O/T: IRS Rebate Check

[Dave Balderstone]

Par with the Canadian dollar is *nothing*?

[B A R R Y]

Dave,

I'm not picking on you. The Mid East region is quite different from the rest of the world, because the Mid East hates up.

Sorry if I fired you up.

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[Dave Balderstone]

Sorry if I gave you that impression.

[Dave Balderstone]

Here in Saskatoon, to tie any price to the "nearest US city" would be insanity, and I'm sure the media would be full of it.

Methinks you're misremembering. If you do find out what that agreement is, though, please let me know.

[Doug Miller]

Ummmm.... yes. Damn near two-thirds of it, actually.

Total U.S. oil imports in 2007: 3.656 billion barrels.

Canada: 680 million Mexico: 514 million South America: 557 million, broken out as follows Venezuela: 420 million Ecuador: 72 million Argentina: 12 million Boliva: 1 million Columbia: 50 million Peru: 2 million west coast of Africa: 641 million, broken out as follows Angola: 181 million Nigeria: 395 million Cameroon: 9 million Congo: 23 million Equatorial Guinea: 20 million Gabon: 23 million

680 + 514 + 557 + 641 = 2393.

Only about 20% of our oil comes from the Middle East.

The top ten oil suppliers to the U.S. are, in order, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola, Iraq, Algeria, Ecuador, and Kuwait.

Only three of those are in the Middle East, and the last one, Kuwait, in tenth place, accounts for a whopping one and three-quarters percent of the oil imported into the U.S. in 2007.

Source for above is the U.S. Department of Energy:

[Edwin Pawlowski]

How long before China controls the US?

I doubt our politician have ever read a history books and looked at the superpowers of the world and what happened to them.

[B A R R Y]

No problem!

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[J. Clarke]

I heard the Arabs were going to buy the US. They couldn't. I heard that the Japanese were going to buy the US. They couldn't. Now you're saying that China is going to do it. I'm not holding my breath.

Find out what percentage of the national debt that 330 billion represents. And how long it took China to accumulate it. And at what rate the national debt is increasing.

[sweet sawdust]

[Dave in Houston]

I dunno; As is my custom, I hit the "REPLY GROUP" button assuming that the subject line would remain that which it was when I opened the post [to which I was responding]. Truth to tell, I never considered whether the post [to which I'm responding] was originally O/T or not. Good question, Dave. I'll surely pay more contention in the future. I have to get to the bottom of this!

Dave in Houston

[Swingman]

"Dave Balderstone" wrote

My guess, and IIRC, in an RFC of yore, "delimiters" like "/", ":", "\" are used for encoded words in message headers and are probably not being parsed by OE.

(this may a rare case where MSFT actually follows an RFC instead of ignoring those parts that are inconvenient to their purpose?)

IOW and IIRC again, include the example "O/T", or "OT:" in the Subject header, under said RFC, the characters in parentheses wouldn't be displayed by the mail/news client.

... it's been a loooong while, however, so I may be all wet. :)

But ... the saving grace is the "reply" remains "threaded", which is much less aggravating than when someone starts a new thread with the same subject on purpose.

Just my tuppence/SWAG ...

[Edwin Pawlowski]

And look at the rate that China is taking more of our money and has a much stronger manufacturing base every ears while ours crumbles. I did not say it would happen next week, but what if some despot leader in China decided to play games, such as putting on an export tax of 100% or so, or stopped exports in total to the US or a lot of other possibilities? Or if China buys Wal Mart.

Just go back and look at powers of the world in the past such as Constantinople, Rome, Venice, England etc. Follow the gold. It may not happen in our lifetime, but it can, and probably will, happen some day be it China or some other country.

[Dave Balderstone]

Sounds about right. Thanks.

[Kate]

"willshak" wrote

I spent mine a year or two ago. That and most of the money I'll make in the next few years.

[B A R R Y]

Has your BIL read the DOE website?

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[J. Clarke]

Such actions would hurt China far more than they would hurt the US. Contrary to popular belief the US is not dependent on China for _anything_.

As for China buying WalMart, that would actually be a very good move for them, _if_ they could figure out how to keep it working, but I fail to see how it would be bad for the US.

So how does the "gold" figure into any of those you mentioned?

Yes, eventually the US will cease to be the predominant power in the world. That's life. China has four times our population. If they _don't_ eventually become the predominant power in the world then they have something _wrong_ with them. But my GOD what a market that's going to be!

[Jim Weisgram]

[...snip...]

Aww, wreckers should know what to do. Just buy a Lie-Neilsen tool, or some wood...too bad it will be "unpatriotic" to get something from Lee Valley.

[Dave in Houston]

Maybe the Chinese will start exporting their manufacturing jobs to the U.S. and it's cheap Mexican labor! What goes around . . .

Dave in Houston

[evodawg]

Question? Hope I'm asking the original poster. When coming through Utah last summer on vacation with the kids. Stopped near a town, Vernal I think the name was, but it was near Dinosaur National Park on the Utah/Colo. boarder. Anyway this town was completely employed by oil companies building this oil pipeline from Canada to I think Texas. It's funny cause I had never really heard much about it from that point or since. You'd think it would be all over the news because of the environmental impact on the Southwest. Anyway does your brother in law know about this pipeline?

[Curran Copeland]

Probably not. He is an engineer and knows about everything and is willing to tell you. Does a lot of work out of country mostly Russia.