obama leads McCain 45% to 39%. 12% undecided. Obama will take Mass easy while leading FL by 2%. I'm thinking FL will be the most crucial state, since Obama is from the Great Lakes. What are predictions on the stock market when either one of them take the office? any thougths?
of course obama takes MA. I seriously doubt he will take FL. Of the polls I've seen, the ones that show LIKELY voters have mac ahead, and the numbers for BO are probably over inflated as the Cuban- American population is almost always under represented in polls, yet they vote in large numbers. They despise BO, and his statements about meeting with Castro. Of course he recently flipped on this when he visited FL, but the damage has been done. I believe Ohio and MI will decide it. Mac probably needs both, or he is toast, even with FL. Obama looks like he is going to take NM, and possibly CO, NV and IN. If so, and either of OH/MI, and its all over. I don't see Mac flipping anything other than MI. I also don't see BO flipping VA, NC, or Georgia, although he will try. Gonna be a nail biter, which always makes election night a fun watch. i may have a party where we put a bunch of cash in a pot, and make bets on the swing states. or maybe a drinking game per state? Whoever wins, i think i will want to be drunk for awhile!
As I mentioned in another thread, these so called polls only use land phone lines, and most voters under 35 don't even have a land line, only the older group. I think the Intrade numbers are more accurate, perhaps 60+ to 35 or so. It will be interesting next time around when they start using real polls with cell phones and other media. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/515/polling-cell-only-problem c
intrade has to be worse as its a web site. I bet most people over 30 don't know it exists. Also, when polling, you need to try and hit a random population, meaning you need to go to them. Even if everyone knew of intrade, it only reflects people who want to bet on the outcome, not all likely voters. Also, intrade is based on who they think will win, not on who a person is going to vote for! polls this time of year have proven worthless in the past anyway. i would take the real clear politics average of all the major polling firms, and drop the high and low one. Can't think of a better way.
Friday, August 08, 2008 Charles Krauthammer The Democrat Plan for Losing WASHINGTON -- Let's see: housing meltdown, credit crunch, oil shock not seen since the 1970s. The economy is slowing, unemployment growing and inflation increasing. It's the sixth year of a highly unpopular war and the president's approval rating is at 30 percent. The Italian Communist Party could win this election. The American Democratic Party is trying its best to lose it. Democrats have the advantage on just about every domestic issue from health care to education. However, Americans' greatest concern is the economy, and their greatest economic concern is energy (by a significant margin: 37 percent to 21 percent for inflation). Yet Democrats have gratuitously forfeited the issue of increased drilling for domestic oil and gas. By an overwhelming margin of 2-1, Americans want to lift the moratorium preventing drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, thus unlocking vast energy resources shut down for the last 27 years. Democrats have been adamantly opposed. They say that we cannot drill our way out of the oil crisis. Of course not. But it is equally obvious that we cannot solar or wind or biomass our way out. Does this mean that because any one measure cannot solve a problem, it needs to be rejected? Barack Obama remains opposed to new offshore drilling (although he now says he would accept a highly restricted version as part of a comprehensive package). Just last week, he claimed that if only Americans would inflate their tires properly and get regular tune-ups, "we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling." This is bizarre. By any reasonable calculation of annual tire-inflation and tune-up savings, the Outer Continental Shelf holds nearly a hundred times as much oil. As for oil shale, also under federal moratorium, after a thousand years of driving with Obama-inflated tires and Obama-tuned engines, we would still have saved only one-fifth the oil shale available in the United States. But forget the math. Why is this issue either/or? Who's against properly inflated tires? Let's start a national campaign, Cuban-style, with giant venceremos posters lining the highways. ("Inflate your tires. Victory or death!") Why must there be a choice between encouraging conservation and increasing supply? The logical answer is obvious: Do both. Do everything. Wind and solar. A tire gauge in every mailbox. Hell, a team of oxen for every family (to pull their gasoline-drained SUVs). The consensus in the country, logically unassailable and politically unbeatable, is to do everything possible to both increase supply and reduce demand, because we have a problem that's been killing our economy and threatening our national security. And no one measure is sufficient. The green fuels the Democrats insist we should be investing in are as yet uneconomical, speculative technologies, still far more expensive than extracted oil and natural gas. We could be decades away. And our economy is teetering. Why would you not drill to provide a steady supply of proven fuels for the next few decades as we make the huge technological and economic transition to renewable energy? Congressional Democrats demand instead a clampdown on "speculators." The Democrats proposed this a month ago. In the meantime, "speculators" have driven the price down by $25 a barrel. Still want to stop them? In what universe do traders only bet on the price going up? On Monday, Obama outlined a major plan with mandates and immense government investment in such things as electric cars and renewables. Fine, let's throw a few tens of billions at this and see what sticks. But success will not just require huge amounts of money. It will require equally huge amounts of time and luck. On the other hand, drilling requires no government program, no newly created bureaucracy, no pie-in-the-sky technologies that no one has yet invented. It requires only one thing, only one act. Lift the moratorium. Private industry will do the rest. And far from draining the treasury, it will replenish it with direct taxes, and with the indirect taxes from the thousands of non-subsidized new jobs created. The problem for the Democrats is that the argument for "do everything" is not rocket science. It is common sense. Which is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, surveying the political rubble resulting from her insistence on not even permitting drilling to come to a floor vote, has quietly told her members that they can save their skins and vote for drilling when the pre-election Congress convenes next month. Pelosi says she wants to save the planet. Apparently saving her speakership comes first.
Since Obama's tire inflation comment became an object of Republican ridicule, I thought I'd look at some actual data (a step Krauthammer obviously skipped). EIA estimates no more than 200,000 barrels per day of incremental production from Outer Continental Shelf areas currently off limits. That's in 2030; naturally, in the near term there would be no incremental production at all. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html Current gasoline consumption (the vast majority of which is in motor vehicles) is 9,286,000 BPD also according to EIA. http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html So if the full estimated 2030 production came online tomorrow, it would be equivalent to only 2.15% of motor vehicle consumption. Most estimates are that proper inflation will save 3% or more of gasoline consumption. For example: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_253.html Martin
Every bit helps. We are the 3rd largest producer of oil in the world. Without exploring, we really have no idea whats out there. The below if from a study from the Dept of the Interior, but is based on prices and technology that is seriously outdated, but still shows 66b to over 100b of recoverable oil. Also, based on your supposed logic, we should stop developing alternatives since they will only amount to a fraction of total energy usage once fully developed. http://www.mms.gov/revaldiv/RedNatAssessment.htm The MMS has completed an assessment of the undiscovered technically recoverable resources (UTRR) underlying offshore waters on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). This assessment was based on information available as of January 1, 2003, including information obtained from new exploration activities. The MMS estimates that the quantity of undiscovered technically recoverable resources ranges from 66.6 to 115.3 billion barrels of oil and 326.4 to 565.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The mean or average estimate is 85.9 billion barrels of oil and 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. These volumes of UTRR for the OCS represent about 60 percent of the total oil and 40 percent of the total natural gas estimated to be contained in undiscovered fields in the United States. The mean estimates for both oil and gas increased about 15 percent compared to the 2001 assessment. For the oil resources, the vast majority of this increase occurred in the deepwater areas of the Gulf of Mexico, while for gas resources the majority of the increase was in deep gas plays located beneath the shallow water shelf of the Gulf of Mexico. These estimates represent the potential quantities of undiscovered hydrocarbons that can be conventionally produced using existing or reasonably foreseeable technology, without any consideration of economic feasibility. Current technology includes drilling in water in excess of 3000 meters (10,000 feet) deep and to subsea depths in excess of 9600 meters (31,700 feet). MMS periodically conducts comprehensive assessments of the undiscovered oil and gas resources on the OCS. The last comprehensive inventory was completed in 2001, with an interim update in 2003 to reflect significant changes in natural gas potential in the Gulf of Mexico. The resource assessments also include production and reserve estimates for the OCS as well as estimates of undiscovered economically recoverable resources. Undiscovered economically recoverable resources (UERR), presented in the form of price-supply curves, represent the portion of the undiscovered technically recoverable hydrocarbons that can be explored, developed and commercially produced at given costs and price considerations. The results of this assessment, published as a brochure entitled Assessment of Undiscovered Technically Recoverable Oil and Gas Resources of the Nationâs Outer Continental Shelf, 2006 is available in electronic form below or in printed form free of charge, as long as supplies last, from the MMS Resource Evaluation Division, 381 Elden Street, Mail Stop 4070, Herndon, VA 20170. (227 KB) For more information, contact: Chief, Resource Evaluation Division 381 Elden Street Mail Stop 4070 Herndon, VA 20170 (703) 787-1628 2006 Assessment Publications: Assessment of Undiscovered Technically Recoverable Oil and Gas Resources of the Nationâs Outer Continental Shelf, 2006 (Summary Brochure) (227 KB) Planning Area Resources Addendum to Assessment of Undiscovered Technically Recoverable Oil and Gas Resources of the Nationâs Outer Continental Shelf, 2006 (127 KB) Planning Area Resources Addendum with Pre-December 2005 Planning Area Configuration for comparison with previous MMS resource assessments (120 KB) Report to Congress: Comprehensive Inventory of U.S. OCS Oil and Natural Gas Resources, February 2006, Version 5-1-2006 (1.0 MB) Estimates of Natural Gas and Oil Reserves, Reserves Growth, and Undiscovered Resources in Federal and State Waters off the Coasts of Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi (378 KB) 2006 Assessment Data Files: UTRR by Percentile by Region (45.5 KB) UERR by Oil and Gas Price by Region (50 KB) UTRR by Water Depth by Planning Area (50 KB) Oil and Gas Resources in OCS Areas Unavailable for Leasing and Development (109 KB) Previous Assessment Publications and Maps -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Privacy | Disclaimers | Accessibility | Topic Index | FOIA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last Updated: 08/06/2008, 09:35 AM
Hapaboy, methinks thy efforts are valiant in thy search for like-minded commentary, but thou art pissing in the wind without thy raincoat. There is a reason why they make them yellow.