Foreign Babies Enjoy U.S. Oil, While Domestic Gas Prices Rise!

Young Swede Enjoying US Oil

After nearly touching the $3.00 level a few months back, gas prices here in the U.S. have roared upwards,with fanciful talk of prices hitting an unlikely $5.00 by summer. Of course such talk happened last year as well, so we tend to dismiss it. The chatter is driven by Republicans, who are hoping that some sort of event creates the type of negative impact that could knock President Obama out of office in a way that their own candidates cannot. A rising gas price is a perennial giver of hope to the few who want a new president at any cost. The President has argued for alternatives to oil, and Republicans have argued for the status quo, but more of it. Which makes this article in U.S.A. Today an eye opener.

For the first time since 1949, the United States exported more gasoline, heating oil and diesel fuel last year than it imported, the Energy Department reported today. Bloomberg writes that to offset weak U.S. demand, refiners exported 439,000 barrels a day more than were imported the year before.

(USA Today)

Notice the reference to "weak demand" in the United States. One would think there would be raging hunger pushing prices up, no? Are rising prices weakening demand? Or should weak demand cause prices to fall domestically? At what point do sustained elevated gas prices drop demand, and at what point does that falling demand cause prices to drop? It's all very chicken and egg, with speculators, manipulative refiners/oil companies, and world demand muddying the rationality of the market.

The article also quotes from a 24/7 Wall Street article that states, "The secret to making a profit in refining these days is for refiners to source crude oil domestically and then sell the refined products to US consumers at prices based on imported oil."

If anything, we seriously need some congressional action and study in terms of how domestic pricing is structured, but we can be pretty sure that won't happen soon. Domestic production is at an eight year high, and yet street prices rise in tandem, and Republicans will continue to give aid and comfort to the status quo. Clearly, more oil, is not the solution, when the market is manipulated, complex, and international. But at minimum the prices we pay should reflect the reality of the ample supply.

Newt Wants Cars Big Enough For Your Gun Rack

Newt Energy Policy

Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential candidate and proxy deep thinker, arrived at Oral Roberts University's Maybee Center on February 20th  to speak to a crowd of enthusiastic students and supporters. The very school I wanted to attend back in the day was probably a good choice for him, given that the entire evangelical world has lost its moorings, substituting a stale and immoral rhetorical politics for the love and concern that a supposed follower of Christ is supposed to show.

Newt began by contrasting economic numbers when he left office with those of today, absent any clarification regarding inflation, the changing world, contributions by Democrats or fiscal destruction by Republicans.

Newt went on to divide the world in two and without nuance: un-American liberals on one side, and morally focused constitutionally loyal conservatives on the other.  He mentions American Exceptionalism, and goes on to suggest that a secular Obama is waging an unconstitutional war on religion. Newt barges forward, saying that he will undue every act of religious bigotry by the President, who is essentially labeled a hedonist, a religious bigot, and a radical. Newt is a master at associative name calling, where he tosses out negative imagery in one sentence and Obama's name in separate sentence, letting your mind do the mental link and subsequent evil thinking.

He goes on. "Arrogant Obama" is trying to redistribute and portion out the pursuit of happiness.  The President's energy policy is anti-American and best defined by his suggestion that we buy smaller cars. Newt draws a huge laugh, from Christians, about the inability to fit one's shotguns inside a small vehicle.  We can thus reduce Newt's own reductions down to "Energy big enough for your car and its gun rack."

According to Maureen Dowd of the N.Y. Times, Newt goes on to declare Obama "the most dangerous president in modern American history." Coming from someone outside of Osama Bin Laden's family, or the random Aghani, such hyperbole borders on

But I didn't listen that far. Because I got lost at the point where an audience of ostensible Christians took moral advice and flagrant distortion with equal vigor, and from a man who is as marginal a Christian as he is presidential material. Not that I think Obama is anything more than casual, cultural Christian himself. But Obama is not out pontificating on morality as much as he is out there pushing policy remedies for difficult problems.

I am of late confounded by the fact that the very same school that produced Michelle Bachmann and that blindly supports every word that flows from the mouth of Gingrich, is a school I was accepted into and eagerly hoping to attend. It was the Wall Street and big city inspired belligerence of my father that led him to refuse my request to attend. Back then he said, "Nobody will respect your degree, and Wall Street certainly won't."  (He had already mapped out my career in his head, and fortunately he is not alive to see how far I am from his life's goals for me.)

While my father migh have overstated his disdain--for ORU has produced many talented, hardworking and capable grads-- I am saddened that the idea of a degree from O.R.U. now brings me a certain amount of disgust.

Big Girls, Little Kids, and Men Who Don't Love Them

We live in a relatively free country, where the state rarely imposes in a way that interferes with the day to day of our lives, and despite what various online malcontents (aka Ron Paul supporters) suggest. It amazes that people get all worked up over policies like NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act (and its detainee provisions), while people ignore larger trends and choices that can destabilize the country or people's lives.

It always amazes what we work ourselves into a frenzy over, substituting unlikelihoods for clear and present dangers. We see the speck, while ignoring the monsoon. We see this even in the immediate societal conclusion that raising kids without the direct input of both sexes won't, years from now, turn out to be a massive boon of instability and confusion and misbegotten social aims.

The New York Times has a short piece about the rise of unwed mothers among the under-30 female set, with the number of children being born to that group rising to 50%.

Further:

"73 percent of black children are born outside marriage, compared with 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites. And educational differences are growing. About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less"

(N.Y. Times)

While some of these kids do have males in the home, often it's a temporary presence.  Many of the women don't seem compelled or able to marry. This situation poses both present and future costs. Present costs when women mask their household income and remain single in order to obtain benefits from the government, and future costs when these children fail to prosper in the way that those kids in stable homes do.

And yet, we are quite free to replicate this activity over and over. Woe to those who come down on anyone for being shortsighted or selfish. We could blame men for their hand in this, and they are surely worthy of blame, but ultimately children don't grow in everyone's internals. Women's priorities and ability to assess situations are wanting.

***

In a distantly related matter, a female and I began watching a movie on BET, a station I normally won't go near. But I was trying to get more involved in women's television and be supportive. It was the story of a fat woman who wants a man, goes to Africa with a friend and cousin, and finds a model gorgeous man who accepts her as she is. In the process of rediscovering her own inner fat beauty, she comes up with a clothing line for fat women that is instantly a worldwide success. She also learns to accept that she too is worthy of the love of a model gorgeous man because she is beautiful. (Using no known set of measurable and objective parameters).

What was laughable to me was the ability of the movie to affirm one message (of accepting your own fat self as is, flaws and all), while simultaneously reaffirming to women that they could have it all, including thin, buff, model status men with abs of steel and cheekbones constructed by Michelangelo.

"Where are the fat guys who they should be going out with, lessons having been learned that all are worthy of love, including guys with beer bellies or fat heads?"

Near the end of the film, but before the return to Africa where the Nigerian stud (doctor stud at that) proposes marriage, the three women end up in a club where two relatively attractive and thin women refer to them as "fat bitches".  The main character turns around and dismisses their diss with her new found positive identity and suggests that those women need to bring others down in order for them to feel good. Everyone in the club applauds her moxie and sides and dances with the fat girls.

While taking a rest from the dance floor, a new set of guys, all thin and good looking, offer the women free drinks.

I told the woman next to me that it was absurd. She said, in response, "Oh no, that happens. When guys  see you all positive and putting out positive energy, they get attracted to that."

"That's nonsense," I said.

I started to elaborate, but then otherwise. A strikingly beautiful man, or any man, will hook up with an overweight woman, to the extent her face is cute, her butt is round and big (if he is a butt man), or she has breasts that are not merely due to weight and will retain size after she loses. And, if by way of the physical attributes, she also has a decent personality, he may... MAY, take a gander. He may sleep with her, or he may make her his friend.  He may remotely go beyond that, but there must be some inherent and "typical" feature that excites him, beyond fat and her new found "I am a Queen" confidence.

In this movie, the central character had no figure and was quite flat chested, unlike her less plump, but plump and bookish friend who was rocking a chest.

The point here though, is that women delude themselves. They carry a great amount of power in terms of the men they date, or even the children they decide to have or not have. Society has changed and granted freedom.

Unfortunately wisdom is not being doled out by God or the government, and women remain in difficult situations when they fail to take into account that men are vastly different in how they process things, and what they value.