someday you will find me caught beneath a landslide

[foxracer]

Ouch. My head hurts quite alot right now. Mostly there is the incessant, dull pounding -- not unlike a marching band bass drum -- throbbing within my head. Oh, poor head. The cause of this seemingly unending pain is that of the common cold. It appears misfortune was my middle name this week as I have not been able to fight off the cold since

Comments

[stacylicious]

Josh, I hope you feel better soon!

[foxracer]

thanks Stace! I'm feeling slightly better today, but still fighting it.

[davesawyer]

Yeah, there's no doubt that the Saudi Arabia situation is sticky. Can't place them in the "Axis of Evil" and then depend on them for 12% of our oil. We don't have much choice but to be diplomatic with them at this point.

I've heard this guy talk before. He seems level-headed. But overtaking Saudi oil fields? Come on. How about instead proposing World War III with every OPEC nation and America-hating county who jumps on the bandwagon? That's what would end up happening.

The major problem here is consumption in the U.S. We consume 15 million more barrels a day than China, who has almost a billion more people I might add. If we consumed less, we could cut out the need to get oil from countries like Saudi Arabia. Hippies generally irritate me, but their general point about using less oil is a good one. I'd just like to avoid penalizing businesses. But it looks like we won't be slowing consumption down anytime soon.

Which brings us back to having to hold hands and play nice for now.

[foxracer]

Well, I guess I should have been more clear. He wasn't technically proposing that we overtake their oil fields. But he did analyze the viability of such an option. And the basic outline of what leads to considering it is the probability of Saudi Arabia collapsing. For reasons too long to list here, SA is teetering on the brink of collapse. If that happens Baer hypothesizes it would be far worse of a situation than for us to have taken over their oil fields. He acknowledges the many problems that would arise with such a move, but believes it would still be a better solution. Basically, Baer provides good evidence that if SA collapses then our own economy will also collapse.

At least that's all what Baer states, and his arguments are fairly convincing. I would love to hear his current thoughts on the Middle East with the successful elections and Lebanon/Syria changes.