1. Non-tippers.

I have a part-time job delivering pizza. It's not the greatest job in the world, but for a joe-job it is fun and pays well. I can make $100 in four hours and 80% of it will be tax free. Not bad. Of course, most of the folks I deliver to are cool decent human beings and tip fairly well. Think about it, I'm saving you from having to go out, stop at the bank and get cash, and go to the pizza place for pizza that will probably be cold when you get home. With gas at $4.00 a gallon, you can at least spare a few bucks for me. My company sets a delivery charge, yes, but I only see 1.10 out of that $2 they charge you. Still, there are those morons out there who don't tip and will never tip. I call them "tip subsidisers" because they are benefitting by getting a cheap delivery while others pay more. I generally remember who the tip subsidisers are though...and next time I have them on my route..they go last... even worse, I'll open up the heat bag and pizza box and give the pizza a nice dose of AC air to cool it down a bit. Go ahead, complain... or just go subsidize at another restaurant.

2. Obama-Haters

For real. I still don't plan on voting for Obama..not because of the countless rumors and BS that has been going around about him, but because I don't think he has the experience for the job. That being said though, the hardcore Obama haters on this site and elsewhere make me want to puke. Good lord...shut the fuck up, you morons! Yes, we all know you hate Obama!

Hate is not a wonderful attribute, despite what Rush Limbaugh may have you believe.

3. Cell phones

Seems like people cannot live without their cell phones. They have to go everywhere. I have a love-hate relationship with them myself. It's nice to have the portability and the ability to call someone from anywhere...but they make you so accessable that sometimes they feel like a house-arrest leash. Say, I'm avoiding my mom... I can't just say that I was out and didn't get the call. And what's with kids having cell phones so young? When I was seven, I didn't have a cell phone..hell...we had a house phone that was attached to the wall with this gizmo called a WIRE. We actually had to walk to where the phone was and pick up the receiver to answer it! There were no games on it..or texting..in fact..just to dial you had to turn a rotary with your finger! Imagine that...the interesting thing is..we survived.

Now cell phones have mini-querty keyboards and can play songs as well. Oh..and don't get me started about bluetooth headsets. Those are real fucking annoying. Not quite as bad as push-to-talk phones but annoying.

I'll think of some more things that irritate the fuck out of me... I'm out of here for now.

Houston, We Have an Oil Problem

Posted on: Wednesday, 18 June 2008, 03:00 CDT

By Steve Huff huff.column@earthlink.net

The other day at least three of my patients could not afford the gas to come to the doctor. On the way home I glumly pumped $44.85 into my Mini Cooper. That night I paid $600 for a plane ticket that used to cost $275.

It was a flight to Houston where my sister lives. An oil town, new buildings had popped up across the skyline, old buildings enjoyed facelifts, luxury services flourished and Chevy Suburbans ruled the road. Houstonians haven't seen a boom like this since 1982.

Clearly, $130 a barrel is not bad for everyone.

With profits at record levels, Big Oil feels little incentive to do anything except find more oil. Beyond petroleum? Renewable energy projects have long since degenerated into forays to the Rocky Mountains to wring out shale.

That, I believe, is where windfall oil profits become reprehensible. Sure, a profit margin of 10 percent is respectable for the average company, but we must remember who we're talking about.

Exxon Mobil's profit margin is a "reasonable percentage" of a number so huge that, according the MSN Money's Charley Blaine, it could rival the gross domestic product of the 17th largest economy in the world (Turkey). Renewable, low-carbon sources of energy ought to find a place in a budget like that.

But they haven't. Yes, it's a free country and a free market. Oil companies are thriving, paying their taxes, pleasing their stockholders. Why should they change?

Answer: Because the planetary gas gauge is heading toward red.

Whether oil production peaked in 1972 or will peak in 2050 we are within a human lifetime of declining oil extraction. We also are on the upswing of booming demand from China, India and other developing countries. Oil speculators may re-speculate and the puny dollar may strengthen, but "easy" oil will disappear in the blink of a dinosaur's eye.

As developing countries clamor for fossil fuels, we should work frantically toward the next best thing: electric, hydrogen, biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol, liquid coal or whatever wins out, based on aggressive, well-funded, impartial research.

Detroit is getting that message, but Houston is not. When Big Business looks to immediate gratification at the expense of future development, it's time for the government to take the reins.

Alas, we have a wishy-washy 2009 budget proposal from President Bush that, in spite of his greenish rhetoric of late, proposes more of the same: increased coal, drilling in nature preserves, reduced wind and solar research, reduced mass transit and reduced funds for weatherization of homes. He's fine with rising carbon emissions through 2025.

In addition we have an ineffectual Congress, mired in such non- starters as gas-tax suspensions, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, offshore drilling and windfall taxes.

Across the ocean, the war in Iraq burns through the equivalent of the Department of Energy's annual budget every couple months. One wonders how vital a role Iraq was to play in Mr. Bush's pre-war energy scenarios.

If we were faced with pure economic pressures I could better understand the argument to let the free market run.

However, far more is at stake. We have grown dependent on countries that are, to put it mildly, unsympathetic to our plight; we suffer the environmental and medical consequences of smog; we are beginning to experience the mayhem of global warming.

By boosting oil production in 10 or 15 years by 1 or 2 million barrels per day, we will merely extend our environmental and climate woes and will create a false sense of energy independence.

Instead, we must focus our resources and enthusiasm on the development of low-emission, domestic energy sources: solar, wind, water and, yes, nuclear. Coal is abundant, but it is carbon. Only when it can be burned cleanly should we increase its use.

Conservation. Americans will curb their energy cravings sooner through prudence, or later through necessity. I'm hoping for sooner. Carbon capping, trading and taxation seem a reasonable way to induce industry to do the same.

In spite of common perceptions, the United States consumes more oil and emits more carbon dioxide than any other country. The next administration needs to work with the next Congress to set an example for the world. Our short-term pain will give way to future generations of improved health, wealth and security.

Huff, who lives in Patrick County and practices family medicine, is a columnist for The Roanoke Times.

(c) 2008 Roanoke Times & World News. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/16/news/economy/oil_speculator/index.htm?postversion=2008051615

Oil prices: Wall Street's game
Big fund money is flowing into oil markets sending prices to levels never seen before. Is it profiteering or an essential way to ensure supply?
By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- There's no question about it: A new breed of speculator is pouring money into the oil market. What's less certain is whether this new money is responsible for driving up prices or essential to a healthy market.

Many blame record prices on Wall Street investors new to the oil market, saying they're bidding up gas prices to artificially high levels - and soaking drivers.

As oil nears $130 a barrel, some say $10 to $70 of that price is due to Wall Street speculation.

But that's not the whole story. Nearly everyone agrees that speculators have always been essential to a functioning market and that oil prices could be much higher without them.

What's harder to understand is the effect of new speculators flowing into commodities from big-money funds like university endowments, pensions and indexes.

Some say they're a good influence. In addition to limiting demand,they make it easier to sell oil contracts and create a larger market where prices are less susceptible to big swings following individual trades - known as liquidity in financial speak. This camp says $130 oil is justified since demand is rising faster than supply.

Others say big-fund money is making it harder for traditional oil speculators to do their job. This camp says big funds distort traditional models used to predict prices and think $130 oil is a bubble ready to pop.

What is a speculator?
Traditionally, a futures speculator bets on the direction of commodity prices and then guarantees that commodity at that price to a client. This removes some of the risk - and greases the wheels of commerce.

Speculators originated in the food market, and were intended to give farmers a set price in the spring to buy seed, according to Peter Beutel, an oil analyst at Cameron Hanover.

For example, a speculator would offer a farmer $3.50 in April for a bushel of corn to be delivered and paid for in October - these are called futures contracts. The speculator hopes that by October corn will sell for $4, and he'll make money. The farmer can plant his fields certain that he's making $3.50 a bushel.

Conversely, a speculator might bet the price of corn will fall.

He might offer to sell a bushel to a corn bread maker at $3.50 in April for corn to be delivered in October. If corn falls to $3 by October, the speculator comes out on top. The deal allows the bread maker to make long term business decisions, like how many employees to hire.

Without this transparent marketplace, uncertainty would be priced into the product, resulting in higher costs for everyone.

Although the lines between producer, consumer and speculator have been blurred in recent years, this same dynamic is at work in today's oil and gas markets.

"We're trying to get some type of cost certainty," said Brad Samples, a commodities analyst at Summit Energy in Louisville, Ky.

Summit buys energy for clients who use lots of it. One client, Samples says, goes through about $15 million a year in diesel fuel, and it's Samples' job to make sure it gets a good deal at a consistent price.

For Samples, more money in fuel markets means more people willing to sell him a contract. He doesn't think speculators push prices artificially high, arguing that supply and demand support prices.

"All the focus on speculators being the problem misses the point," he said. "The point is: supplies are not growing as fast as demand. You need sharp price growth to bring down demand."

Making the right bet
When Samples buys a contract, he needs someone to sell it to him, usually a bank. To manage the financial risk, the bank will go out and sell that contract to someone else - in other words, a speculator.

Sometimes that person might be someone like George Zivic, managing partner at Almanac Capital, a commodity investment firm.

For him, the influx of big-fund money betting oil prices will move in one direction - in this case up - into the commodities market is a challenge.

Before the new money, price movements were more predictable. For example, in the spring gasoline usually rises in tandem with crude, and Almanac and other related firms would look to make their money by betting on the difference between the two.

This year that hasn't happened - oil prices have greatly outpaced gasoline - and that's made making money in this market more difficult. He blames some of the schism on big-fund money betting oil prices will only go up.

"When you have directional money, it makes the historical relationships distorted," he said. "There's no short term shortage of oil. $127 a barrel doesn't make sense."

Placing blame
Beutel, from the consultancy Cameron Hanover and a former NYMEX floor trader, goes even further in blaming big-fund money.

"We want to see them out, they have no respect for our markets at all," he said.

But Beutel doesn't blame these funds for wanting to diversify their portfolio by investing in oil.

If anyone is to blame, he says, it's the Federal Reserve, which has been predictably cutting interest rates since September to shore up credit markets. When interest rates fall, investors flock to commodities as an inflation hedge.

"The Fed tipped their hand," he said. "[The big funds] were basically told by [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke that this is where the money is."

And if the money is there, why wouldn't the big funds take advantage of it?

"We are following for us what is a prudent strategy to maximize investment returns, said Clark McKinley, a spokesman for CalPERS, California's pension fund for workers in the public sector. "Obviously, there's some unintended consequences."

Not everyone agrees big-fund money is playing a role in driving up prices, starting with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the government's own regulatory agency.

Economists at the CFTC have testified that after studying all the numbers on who is trading what, there is no evidence speculators of any kind are significantly driving up the price of crude.

'You can't just point the finger at speculators," said Michael Haigh, head of U.S. commodities research at the investment bank Société Générale and a former economist at the CFTC. "Fundamentally, the markets are where they are supposed to be."

Haigh said that big-money funds are not just dumping their money onto the market - only betting prices will go up. He and others say these funds are sophisticated investors and take a variety of positions in the market.

Deutsche Bank took a somewhat novel approach in investigating the role of speculative money.

Analysts there looked at the price of commodities that do not trade in a futures market and came to basically the same conclusion.

"The rally in non-exchange traded commodity prices since the end of 2002 has been similar if not greater in magnitude," the bank's analysts wrote in a research note. "We believe this refutes the claim that speculators have been the primary drivers of rising commodity prices during this cycle."

So what's to be done?

Members of Congress, their ears bent by angry motorists paying nearly $4 a gallon for gas, are considering increasing the amount of money investors have to put up front in order to buy oil futures.

Some say this may work, as a lot of the investor interest in commodities is due to the fact that they can essentially gamble with a million dollars worth of oil by putting up $100,000 or less of their own money. In the stock market, they'd need to put up $500,000.

But others say increasing these requirements - known as margin requirements - would merely drive oil trading into less regulated markets where information would be even harder to track.

The motorist organization AAA doesn't have an opinion on what Congress should do. But like many American drivers, they've certainly noticed that oil prices have shot up $50 a barrel since August at the same time that the stock market tanked, while the supply and demand picture for oil remained little changed.

"After Israel invaded Lebanon, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, all of these situations, we haven't seen prices rise to these levels," said AAA spokesman Geoff Sundstrom. "We have to wonder if the foundation behind these very high prices is nothing more than speculation."

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/feds-scrape-tog.html

The Bush Administration has shown its support for plug-in hybrids by promising a measly $30 million to get them on the road within eight years, a figure and a timeline some automakers and plug-in advocates say is too little and too long. Getting these cars on the road quickly, they say, should be a national priority with the funding to match.

The Department of Energy made a big deal of the hand-out, announcing it at a plug-in hybrid conference in Washington D.C., but c'mon -- $30 million? To be spread out among three companies over three years? What'd it do -- scrounge change from couch cushions in the Pentagon? Granted, the award brings to $71.3 million the amount DOE has invested in hybrid and plug-in hybrid technology in the past three years, and EV advocates were quick to thank Uncle Sam for the money. But they said it's going to take a whole lot more than that to wean us from oil -- which, by the way, will collect $17 billion in tax breaks during the next decade.

"It's great to see the DOE upping its support of plug-in vehicles and getting the major car companies involved," Sherry Boschert, vice-president of Plug In America, told Wired.com. "Unfortunately, the $30 is a drop in the bucket compared with funding that DOE blows on less viable and potentially harmful options like hydrogen fuel cell cars and corn-based biofuels."

General Motors, Ford and General Electric will share the money, which is part of the $41.2 million DOE is investing in the technology this year. Assistant Energy Secretary Andy Karsner said the funding accelerate development of the cars to make them cost-competitive by 2014 and commercially viable by 2016.

2016? When the Chevrolet Volt and a plug-in Prius could be in showrooms by 2010 and Nissan says it'll skip plugs entirely and give us an EV at about the same time?

Every day, a male co-worker stood very close to a lady at the coffee machine, inhaled a big breath of air, and told her that her hair smelled nice. After a week she couldn't stand it anymore and took her complaint to a supervisor in the personnel department, asking to file a
sexual harassment grievance against him.

The Human Resource supervisor was puzzled and asked, 'What's sexually threatening about a co-worker telling you your hair smells nice?'

The woman replied, 'It's Keith. The midget.'