Posts Made By: George Blahun

Bob:
Not to get bogged down in semantics, but Obama said we could "reduce" our dependence by proper inflation of tires and tune ups. You don't have to be a physicist to know that is true. Also, the original meeting at the White House, with members of congress present, where the imminent collapse of the economic system was presented, was during the waning days of the Bush administration.

George

Bob:
To be candid, I don't recall the statement as you wrote it. When it comes to calculating things like the way you presented the statement, there is a lot of guesswork involved in coming up with numbers to support any position. We don't really know for certain how much oil and when it would come. On the other hand it is difficult to know how many vehicles could benefit and by how much. This is admittedly anecdotal, but most of the people I know, do not check the air pressure in their tires. I check mine once a month and know for certain I gain or lose 2 to 3 miles a gallon over a 4 psi range depending on the ambient temperature and type of driving I do. That comes out to about 3% to 4%, which is to me significant.

George

Rolando:
Oh no, I'm not blaming Bush for Obama's policies, only for the incompetence that took us into this mess.

George

Don:
Just a point of fact here, as far as I know we are not drilling in Alaska and not inflating our tires. However, gas is now falling out of the sky and I'm paying less than half of what I did only a short time ago.

George

Rolando:
Thanks, that's pretty funny! You should play in comedy clubs.

George

Mark:
I agree. As far as I can tell we've only slightly reduced our demand and talked about doing something, anything. I realize this is the simple explanation and it's probably somewhat more complex, but hopefully, whatever we decide to do, we actually do it and not waste this opportunity.


George

Jeffrey:
I know your comments were in response to Paul's post, but we have a snow day here in the Northeast so I thought I'd take a moment to chime in. Your words come across to me as very patronizing. It's one thing to state your interpretation of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution is not consistent with others' views, but to tell someone to go read these documents requires a grandiose assessment of your own knowledge.
While many of us have great respect for the founding fathers and their views, we shouldn't forget they were not perfect and many also supported the owning of slaves and maintaining women as subordinate citizens. Also, your complaints about the president exceeding his authority seems a bit disingenuous. After reading through most of your previous posts (I love this feature of Astromart) I didn't see anything complaining about the Bush-Cheney illegal wiretaps and use of torture which arguably violates not only our constitution, but also the Geneva Convention.

George

Jeffrey:
The differentiation between uniformed and other combatants is a cop out designed to circumvent the intent of the GC, which was to provide some basic human rights. Yeah, yeah, I know, they did horrific things to us, just like the Nazis, the Japanese, the Vietnamese etc. It's the one thing that up until now has separated us from our enemies.
Yes, I did read you weren't happy with the last 8 yrs, but you never posted anything with regards to the aforementioned torture. That was my point, not that you were some type of Bush sycophant.
Slaves may have been common in many societies, but there were significant numbers of people who objected to slavery since its inception. I'm not talking just about the slaves themselves, who must have thought it was a very bad idea, but many intellectuals. My intent here was to point out "they" didn't get everything perfectly. That's why we get 9 very bright, learned Supreme Court Justices arguing intensely over interpretation.
If you question others' knowledge or background, you open yourself up to the same criticism. I'm actually accustomed to anger and tirades for my positions, I've been a member of the ACLU for many years and admittedly have views which are clearly not of the mainstream. It's been good for developing a resilience to criticism and adopting the "I'm rubber you're glue..." philosophy. You have to remember however, and this is good for both of us to know, the actual revolutionaries in our early history represented a minority of the people living here. I'm content also to move beyond Bush-Cheney, except for this horrendous mess they left us with.

George

Thomas:
Yeah right, that will solve everything. At about 1.5 million bucks for every execution the sates will be bankrupt in no time. Oh wait, they're already bankrupt.

George

Dewey:
While the actual estimate ranges some based on which state, it comes out to about $20k a year to house an inmate. Life in prison is no picnic, and there have been way too many people released from life sentences due to errors and DNA evidence. Also, if you're going to execute drug dealers, does that mean the 18 year old kid who bought 1/4 lb of pot, sold three oz. to his friends and kept one?

George