Yoshi on the Demographic Crisis
I know, I know: to deal with Adam Yoshida is to scrape the bottom of the wingnut barrel. Still, it’s fun; also, it’s useful because Adam’s writing is like a distant early warning system. If you want to know what major wingnuts really think — if you want to know how most wingnuts really feel, and what their ideas and policies are really about when taken to the logical (if often unstated) extreme — then Yoshi’s one of the guys you read. Because Adam “Human-sized microwaves” Yoshida never minces words.
Above: Yoshi and his hand: this committed couple has no children
yet but not for want of trying.
Take, for instance this post, temperately titled ” First, Kill All The Environmentalists…” Yes, a Shakespeare reference. But Adam’s not smiling:
Of course, I probably don’t mean that literally. Though some days, looking at the signs in front of gas stations, I pretty much do. After all, without them we could not only have all of the cheap energy that we or our children or our children’s children will ever need if we were to all live to be two hundred and fifty but we could all also make ourselves even richer at the rest of the world’s expense.
[…]
Step by step they have tightened the noose around our necks. They will continue to do so until they are stopped. They are against Western Civilization – in their hearts environmentalist fanatics would like to see the human race (or at least the rich and Western part of the human race) rendered extinct and replaced by some sort of global version of sub-Saharan Africa, where impoverished and suffering masses live under the benign rule of U.N. and local kleptocrats. I don’t claim that this is the ambition of all environmentalists – most people who would self-identify as such haven’t thought through their position to a degree sufficient to render them that morally depraved.
The truth is that, without troublemaking environmental radicals we could solve this problem pretty much overnight.
[…]
Understand that the reason you’re paying so much at the pump has very little to do with the evil oil companies, or President Bush, or whomever else popular culture wants you to blame. The blame for our woes rests soundly upon the environmentalists who have deliberately restricted our economic growth and grabbed cash out of your wallets in the name of their own illusory greater good.
This, of course, is simply George Will’s latest horseshit processed, intensified, and rebroadcast by a troglodyte sociopath (which is to say, an average wingnut). We should thank Adam for demonstrating how the wingnut message machine works.
But scapegoating environmentalists and sucking up to Big Oil is one thing, no matter how stylishly (to wingnut connoisseurs like us) Adam does it. Another thing, more interesting, is how Mark Steyn’s “demographic crisis” thesis has become, like, the wingnuts’ Unified Field Theory, by which every rightwing belief is explained, reinforced, justified. Here’s Adam:
Broadly speaking, there are three major man-made factors – three socialisms if you will – which are influencing oil prices.
First, we have speculation on a massive scale. Why do we have this? Well, one of the factors is the one that Spengler identified a few months ago as driving the crisis in the housing market: there are vast pools of European and Japanese capital which cannot be invested in those nations because they lack the young people to start businesses, buy homes, and have children to make use of that money. Thus, this great wave of cash is sloshing around the world – driven to seek the highest return. This is one of the first visible elements of the demographic crisis that Mark Steyn and others have been droning on about for years. A disturbance of the natural human order has economic effects. The result has been this recurrent global pattern of bubbles – technology, commodities, housing, energy – driven by speculation on a massive scale. Indeed, this is the one factor which promises relatively short-term relief. The present oil price is in the Pets.com-selling-for-$250 stage of the boom.
As with all good bullshit, it starts with a grain of truth (high commodity prices are being driven by speculation), then comes the startling misdirection. A tiny minority composed of greedy assholes who are remorselessly — hell, enthusiastically — causing mass suffering for the great majority of regular people, just to make some money they don’t need, aren’t to blame. No, of course not. Rather, greedy assholes hapless, put-upon investors are “forced” to dump their money in commodities markets because the coddled people of Europe, Japan, and increasingly, America refuse to breed. And why do they refuse to breed? Because they are culturally suicidal (lacking the “will” of our great Muslim rivals), and because they are… well, babied by the Welfare State. How’s that for perfectly dotting the Is and crossing the Ts of wingnuttery? Clever, really — and too insidious not to pick up steam. Want to save the economy? Grab a woman (if she’s willing, fine; if not, well, then all the better), impregnate her, give up your entitlements, commence to out-breeding the Muslim Horde against which we are fighting a “Long War,” and you’ll do the trick!
Of course, I probably don’t mean that literally.
Who the hell knows what I mean? Not me, that’s for sure.
Um. I have a question.
Does the fact that Adam’s point makes no sense and is directly contradicted by pesky old facts have any bearing here?
Or maybe no, let’s ask an easier question. Who is his constituency, exactly? Who are the people who are reading this embarrassing irrational tripe and nodding their heads sagely, thinking “my goodness, this is a wise fellow”?
What does it take to be willing to ignore all the reality of any given political or economic condition and merely seek to pile blame on those who’s ideology is different, or at least significantly less extreme than your own?
If it wasn’t so easy to refute, it would constitute debate, but as it is, it’s merely pathetic…
mikey
Mikey, I don’t think Yoshi has a constituency. I do think he’s valuable in that he’s a window into the average A-list wingnut blog *reader’s* life and worldview.
Judging from the photo, Yongo only pawn in game of life.
Got it!
More babies –> cheap gas!
Brilliant!!!
So…………. have lots of kids that we can’t afford , splitting the resource pie into ever smaller slices , and Voila! with everyone poorer, waves of excess cash eliminated , oil prices go down, a everyone will be richer because they’re poorer. What a genius plan !
Step1 : Steal Underwear
Step3 : Profit
Raging Yoshi
A disturbance of the natural human order
Holy fuck! Alderaan is not there any more!
It’s kind of comforting to know that the wingnuts have such un-ironic envy for many of the “islamofascist” tactics that fall into the, you know, fascist category: an obsession with demographics, censorship as a political good, oppression of women, clash of civilizations, etc. It jells well with my view that those people we consider inherently evil are just unrepressed versions of those respected pundits who we put on TV to tell us the pro’s of one sider or the other.
It seems like a large majority would support the caliphate were it under a different name.
this handsome couple has no children yet but not for want of trying.
For that alone, sir, if for nothing else, you must let me purchase a spirit libation for you at some time of your choosing. BTW, I couldn’t help but wonder if your place is somewhere in the England vicinity what with your pecan trees and all. I did a lot of work on getting a state ag dept a few years back, so if you were one of the fine farmers who got behind that effort, I might have even already met you without knowing it.
Yoshi has, I think, in this instance achieved the equivalent of what Venkman and Spengler accomplished in the first Ghostbusters when they crossed beams to trap spirits…only in this case, Yoshi instead rolled a whole bunch of bullshit all together and trapped it in a confusion of narrative devices standing in for a plot.
>It seems like a large majority would support the caliphate were it under a different name.
As someone said long ago, if fascism ever triumphed in the United States it would call itself ‘100% Americanism’.
I am still amazed that Steyn’s half baked demographic theories are taken seriously by anyone, but stunned to see them used to bolster arguments, although our Adam is kind of low hanging fruit.
It takes a lot of nerve, in my opinion, to extrapolate from bollocks studies like Steyn’s (& others), to make a point about something completely unconnected. And its not just Adam, so called serious commentators on the right still harp on about America Alone as being some sort of seminal work rather than ignore it like the bag of shit that it actually is.
The irony is so bad,in fact, that they spent internet years ripping apart Gore or Fahrenheit 911 for minor errors, but completely ignore the huge shit in their own backyard.
in their hearts environmentalist fanatics would like to see the human race (or at least the rich and Western part of the human race) rendered extinct and replaced by some sort of global version of sub-Saharan Africa, where impoverished and suffering masses live under the benign rule of U.N. and local kleptocrats.
I never tire of reading what wingnuts think is in the heart of hearts of every Lefty: hatred of America, loathing of our troops, wish for another September 11, desire to see the human race reduced to mass starvation under the sway of local warlords.
It’s amazing how they know our innermost secrets, seeing as how they’ve probably never interacted with a Lefty in any substantive way.
It doesn’t matter what we say or do, all of it is, in fact, central to their point that we want a whole bunch of things that a normal human being would realize is not in our best interest–“normal,” of course, being the operative word.
I want an Adam Yoshida mask for Halloween.
where impoverished and suffering masses live under the benign rule of U.N. and local kleptocrats.
Because in the West, we want our local kleptocrats to be malignant rulers, and the U.N out of our business altogether.
Jennifer —
I’d like that very much.
I doubt that you’ve met me under those conditions: I don’t do farmer things like that really (I don’t even go to the co-op meetings; I’m small-time as it gets and only make a living at it because it’s so cheap to live here and the family shack I inherited and to which I’m weirdly attached is free), and until a couple of years ago, I lived in Memphis for a good while.
But it’s really cool you did that.
I’m kinda hesitant to publicly say where in Arkansas I live because of that crazy Trevino/stalker issue here a while back, so… email me sometime.
But…but…I have two kids and no driver’s license…and gas is ever so expensive (except, you know, not at all compared to Europe)… WHAT AM I DOING WRONG! ?
Without environmentalists, “we could all also make ourselves even richer at the rest of the world’s expense.”
He goes on to concede that only a central core of environmentalist fanatics are “morally depraved.”
Seen on a car bumper just today: “Solve the energy crisis, drill Alaska”.
It’s an “idea” that won’t go away easily. Conservatives, those steely pragmatists, are very much wedded to the notion that all problems can be solved by killing a few polar bears. They will not relinquish this fantasy without a struggle.
Just so you know.
On the topic of being concerned about whether our air and water is so poisoned that it might kill us, George Will is far more fucked up than Adam Yoshida.
One wonders what part of “don’t shit where you eat” Yoshi does not understand. All those dumb animals that he would kill or see killed in the mistaken belief that doing so would allow even one wingnut to keep an extra dollar in his pocket while gassing up the Hummer know better than to shit in their own nests. Thus proving yet again that the average dumb animal is smarter than the average winger.
One also wonders how Adam Yoshida, who lives in Canada does not udnerstand that the average wingnut in America already sees him as “the rest of the world.”
Particularly with a name like “Yoshida”.
McCain would probably snap his neck after having a post-traumatic episode about the gooks coming back to kill him for giving them bad intel.
“After all, without them we could not only have all of the cheap energy that we or our children or our children’s children will ever need if we were to all live to be two hundred and fifty but we could all also make ourselves even richer at the rest of the world’s expense.”
The question pro-drillers don’t seem to have an answer for: What do your children’s children’s children do?
Putting aside the idea that Alaska somehow holds enough oil to support even the US alone for 200 years. Or that, giving how laughable it would be to assume the oil companies wouldn’t sell that oil t foreigners for ridiculous profit (they can call themselves USPEC), or maybe the rest of the world won’t put together a Coalition of the Willing to liberate us from our evil rulers to get to our oil.
I think we should force Yoshida and Michelle Malkin to breed. Then their children can ship them off to internment camps with the rest of the “mongrel races”.
so, it’s the dirty fucking hippies that are behind all this? i knew it.
fucking pelicans are nothing compared to a barbecue hatstand fishmonger.
Actually, Some Guy makes a good point. Those oil companies don’t exactly bleed red, white ‘n blue. What with the value of the dollar and China and India energy-starved, I could see quite a few of those All ‘Murrican oil barrels never making it into your Local Heartland Gas Pump. Which proves that, just like other wingnut “solutions,” drilling in Alaska actually solves only one problem: how to make the wealthy even wealthier.
DrDick,
Christ, man. I’m eating! That’s uncalled for.
Although, there is a certain charm to the thought that Malkin would likely consume the oaf at some point between the mating ritual and laying her thousands of eggs.
Strangely, Yoshi lives in a low rent apartment in the heart of the gay community in Vancouver. If there was ever a place for a wingnut like Yoshi not to fit in, it’s the West End. I can picture him walking along Denman Street in his cheesy stockbroker suit and poorly gelled hair casting secret glances at the stylish men who pass him by arm in arm.
Bleed red, white ‘n blue? Haven’t they all moved their assets to Dubai by now?
FWIW, I have a friend pretty high up in the off-shore drilling business. He says that several oil companies have already drilled and capped a shitload of wells in the Gulf, but that they are saving them for later (which I take to mean, after the rest of the world has gone dry) and instead are sucking up oil from elsewhere, mostly Africa, which is cheaper to extract.
I dunno whether the “ratholing” of relatively “american” oil is a far-sighted national strategy (knowing what I do about the oil industry’s utter lack of patriotism and total disregard for the american consumer, I doubt it), or if it’s all about maximizing short-term profits and with the added benefit of plausibly tarring a long-time nemesis (the eco movement). I do know that Big Oil bought out and shut down most independent domestic refineries, and you can’t tell me that wasn’t done to create an artificial bottleneck to boost their profits.
Lesley,
I was going to reply to the brilliant “Yongo” comment above by mentioning that Mongo was straight, whereas Yoshi, should we follow the iron clad truism that the louder and more rabid the wingnut, the freakier their personal demons, must need to have his bum serviced by a half a dozen gilt-furred spider monkeys in kevlar lederhosen riding a Damascene goat. Somehow I suspect that envies his neighbors’ normalcy and self acceptance.
Urp…
he envies
I’d take a wild guess and say that it was done to use the various billions in welfare they have been given to find future revenue streams before the well of the public pocketbook runs dry for them.
But what do I know.
I’m kinda hesitant to publicly say where in Arkansas I live because of that crazy Trevino/stalker issue here a while back
Good times, good times… remember ’em well. One day we’ll meet and we’ll have some yuks about that.
Josh Trevino got laughed out of the blogosphere. I’m almost sorry for that… A douchebag’s douchebag. Slainte!
I want an Adam Yoshida mask for Halloween.
Start with 12 pounds of papier marche and a sack of potatoes…
Doc Washboard: I want an Adam Yoshida mask for Halloween.
Too easy?
The genius of Yoshi’s screed is that it relies entirely on hand-waving pulled-out-of-my-arse economics.
The interesting thing is to see how it meshes with wingnut pronouncements on immigration. After all, aren’t all these immigrants ‘taking our homes and jobs’? Why aren’t they absorbing the alleged wave of capital?
Here in England the East European immigrant, the ‘Polish plumber’ is emblematic of the hardworking young tradesman making good. By Yoshi’s theory these should be sponging up this loose capital.
They’re not, he says? Oh, then I suppose that’s because all immigrants are indolent, workshy and lacking ‘can do’ spirit, isn’t that right, Yoshster?
Yongo, Mongo, it’s all a big mystery to me, unless you mean this Mongo?
As for A-lister wingnuts, I can’t help but think Yoshi is a lonely soul who doesn’t get invited to very many parties. It’s very strange that he chose to settle in the West End or anywhere in the City of Vancouver as it’s a pretty liberal town. Given his views he should probably be living in Abbotsford or somewhere in Alberta, though I can’t really picture him being accepted in redneck circles either. Sraight single men with Yoshi’s political views simply do not live in the West End.
Yosh strikes me as gay, but not quite brave enough to emerge from the closet. Next step for Yosh might be hooking up with log cabin Republicans though I doubt he’ll find any of those in the WE.
the coddled people of Europe, Japan, and increasingly, America refuse to breed. And why do they refuse to breed? Because they are culturally suicidal (lacking the “will” of our great Muslim rivals), and because they are… well, babied by the Welfare State.
Wait a minute. I thought all of us Welfare Queens had lots of babies so we could get those welfare checks.
Now you’re telling me we refuse to breed?
The demographers I have read claim that Westerners ‘refuse’ to breed because women are educated and have access to birth control. The solution to this would clearly be to turn back the clock to an age where women had fewer options and were continually pregnant.
However, this has the disadvantage of removing roughly half the population from building businesses and absorbing that unused capital Yosh talks about. Though, at the risk of putting words in their mouths, I imagine women are probably on a list of people Wingers think contribute little to the economy other than as machines to reproduce fresh consumers.
Are you white? Are you Christian? Are you culturally conservative?
If you are none of these you are the wrong kind of breeder and Yoshi scorns your coddled spawn.
I am still amazed that Steyn’s half baked demographic theories are taken seriously by anyone, but stunned to see them used to bolster arguments, although our Adam is kind of low hanging fruit.
The fReichtards have been working the “we’re-being-outbred-by-the-lower-orders” trophe since at least the original Gilded Age of American Kleptocracy. It’s the economic equivalent of “They hate us for our freedom!!!” There is no bad, failed idea these self-identified conservatives will not conserve, especially since “The mud people and their unbridled lusts are determined to steal my land, my resources, and my precious bodily fluids” is a much more self-rewarding mindset than “Why do the neighbors always edge away when I try to inform them of the Real Truth that has been revealed to me?!?”
How many children does Adam Yoshida have?
Adam Yoshida has no children. I very much doubt he’s even lost his virginity yet.
That’s the one. The lines just before the referenced “Mongo only pawn in game of life.” include Gene Wilder saying “I think Mongo’s taken a little fancy to you…” to the Sheriff, and Mongo saying, “Awwwh, Mongo straight…”
Just so you know what sparked my thought.
You can kind of see the resemblance, though.
his bum serviced by a half a dozen gilt-furred spider monkeys in kevlar lederhosen riding a Damascene goat.
Let us have fewer fantasies like that, please. Our monkey butlers will read about the existence of these better-paid career pathways and demand higher salaries.
So you’re saying I should leave out the part about the three layers of b-bs under a half a foot of green jello on the floor out?
all problems can be solved by killing a few polar bears
Could it be that you are confusing the cost and the benefit in this calculation? I suspect that in Yoshida’s mentality, a few months of oil supply are a rationale for killing polar bears, rather than the benefit.
Whurps. I can haz Inglich nao?
I’m not even drunk.
Yes, please leave out that part out.
Kill the environmentalists.
Adam, Adam, we already have, dear.
Have you been to the upper green in wyoming lately?
Pinedale has strung up the enviros and given the keys to any pimp with the $$$.
As though having oxygen to breathe and water to drink was some great stretched out dream that the average person should not have.
Here’s what I don’t get about the whole, “They’re outbreeding us!” thing: There’s a limited amount of space on the planet.You can’t go on forever with each generation being bigger then the last; at some point we’ll have to stop breeding like crazy. Isn’t it better to do it now, before we reach a crisis point and nature restores her balance with massive plagues and famines?
Speaking of… oil is a limited resource. We’re quite clearly using it faster then it gets produced. Wouldn’t it be better to start weaning ourselves away from it now, rather then waiting until we’ve hit a crisis point? Because at some point we’re going to have to do it, no matter how many wells we open up.
These things Adam is railing against are things that simply can’t be avoided.
Frankly, I’ve never quite understood how people get so damn emotional about environmentalism. For example, it seems to me the pro- and anti-nuclear power folks both have good, comprehensible points to support their arguments. And yet any argument about how much of a role nuclear power should play in our energy production is filled with people explaining how their opponents are the spawn of Satan.
In a similar way, Yoshida has somehow become convinced that “We really ought to cut back now, rather then wait until the last minute.” is code for, “I want to shove bamboo shoots under Adam Yoshida’s fingernails.”
I wonder how that happens.
>>It seems like a large majority would support the caliphate were it under a different name.
California – from the word Calipha, it’s a guy in a white turban and a light blue electric guitar last seen on Muscle beach, he rules the place instead of Arnold, and once he finds the magic camel it’ll be over for all you infidals!
Yoshi’s right. Alaska’s got like 800 billion times the amount of oil in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Mexico combined and if only we would finally let people drill in all the national parks then oil would be like 2 cents a gallon and it would deliver itself and also it would arrive at your home with freshly baked cookies and it would know which movies you want to see.
Wait; one of Yoshida’s “three socialisms” is massive financial speculation in the capital markets?
Well, one of the factors is the one that Spengler identified a few months ago as driving the crisis in the housing market: there are vast pools of European and Japanese capital which cannot be invested in those nations because they lack the young people to start businesses, buy homes, and have children to make use of that money.
Aside from the utter stupidity of money needing children to invest in, it is not so much capital sloshing around the world, but depreciated and debased dollars that we have exported and which now pile up in the world’s bank vaults like so many bad notes. Everybody is speculating with their dollars because a high rate of return is needed to offset all the inflation that the US government will not officially admit to.
I remember in the late 90s that mutual funds were going into mortgage backed securities because the rate of return was maybe 6%, and inflation (including non-core inflation) was at least 5%. This is all a direct result of Greenspanism.
I have to get up and go to work real early today, but I wouldn’t have to if the damn enviro-whackoes would let us drill in ANWR, then I would have my own company and be rich and angels would deliver roast chicken soft tacos any time I wanted.
“My goodness, this is a wise fellow.”
“My goodness, this is a wise fellow.”
Wait; one of Yoshida’s “three socialisms” is massive financial speculation in the capital markets?
I found that to be about the funniest damn thing about this pathetic screed.
That and “Thus, this great wave of cash is sloshing around the world – driven to seek the highest return” as if it were friggin’ gravity instead of human beings making (often immoral) choices.
Somebody is paying this moron to write this stuff. If that’s not an immoral economic choice I don’t know what is.
as if it were friggin’ gravity instead of human beings making (often immoral) choices.
And as if highest possible return, damn the consequences capitalism weren’t his tribe’s highest value and the entire point of his moronic screed. It must be chapping his hide that it’s furriners making themselves richer at our expense for a change.
There’s the nut Yoshi, you’ve got it in your grasp. Just reach out and…
Okay, buddy. We’re all glad you’re finally on board with recognizing that it’s Big Oil that’s writing energy policy, but that’s not the way it’s supposed to work. And the whole taxes thing? You know that sometimes taxes are used to discourage certain practices and encourage others. You know, likehaving high taxes on cigarettes discourages smoking, and making charities tax-exempt encourages charitable activities. Hey here’s an example from the previous Presidential election year of how President Bush can influence the demand part of the economic formula:
President Bush’s new Economic Stimulus Plan would triple the equipment deduction currently available to small business owners (from $25,000 to $75,000) — enough to make some of the largest, most luxurious SUVs fully deductible.
I wonder what effect that might have on gas prices? For Yoshi’s sake, I’ll jump to page four of the article and let the writers explain it in very small words:
One outcome of this incentive is that business owners are likely to seek out bigger SUVs instead of cars. For example, an accountant who would do fine with a 30 mpg compact sedan as a company car could be enticed into a big, 15 mpg SUV instead. Or a real estate agent about to buy a 20 mpg midsize SUV that doesn’t qualify for the deduction might opt for a full-size SUV instead, because it does qualify.
Yoshi would be a much better writer if only the enviro-wackoes would let us drill for oil in Alaska.
I always wondered what Chewbacca was saying in that scene.
Just how the fuck does one speculate commodities (socialism #1) when the prices are regulated (socialism #2)?
Socialist commodity speculation? I mean, here we go to all of the trouble of wiping out every last communist in the West and for what? So they can go and redefine rapacious profiteering as socialism. I am depressed.
You know, when Shakespeare wrote “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the Lawyers” he put the words into the mouth of an idiot for a reason. The whole scene is at its essence an argument that laws and lawyers are a protection for the public against the worst excesses of tyranny.
So when Yoshi says “first, kill all the environmentalists,” I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
first, kill all the environmentalists
right, right – from shakespeare! that’s witty. really. i’ve never heard that line changed up or turned around or used in a different way before for the purposes of making a written argument. really. that’s some unique writing. how. very. clever.
Silly liberals. Commodities speculation has ALWAYS been socialist. Until such time that such a practice is deemed not socialist.
The whole scene is at its essence an argument that laws and lawyers are a protection for the public against the worst excesses of tyranny.
I used to think that too, just goes to show how powerful the lawyer lobby is. Sure they guy who delivers the line is a crazy psychopathic idiot, but if you look at the entire context of the line, it’s lawyer bashing.
Considering that it’s an Elizabethan play, the populism of getting rid of all the lawyers is pretty much their version of bashing latte sipping elitist intellectuals. Plays well to the crowds.
WordPress ate my link again. Visualize this in the correct spot:
entire context of the line
I can’t believe he’s attacking the most sacred investor class. I thought we were all supposed to invest so that the state and/or the next generation wouldn’t have to take care of us in our old age. Remember that ownership society thing? Private accounts? Medical savings plans? You-should-have-thought-about-that-before-you-moved-to-New-Orleans?
I’m crushed. Here I believed that they wanted us all to scrimp and save until our investments could handle any conceivable contingency, so that we’d never, ever, ever have to go hat-in-hand to the government. But now we know that if every single person does just that, we’ll only end up with a choice between investing in a series of speculative bubbles or letting inflation gnaw our savings away to nothing.
Here I thought the wingers only hated the world’s n’er-do-well grasshoppers. Who knew they’d have just as much disdain for the hardworking ants?
I just wonder if the Truthtroll is actually Yoshida – hrmmmm. Wasn’t he the one who wanted to run for the Canuckistani Parliament?
Living in the West End you say? Sweet Baby Jesus with a diaper rash! The mind reels.
Yeah, go for the gusto – drill that wildlife reserve, & AT ITS PEAK it’ll account for a whopping 5% of your supply needs – that peak isn’t until about 2025 by the by. At the present rate of increase, that’ll take about a whole dollar a gallon off the cost at the pump … when it hits $20/gallon, that is. But hey, at least it won’t be $21/gallon! You never know – maybe we’ll all have herds of giant magical flying beavers that shit fresh air & piss distilled water by then, too – I hope so, because we’ll sure as hell be needing them at that point.
Yep, a lot of that petroleum price-rape is either BushCo puking huge piles of money into the economy, speculators playing oil the way the Hunts once played silver, or Oil-R-Us keeping the number of refineries artificially low. Yoshi can either live with the free market he likes to wank over so much, or suck it up like big boys do & STFU – it’s rightist policies & culture that are making the price soar, so wingnuts have zero legitimacy when they of all people bitch about gas prices.
Oh, & if it wasn’t for Petra Kelly & the Greens, helping to extend our civilization’s shelf-life via environmentalism & mass-conservation, a gormless tit like Yoshida wouldn’t be railing against environmentalists — by now he’d’ve long since been eaten by wild dogs amid the proverbial smouldering ruins.
Mmmmm! Smell that irony!
Shorter wingnut: a) Every political movement is fascist. b) If the other fascists win, we’re screwed. c) Rah-Rah our fascists!!11!
Sagra, I guess the only laudable way to make money is to inherit it.
The ANWR is much like Iraq, in the sense that as long as we don’t drill there, it’ll sit atop a million zillion barrels of oil. Once we drill, nobody will have said there was enough oil there to actually impact oil prices.
The flowers and sweets are always a boondoggle away.
I should have thought of that before being born the daughter of a hot-tar roofer.
Again…isn’t this guy Canadian?
Heh.
Drilling in the ANWR is basically the equivalent of drinking the vanilla extract because you’ve run out of booze:
a) you’ll feel like such an asshole,
b) it won’t really do the trick anyway, and
c) now you can’t make cookies.
“Culturally suicidal”
I kind of like that term. I’m down with it the next time someone inappropriately asks me why I don’t want to have children and share in their misery (maybe we can call that “collective despondence”). I’m not particularly impressed by this culture. Cultural suicide is painless.
high commodity prices are being driven by speculation
I’m just not buying this. If anything, traders are speculating that consumption will merely continue to equal supply at current prices – not an extremely risky prediction for the world energy markets.
The fact is that world demand, even if it were to remain flat, would have no problem continuing to support the current price of oil. Is there any indication that demand has been reduced by price rises in the past 6 months? Is there a chance that production can increase in a significant way in the next 2-3 years? Sure, Saudi Arabia has some excess capacity, but even if they open that up it’s unlikely to push down prices much at all. Since world demand isn’t flat and is actually growing pretty quickly, prices will probably climb a lot more in the next decade before anything changes.
Nothing about commodities markets allows traders the option of saying “Hmmm…I guess I’ve made enough money here. I should stop bidding the price up even though end users are willing to pay higher”. The upward pressures on price are systemic and – to be honest – natural and healthy (economically speaking, I mean, we’re all still getting fucked). Ridiculously high gas prices are the only thing which will create an incentive for the world to actually move to new energy sources, to find economic value in maximizing efficiency (which generally has required a much higher capital outlay than could be justified by energy savings), and to really address questions about how our society has come to be structured in the past 70 years.
I have this observation about Yoshi that developed as I drove to work this morning.
The guy doesn’t live in America. He’s not from a cultural demographic that strongly identifies itself with the kind of fascist nationalism that he’s espousing.
What I think is going on is that Yoshi is a terribly demented, lonely person who looked for someone who would accept him out there in the wide, wide Internet and found that if you mouthed the correct shibboleths and stood with a flag behind you, and weren’t a filthy brown person, the conservative nutjob demographic would wrap its arms around you with glee.
Maybe I’m wrong about that. But I’m starting to view the Conservative Internet, who appear to spend way too much time alone in their basements, as kind of the social cul-de-sac of 2000’s Western Society. The same place that I might have occupied 20 years ago when I was running around pretending to have an English accent and wearing a 20-foot long scarf and trying to convince people that a telephone booth was my spaceship.
Sad, lonely little geeks, in other words.
Drilling in the ANWR is basically the equivalent of drinking the vanilla extract because you’ve run out of booze:
a) you’ll feel like such an asshole,
b) it won’t really do the trick anyway, and
c) now you can’t make cookies.
Doctorb, I am *sooo* stealing your analogy! Bravo!
Isn’t this asshat Canadian?
Why is he so emotionally invested in what goes on in the U.S.?
Funny thing, Alaskan oil… It’s already being drilled (just not in ANWR), and shipped off to Japan, China, and Canada. Yup, we Canucks are BUYING YOUR OIL! BWAHAHAHAHAA! Cheaper shipping to folks who will pay the same – oil being a fungible commodity and all that.
Hell, there’s currently a surplus of oil, but it’s gone up 100% in one year? I guess those environmentalists work fast! After doing jack-shit for fifty years (you can tell by how little the price of gas rose) to suddenly force such a price increase shows some kind of power – Wow!
Yosh would shit himself (more, I mean) if he were in England – it’s over $12/gallon there.
res ipsa loquitur –
He gets a thrill whenever someone notices him, so he’s as obnoxious as possible in as many ways as he can manage; and a lot of us Canucks are twitchy about the States – an instinct of self-preservation and acquired cultural and political jealousy ofer the past 150 years has pretty much put us on tenterhooks with Can-US relations. No offense is actually intended to Americans (that would be impolite), but Yank-bashing is an easy target for humourists up here.
Not only does he do a lot of stunting for attention, he feels the easiest way to get it is to scream and kick over displays in the toy store. Then gloat that he’s being picked on, and isn’t everyone else mean, and WHAAA i’M BEING PICKED ON WHAAAA! That sort of thing.
Just for the record, one of the places that employed Mr. Steyn, Maclean’s magazine, is running “The Myth of Alberta’s Dirty Oil” as a cover story. Can’t wait to see how tar sands = Eden.
Or you could go and ride a fucking bike.
Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry! I’ll hurry up and get barefoot and pregnant to solve our oil crisis!
… As long as I never have to look at Yoshi again. That man looks like he could be an effective form of birth control.
Yoshi, you make me laugh real good. i love that passive-aggressive finger pointing, that picture is worthy of a frame.
Yeah, that was the final thought I had. Yoshi, my boy, it’s not your national inheritance that’s being debated here. You Canucks have your own Great White north which you are free to advocate the despoilment of.
Or maybe, you could grow a brain inside that greeet giant heed of yours and think about alternatives and conservation.
Again, I think Yoshi needs friends and companionship, and he’s unaccountably stumbled on a bunch of wanking dweebs who accept him and now he’s trapped. Stupid for life.
Thursday,
Oh I get why Canadians have an interest in the U.S. (we share a border, we have lots ‘o weapons, are kinda imperalist assholes these days, etc.). What I don’t get is why this guy is so fucking emotional about it all (remember his “Now it’s time to curb-stom (the Democrats)” post)?
Though some days, looking at the signs in front of gas stations
As if he ever gets out of his mom’s basement. As if he’s ever allowed out.
As if he ever gets out of his mom’s basement. As if he’s ever allowed out.
Nah, we established that Yoshi does in fact live on his own, but it ain’t much.
The comments on his Earth Hour post are priceless.
I find it hilarious he still hasn’t resized those “giganto” pics.
Oh yes, another Yoshi fun fact: his domain was registered by his mom.
Whew, that was close! Yoshi almost found me out: an environmentalist who invests. But, I have still eluded him, seeing as how I’m home-grown American, not European. Still, my plan to ruin the world by saving whates and reaping the dividends of growth, value and mid-cap stock corporations was almost exposed. Fortunately, by breeding I have camouflaged my nefariousness. Oh, and:
As someone said long ago, if fascism ever triumphed in the United States it would call itself ‘100% Americanism’.
Some of us would say that has already happened, my friend.
I don’t know about the ‘wingnut’s’ take on speculation and the demographic crisis, but the West (and the Orient, I guess) is(are) facing a very real demographic crisis. I would have called myself an environmentalist as a young man, so I think I understand some of the zeal that self-identified environmentalists feel. It’s important to think critically about the state of the world and how the history of different peoples relates to the current situation. The West is not the evil, industrial abode of greedy white folks who secretly love to kill Indians and work Africans; rather, it is, without doubt, the most enlightened and efficient cultural region the world has ever known. The environmental movement has provided an important and needed correction to the waste that resulted from the industrial revolution, but I think that ‘green’ folks have lost a true human-centered view of the world. People will breed. Those who breed the most often and successfully will play a greater role in the future of the world. If you personally believe that it’s wrong to use certain resources for humans, the best way to spread that message is to raise a big family of 5 or 6 kids in your ‘faith’. Our ability to continue as a society with relatively stable politics, safe drinking water, jobs, and a bright future hinges on the American woman bearing at least 3 children because anything less does not actually replace the parents and reduces the real American population. It’s possible for folks like you to remain suspicious of industry and acknowledge that your values will NEVER be shared by the most prolific breeders in the current world. In other words, the demographic crisis is real and it affects you too! Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater 🙂