any other degrading good. Oil runs out as you pump it. I have seen liberals claim that depreciation applied to oil is somehow a "special break" when in fact it's just the normal rule of subtracting cost of earning a dollar from the dollar earned.

Exhibit C: His anti-drilling regulatory policies. The U.S. Geological Survey found that the area north of the Arctic Circle has an estimated 90 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas, one third of which is in Alaskan territory. That’s our next Prudhoe Bay right there. According to one industry study, allowing Royal Dutch Shell to tap these reserves in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas would create an annual average of 54,700 jobs nationwide with a $145 billion total payroll and generate an additional $193 billion a year in total revenues to local, state, and federal governments for 50 years. This would be great news if only the federal government would allow Shell to drill there. But it won’t. It’s been five years since Shell purchased the lease to develop these fields, but it’s been mired in a regulatory funk courtesy of the Obama Administration. After investing $3.5 billion in exploration programs (a significant portion of which went to ensuring responsible spill response and prevention), Shell announced last month that it has given up hope of obtaining the required permits to conduct exploratory drilling this year. That means no jobs and no billions in oil revenue from the Arctic anytime soon thanks to this Administration. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. Right now Beltway politicos are quibbling over cutting $61 billion from our dangerously bloated $3.7 trillion budget. Allowing drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas will enrich federal coffers by $167 billion a year without raising our taxes. If we let Harry Reid keep his “cowboy poetry,” would the White House consider letting us drill?

As I understand it, with ANWR (though I don't think this is what she's discussing; not sure), we have a certain estimate of how much oil is in the ground, but no further exploration has been permitted to get a firmer reading on the oil.

I suspect the reason that liberals will not permit us to even do the science needed to get a more accurate read is that they are afraid there will be discovered an even greater bounty of oil, and that will make their no-drilling-in-the-barren-tundra-called-ANWR politically untenable.

Can we at least be permitted to discover precisely how much oil we are giving up on for no reason?

A bear. Obviously distressed and crazed by an oil pipeline.
You can almost hear him crying, "Please choose a policy of
wind-turbines and solar so that my cubs are spared this horror."

Taken altogether, itÂ’s hard to deny that the Obama Administration is anti-drilling. The President may try to suggest that the rise in oil prices has nothing to do with him, but the American people wonÂ’t be fooled. Before we saw any protests in the Middle East, increased global demand led to a significant rise in oil prices; but the White House stood idly by watching the prices go up and allowing America to remain increasingly dependent on imports from foreign regimes in dangerously unstable parts of the world.

This was no accident. Through a process of what candidate Obama once called “gradual adjustment,” American consumers have seen prices at the pump rise 67 percent since he took office. Let’s not forget that in September 2008, candidate Obama’s Energy Secretary in-waiting said: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” That’s one campaign promise they’re working hard to fulfill! Last week, the British Telegraph reported that the price of petrol in the UK hit £6 a gallon – which comes to about $9.70. If you think $4 a gallon is bad now, just wait till the next crisis causes oil prices to “necessarily” skyrocket. Meanwhile, the vast undeveloped reserves that could help to keep prices at the pump affordable remain locked up because of President Obama’s deliberate unwillingness to drill here and drill now.

Hitting the American people with higher gas prices like this is essentially a hidden tax and a transfer of wealth to foreign regimes who are providing us the energy we refuse to provide for ourselves. Like inflation, higher energy prices are a hidden tax on Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. And these high gas prices will be felt in the form of higher food prices due to higher transportation costs. Energy is connected to everything in our economy. Access to affordable and secure energy is key to economic growth, which in turn is key to job growth. Energy is the building block of our economy. The President is purposely weakening that building block and weakening our country.

You know, when I say that Palin needs to sound smarter, this is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to hear her saying on TV.

I don't think this last part can be emphasized enough: Higher energy costs equal higher costs for everything -- everything runs on energy -- and that additional expense isn't even remaining in the country. As a river of oil flows into this country, a river of money flows out.

What She's Talking About In Exhibit C: It's not ANWR. It's oil that's gettable for a limited time only since ice has retreated a bit:

Confirmation on one of your thoughts: Palin isn't talking about ANWR in Exhibit C. There's a big-ass pile of resources above the Arctic Circle (and not just oil) that no one could get to before. Because of arctic warming, the ice cap recedes enough that Shell could rush in and pump oil before the ice returns. That sort of thing didn't make sense before, but between the price of oil and the longer drilling season, there's enough money to be made.

Because of the stupid bureaucratic rules, Shell can't get approval before the ice returns, and the agency keeps making them re-apply every year.

Oh that's precious.

Thanks to Meiczyslaw.

Not Special Incentives: robrtr says the "incentives" she mentions are just normal deduct-your-costs-from-your-profits things:

The incentives she is talking about are research incentives. In other words if the oil company drills a dry well they can write that off as a cost of doing business.

It's the same as if Apple built a bunch of I phones they couldn't sell they can write off the cost of buidling those I phones.

Companies use money for research that they have already paid taxes on, if they lose it in a dry hole or an unsuccessfull product they write off that cost against future tax liabilities. If you take that away then they will increase the cost of oil they do find or products that are successful to cover the costs of their losers.

This results in a tax increase to the public with the corporations collecting the tax for the government.

Thanks, that's what I expected it would turn out to be. In that case I think leaders should make sure people know these aren't special incentives but just the normal rules of determining profit.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (298)
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