While I’m generally trying to avoid politics, I was curious and did watch Trump’s public address last night, but I don’t think that what I took from it was his intended message. He kept talking about how we had beaten them, how they were weeks away from nuclear weapons (the same ones he claimed to have destroyed last year putting their research back decades), and how it is no big deal if the Strait of Hormuz is closed because we are the largest oil producers in the world, and other nations can just buy oil from us instead… but if the other nations care about oil from the Middle East, they can go in and take it themselves.
Here’s the problem with that – we do produce a lot of oil, but it is not the heavy crude we get from the Middle East, its the lighter shale crude, and 70% of our refineries are only equipped to handle the imported Middle Eastern heavy crude. 90% of the oil we import is the heavy crude that we are unable to produce here domestically, we export the shale crude and import heavy crude. Oddly coincidentally, Venezuela, the sovereign nation who’s leadership we overthrew in January, produces heavy crude – which we now just happen to control.
So here’s an analogy: There’s this town with a few farmers, one grows only tomatoes but only eats potatoes, while the other grows potatoes and sells them to anyone. The tomato farmer sells their tomatoes too, but really wants potatoes so they end up beating up a neighboring farmer and takes his potato fields. The tomato farmer then starts another fight with the main potato farmer who shuts down the road to the potato farms, so the tomato farmer just yells, “who cares, you can buy my tomatoes instead! If you want potatoes, you can kick that farmer’s ass and open the road yourself!”
That’s basically what’s happening now. Our global representative started a war, and is now saying the repercussions are for others to deal with. To be fair to Trump, a lot of his ideas and policies are sound (the implementation on the other hand… not so much) but his vanity projects and starting this global crisis will be all he’s remembered for.
Anyhow, that’s enough for today, thinking about politics this long is making me nauseous…
Song of the day: Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel
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