Obligatory, 3.11.20

The Biden campaign wasn't dead after all, but he looks pretty ill.

It looks like the Dems will nominate a near-cadaver for POTUS. To me, it is all the same. They are all bad. Maybe if he is nearly dead, he cannot do as much harm. But he still lies his butt off when he is lucid enough to get a few words out.

The lefties are fully committed to lying. It really doesn't matter if it is Bernie or Biden, they'll both lie in order to win.

I know what the Dems will say. They'll say that Trump lies. It doesn't make any difference what Trump does if they are going to lie every time they open their pie holes.

If they would tell the truth, then we could look at Trump. Otherwise, the best they can do is to make an equivalence. By the way, if they claim to be more competent, then all they can accomplish is to claim to be better liars.

In other news, the market has gone south again. I have to wonder what the market is seeing right now. It appears that the Saudi-Russian move in the oil markets is what may be moving the market recently. If there is any exposure in the oil markets that may make a price plunge problematic, then maybe that is what we are seeing with this sell-off. What I'm getting at is that this may have ripple effects.

In the end, if domestic oil production is not too expensive, then they can weather this storm. If not, there could be a massive restructuring of the oil market. That is what we could be seeing now.

Why Trump wins, and why he will continue winning

The idea here is that the Democrats are incompetent and that Trump is not. Of course, the Democrats are saying otherwise. If they would stop and analyze the situation honestly, then they would conclude otherwise, and begin to shore up their problems.

But they won't. They are heavily invested in their incompetence. How? Their class warfare is one factor. Class warfare does not recognize competence. It actually punishes it. The result of this is a growing lack of basic competence, especially within their own ranks. All failures are externalized. It cannot be all everyone else's fault. Especially if it continues. But the failure WILL continue because of the basic unwillingness of these people to recognize their own FAILURES.

A prime example of this is the Spygate scandal. The Democrats keep pushing the erroneous notion that Russia put Trump in the White House. It should be obvious by now that this is not so. But they stubbornly cling to that erroneous notion, and consequently, it makes them INCOMPETENT to deal with the problems that it creates for them.

Another example is this coronavirus scare. They keep pushing ideas that won't help, like OPEN BORDERS. The fact that Trump's limited Chinese travel to this country is credited with the relatively low infection rate in this country. If the Democrats had their way, the infection rate would be a lot higher. The Democrats are pushing what should be obviously a failed strategy in order to hurt Trump. But it will harm them instead.

Yet another example is their haste in trying to exploit the market selloff. When pump prices begin to fall a bunch due to the oil price war, the economy will receive a boost. This will actually help recovery to any of the ill effects of the selloff.

It all happened the same way in the late nineties. Although there was a recession in 2001, it wasn't caused by the oil glut of the late nineties. Actually, the low prices then were considered to be HELPFUL in delaying a recession. The actual cause for the recession in 2001 was the extremely tight monetary policy in the preceding year.

The yield curve was inverted in 2000. It was about that time that the dot-com boom went bust. The FED popped that bubble, and the terrorist attack of 9-11 sealed the deal, and the economy went into recession.

Unless there are some other events and wrong turns, Trump will continue to win. The Democrats won't be able to exploit these events, because they will be focused on the wrong things. This is due to their own incompetence. Trump will win because he is more competent than they are, and it will be obvious to enough people for him to be re-elected.

$20 barrel oil soon?

There's talk about that happening this year. There are two factors in that outcome: 1) The coronavirus and 2) an OPEC price war.

How does that price translate into prices at the pump? If $10 oil is $1.00 per gal at the pump, then the price should be fairly close to a buck. Not a buck but close to a buck. Imagine that.

Back in 2008, when oil peaked at $150, the prices around here were about $4.00. The most I ever paid for a gallon of gas was about $4.15 if memory serves.

The oil boom might go bust.

If we are lucky, that will be all that happens. What might be a bit of worry is if there is a popping-of-a-bubble type phenomenon. This could have ripple effects throughout the economy.

Incidentally, I note that Saudi Arabia is going to pump over 10 million barrels per day. Is there really any need for such output in the midst of a glut?



Update:

Wow. Well, I didn't expect a big selloff today. It was already ongoing by the time I posted this. I posted it at about 9:30 central time. The market opens at 8:30 central.

I don't follow the markets much anymore. The thing that alerted me to this selloff was the Bongino Show. He called it a "somber" day. Maybe he bought the dips earlier. There is a problem with buying dips. You have to time them at bottoms, or you may ride that sucker to the bottom with big losses before the thing bottoms out.

If I knew how to buy at bottoms, I would be wealthy right now.

Html

I've experimented a bit with Html recently. Perhaps there are those of you out there who have noticed.  This is a post to test some Html that I have adapted for my own use. If the experiment succeeds, future posts will look a lot like this one.  The experiment is intended to solve a long-term problem that I have had with the Blogger interface. I cannot create posts offline and paste them into the Blogger editor. The interface scrambles the text and requires extensive editing to make it readable.  The Blogger interface does allow for Html, which is how this post will be constructed.  Html as a subject never did interest me, so this required a bit of study before I came to this point. The Html code will encapsulate the text so that it will be properly formatted with any text that I enter. At least, that is what I hope happens. If it works, there will be little if any editing necessary once I get my post written up in a plain old text editor. I can just paste it in the pre-written Html and bingo, a properly formatted post. So here goes.

Obligatory, 3.6.20

What to write about?  It seems that there was no post yesterday, and that is becoming something of a habit.  Not that I haven't been keeping up with the news, but writing about it seems not to be the rage these days to write up a post.

I can always work to improve my techniques, and today there is something new that I'm trying.  Actually, it isn't new, but I have a new twist on it so that I can maybe write something off of it.

But that is not what I want to write about, so I won't comment upon it too much.

There's this bit of old wisdom that may have come from the Bible--- The wages of sin is death.  By the way, what is "sin"?  I think it means a moral error.  You could generalize that out to all errors of all kinds. 

For instance, you may have to pay for your "sins of youth". The one thing that comes to
mind for me is my dietary habits. Yep, that was a mistake of my youth. I'm paying for
it now that I am an old fart.

But sins can come in a lot of flavors.  You can say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  I've done that before.  Yep, and I paid for it too.  Chuck Schumer may have to pay for this kind of "sin". His sin was to speak intemperately.  People may get a bit worried that a leader would use such language.

When it comes to politics, I think the Democrats, in general, may have to pay for a lot of sins.  But before you can pay, you have to stop your doggone sinning.  Otherwise, you just get deeper into the hole.

Donald Trump might win big in this coming election.  The rest of the GOP is another matter.  They are a lot like the Democrats in that they won't stop their doggone sinning.  I'm thinking of Pierre Delecto and his defense of Hunter Biden.  This is the kind of thing that the GOP could win big on, but they won't go after the Dems because their own hands are dirty, and they know it.

It would be a mistake for this country to reward the Dems with any kind of victory at all. But how can you reward the GOP with a victory when they are no better? The best thing the GOP has going for it is Trump, and they keep trying to screw him.

Don't give me that bit about the GOP being unified.  They are "unified" only up to a point.  Otherwise, they are like the Dems.

As for the Dems, they are going to pay for their flirtation with communists.  If there is one thing that Americans might be still unified on is that we aren't commies, yet.

But give it time...  In the meantime, we will all pay for this sin.  If we are lucky, we won't succumb to it.  Otherwise, we are DEAD.  Literally.

Before you drain the swamp...

You are going to have to find a way to beat stuff like this.  Basically, the Democrats are benefitting from their own malfeasance.  If you don't make them pay for their malfeasance, then no attempt at draining the swamp will ever work.

Here they are, attempting to profit off their own malfeasance.  They are causing this outbreak of coronavirus, then they try to blame Trump for it.  That's the malfeasance and the attempt at profiting off of it.  You have to make them pay for that.

How?  That's the 64K dollar question, now isn't it?  Well, if you don't attempt to crack it, then you won't have a chance at cracking it.  The GOP won't, so Trump will have to find a way to do it.  How?

We are in an election year, and so far, they are still doing it.  Maybe with less effectiveness, but they are still doing it.

It has to be stopped.

Time for choosing

Today is primary day in Texas. 

There were long lines at the voting precinct, but it may not any busier than usual.  The reason for the lines is the change in voting procedures.  Evidently, the people in Austin decided to foolproof the process, but it sure seems longer now. 

Maybe because it is new?  It isn't hard to vote with this new fangled thing.  What it does is print out your vote as a backup for the digital part.  In order to get that result, you have to feed a sheet of paper into a machine, then make your choices as usual.  When finished, you cast your vote, and the paper is printed out.  Then you take the paper to another machine, which records the vote and drops the paper ballot into a secure box.

I suppose all of this was done because of what the Democrats are claiming about Russia, but it seems to be unnecessary to me.  Nevertheless, it is hard to see how anyone can claim fraud with this system, but they'll try anyway I suppose.