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| Too young to get this? We don't care. |
Former and future bartender, democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, tweeted of the unprecedented below-zero oil prices "You absolutely love to see it. It's the right time for a worker-led, mass investment in green infrastructure to save our planet. *cough*" (Note: AOC's "cough" was, disappointingly, an attempt at humor and not indicative that she's in the final throes of Covid19.)
The mind-boggling idiocy of her pronouncement is so bad that the Board of Regents at Boston University, her alma matter, is not only talking about revoking her degree in economics, but also tarring and feathering her while tar is essentially free.
When there's no money to be made from drilling, refining, or transporting oil, the supply lines will stop. As will everything that ran on oil, which is pretty much civilization as we know it. And at that point, it's highly unlikely that roving bands of starving survivors will take much interest in windmills, solar panels, or replacing our nation's entire infrastructure with only the tools that the Amish use to raise barns.
Of course, the governments of the world will attempt to keep that from happening by propping up the oil industry with yet more trillions in monopoly money hot off the printing presses. At which point AOC may finally be exposed to fiscal terms like "hyper-inflation" which she clearly never encountered while dancing on rooftops at Boston U ("home of the Fighting Baked Beans").
FROM THE VAULT: HAPPY EARTH DAY!
Today is Earth Day, meaning that if any restaurants were open, Earth could get a free dessert and have an embarrassing song sung to it by hand-clapping waiters and waitresses. Sadly, that's not the case this year, and large public celebrations are unlikely what with the whole "go outside and die" thing.
That's why we're going back to 2013 for this Earth Day visit with Bark Obama and Joe Bitem!
28 comments:
Me: Analextrusion Occasional-Cortex can't POSSIBLY get any stupider or more obnoxious!!!
AOC: Hold my latte.
As for Bark, he's still at it four years later. Unfortunately. I was rather hoping for parvo.
On another forum I speculated on whether the retail price of gasoline could drop below a dollar. Was told that will not happen as taxes on a gallon of gasoline are more than a dollar. True perhaps, but my gut tells me that depends on the state one lives in.
Even with a gallon of gasoline below $2 now, I still see some filling station selling well above $2 a gallon, which makes me wonder if the station is really interested in pumping gas, or the owner made a truly bad deal on the lease.
AOC I'd clueless as to how joined at the hip, for better or worse, we and other techno-industrial nations are joined at the hip with oil.
It heats our homes, it paves most of our roads (I prefer concrete), chemicals from it provide clothing for our backs and in some cases, footwear fir our feet, etc, etc, etc . She among others is a big poster child for how our educational system has utterly failed society.
Last, wonder how the drop in oil prices will affect the public's appetite for electric vehicles.
If AOC is the “future” of her party, I bet JFK is thanking Oswald for getting him out of the Democrat party
@Bobo: I'm kinda surprised more people haven't followed LHO's example.
It is very enlightening for the oil FUTURES contracts to go into negative pricing. This demonstrates how far from reality the stock and commodities pricing exists. From hedge fund operators to the Flash boys, the concept of owning stocks as a partial interest in a company or betting on the possible future price of commodities has revealed just how much of a better chance you can get in Vegas. Our free wheeling economy (with the assistance from obliging, greedy congress critters) has evolved a new class of being - the combination of bankster/stock manipulator/lawyer that acts like magicians to enhance their own wealth and allow us mere mortals to share in their success while in actuality they are crooks who would steal from their own grandmothers. And likely do. The oil pricing debacle began with a single over bought trader that realized that May contracts would require him to actually take delivery of far more oil than he had storage to keep it. Then that same light bulb when on over the heads of dozens of other speculators with the same problem. It's all fun and games....until it ain't.
The oil and gas industry is the lifeblood of our technically advanced and comfortable lifestyle. The laws of physics basically have imposed limits on how efficient "alternatives" such as avian cuisinarts and large scale solar projects can be in capturing energy. Until nuclear, already several generations safer than Chernobyl, and other technologies are employed it is what it is. Even if oil and gas weren't our go-to fuel source, the products made from petrochemicals will be necessary forever.
The timing of the Saudi-Russian attempt to destroy our tight reservoir (shale) production, which really needs ~$50/bbl prices to be viable, is instructive. As with the Chinese, the Saudis and Ruskies are NOT our friends. We forget this fact of life at our peril.
I believe that PDJT understands and will act in our country's best interest, for instance buying dirt cheap oil to fill our strategic reserves. Great business move, get a bargain for the taxpayer, and provide price stability (storage) for our O&G producers.
Well personally, being a proponent of Adam Smith's treatise on Division of Labor, I don't see what's so wrong with letting China make all our pharmaceuticals, PPE and iGizmos, Bangladesh all our clothes, Mexico all the produce, Brazil all the beef, Colombia all the coffee, Canada all our lumber, Japan all the cars, Saudi all the oil, Russia/Kazak all the uranium, Aussie all the iron, India all the steel (and tech support). Then the USA can do what it does best - print all the money.
I didn't know AOC went to college. Oh, that's right, she had a job as a bartender. Paid better than starbucks I guess...
@Snark, w/ all due respect, commodities markets do not exist to enable/satisfy speculators. Speculators are actually a small, but influential, minority of traders. Most of the commodities volumes come from producers and consumers of the commodities. In the case of oil, that means oil producers and oil refiners/pipelines, respectively. Speculators function as "shock absorbers," actually, b/c producers sell and industrial consumers seek massive amounts of the commodities. Speculators are tolerated and even encouraged in these markets because they serve as a MODERATING factor on price volatility. Wild fluctuations still occur. But w/out speculators they would be even worse and more frequent. Seems odd to me to point at a single, unprecedented event, i.e. a negative futures price of West Texas crude oil(which has NEVER happened before), and portray it as typical of commodities market action.
@FishOutOfWater: Next time you refuel, you can see exactly what the taxes (State & Fed) are - that info is required to be posted on the pump.
And even if oil were free, it still costs money to refine, transport, and sell gasoline.
When oil is extraordinarily cheap, why would anyone invest money in alternatives? Are you SURE AOC has a degree in economics?
If there was a day to restock our strategic petroleum reserve, Monday was it. I would have filled my swimming pool with the stuff, if I only had a swimming pool. Sure, I'll take $350-grand to take 10,000 barrels of this this awful commodity off your hands!
Of course, AOC hasn't a freekin clue about what she thinks she wants or how to get there. Complete ideologues like AOC and her fellow travelers know that America must be brought to its knees before the masses will overwhelmingly acquiesce to their Marxist vision. Unfortunately, such an economic calamity would ultimately claim orders of magnitude more lives than the Wuhan Flu will ultimately take.
So imagine you life now, except without heat or electricity, which of course ultimately means no food. So yeah, there will be a worker-led revolt. Except it will be the non-worker people like AOC who may find their heads on a pike in the wake of the ensuing chaos.
Of course, there is at least one upside to a total economic collapse that sets us back to 1820: The whiny kids who think that they got such a raw deal being born into the latter 20th and 21st centuries will finally get a real education; the kind that public education utterly failed at delivering. Millions may ultimately be liberated from their student loan debt, but they'll still be left utterly skill-less in a 19th century world that has absolutely no use for those with master degrees in navel-gazing. The marketplace will have no use for pajama boys. Men will have to be men again, and women will have to be women. I really don't think anyone will enjoy it very much.
As for the Board of Regents at Boston University: If I was one of their alumni, I'd be suing them for a refund on my tuition. AOC has rendered their diplomas a joke.
Happy Earth Day! I haven't watched this yet because I only heard about it this morning, but Michael Moore has a new documentary out to celebrate the 50th anniversary of "Earth Day". Except it's not entirely the usual far-left tin-foil hat stuff you'd normally expect from Moore. It's actually about what a scam the "renewables" agenda really is.
For years now, I've been arguing that it's just a matter of time before the traditional coalition of far-left Progressive groups implodes. This is another sign.
In honor of Earth Day I'm holding all farts until I get outside, and dictating that everyone in my household do the same! Especially the dog.
@Freedom Seeker said ...being a proponent of Adam Smith's treatise on Division of Labor, I don't see what's so wrong with letting China make all our pharmaceuticals...
In a perfect world, I wouldn't either. But here are the problems: China is interested in much more than making our stuff. As has been realized over the last two months, and will soon become apparent over the next several, being wholly dependent upon a communist country that does not share our enthusiasm for freedom and transparency for so many vital items is not a good strategic plan.
In the meantime, the US becomes weaker. Because of our extreme affluence and comfort with letting other countries make the stuff we need to survive from day to day, it's become possible for an ever larger percentage of our population to become economically useless. Most of our high school kids today graduate with absolutely no useful survival skills for this or any other age. Our universities now pump out more people with useless degrees than they do for the hard sciences. After spending the better part or more of 6-figures, most of these people are little more economically useful than our economically useless high school graduates. To make matters worse, most of these people have been educated to believe that they are "too good" to do most of the work that actually needs doing. So to make up the difference, we import millions of poor people to do those jobs.
This is not sustainable.
"If this goes on..."
BTW - there will be a war with China! Did any of you readers hear Glenn Beck today?
@TrickyRicky: "avian cuisinarts" is the essence of humor! The delayed recognition hit me with a paralyzing belly-laugh—a full 30 seconds later, when the penny finally dropped!
@Don in Oregon: Amen! The real impact on the industry (top to bottom, including our pocketbooks) of the dropping futures prices is that they render exploitation (read: chances of future supply increases) more expensive. When the graph-line of cost to produce crosses the graph-line of (expected) income from produced product, companies make the obvious choice to stop expending those costs. All futures pricing does is open the lag-time gap between those two datasets.
@John the Econ: "After spending the better part or more of 6-figures, most of these people are little more economically useful than our economically useless high school graduates. To make matters worse, most of these people have been educated to believe that they are 'too good' to do most of the work that actually needs doing."
It's actually worse than that; there is a job for which their flimsy paper diploma suits them, and it is a task which carries a hefty salary—and an even heftier price-tag for the taxpayer. As politicians, they get to leverage their indoctrination to ever-higher levels of economic idiocy, and then pass the bill to the truly productive members of society. Including those "millions of poor people," of course...
@Don in OR. To compensate, I predict the costs to refine, transport and selling of gasoline will rise because Americans are accustomed to rising gas prices and won’t know the difference between the low cost per barrel out of the ground v. INFLATED processing and delivery costs. The industry will make up the difference one way or the other.
AOC has a degree in economics?! HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!! I figured she had a college degree of some sort, but figured it was in something like basket weaving or community organizing. Either she was asleep (drunk?) through all of her econ classes, or her professor was Keynes. Maybe both?
Up hers I say. Yes, oil is dirty stuff, but like it or not, it's the lifeblood of our world for the foreseeable future, so we can't just shut it off and start using f**king windmills.
@John the Econ,
Moore is still a dirtbag, but I'll agree on the "renewables" fantasy. I still remember when our town implemented recycling with the weekly trash pickup. Everybody was given (in addition to the normal garbage dumpster) a container for paper and another for plastic and aluminum. I watched the garbage truck come by on the first pickup day, and they promptly dumped all three containers into the back of the truck. Your tax dollars at work.
@ John the Econ - sorry, I thought readers of Stilton's blog would recognize sarcasm when applied so heavily. It's obvious to anyone who isn't a Marxist Moron that offshoring all our energy needs will end badly, and sooner than a recent University grad can turn out a double shot caramel latte. But hey, we'll just print our way out of any jam, right? (heck, it doesn't even cost the price of the paper it's not printed on anymore).
As for that get-rich oil arbitrage scheme, hate to break it to you but an average backyard pool would only accommodate about 300 ~ 400 bbls, not quite the payday you'd need to unclog the filter, replace all the daisies, and pay off the neighbors to not turn you in for hazmat violations. However, if you owned a closed gym with an Olympic sized pool ...
Cheers.
In honor of earth day, for mother gaia, I went down to my storage building. I started up the 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible and racked the exhaust pipes for quite a while. It has a 390 engine, four barrel carb, no smog pump, no catalytic converters, no restrictive regular mufflers. I turned up the radio loud with "Runnin' down a dream" by the late, awesome, Tom Petty. I would have driven the car, but the sky is falling with rain and hail.
Suck it, you bitch.
When you store your newly purchased crude oil, don't forget it still contains the very light ends, mainly propane and butane. Very volatile. No smoking. I fought more than a few crude oil tank fires. No fun, and very hot. Mostly set by lightning.
@M. Mitchell Marmel- I can almost literally not believe what a brainless idiot AOC is.
@Fish Out of Water- That's one of the most amazing things about AOC's stupidity: she thinks that oil being basically free is an incentive to further develop energy sources which are even MORE impractical now?
@Bobo the Hobo- I HOPE that AOC isn't the future of her party, but these days a loud mouth and a set of knockers will take one a long way.
@Edam Wensleydale- Well, attempts have been made.
@Snark- Good analysis. There is no real connection between the markets and reality now...everything (well, MOST things) are being propped up to keep the fantasy going a little longer. Spoiler alert: it won't work long, and it will crater hard.
@TrickyRicky- Good points throughout!
@Freedom Seeker- Until those other countries say "Hey, this isn't really money - it's just paper!"
@Easygo- I believe she was a bartender AFTER getting her prestigious economics degree from Boston University. Wow.
The thing that annoys me MOST about the "avian Cuisinarts" is how grossly inefficient they are. If they built a platform, with the same 'swept area' filled w/ 100 6 foot windmills, like you see pumping water, every where, you'd get 10x the energy.
But that would be easy, and low tech, and not schexy... Fmeh.
My broker called me, and said I needed to shift funds to oil, specifically to an ETF that brokers oil. I hope he's right... it's not ALL my eggs, but a good portion of 'em. OTOH, my 401 is so pathetic (had to cash it in to pay the mortgage in '02) losing it won't hurt THAT much...
AOC - that might be the stupidest thing EVAH!!!
APressley - hold my Ripple...
https://www.weaselzippers.us/447500-dem-rep-ayanna-pressley-compares-trumps-coronavirus-response-to-war-crimes/
JohntE - Thx for the link to Moore - may watch it later tonight.
Low tech skills - I can brew, I can shoot. I can reload. I can probably whittle bow and arrows. I can hoe weeds, and ID some of the edible ones...
I'm always amazed at people who think "everyone" deserves Food, Shelter, and Health Care...
For WHAT, fer crying out loud?
Well, b/c they're HUMAN. Why is their only value in what they PRODUCE?!?!?!
Because, if they're not producing, they're parasites. Human shaped leeches, sucking the life blood out of all of us. Thanks, no. Fleas, lice, ticks, leeches, humans. I have NO patience w/ parasites...
I will say this for Sandy head on a pike, she does look pretty tender...
It won't take long after a real economic crash for people to find out that those who won't work are truly parasites and those who will actually work will stop carrying the others. It will be more than just getting kicked out of a commune, as happened to Breadline Bernie. "Work or starve!" will be the new slogan and the new world order. For a while, anyway.
Well Stilton March 25 was the very first international Dante Day so perhaps we will see more of you dad's work next year on Dante Day ???
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/04/22/how-groups-around-the-world-celebrated-italys-new-holiday-dantes-day/
I was late to the board because of our annual oil soaked, asbestos shingle covered, tractor tire bonfire we hold every erf day......
Was hoping some one would put greta in a trunk in a closet for composting to finish the festival......Next year maybe ???
BTW It's been so nice not seeing the great afreak-an Lying dog, bark oboma, that I had almost forgot about him .....
@Freedom Seeker, I apologize for not tuning into your sarcasm. It's not all that often I see people actually use Adam Smith and "division of labor" in the same sentence that are being sarcastic.
Likewise, I really didn't expect anyone to take my "pool of oil" that seriously. The math was literally off the top of my head and yes, it would have had to be a very large pool. (Bigger than your typical backyard pool, but likely less than 1/3rd of an olympic-sized one) And hardly a practical or ecologically sound endevour at that. Yes, that whole pool thing was sarcasm.
@JustaJeepGuy, I frequently reiterate the observation I made when in college decades ago that of all the avowed Marxists I knew when I was in school, absolutely none of them envisioned their futures as one of the "workers". The same goes for today's social justice warriors, who pine for a more just utopia, but are woefully not prepared to work for it in any material way. You are right. When the economy really does hit the fan, the willfully unemployable will be in for a very rude awakening. The real workers will have no patience for either their laziness or their BS. Some might even realize that they were better off under the less seemingly fair, but far more affluent capitalistic society that tolerated and subsidized their easy lives the crash. But I doubt it.
The Latest Documentary from the Moore-on: I've watched about half of it so far, and it's been surprisingly on point that there is very little that is actually "green" about "green energy", and about how most of the green activist establishment has blindly gone along for the ride. They've made many of the same points I've been making for years, like if Germany is leading the world in deploying cheap, green energy, why are they one of the world's biggest coal users with the highest electricity rates? Or where do all the minerals and chemicals required to deploy all this green stuff really come from? And of course, they hit on one of my favorite topics, the scam that is ethanol.
Yes, it is heavy on the neo-Malthusianism, but that's okay with me because it forces them to be more honest with themselves and everyone else: Do we really want to kill off 3/4ths of the world population to save the village?
AOC does not have a degree in Econ. https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2019/04/02/aoc-really-economics-degree-boston-university/
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