Energy Secretary

All of the debate above is academic until someone beats Alabama.

Only two chances left, and I think Bama will beat them both.
 
ib1yysguy said:
I don't remember nearly this much scrutiny of Bush's picks.
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Uhhh that's because we were at historic levels of peace time prosperity and a government with a surplus of revenue.

Now were bogged down in an immoral war with the economy on the verge of collapse and trillions of dollars in debt and maybe, just maybe, a little more scrutiney is warranted.
 
Superfreak said:
Not really, all three are quite true. Penn State and Texas would easily knock off the trojans and the trojans would indeed have a legit shot at knocking off one of the lower ranked SEC or Big Twelve teams.
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You're nuts. USC and Florida are the best two college teams in the nation. Their loss to Oregon St. was a fluke let down after the Ohio State game. Anything other than a match up of USC and Florida in the BCS championship game will be a misscarriage of justice....well unless that is, in the unlikely event that Bama would beat Florida.
 
Mottleydude said:
Uhhh that's because we were at historic levels of peace time prosperity and a government with a surplus of revenue.

Now were bogged down in an immoral war with the economy on the verge of collapse and trillions of dollars in debt and maybe, just maybe, a little more scrutiney is warranted.
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... and people are complaining because Obama is putting some people involved with the administration responsible for the "historic levels of peace time prosperity and a government with a surplus of revenue."
 
Solitary said:
Would somebody please explain the constant talk about "clean coal"?

Thats like discussing virginal hookers.

Coal is dirty when you take it out of the ground and dirty when you burn it. Some coal might burn slightly less nastily than other coal, but its all a dirty source of energy.
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But it can be cleaned up and burned in utilizing new technology so that it doesn't pollute nearly as much and greater effeciencies are achieved by a more thorough combustion.

It works something like this. The coal is ground up and mixed with water to form a slurry and filtered. Sulfates and metals are leached out from the coal and into the water where the sulfates are neutralized with lime and heavy metals are precipitated and stabilized.

The coal is filtered, dried and pellatized. Uniform and consistent sizing and feed rates, sans impurities ensure a more complete combustion of the coal and less pollution in the off-gases. This is further ensured by using modern fluidized bed technologies to combust the coal. This helps entrain particulate and acid gas emmisions in the upper, uncombusted layers of coal in the furnace.

Not only is there more energy recovery and less air pollution but less slag is generated during combustion.
 
Mottleydude said:
You're nuts. USC and Florida are the best two college teams in the nation. Their loss to Oregon St. was a fluke let down after the Ohio State game. Anything other than a match up of USC and Florida in the BCS championship game will be a misscarriage of justice....well unless that is, in the unlikely event that Bama would beat Florida.
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1) There is ZERO chance of USC making it to the title game. It will be the winner of the SEC title game vs. either OK (if it wins the Big 12 championship against Missouri) or TX should OK fall.

2) TX, OK, and Texas tech are all better than USC this year.

3) Bama will beat FL for the SEC crown... so neither of your 'two best teams' will be in the title game.
 
ib1yysguy said:
... and people are complaining because Obama is putting some people involved with the administration responsible for the "historic levels of peace time prosperity and a government with a surplus of revenue."
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Keep in mind.... during that "historic levels of peace time prosperity and a government with a surplus of revenue"... our country saw...

1) our national debt increase every single fiscal year

2) Politicians con the public with talk of "budget" surplusses

3) Oklahoma city bombings, two embassy bombings, US Cole bombing.... the admin... did little on the latter three to aprehend those responsible. for that great effort... we got 9/11.

4) Fraud at Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing etc...

5) The economy in a recession when they left office

6) Fair lending act, repeal of glass Steagall... both of which helped create the problems we face today

yeah... how could anyone not want them back.

To be clear... bush has been far far far far worse. But enough with the peace and prosperity bullshit.
 
Mottleydude said:
But it can be cleaned up and burned in utilizing new technology so that it doesn't pollute nearly as much and greater effeciencies are achieved by a more thorough combustion.

It works something like this. The coal is ground up and mixed with water to form a slurry and filtered. Sulfates and metals are leached out from the coal and into the water where the sulfates are neutralized with lime and heavy metals are precipitated and stabilized.

The coal is filtered, dried and pellatized. Uniform and consistent sizing and feed rates, sans impurities ensure a more complete combustion of the coal and less pollution in the off-gases. This is further ensured by using modern fluidized bed technologies to combust the coal. This helps entrain particulate and acid gas emmisions in the upper, uncombusted layers of coal in the furnace.

Not only is there more energy recovery and less air pollution but less slag is generated during combustion.
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To add to the above... you can also add on to the coal plants with an algae biofuel production capabilities. The algae feeds off the pollutants and will further reduce the emissions.
 
Mottleydude said:
You're nuts. USC and Florida are the best two college teams in the nation. Their loss to Oregon St. was a fluke let down after the Ohio State game. Anything other than a match up of USC and Florida in the BCS championship game will be a misscarriage of justice....well unless that is, in the unlikely event that Bama would beat Florida.
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I wasn't sure if you were gay till this post:clink:
 
Watermark said:
Yeah, but our national debt as % of GDP went down for the first time since the 80's.
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who gives a shit??

It was because GDP growth outpaced spending growth. It was due to the productivity of the American workforce. There was NO reason to be raising our national debt during that boom. NONE.
 
Superfreak said:
who gives a shit??

It was because GDP growth outpaced spending growth. It was due to the productivity of the American workforce. There was NO reason to be raising our national debt during that boom. NONE.
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The productivity of the American workforce was going up but the budget was always pretty close to being balanced. If a nation only goes into debt a small percentage every year, it's debt is going to be much easier to handle later on. Clinton went into debt by much less than either Bush or Reagan did. The boom didn't make up for that, anymore than the housing boom helped out Bush. Clinton was much tighter on the purse strings, and if we would've kept with that formula we'd have a much more manageable amount of debt today.

Debt doesn't matter as much when it's kept so low inflation and the economy grow faster than it does.
 
Watermark said:
The productivity of the American workforce was going up but the budget was always pretty close to being balanced. If a nation only goes into debt a small percentage every year, it's debt is going to be much easier to handle later on. Clinton went into debt by much less than either Bush or Reagan did. The boom didn't make up for that, anymore than the housing boom helped out Bush. Clinton was much tighter on the purse strings, and if we would've kept with that formula we'd have a much more manageable amount of debt today.

Debt doesn't matter as much when it's kept so low inflation and the economy grow faster than it does.
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Clinton added $1.6 trillion to the US debt. The same number as Reagan. Reagan did it during the cold war, when the nation was under severe pressure from inflation, when unemployment was well above the average 5%.

Clinton did it with a tight labor market, a time when we were not at war, all the while cutting the military, in a time where the tech/telecom/internet/biotech booms brought millions of jobs and provided a great boost to GDP growth. Yet he still raised the debt by $1.6 trillion.

yet again, a balanced "budget" doesn't mean shit if you don't stick to the budget and in turn overspend.

Adding to the nations debt is sometimes necessary, but in properous times we are not supposed to be adding to our debt. In prosperous times we are supposed to be paying down the debt.
 
Superfreak said:
Clinton added $1.6 trillion to the US debt. The same number as Reagan. Reagan did it during the cold war, when the nation was under severe pressure from inflation, when unemployment was well above the average 5%.
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SF, you have just mentioned the reasons right there. Inflation. 1.6 trillion in the early 1980's was huge compared to 1.6 trillion in the late 90's. It is good if you only grow the debt by the same nominal amount as your predecessor from 10 years earlier.

Carter, Nixon, LBJ, Kennedy, and Eisenhower also had to maintain a huge military, through recessions, and did so while reducing the debt as % of GDP. Reagan's economic policies, like massive tax cuts for the wealthy, are directly responsible for the growing debt as % of GDP.
 
SF, if we had a 100 billion deficit (in real dollars) every year for thirty years, our deficit would be trivial after 30 years. It's not entirely necessary to completely get rid of the deficit, but running up massive deficits like Reagan did, and especially Bush, is completely and totally unnacceptable. Clinton did a good job.

Follow the red line:

National-Debt-GDP.gif
 
Watermark said:
SF, you have just mentioned the reasons right there. Inflation. 1.6 trillion in the early 1980's was huge compared to 1.6 trillion in the late 90's. It is good if you only grow the debt by the same nominal amount as your predecessor from 10 years earlier.

Carter, Nixon, LBJ, Kennedy, and Eisenhower also had to maintain a huge military, through recessions, and did so while reducing the debt as % of GDP. Reagan's economic policies, like massive tax cuts for the wealthy, are directly responsible for the growing debt as % of GDP.
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If you adjust for inflation Water you are talking about $2.4 trillion for Reagan vs $1.6 trillion for Clinton....

Reagan had to deal with the cold war, high inflation, high unemployment and had to rebuild the military. Clinton had the tech/telecom/internet/biotech booms to keep unemployment low, to provide huge GDP growth, cut the military drastically and STILL raised our debt by $1.6 trillion.
 
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