# The Koch Oil Speculation Kingdom **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 11, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053 "2011-06-11T01:31:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2011, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/41 "2011-06-24T15:09:52Z")
Speculation is good for the economy in that it smooths price changes. The Koch brothers do not have enough money to corner the market for oil, if they are speculating on price moves it means that other speculators agree with them, or the Koch brothers investments would not make any difference. If the Koch brothers are correct and oil will be more valuable in the future raising the price now sends a signal that pursuing alternate energy sources is valuable so more investment will be done in that. Also more oil will be produced now by producers in response to the price hike. This increased supply will lower the price. If the Koch’s are wrong about how valuable oil will be in the future they will lose alot of money and be unable to fund the mind control rays which Republicans use to fool the voters. Then the left will have to find someone else to play Emannuel Goldstein. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2011, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/42 "2011-06-25T01:16:40Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > If the Koch’s are wrong about how valuable oil will be in the future they will lose alot of money and be unable to fund the mind control rays which Republicans use to fool the voters. Then the left will have to find someone else to play Emannuel Goldstein. Nah, they are counting on the profits of today as I would not be surprised his own researchers should be telling them that in the future most governments will have to acknowledge the real costs of the carbon pollution. [http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/02/02/207433/koch-industries-carbon-pollution/](http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/02/02/207433/koch-industries-carbon-pollution/) > [@](#): > > Koch Industries, the private company of the billionaire Koch brothers, is one of the primary sources of carbon pollution in the United States. However, the actual emissions profile of the diversified giant, with its oil and gas, chemicals, cattle, forestry, and synthetics holdings, is unknown, because of the lack of mandatory carbon reporting in the United States. > > Brad Johnson has the story — and his estimates of the Koch carbon pollution. > [@](#): > > Koch Climate Denial Is Dirty Self Interest. The virulence of the Koch brothers’ opposition to climate policy “” to anything that would make polluters instead of society pay for the cost of their pollution “” is purely a matter of self-interest. The immense profitability of their carbon holdings depends on their freedom to pollute without consequence “” a toxic freedom they have sold to the American public, and particularly the Tea Party faithful organized by the various Koch front groups, as inherent to the American dream. If their pollution was fairly priced in a free-market system such as the cap-and-trade markets the Koch successfully demonized in Washington (but failed in their attempt to do so in California), the Kochs would be facing costs of anywhere from $1 billion to $40 billion a year. Spending well less than $1 billion a year on their political and philanthropic activities, the Kochs have made a brilliant investment to defend their killer business model. > > The Carbon Liability Of The Kochs Is Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars. Over the lifetime of the Koch Industries, as it has grown from a $100 million enterprise built on oil refining in Stalinist Russia to one of the largest private companies in the world, its cumulative carbon footprint rivals that of most nations. Experts estimate that the social cost of carbon “” the true cost to society of global warming pollution “” is between $30 and $300 per ton of carbon dioxide. The potential liability the Kochs face for having knowingly destabilized the global climate system “” and funded a propaganda network to prevent political action to end their pollution “” represents practically the whole of their wealth. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2011, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/43 "2011-06-26T19:12:09Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Like so much else you have written here, you have this wrong. In fact, you have it backwards. > > Kerry had ethics. That’s why he went _from_ rah-rah war hero _to_ anti-war protestor.. Actually, the word I would look for is “oppurtunistic”. He realized in MA, you get points for selling out your country. But on the National Stage, it’s “Gee, where did I put those medals?” His fellow vets called shennanigans on him, and rightfully so. . > [@](#): > > It’s already been shown that you are utterly wrong about “the guys he served with”; at best it was a guy he served with.. How do you define “served with”? Yes only ONE GUY on his boat thought he was a traitor, but guys on the other boats that worked out that base and his superiors were disgusted by his behavior, as they should be. . > [@](#): > > Do facts matter at all to you, or do you, like so many other Republicans, just make up shit and then declare it be “truth”? Because so far, even when people show you that your facts aren’t actually true, you fail to re-evaluate your position or opinion, and instead argue more vociferously for an unsupported conclusion. At least, that’s what I’ve seen from you in this thread. First, he wasn’t a hero. He’s a guy who claimed purple hearts for owies. Not that this is a bad thing in and of itself, because lots of career guys did that. Second, he and every other anti-war protestor was a traitor, and ANY other country but ours would have imprisoned them or shot them. In fact, that is EXACTLY what we did to such traitors during the World Wars. (Well, we didn’t shoot many of them, but they all got to know nice prison cells.) Debates on wars END the minute the first shot is fired. You fight until they give up or they are all dead. THAT’S war. Every war we’ve fought since Vietnam has been based on “well, if we drag this stuff on long enough, they’ll give up.” It was a terrible precedent to set. More to the point, guy, if Kerry was SOOOOO flippin’ proud of his anti-war activities, why did he try so hard to deny them? Why not run on that? Why not take the Beach at the convention with Jane Fonda and Tom Hadyn and the rest of the traitors? Because in the time since all the cool kids were doing it, Americans realized we shafted the Vietnam vets and Ho Chi Mihn and his buddies were not swell guys. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2011, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/44 "2011-06-26T19:15:00Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > I don’t think he’s recovered enough yet. No, I’m just a cynic. The Republicans are the party of the rich. This is why I can’t really support them at this point. They’ve put the interest of the wealthy above the rest of us. The Democrats, how do I put this… are sissies. Well, that isn’t the word I want to use. the one I want to use could proably apply to cats. I’d like to see a Democratic Party of JFK, FDR and Truman, one that was on the side of working folks, but understood American interests came first. A pity we don’t have that party. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2011, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/45 "2011-06-26T19:24:22Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#): > > What is your beef with Kerry here? Do you think he knowingly lent credence to stories he knew to be false? Were there atrocities committed by American troops in Vietnam? Were any of those referenced by Kerry in this statement? What portion of the atrocities he indirectly refers to actually happened?. My beef is that he and the people he was involved with intentionally looked for these kinds of stories, repeated them with no attempt to verify them. Not to be crude here, but if I said that someone had told me that your mother was a less than virtuous woman, I don’t think you’d be saying, “Well, gee, that’s just what you heard.” I would suspect you’d lay me out, and rightfully so. > [@](#): > > What this has always smelled like to me is that some Vietnam vets grew up hearing about how their parents were heroes in WWII, thought Vietnam was their turn to get that glory, and were permanently disappointed that Vietnam _wasn’t actually a glorious struggle._ But that’s not the war protesters’ fault. The blame goes with their leaders who directed them into a ridiculous war, not the protesters who pointed out its injustice.. Or maybe they rightfully feel that they _were_ fighting a just cause, and the behavior of the Communists after they won justified that. (You know, “boat people” “re-education camps” and “Killing fields” were added to the lexicon thanks to these wonderful people like Kerry and Fonda, who are glamorized in Vietnamese museums. I would make the argument the _way_ the war was fought was criminal in its ineptitude. . > [@](#): > > I agree that Bush screwed up everything he touched, but disagree with the implication here that he isn’t a low-life with no ethics. As for Kerry, that seems to be more of an IMHO than a statement corroborated with any kind of actual fact in evidence in this thread. You mean other than he made slanderous lies about the troops, and then tried to hide it. The thing is, I think Bush is actually a decent guy who just didn’t have the skills to do the job. Kerry was a guy who betrayed his brothers in arms for political gain, and then tried to deny he had done so. But someone put it on tape. I also think that we’d have been in just as much trouble if Kerry had won in 2004. I don’t think he’d have been able to extracate us from Iraq (Obama still hasn’t) prevent Katrina or the Housing Bubble collapse. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/46 "2011-06-26T22:54:31Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Actually, the word I would look for is “oppurtunistic”. He realized in MA, you get points for selling out your country. But on the National Stage, it’s “Gee, where did I put those medals?” > > His fellow vets called shennanigans on him, and rightfully so. Not really. You are misremembering or mischaracterizing nearly every bit of the timeline and his motivations. Unless you have real evidence, not just from the voices in your or other people’s heads, that show that his stated intentions were lies, I’m gonna have to believe the man himself. > [@Recovering Republican](#): > > How do you define “served with”? Yes only ONE GUY on his boat thought he was a traitor, but guys on the other boats that worked out that base and his superiors were disgusted by his behavior, as they should be. I define “served with” as, well, “served _with_”. Not “served at the same time” or “served in the same country” or “served in the same general area but had no interactions of any kind”. Apparently, you define “with” differently than, oh, just about everyone else who speaks English. > [@Recovering Republican](#): > > First, he wasn’t a hero. He’s a guy who claimed purple hearts for owies. Not that this is a bad thing in and of itself, because lots of career guys did that. First, I never said he was a hero. So nice strawman you set up there; how did it feel to try and knock it down and not succeed? You know why you didn’t succeed? Because you don’t appear to know the first thing about Purple Hearts or how they are awarded, or what they are awarded for. You don’t claim or apply or do anything else to have a Purple Heart awarded; it happens automatically to every single soldier who meets the criteria established by the DoD. And you know what that criteria includes? I’ll tell you, since you obviously don’t know: owies. That’s right; being wounded or killed in the line of duty gets soldiers a Purple Heart. Do you have evidence that Kerry wasn’t wounded? Because there’s plenty of evidence, including a necessary treatment/evaluation form from an army medic that says he was. > [@Recovering Republican](#): > > Second, he and every other anti-war protestor was a traitor, and ANY other country but ours would have imprisoned them or shot them. In fact, that is EXACTLY what we did to such traitors during the World Wars. (Well, we didn’t shoot many of them, but they all got to know nice prison cells.) So it’s “EXACTLY” what we did, except it isn’t what we did? Do you have any idea how ridiculous this makes you sound? I mean, you’re completely wrong. You’re even wrong about being wrong about what “EXACTLY” we didn’t do. > [@Recovering Republican](#): > > Debates on wars END the minute the first shot is fired. You fight until they give up or they are all dead. THAT’S war. What if they want to give up, but some of us don’t want to let them give up under the terms they want? Are you saying we can’t debate that, because all debate must cease? How can we agree on terms if we can’t debate them? This is just dogmatic, ill-informed and ludicrous, and isn’t at all supported by any events in any war this country has ever fought. > [@Recovering Republican](#): > > Every war we’ve fought since Vietnam has been based on “well, if we drag this stuff on long enough, they’ll give up.” It was a terrible precedent to set. Sure it has. By the way, are you interested in real estate? I have some land in Florida I’d like to talk to you about. > [@Recovering Republican](#): > > More to the point, guy, if Kerry was SOOOOO flippin’ proud of his anti-war activities, why did he try so hard to deny them? Why not run on that? Why not take the Beach at the convention with Jane Fonda and Tom Hadyn and the rest of the traitors? > > Because in the time since all the cool kids were doing it, Americans realized we shafted the Vietnam vets and Ho Chi Mihn and his buddies were not swell guys. I don’t think your recovery is going all that well. You seem to be stuck in a loop of denial and bad information. Good luck with that. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2011, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/47 "2011-06-26T23:35:06Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > On the actual topic at hand, Lee Fang (who wrote the article) has no idea what he’s talking about. > > The Kochs do not speculate on oil. That’s a pure investment activity. What they do is buy it at low prices and hold it, in actual giant tanks they own, until somone wants to buy it. It’s most definitely not the same thing: the global supply chain desperately needs this service done, and if the Kochs didn’t, the refineries would have to. For various and sundry reasons, they choose not to. But the Koch brothers’ actions don’t change the price of oil. In fact, it actually smooths the price of oil. This kind of smoothing is a huge part of the modern economy, and it’s what keeps swings in oil prices to a point based solely on the underlying supply, and not how recently the giant tanker rolled up. > > If you want to debate the policies favored by the Kochs, fine - although it’s stupid. If you want to pretend their some threats to republic, whatever - and hat involves, how do we say it, “highly selective” judgment. But people who know nothing about their business should not listen to other people who write moronic and content-free hit pieces > [@SeldomSeen](#): > > In other words, speculate. > Play with semantics much? You can’t affect the price of oil by storing it, especially if you’re a private individual. There is simply not enogh capacity to store it. The largest oil tanker can hold 4 million barrels or about 1 hour of the world’s total consumption. By speculation most people understand “storing for the purpose of influencing the price” not simply “storing to take advantage of price differences”. Also, a 4 mill-barrel would be sitting of 400 million dollars, not producing nay money at all. * * * Can the whole “Bush teh suxx0r” stuff go someplace else? ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/48 "2011-06-27T10:36:07Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Not really. You are misremembering or mischaracterizing nearly every bit of the timeline and his motivations. Unless you have real evidence, not just from the voices in your or other people’s heads, that show that his stated intentions were lies, I’m gonna have to believe the man himself. Yes, because we know politicians are such a trustworthy lot. Again, I keep asking, if Kerry was SOOOOOO darned proud of what he did back then, why did he try to hide it? (no one answers that question.) > [@](#): > > I define “served with” as, well, “served _with_”. Not “served at the same time” or “served in the same country” or “served in the same general area but had no interactions of any kind”. Apparently, you define “with” differently than, oh, just about everyone else who speaks English.. Well, no. I served with guys in my platoon, my company and my battallion. They all knew who I was. So someone in another company with me who says “Sgt. B. was a jerk” can honestly have said to have served with me. . > [@](#): > > First, I never said he was a hero. So nice strawman you set up there; how did it feel to try and knock it down and not succeed? > > You know why you didn’t succeed? > > Because you don’t appear to know the first thing about Purple Hearts or how they are awarded, or what they are awarded for.. Again, guy, I served in the Army for 11 years. And, yes, there were guys who claimed purple hearts for superficial injuries. And this was nothing new. My dad said in WWII, there were guys who claimed PH’s for cutting their hands opening C-rations. Let’s get real here. Kerry earned 3 purple hearts in a period of about 90 days, and wasn’t off duty for a single day. People who were with him on at least two of those incidents question them. . > [@](#): > > So it’s “EXACTLY” what we did, except it isn’t what we did? Do you have any idea how ridiculous this makes you sound? I mean, you’re completely wrong. You’re even wrong about being wrong about what “EXACTLY” we didn’t do. . No, actually, we did. Eugene Debs, Commie socialist scumwad who protested against WWI was locked up. In world war II, they locked up Ernst Kuhn, the leader of the German-American “bund”. (Pro-Nazi group.) Kerry and Fonda would have looked just smashing in stripes. . > [@](#): > > What if they want to give up, but some of us don’t want to let them give up under the terms they want? Are you saying we can’t debate that, because all debate must cease? How can we agree on terms if we can’t debate them?. Unconditional surrender is always best. That was the mistake we made in WWI, we let Germany surrender on her terms. Oooops. That didn’t work out, some of them didn’t realize they lost. . > [@](#): > > I don’t think your recovery is going all that well. You seem to be stuck in a loop of denial and bad information. Good luck with that. No, guy, the problem is that you all think you got robbed in 2004. You submitted a flawed candidate you thought could pull the wool over people’s eyes. You thought they wouldn’t dare challenge his sleazy anti-war activity because then you’d bring up Bush’s dubious Guard record. You would have us belived that a group of veterans who served WITH Kerry from Admirals to gunner’s mates, would be rightfully offended by the way he acted 30 years before. Politics is image. Kerry tried to present a false one. So many better guys have had their careers sunk by single words. Kerry’s was sunk by hundreds of them. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/49 "2011-06-27T10:55:01Z")
Recovery is one day at a time, so I’m told. Keep working at it, **RR**. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/50 "2011-06-27T11:28:11Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Recovery is one day at a time, so I’m told. > > Keep working at it, **RR**. Well, it’s hard to stay on the wagon when the other side keeps insisting their foulups weren’t foulups. ---
**Author:** ![LonghornDave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@LonghornDave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonghornDave)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/51 "2011-06-27T15:48:54Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > You can’t affect the price of oil by storing it, especially if you’re a private individual. There is simply not enogh capacity to store it. The largest oil tanker can hold 4 million barrels or about 1 hour of the world’s total consumption. It is possible to affect the price by storing it, but it would really be more of a local price rather than the global price of crude oil. Think about basically the difference in Cushing (West Texas Intermediate) versus St. James (Light Louisiana Sour) for an example of the differences in prices of various regional crudes. High inventory levels at Cushing have caused a those prices to be approximately $15 less than St. James. Total Cushing storage is something like 44 million barrels. > [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > By speculation most people understand “storing for the purpose of influencing the price” not simply “storing to take advantage of price differences”. Also, a 4 mill-barrel would be sitting of 400 million dollars, not producing nay money at all. You may be correct that those are what most people understand the definition to be. That would be a completely incorrect definition though. You would be much better off using the term “market manipulation” as opposed to “speculation” if you want to talk about someone trying to influence the price. There is nothing wrong, morally or legally, with speculating. The same can not be said for manipulating. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/52 "2011-06-27T17:28:12Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > No, actually, we did. Eugene Debs, Commie socialist scumwad who protested against WWI was locked up. In world war II, they locked up Ernst Kuhn, the leader of the German-American “bund”. (Pro-Nazi group.) Kerry and Fonda would have looked just smashing in stripes. > > … > > Unconditional surrender is always best. That was the mistake we made in WWI, we let Germany surrender on her terms. Oooops. That didn’t work out, some of them didn’t realize they lost. Are you proposing that once a war begins, then nobody but nobody dare question the war or protest under fear of arrest? Kind of ironic how the super patriot veterans boast of fighting for our freedom, except the freedom to disagree with them. The WW I armistice was under German terms? Who wrote your history book? You don’t think a driving factor in WW II was the terms that the Germans had to agree to to end WW I? ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/53 "2011-06-28T00:12:47Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Are you proposing that once a war begins, then nobody but nobody dare question the war or protest under fear of arrest? Kind of ironic how the super patriot veterans boast of fighting for our freedom, except the freedom to disagree with them. I think the WHEN a war starts, when you side with the enemy, like Kerry and Fonda did, that’s treason. Because at that point, your only real options are victory and defeat, and defeat just tells everyone else to take a shot at you. Look what happened AFTER we cravenly surrendered in Vietnam. All over the world, the Soviets pulled stuff they’d have never tried before, and this went on for a decade until Reagan said “No Mas”. We didn’t win World War II being all sweetness and light. We interned people (some of whom without cause) we censored the news, we rationed stuff, we raised taxes. In short, we did what we had to do to win. Because when a war starts, that’s the time to stop having the discussion about whether it’s a good idea. War is NEVER a good idea, but > [@](#): > > The WW I armistice was under German terms? Who wrote your history book? You don’t think a driving factor in WW II was the terms that the Germans had to agree to to end WW I? The Germans avoided occupation, the provisional government threw out the Kaiser, the allies didn’t. And, the dirty little secret of the war was that all the sides were on the verge of collapse and revolution. Russia had already gone under, there were socialists and revolutionaries organizing in the west. Germany probably felt that they were going to get decent terms so everyone could turn their attention back to protecting the interests of the wealthy. It was when the Allies stretched out the blockades and insisted on punative terms at Versailles that they pretty much watered the ground for Hitler. the UK and US wanted to be more magnanimous, but we let the French be vindictive. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/54 "2011-06-28T00:27:11Z")
Go back to being a Republican. I don’t want you on my side. The Constitution doesn’t stop being in effect because there’s a war going on. Neither Kerry nor Fonda are guilty of a damned thing, least of all treason. The Reagan nonsense has been thoroughly debunked, I suppose you think the Wall came down because Reagan told it to? We didn’t have to intern Japanese-Americans in order to win WW II, no more that we had to intern German-Americans. The Japanese-Americans just happened to be more identifiable. Regarding the Armistice, I’m not sure where you’re standing. In one post you claim it was favorable to the Germans, in another you state (more correctly) that the terms were punitive and helped Hitler’s rise to power. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/55 "2011-06-28T00:35:37Z")
> [@LonghornDave](#): > > It is possible to affect the price by storing it, but it would really be more of a local price rather than the global price of crude oil. Think about basically the difference in Cushing (West Texas Intermediate) versus St. James (Light Louisiana Sour) for an example of the differences in prices of various regional crudes. High inventory levels at Cushing have caused a those prices to be approximately $15 less than St. James. Total Cushing storage is something like 44 million barrels. Agree in part, because they are two differen types of oil. Also, Cushing has 44 million in inventory -which definitely impacts prices- but they will not store them for a long time. > [@](#): > > You may be correct that those are what most people understand the definition to be. That would be a completely incorrect definition though. You would be much better off using the term “market manipulation” as opposed to “speculation” if you want to talk about someone trying to influence the price. There is nothing wrong, morally or legally, with speculating. The same can not be said for manipulating. Agreed 100%. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/56 "2011-06-28T00:44:30Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > I think the WHEN a war starts, when you side with the enemy, like Kerry and Fonda did, that’s treason. You are delusional. Cite for Kerry proclaiming he was on the side of the Viet Cong? No? Then admit you’re wrong. > [@Recovering Republican](#): > > Look what happened AFTER we cravenly surrendered in Vietnam. We surrendered in Vietnam? Srsly? You believe this? Where was the surrender treaty signed? Who signed it? What were the terms of surrender? Again, you are completely delusional. Please go back to being a Republican. Like **BobLibDem** , I’d prefer you just stay over there. You’re arguments and conclusions are easy to mock, and it’ll be easy for everyone to see what I mean when I point out your posts as indicative of the poor critical thinking skills of the right wing. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/57 "2011-06-28T10:48:35Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Go back to being a Republican. I don’t want you on my side. The Constitution doesn’t stop being in effect because there’s a war going on. Neither Kerry nor Fonda are guilty of a damned thing, least of all treason. The Reagan nonsense has been thoroughly debunked, I suppose you think the Wall came down because Reagan told it to? We didn’t have to intern Japanese-Americans in order to win WW II, no more that we had to intern German-Americans. The Japanese-Americans just happened to be more identifiable. > > Regarding the Armistice, I’m not sure where you’re standing. In one post you claim it was favorable to the Germans, in another you state (more correctly) that the terms were punitive and helped Hitler’s rise to power. 1. I’m not on your side, I’m on no one’s side but my own and my country. The problem with both political parties is they’ve sold out to big corporations and international interests, really. 2. The constitution is a piece of paper. I thought constitutional fetishism was limited to the right. In wartime, the great presidents realized winning the war was a lot more important than some amorphous notion of “rights”. Lincoln suspended _habeus corpus_, arrested political opponents who favored the confederacy. FDR interned citizens of Axis ancestory (not just Japanese, but Germans and Italians as well), limited freedom of the press, I could go on and on. THAT’S what you do when you are out to win the war. The problem with Vietnam is that on some level, LBJ saw it as a jobs program. (Shovel-ready?) 3. Kerry and Fonda are traitors. Imagine Audie Murphy claiming we raped and mutilated German women or Greta Garbo sitting on an anti-aircraft gun in Toyko. Do you think they’d still have careers afterwards? 4. Nope, the wall didn’t come down because Reagan “told it to.” It came down because he poured a bunch of weapons into places like Afghanistan and Nicaragua and exhausted Soviet military might. When the Eastern Europeans realized they couldn’t impose communism on Afghanistan, they figured they might as well have a go. Now, it’s not all fun and roses. In teh process, we enabled jihadism, just like we enabled communism in order to beat the Axis. 5. As I stated, we did intern German Americans. Not as many, of course, as the Japanese. What we forget is that in WWII, people were MUCH angrier at Japan than Germany. Today, we kind of gloss over the Pacific War while glorifying the European one. 6. Final point- yes, Germany got favorable terms after WWI in regards that we didn’t a) occupy the country and b) have trials for the generals and industrialists and politicians who provoked the war and kept it going for as long as it did. THAT’S what should have happened. Ludendorff and Hindenberg and the Reichswehr were running the country after about 1916 or so, but the poor Kaiser was the one who got exiled. That allowed guys like Hitler to claim that Germany was “stabbed in the back”. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/58 "2011-06-28T10:57:02Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > You are delusional. Cite for Kerry proclaiming he was on the side of the Viet Cong? No? Then admit you’re wrong. > > We surrendered in Vietnam? Srsly? You believe this? Where was the surrender treaty signed? Who signed it? What were the terms of surrender? Again, you are completely delusional. > > Please go back to being a Republican. Like **BobLibDem** , I’d prefer you just stay over there. You’re arguments and conclusions are easy to mock, and it’ll be easy for everyone to see what I mean when I point out your posts as indicative of the poor critical thinking skills of the right wing. Guy, I posted that. When Kerry made a statement in front of CONGRESS stating we were committing war crimes with NO EVIDENCE, he was taking the side of our enemies. You do realize the communists were the enemy, right? I mean, I don’t want to sound like a Town Hall nutcase who thinks that you guys are all closet socialists, but, ummmm, gee, you do realize we were on the right side in the Cold War/Korea/Vietnam? Yes, we did cravenly surrender when after the Paris Accord, a Democratic Congress voted to cut off all military aid to the Republic of Vietnam. Kind of hard to continue defending your country when your equipment doesn’t work for lack of parts and ammo and the people who said they’d help you out don’t. We signed a treaty that we knew they had no intention of honoring and we had no intention of upholding. And then we wonder why we have a hard time getting people in a place like Afghanistan to sign on with us. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/59 "2011-06-28T11:21:16Z")
Two final points- On the actual subject of this thread… anyone on the left who sees a Koch brother hiding under his bed is in the same category as a right-winger who sees George Soros under his bed. If you really think elections can be tipped by eccentric billionaires manipulating the economy or buying ads, you are pretty much admitting democracy is a lost cause. On Kerry (and I really hope this is the last i have to say on this)… If what he did after Vietnam was so okay, so right and so wonderful, why didn’t he run on that in 2004. “I’m John Kerry. I helped us lose Vietnam, and I’ll help us lose in Iraq, too!” That isn’t who he ran as. He ran as Mr. “Three Purple Hearts” who was going to get Bin Laden. He voted for the Iraq war so he wouldn’t look soft. I mean, if he wasn’t going to defend his actions, I’m not sure why you guys are. He just tried to pretend those things never happened, and questioned the motives of those who did. (Hint. Their motives were they didn’t like that you ran around calling them baby killers. They didn’t like their relatives looking at them like they were ticking time bombs at Thanksgiving all through the 70’s.) ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053/60 "2011-06-28T15:17:38Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Guy, I posted that. > > When Kerry made a statement in front of CONGRESS stating we were committing war crimes with NO EVIDENCE, he was taking the side of our enemies. [Here is a transcript of John Kerry’s speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 22 April 1971](https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/johnkerrytestimony.html). I disagree that free speech rights and especially the right to say anything bad about our country or our conduct during wartime should be curtailed. “Win at any cost” isn’t compatible with the ideals and values that our country espouses, either in war or in peacetime. Moving on, why don’t you go ahead and point out where Kerry stated we were committing war crimes? I’ll save you the time: you can’t. Because he didn’t ever make that statement. What he stated was that other people testified to committing war crimes and seeing war crimes committed. If I repeat something you said, did I also say it? No. And [the truth is, many of our soldiers were committing war crimes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_Crimes_Working_Group_Files), sometimes at the behest of officers. [My Lai](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre) was already a 3 year old incident when Kerry testified, after all. > [@](#): > > The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files is a collection of documents compiled by Pentagon in the early 1970s during Army investigations into atrocities by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. They detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by United States Army investigators — not including the 1968 My Lai Massacre. Kerry also wasn’t wrong when he said that the war was a mistake. It was. We had no business being there, except to exacerbate the hubris of men who thought they could decide the fate of this small country and thereby the fate of the world. Ultimately, those US troops who died there were unnecessary wasted deaths, victims of other men’s ambitions and lies. I’m not a fan of Kerry, but I am a fan of being accurate when forming opinions, and you seem to consistently form your opinions based on half-truths and misheard (or misinterpreted) information. In fact, you seem to already have your opinions, and not let any facts get in the way of keeping them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-koch-oil-speculation-kingdom/585053.md?page=4)