Scattershot Post: Too many Issues, So Little Time
The Price of Gasoline
The price at the pump is what the public notices. The recent release of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is irrelevant to that issue. The issue isn’t number of days of consumption this will replace (3); it’s number of days’ imports it will replace, which is much better. Fourteen days, almost two weeks. And it will take about four weeks minimum to have that measly effect. Oh, and the day after Biden’s announcement the global price of oil went up.
The claim that we can replace the use of fossil fuels with electricity is risible. Something has to generate the electricity, which must then be carried afar to where it can be used. If you want to get rid of coal, the answer is increased production of natural gas through fracking. Which is prohibited. Or hydroelectric power on a small scale, which would be unmanageable by government regulation. I designed a hydroelectric generating plant near shore for a novel I wrote that took place in part on Vanuatu. It captured and stored wave energy using crude technology. The other option is increased nuclear energy, but we always draw the wrong conclusions from nuclear energy accidents.
Chernobyl was a dud. In the last 35 years the cumulative radiation deaths are fewer than the annual number of deaths in the UK caused by falling out of bed. Three Mile Island was a snooze fest. The safety systems worked exactly the way they were intended. I should know – we were less than a mile from the power plant during the incident.
The one in Japan was run through so many iterations of approval of risk mitigation and environmental impact studies that by the time the actual plant was put up there wasn’t enough money left to raise the plant ten meters above the waterline. The tsunami then created the disaster.
Whatever the Issue, Make This a Tool you can Use
For thirty years California has been disintegrating. A major problem was limitations on police, de facto decriminalizing crime, and protecting the rights of the mentally ill to shit in store aisles. It was OK when mobs invaded and looted Walgreens, WalMart, CVS, convenience stores and bodegas. The kind of places the maggotry shopped in. But let a mob invade and loot Luis Vuitton and Nordstrom, now that has the governor up in arms. It's astounding how easy it is to get an elitist’s attention when the pain of the proletariat is inflicted on him.
Bill DeBlasio destroyed public safety in New York, not to mention shredding the First Amendment. He led the effort to empty the jails, to release prisoners so they wouldn’t be at risk from COVID19. He closed churches, denied Jews the right to traditional funerals, and ordered everyone to stay indoors. Except, of course, for VIDs (Very Important Democrats) such as Chris Cuomo. He defunded the racist police by a billion dollars, resulting in record numbers of black children being shot and killed. He seemed clueless about why he was so hated.
Political Parties
I was a Democrat for 49 years, have never been a Republican. I left the Democratic Party in 2009 when I realized that it had abandoned liberalism for thuggery. I self-identify as a lower-case “L” libertarian. We are generally suspicious of state power, and are social liberals who recognize that liberalism is a luxury that we can afford so long as we remain fiscal conservatives. Plenty there for everybody to hate. I’ve been called out for only criticizing Democrats. I suppose it’s because of a sense of betrayal. I have never seen a purpose for the existence of the Republican Party except to oppose abortion. Every abortion position I encounter is based on a belief in miracles, from the Sandra Day O’Connor school of numerology to the proposed Illinois legislation that did not consider an infant born and alive until he/she left the hospital where he/she had been born. I’m a theist, specifically a Deist, and I don’t believe in miracles. I do believe in definitions, such as for humans. Except there is no standard definition for what makes someone a human.
In my case I know the scientific definition of homo Sapiens Sapiens. “A multicelled organism containing the homo Sapiens Sapiens genome in every nucleated cell.” Thus, when sperm and egg unite no human has been created. On the first division of the Zygote we have a homo Sapiens Sapiens. I have no objection to killing most animals, they’re delicious. I do have an objection to killing my own species. It’s so unseemly.
The Bill of Rights is Not a Suicide Pact
The District Attorney for Milwaukee County was fine with letting people out of jail, even people with multiple pending felony cases, so long as it was just blacks killing blacks. The prisoners deserved our pity. But now that one of his frequent fliers has actually gone and done the unforgiveable – killing white people – he’s aghast that someone with multiple pending felony cases was released on minimum bail.
Scattershot Post
I can sense the frustration and am in the same place. Sadly my faith in politicians has steadily eroded over time. Somewhere in the '90's I think things went bad, by 2000 it was every man for himself. Society destroyed by dot com.
As usual a lot to think about.