Understanding the PetroDollar

The thought about high oil prices and inflation does not jibe with Milton Friedman's theories about money. That is, it doesn't until you consider the petrodollar. Then it starts to make more sense.

That means the current high prices for oil won't cause inflation. It will cause the reverse. Less money means high "interest" rates. The price of oil works like interest rates. If interest rates are high, economic output drops. That means recession.

The statistics show a higher rate of inflation, but not all of the stats showed that. If you count "core" inflation, the prices didn't go up. That means aside from oil prices, the inflation rate did not go up. Eventually, the rest of the price structure will fall even while oil prices stay relatively high.

That would be true if oil is acting like a currency. Check back later to see if that is true.

Some folks just can't be happy

There was a tweet about how all the oil tankers are coming to the USA, since the Hormuz Strait got tied up in knots.

The tweet seemed to reveal something that illustrates the ignorance of people about the significance of things. Well, this blog is here to help. You see, for the longest time, there was a disincentive to drill for our own oil. So policies changed, and whaddaya know? More oil. But there's a problem. While pumping oil is great, we cannot REFINE it. It couldn't be refined and it couldn't be sold overseas. Again, a policy adjustment ensued, and whaddaya know? More oil got produced because the oil producers could sell their oil. Funny how that works. When the government lets you sell your product, more gets produced. It's a beautiful thing, as Limbaugh used to say.

I jipped the video at this point so that you will know that I'm not making this stuff up.



This video doesn't come to the obvious conclusion that you should BUILD MORE REFINERIES. The premise of CLIMATE CHANGE is bunk. Oil companies won't build the refineries because the risk from the environmentalist wing may make that a costly mistake. So we import the "sour" crude, as opposed to refining our own "sweet" crude.

Hopefully that clarifies the matter. But who knows? You can draw all the pretty pictures you want, but if nobody cares about the truth, nothing will change.

If you're going to complain about high prices, then quit bitching about CLIMATE CHANGE. duh

Owens v. Kirk

4/12/26:

The fur is a-flyin', and I'm just a laughin'.

Alex Jones? That Fuentes guy? MTG? No worries, mate...

Update:

Tucker Carlson? He makes an allegation... where's his evidence??? It's not enough just to make a charge. You have to back it up.

4/11/26:

Trump distances himself from a group of what is called "influencers".



Owens had a reply on Twitter, which won't be embedded here. She's clearly anti-Trump now.

Quick update! Blogger blocks Truth!? It's been awhile since I last embedded a Truth Social post. Censorship is not good, ya'll.

Update two:

Google owns Blogger, which is the platform for this blog. Blogger also owns YouTube, which does not block itself, I judge. There's a YouTube video of Owen's response to the Trump post. After watching some of it on YouTube, I don't think it worthy to link to, nor to embed. But it is there, and that is worth noting here. So I have noted...

Now Trump's Truth is working! Well, bless my soul...

2/25/26:

 

 

  There hasn't been much on the brouhaha going on with the widow of Charlie Kirk and one Candace Owens.

  But there wasn't anything about Charlie Kirk here while he was still alive.  Not on my radar.  Not much on Owens either, but there are a few posts about her.

  So I've stayed clear of this too.  Actually, the whole thing doesn't make a helluva lot of sense.  It is a tempest in a teapot.

  One thing that I DID get.  I went to Grokipedia, since I stopped going to Wikipedia, and took a look at some of what that site had to say about Erika Kirk.

  One of my pet peeves came up about "far-right" politics, and that made me feel pretty bad about the state our country is in.

  It is little wonder then, that the political left calls their opponents "fascists" since they (meaning the so-called "right") love to attach that terminology to themselves all the time.

  Folks who claim to be on the right don't have a clue about what they're doing. That includes a whole lot of miscalled thought leaders.  For if you do not know who you are, you have at best a 50-50 chance of winning any fight.  That, according to Sun Tzu on the "Art of War".

  Check out history, and if you do check anything at all, then any association with "right-wing" and conservatism in America should repulse you as much as it does myself.

  If there's anyone in politics that emulates Nazism and Fascism, it is the leftists themselves.  The last thing you'd be if you were a true conservative would be to embrace Fascism.  It is the height of either ignorance or malevolence to believe otherwise.

  People need to get a clue.  You cannot win if you concede the fight before you even start.   Erika Kirk a Nazi?  Puhleeze...

Don Surber substack

 

Gotta love it.

Art of the Deal met Sun Tzu in Iran by Don Surber

Trump also is spanking Britain, France and Red China.

Read on Substack

Morality who needs it?

 

There is an economics term called "the commons". This is distinguished from "private property". The capitalist theory holds that socialism doesn't work because nobody really cares about the commons; but if somebody owns it, then they'll care about it.

Perhaps one can expand upon that beyond the economic sphere. Let's take religion. Religion concerns itself with morality, does it not? But nobody cares about morality except for the people who own it. That would be the clergy. Got that?

There will be objections to that, of course. Christianity teaches that the "good sheperd" takes care of the sheep. The sheep meaning the followers of the religion. Therefore, according to the theory propounded above, the clergy only cares about the sheep because they "own" the sheep. Once again, there are those who would object, but isn't that really the case? Who would care about the sheep but its owners?

The good shepherd will guard his flock with his own life. The same is true of private property, is it not?

Once again, there will be objections. There's always objections. This is a working theory. Maybe it isn't the best possible one, but it one that provide a working model for an idea.

Morality is the commons like land is, or any other good thing. Morality is a good thing because it gives predictability to human relations. For example, the common good isn't advanced if there's no enforcement for murder, theft, and so forth. If these behaviors aren't punished, there will be anarchy. Of course there are those for which anarchy would be a good thing, and those people benefit from the anarchy. Consequently, it can be said that they own it.

Furthermore, if anything is a good thing that most people would want, it would be best to have someone in charge of it.

Most people would say that law and order is a good thing. Only the criminal class likes anarchy.

Who would benefit from law and order? Why the government, of course. An anarchy doesn't go with law and order. Therefore law enforcement will "own" orderliness in a society.

Consequently, if you want good things for everybody (in the commons), then you'd better put somebody in charge of it.

If nobody is in charge of it, then the law of the jungle will apply. Nature really does abhor a vacuum. If there's no morality, then the amoral will benefit. If there's no law and order, the criminal class will dominate. In a so-called democracy, if the people want law and order, then that is what they'll get. If people want to be amoral monsters, then that's is what they'll get too.

How do you determine what the people want? Why an election, of course. I think the conclusion follows. But of course there will be objections to that. There always is.

The Shroud of Turin

4/8/26:

Have you seen those type of videos that take a picture or sculpture, and turn it into a life-like depiction of that person? This is a documentary of that endeavor with respect to the Shroud of Turin.

From the video's description section:

A team of graphic experts use cutting-edge software to bring the Shroud of Turin to life.

3/15/26:

A genetic analysis results in anomalous results. In other words, a satisfactory explanation for the cloth still does not exist. But the evidence does show that it is not a forgery.



4/4/21:

The first I heard of it was way back in the early eighties, if memory serves. There was a guy today on the internet who was claiming the Shroud is a fake.

One could argue the point, I suppose. If I were to argue, it would be along the lines that nobody knows how such an object could have come into being. You can claim it is a fraud based upon certain tests, but how do you explain its very existence?

The technology to reproduce the relic still doesn't exist, if I am not mistaken. Once that is figured out, maybe there would be a cause for claiming fraud. Or there wouldn't be. The next question is if you reproduce it today, how did somebody in the middle ages fake this, and why?

Find an answer for that one.

How the LOTR Gollum character was created for the screen

High praise for the actor in this video.