is the US sliding into Fascism? Evidence for and against

Actually, it would be libel. Slander is spoken, libel is written.I think it is obvious.
Given a fixed domestic production capacity, any increase in price of the commodity benefits the producers. (although Alexander is right that there is greater producer benefit from gradual, rather than rapid, price increases).
Domestic oil companies didn't experience any increase in costs of production (domestically) to justify increasing their prices, and yet they captured the higher price returns on their commodity.This happens because oil is a relatively 'inelastic' commodity in economic terms.
We can't just use less when it gets more expensive, and we don't necessarily buy any more of it when it gets cheaper.
This makes a commodity somewhat less responsive to the 'law of supply and demand' than something like beef.
If beef gets too expensive, people start eating more pork, chicken etc.
Your car can't just switch to another fuel source, so they have you.

quote:

---

You have it backwards. Conservatives are trying to get the government out of our lives with their legislation to force us all to adhere to and financially support political programs we detest,

---

You mean you detest paying taxes to support equal rights for all Americans?

quote:

---

and that were never a part of US policy until the PC police took over.

---

You mean people like Thomas Jefferson?Just who are these "PC Police" you are talking about?

quote:

---

Leave us alone, we leave you alone.

---

How is working to pass laws requiring all American children pray to the Christian God in public school "leaving them alone"?

quote:

---

How is working to pass laws requiring all American children pray to the Christian God in public school "leaving them alone"?

---

Please cite said law or proposal.

---

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
No webpage found at provided URL: www.1st-vets.us

All that could be true and yet proves nothing about anybody's motivations. That's the slander/libel part, the implication that the war had this purpose.And I'm not sure I'm following you anyway, which may be because I'm no economist but please explain. Prices go up because of events in the Middle East, our major supplier of oil, but what then, our much less productive domestic oil suppliers benefit from that because the prices go up across the board? Is this what you are saying? And if so, why wouldn't domestic producers benefit more from say, a price war, in which they can sell their product cheaper than the ME suppliers? Something doesn't compute here but I'm not sure exactly what.

What disinformation? Do you deny those quotes were actually quotes? You say only "concerned"? Here, go read them again Message 138Everyone can read those quotes and decide for themselves. There is no need to "interprete" what those folks "actually intended" or what they "really meant" when they said them. Their words are in the record for all to see.

I detest the revisionist redefinitions of rights and freedoms for starters, terms which have been co-opted by the Left and made to apply to personal behaviors, such as homosexuality, which is not the business of government to force on people who have moral objections to it. Freedom means leaving them alone to do as they please in their private lives, but what we are starting to get is a police state tyranny which forces all to legitimize and even subsidize such behavior. More and more the idea of freedom is being twisted to apply to formerly criminalized behavior. While in many cases I can support decriminalization, I can't support official legitimization that requires Christians, for instance, and other likeminded groups, to violate Biblical precepts by treating something as right that the Bible condemns. That is unAmerican and an unconscionable misuse of government power. THIS is the police state, what YOU are supporting. The Sixties generation basically, now in power, even the terrorists among them, God help us all. Who is working to pass such laws? The trend has been in the opposite direction for generations now, from originally Christian schools to militant secularism. However, I don't support official prayer in public schools and don't know who you are talking about.

My opinion, based on nothing but common sense and speculation, is that Iraq has definitely had limited weapons of mass destruction and that these weapons have drifted out into the general sympathetic militia in that region. The war that is being fought is viewed much differently for the Islamic Jihad sympathizers than it is for the typical U.S. liberal. (Not that I support a conservative theocracy, mind you)The fact is that there will be another 9-11 type of a day coming up on the horizon. This day is either going to be catastrophic or it will be disrupted by our forces, yet still rather severe. It will show that the theory of WMD was justified in principal.The weapons are out there. Our challenge, as Americans, is to use every means that we have to eliminate the major concentrations of power that support the Jihad militia. Secondarily, we must be humane enough that our enemy gives up the senseless ideology of destruction that has been brainwashed into their minds.This message has been edited by Phatboy, 05-12-2005 07:58 AM

---

"It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle."
---
"Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage."
---
"People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas. They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour's work as for a day's. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the lamb".Frederick Buechner

quote:

---

So you would have supported invading those African nations..eh? I doubt it.

---

I don't know if I would have supported it or not, but you have missed the point.The point is, the rationale for invading Iraq back before we invaded was the imminent threat and chemical and biological and nuclear WMD threat the Bush administration claimed Iraq posed.Now, years after the invasion it is clear there were never any WMD, and certainly no imminent threat to the US. The rationale for the war is post-hoc reasoned and spun as "Saddam was a brutal dictator."This is a fundamental departure from the bill of goods the congress and public were sold in the run up to the war.Well, there are a lot of other dictators around the world, with many being much worse that Saddam. If Saddam was so bad that we had to invade Iraq to oust him, surely there are other more murderous dictators we needed to get rid of first, such as those in African nations.This illustration is to show that the rationale for war that we have today is not at all the same as when Bush got approval from Congress and the American people to invade.

quote:

---

Would it have made a difference if the Bush admin had invaded those nations?

---

It would have made him look much more consistent and a lot less like he is is trying to cover his ass when the WMD never materialized and he had to justify a hugely expensive, unneccessary war on a country which had never posed any serious, imminent threat to America.

quote:

---

No, there would have been a uproar against defenseless Africans. The far left would have ignored the butchering by those nations just as they did in Saddam's Iraq

---

I think it would have been great to have no war at all, personally.Did you even know about the problems in Africa during the run up to the war?And I really think you need to stop saying that there is an influential "far left" in US politics. There is no "far left" in any sort of power in the US, unless you would like to show me who the Socialists or Marxists are in Congress.You left many of my points unaddressed when you took a break from the thread (that I thought you were done with?) Page 8 of this thread contains several posts which summarize my position and give evidence and logical support for them.If you are resuming your participation in this thread, I would appreciate responses to those posts.

quote:

---

No, it?s not funny that Bush has to be friendly with the Saudis. It?s a matter of necessity and of national interest. Whether you like it or not, the Saudis and in particular OPEC control a significant portion of the world?s oil supply. I don?t like it, Bush doesn?t like it, but that?s the way it is. It is naive to ignore that fact.

---

Saudi Arabia was also the birthplace and home of nearly all of the 9/11 hijackers and of Osama bin Laden.

quote:

---

Many US presidents have had to endure tenuous relationships with the Saudis because of it. This goes back to FDR after WWII:

​

So it is disingenuous for you to imply that the Bush administration is maintaining this long standing ?marriage of convenience? with the Saudis for purely personal reasons and that he is the only US president to do so.

---

So why isn't Bush pouring money and political will into research into and promotion of alternative energy sources and technology so he wouldn't have to get into bed with these people?Could it be that, like the Saudis, the Bush family is in the oil business and they stand to have a very mutually beneficial relationship if one of them is the president of the US and can greatly influence how much pressure is on the Saudis to improve their human rights record?Of course, lately the US has lost a great deal of it's formar moral high ground WRT human rights, including the suspension of habeas corpus for native born Americans, it's endorsement and justification of torture in it's military prisons, etc.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 05-12-2005 10:14 AM

All of the top republicans currently in power support a constitutional amendment to allow state-sanctioned school prayer.Frist, for example, is closely associated with Family Research Council, a right-wing religious lobby group which is striving to get it's particular religious morality instated as the law of the land.

Let me see if I can clear this up a bit. Oil companies don't benefit from spikes and shocks because they hedge away pretty much all of their oil exposure in advance. In other words, theyve already sold the barrels of oil theyre going to pump in the next year.So really EZ you're looking for collusion in the wrong place. The price of oil is pretty much independent of what western governments and our oil majors want it to do. In other years I would have agreed that the Saudis could move the price to their liking, but without much slack in their refining capacity, that is no longer the case. Again, the place to look for malfeasance is in the newest tax breaks given to oil majors.

---

'Most temperate in the pleasures of the body, his passion was for glory only, and in that he was insatiable.'

quote:

---

I detest the revisionist redefinitions of rights and freedoms for starters, terms which have been co-opted by the Left and made to apply to personal behaviors, such as homosexuality, which is not the business of government to force on people who have moral objections to it.

---

Nobody is forcing you to be a homosexual.

quote:

---

Freedom means leaving them alone to do as they please in their private lives, but what we are starting to get is a police state tyranny which forces all to legitimize and even subsidize such behavior.

---

Nobody is asking you to consider it legitimate for yourself.However, I am against the war in Iraq, yet I am forced to subsidize it. Living in a democracy where people have civil rights means that you and I will pay taxes which support some things we do not personally agree with, but are protected by the constitution.Believing in "civil rights" means that you believe in supporting someone's right to do what what you disagree with.

quote:

---

More and more the idea of freedom is being twisted to apply to formerly criminalized behavior. While in many cases I can support decriminalization, I can't support official legitimization that requires Christians, for instance, and other likeminded groups, to violate Biblical precepts by treating something as right that the Bible condemns.

---

You don't have to treat it as personally right.You just aren't allowed to discriminate against people because what they do or are is against your religion if you are an employer, for example.

quote:

---

That is unAmerican and an unconscionable misuse of government power.

---

You can be a bigot about anything you want to in your personal life.You just can't be a bigot if it breaks the law in employment, housing, or other legal matters.

quote:

---

THIS is the police state, what YOU are supporting.

---

So, why should an employer's particular religious bigotry hold sway over the civil rights of all Americans, and why should this bigotry be protected by law?

quote:

---

The Sixties generation basically, now in power, even the terrorists among them, God help us all.

---

Yeah, Frist, DeLay and Hastert are all a bunch of hippies.

quote:

---

Who is working to pass such laws?

---

Frist, Hastert, DeLay, Santorum, Cheney, Bush, and many other prominent Republicans all strongly support a Constitutional ammendment to allow state-led prayer in state-funded schools.

quote:

---

The trend has been in the opposite direction for generations now, from originally Christian schools to militant secularism.

---

What's wrong with secularism?Isn't the US government founded upon secularism?

quote:

---

However, I don't support official prayer in public schools and don't know who you are talking about.

---

Only the Republican leadership of the country.This message has been edited by AdminPhat, 05-12-2005 08:47 AM

Now Faith, let's be fair.
I made no inferences about motivations, only about consequences.
What I said was: Nowhere did I imply that this was the purpose of the war.
But it certainly yielded a windfall for domestic oil interests,
and this is Bush's biggest financial support base. Correct. Good question. It relates to my comments about the 'inelasticity' of oil as a commodity.
It doesn't exactly obey the law of supply and demand like other commodities.
First of all, producers almost never benefit from a price war - usually only consumers benefit, and only temporarily.
The price war gets started by some producer (usually a large and powerful one) trying to capture a larger share of the market by undercutting competitors.
How could a consortium of domestic producers benefit from a price war aimed at capturing larger market share when they cannot supply the existing demand as it is?
If they lowered their prices, they would just be shooting themselves in the foot and missing an opportunity to capitalize on a hefty profit margin.
They would never be able to increase their market share above what it already is.Does that make sense ?

Where did anyone (besides liberals) say imminent threat? Incorrect. 1st of all we have the 1.77 TONS and 1,000 "Radio Active items" BUT besides that we still don't know where they went. And they went somewhere. Not finding something is not proof that it wasn't there. You can't prove a negative. WMD was only 1 reason. Some History is in order. A little more...

---

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
No webpage found at provided URL: www.1st-vets.us

quote:

---

My opinion, based on nothing but common sense and speculation, is that Iraq has definitely had limited weapons of mass destruction and that these weapons have drifted out into the general sympathetic militia in that region.

---

Are you thinking of WMD or conventional arms, Phat?We've long known that Iraq had bunkers full of conventional explosives that were sealed and inspected by the international weapons inspectors in the run up to the war. The US forces came across them during the invasion, opened them, and then left them unguarded. It has been reported that likely some, if not many, of the explosives being used by the current insurgency have come from those previously secure bunkers.By WMD, I specifically mean what the Bush administration claimed Iraq had; vast stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and also nuclear weapons.WMD have never been found.