Monthly Archives: May 2024

Biden’s Dilemma

27 Monday May 2024

Posted by in Gasoline, President Biden

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        The price of gasoline is critical to inflation, interest rates, economic and the upcoming election in November. The price of gasoline determines world politics and wars. What would you do if you were President?

            The price of gasoline is dependent on the price of oil which is dependent on the amount of oil for sale. The amount of oil produced by OPEC is supposedly tightly controlled by voluntary agreements among its members. Another “restriction” is the sanctions imposed by the United Nations and members of NATO.

            Oil is currently selling for less than $80 per barrel. Iran is allowed to sell one million barrels a day to comply with the UN sanctions but it sells over three million to China and India. By law, we can sanction the small refineries in China but they wouldn’t care since they have little or no trades with outsiders. The only way cut them back to one million would be to board the mega-tankers and confiscate the oil by taking them to another port. After two or three tankers are held the others would be unlikely to carry above sanctioned amount. The loss of two million barrels would raise prices twenty to thirty dollars or more. It could also cause a higher level of violence by Iran and push their nuclear path to a bomb.

            Russia’s sanction is to not sell oil above sixty dollars but they go around this by moving oil on a Russian-flagged tanker and in the middle of the Black Sea transferring oil to other countries’ flagged tankers. The oil is then sold at market price. Stopping this would mean encountering Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and a shooting war with NATO. Price of oil would skyrocket.

            So what would you do and when?

Stupid Tourists

24 Friday May 2024

Posted by in Tourists

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        My Webster’s Dictionary defines STUPID as “Lacking normal intelligence, foolish and silly.” I can’t think of a better word for taking a vacation or business trip in a dangerous area. Americans are in jail in Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, and a dozen other countries for being an American. Some are in jail for stupidly violating drug (and other) laws.

            Currently five people are on bail for having a few bullets in their suitcases. Why would someone be so stupid as to have bullets in their suitcase after the repeated reports of the Turks and the Caicos arresting people for the crime?

            People are in prison in Iraq for hiking near the border and perhaps crossing the border by accident. Hikers from other countries would probably not be in jail.

            Several Americans are kidnapped or killed every year for going to an area known to be dangerous. Parts of South America, Mexico, Europe, Southeast Asia, and some Pacific Ocean Islands are places where many people are killed or kidnapped.

            When these stupid people are jailed or kidnapped they want our government to free them. When they are killed their families complain to our government. Forrest Gump’s mother said “Stupid is as stupid does” and hundreds of Americans prove her statement to be true. These people should combine a couple of axioms’ and “think twice before acting once”. Why criticize a president for someone who acted stupid and went where they shouldn’t have or did something stupid and got caught?!

Cynical About Politics

15 Wednesday May 2024

Posted by in Politics

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        At the end of a segment about Bill Maher, CBS’s 60 Minutes played the end of one of Mr. Maher’s shows. I don’t get his show because it is on HBO. The replay was “You say you are cynical about politics, don’t flatter yourself. Cynical comes from when you know too much. You, on the other hand, haven’t bothered to learn anything.” How true. That is the basis for “siloing.”

            People today tend to allow themselves to have only one viewpoint because they get all their knowledge from one source or one group of sources centered on that point. That behavior allows people to be gullible to the one-sided speeches and broadcasts designed to enforce an opinion however ill-conceived and false. Carried to extreme is how the Oath Keepers and other militias are founded and grow. They believe in their ideals and reject any ideas or knowledge disagreeing with their philosophy.

            Social media and many of the TV channels are just hucksters pushing ideas they may or may not agree with but it is what their scripts and contracts require. That is what being in a silo means – one train of thought with no possibility of a siding to get somewhere else.

            As Bill Maher said, most people only see one side of an issue and jump to a misguided conclusion. The Hamas/Israel war is one. People are rightly concerned about the people of Gaza being starved and their homes and businesses being destroyed by bombs we gave Israel. What they don’t say and the media don’t often tell is about all the protesting against its administration and Benjamin Netanyahu. He only stays in office because of the war and the far right ultra-conservatives who put him in office instead of jail. As long as the war goes on he is safe.

Another Earth Day

07 Tuesday May 2024

Posted by in Earth Day

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        I was in college working on my Master’s Degree in Geography during the first Earth Day. My courses encompassed much of the idea for the awareness of what was happening to destroy life on Earth. My studies were really in infancy

            I do remember one scientist saying we need not worry about running out of fish to eat because the oceans were full of fish. Of course the world population was only three billion and it is now over eight billion. Many of those species are now endangered. One huge change is our appliances, toys, and other items have become disposable so we have mountains of trash. In order to manufacture those disposable products we have dug holes that can be seen from the space station and burned fossil fuels.

            A river in Detroit was so polluted it often caught fire. It and many other rivers in America are now recreational because we no longer dump raw sewage and industrial waste into them. Now we dump invisible plastic particles and drugs into them. One reason crop yields have increased is the greater amounts of fertilizers which wash off into ditches, creeks, rivers, and finally into the oceans causing millions of acres of dead zones. Let us not forget the millions of acres of plastic islands in the world’s oceans.

            We have made many advances. The air was so bad south of Lake Michigan we rolled up the windows in our 1972 Cutlass and held our breath when driving across the area. Today the air is finally clear and clean. Lake Erie has little algae sludge anymore Acid rain is almost gone allowing Northeastern forests to revive.

            With all the advances, millions of Americans can’t see the future of life as we know it is at risk. Unless we make major changes in reducing carbon dioxide and methane gas, our days are numbered!