I'm Getting Into Commodities!!!

Hello there, faithful Patriots!

It's your friend and mine, me, The Chuckmeister, bringing you some great new economic news!  Yes, even in this time of turmoil and strife, there's still a port in our collective storm.  You knew I was a graduate economist, didn't you?  Well, I am.  Among other things.  Like being a ferrier, a nascent crypto-paleozoologist, a philatelist and an ecdysiast (look it up). 

Anyway, I'm sorry to say I missed the run up in Bitcoin.  Imagine that!  Totally made-up money selling to $tens of thousands of dollars.  I'd bet you could even sell people cars out of a vending machine!

And in real estate, too.  Missed that one.  And collector cars.  Collector cars!  Cars I owned new and didn't like!  In fact, I'm usually a day late and a dollar short on most investments.  But I think I'm on to a winner now, friends and neighbors!  And I'm going to open it up to you, too!  

    I'm going to get into commodities!  

You know, like they sell on the Chicago Board of Trade.  Like wheat, and pork bellies, and cattle futures.  Oh yeah, and like ENERGY!

Have you noticed the rapid, astronomic, Earth-shattering recent increase in the price of oil?  And how that's impacted the price of gasoline at the pump?  Of course you have, Pilgrim, because you're a Pilgrim!  And you can see beyond the end of your nose, unlike those who are making policy back there in the Swamp.  The dimbulb weenies conjuring up new and novel ways to implement full-on socialism.  Those guys.  So you've seen the price of Biden Gas double since he took charge.  It's past $7.00 a gallon here in Taxifornia!  I even saw a photo of a Sacramento pump displaying $9.00 a gallon !!!  And it keeps going up every day.  Day by day, up and up...and UP!

So, hey, I've got an idea!  I'm now filling up my car on Monday, parking it, sitting my ass down in front of one of those really good old movies (there hasn't been a really good NEW movie made in years!), opening an adult beverage, and waiting for Friday.  Come Friday I'll offer to let folks siphon out my gas on E-bay, top offer gets the juice!  The motion lotion!  You know, that most compact source of energy man has ever discovered.  And they'll have to bid fast, 'cause who knows, I might just decide to keep my car parked and sit on my investment for the long term... 

After all, I can't afford to drive it!

Or maybe I'll buy another old car with a reeeely big gas tank and start my business expansion.  I remember when Jimmuh Carter was screwing up America.  It got so bad back then that Arabian oil tankers were parked off our East coast, refusing to offload their crude.  Carter pissed the sheiks off so much they cut off our oil!  We could only buy gas on alternate odd-even days according to our license plates.  Gas lines out past the horizon!  It was awful!  Sort of like the life we're beginning to lead, once again.  

So what did I, The Chuckmeister do back then?  You just knew I'd have come up with something devious, right?  I bought a 1973 Dodge Polara at the time.  It was my fifth or sixth car, as I recall.  It was yuuuuge!  It was the size of Des Moines and had rats living under the back seat.  It used to be white with a tan vinyl top.  I say "used to be," because there was scant evidence remaining of either.  

To wash it would have been an affront to water.  

It was about 20' long and required two parking spaces.  It was also on its last legs, huffing and puffing and blowing blue smoke out the tailpipe as it groaned down the street.  I think I paid $200 for it.  So why did I buy it?  It had a 26 gallon gas tank.  And I'd fill it up, to the brim, when my day to buy gas came up, and then siphon it whenever I ran out of Jimmy Gas.  It was brilliant.  I was EVERYBODY's best friend!  

Business plan, you know.  Got to have a business plan.  It's the bane of entrepreneurs like me.  I can see some real possibilities with this one here, folks.  I chose not to make a profit on my neat little idea back then, but I just might now.  Maybe we can buy some old cars, you and me, off Craig's List, or Whomever's List, and start making some real money!  If you're interested in getting together with me and creating a new "fuel-remarketing empire," let me know.  Franchising is a slam dunk!  

Anyone got any old, barely-running cars with big gas tanks laying around?

Laying Siege...

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

                                                                                         George Santayana, 1905

Putin intends to lay siege to Kyiv.

Every move he's making, and has made, signals that intent.

He intends to kill every living soul there until or unless Zelenskyy surrenders.  And I doubt he'll surrender.  That means Putin will bomb the sh*t out of Kyiv until it's rubble.

If he does, it may well signal the beginning of the end of the world.  Because we cannot, and simply WILL not, permit Putin or anyone to starve Kyiv into submission, we'll be forced to intervene.  NATO will be forced to intervene.  At a time when it's less to our advantage.  At a time when we could have, and should have, intervened.

Can't our "leaders" look two weeks into the future, when the Ukrainians have already told us they'd be out of food and fuel and medicine, and know that we'll have to intervene?

But anyone with any sense already knows that.  Sorry...

It'll be less to our advantage...the world's advantage...than it was when the Poles offered up their Mig-29's to Ukraine, if we'd just let them fly them to Ramstein Air Base, in Germany, they said.  Sort of like the Poles washing their hands in public.  Shifting blame to us, if we'd just take it.  

We should have taken it.  We're supposed to be the Leader of the Free World.  Supposed to be...

Our boy wonder Secretary of State Tony Blinken initially said sure, absolutely, we'd be happy to take them, how about right now?  And then, good ol' Joe wimped out.  It was reported he felt that might prove "escalatory."  Where do they get these friggin' words, anyhow?  

Of course, state-of-the-art Javelin missiles, and Patriot rocket systems...aren't.  Somehow.  These deadly rockets kill pilots, and Mig's kill pilots, they sort of both kill pilots, so...  

Do these folks have sh*t for brains, or what?

We're either going to help the Ukrainians fight and win their own war, RIGHT NOW, or we're going to have to engage our NATO brethren in putting together a "sky bridge" like we did for post-WW 2 Berlin, later.  To bring them the food and fuel and medicine and ammunition they're going to need to survive.  Which would require we put our airplanes in Ukrainian skies, parachuting supplies 'til the skies darken.  Skies currently patrolled by Russkie jets.  So, we'd just HAVE to protect our cargo planes with attack fighters, right?  RIGHT?  Which just might put them into a fight - or flight - scenario, right?  And cause the very same World War we're working so hard to currently avoid.

Do we have sh*t for brains, or what?

I'm not absolutely sure, but I'm guessing there's about 20 million older folks like me who are so goddam pissed they are ready to puke.  Pissed at the way the bozos in Swampland wimp out.  It shouldn't be left up to a dictating despotic killer like Putin, or anyone else, to dictate to us, the United Friggin' States of America!  Don't they remember when the USSR's Stalin starved more than four million Ukrainians to death?  Don't they remember when we won two World Wars?  They are a bunch of pus*ies!!!

The moral of the story is, if a fight is inevitable, it's almost always preferable to fight it now, versus later.  When your enemy will have time to better arm, and better prepare.  Sun Tzu again.  The "Art of War."  Might be nice of our "leaders" in the Swamp would read it.  I have.  A word to wise should be sufficient...

Of Note:  I used to be stationed near there, and actually trusted to do some of that "military intelligence" stuff you read about...   

A Bald-Faced Lie...

I know that I, the Chuckmeister, have believed in the past that those I elect would never choose to look me in the face and lie to me outright.

I no longer believe that.

Our President, one Mr. Joe O'Biden, delivered unto us on TV the other morning a speech.  In this speech he stated that we, America, are producing more oil and gas now than at any time in our history.  More even, he told us, than when he assumed the Throne.  And that it's not HIS fault if we're not producing more.  Yeah, I think that's called gaslighting.

So, thinking that good ol' Joe might be blowing smoke up our collective arses, I did a little checking.  I Googled it.  I know, I know, it didn't take much.  But Joe could have done so as well.  In the darkness of his Rehoboth Beach mansion he could have Googled for an answer and one would have magically appeared.  And you can do it too.  And I soon learned, and now you will have learned, that America's total oil and gas production breaks out as follows:

     Oil Production, 2019:            Oil Production, 2021:

12.9 Million Barrels/Day    11.4 Million Barrels/Day

Clearly, even those with rudimentary math skills like my own can finger out that we're at a 1.5 Million Barrel/Day shortfall, right now, as we speak.  That's because Joe shut down the Keystone XL-Pipeline on Day One, which would have produced more than 500,000 Barrels/Day by now.  And he ended all oil and gas leases on Federal land that same morning.  While greenlighting Russia's Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, from Russia to Germany, guaranteeing their long-term fealty to that country.

And then went on a telephonic World Tour to try and convince our enemies, long-term sponsors of terrorism, to please produce more oil so we can give Putin the finger.  He looks past the Permian Basin and the Bakken Oil Deposits here at home, which make America the owner of more proven oil deposits than any other country on Earth, to beg Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and Iran to produce more. 

What a disgrace! 

So he cannot have it both ways.  He cannot do everything to signal his war on energy, and then look us in the face and mumble through another speech, filled with falsehoods, written by some pimply-faced, recent college graduate in "Climate Awareness" with a hard-on for the oil companies.  And then shuffle back to his lair, primped and coddled and kept in an information cocoon, bereft of the facts, and primed for the next time his handlers need to trot him out and tell another lie to the American People.   

You don't see it all that often, but you suspect it all the time.  This is a time when you have the proof.  Your President looked you in the face and lied to you.  And his Press Secretary, Peppermint Patty, did the same thing in a press conference the day before yesterday.  And whether he did it while knowing he was doing so, or by permitting those around him to lie through him to you and me, it matters not.  He lied.  

So to all those of you who chose to throw in with this bozo, You see what you did?  You like $7.00 a gallon gas?  You like world wars?  

VOTE BETTER NEXT TIME!!!  

A Wake...

I'm sorry to report that we'll be hosting a wake here at Fortress Chuckmeister next Saturday, March 12th.

Yes, my friends, there's been multiple deaths in our automotive family.  The "Felicity Ace," a 650' foot long, 60,000 ton container ship on its way to the freedom of America from Bremerhaven, Germany, I'm sorry to say, just sank.  Oh, the humanity!  And although that would be a tragedy, the ship was filled with expensive automobiles. 

And not just ANY automobiles.  No, fellow gearheads, the "Felicity Ace" held some 1,100 Porches, averaging about $100,000 each, 187 Bentleys, my personal favorites, going for about $150 - $200,000 a copy, and assorted other Audis and Volkswagens.  1,000 Porches.  My heart is heavy, and I know yours is as well.  And that includes a bevy of GT-3's and custom GT-2's, no longer in production, ordered by its dealers no doubt for their personal collections.  Some models have even been discontinued, elevating their value tremendously.  In fact, it's been reported the value of the autos lost in this devastating wreck is some $487,000,000.  

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that there were a few dozen new Audi electric autos deep down in the ship's hold, which are currently receiving the blame for the fire.  That's because they believe their batteries may have spontaneously combusted.

They do that, doncha' know.

So we will gather at the Fortress next Saturday to express our grief at the loss of cars we've always wanted, but could never afford.  And now some of them have even been tossed overboard, like so much extra trash, into the deep.  

So all you folks with electric cars out there, sleep with one eye open from now on; your car my set your garage on fire...  

"Hangin' in a Tree..."

Those words are banging around in my gnarly old noggin like a BB in a boxcar these days.  

Sergeant Bob Rosenau, one of the guys chosen to train a bunch of us enough to keep us from dying in Viet Nam, famously said to us all one bright Fort Leonard Wood day: 

"There's a guy who's strapped himself high up in a tree, just waiting for you to come a' lookin' for him.  And when you do, unless you listen up to me right here and right now, he'll blow your ass off.  'Cause it's HIS country.  And he'll be fighting for it.  And he'll probably win.  So just remember, keep your heads down when you get off that plane, 'cause he'll be hangin' in a tree..."

Rosenau had been among the first 100 "MAG-V (Military Advisory Group - VietNam) trainers who'd been sent there to teach the regular army of VietNam how to fight its own wars.  That was 1963.  He was tough as nails.  I was told he'd crawled up the side of a burning 10 story brick building to save a family one day.  I personally watched him do 1,500 pushups one afternoon.  Yeah, think about that.  

Anyway, by the time he was training me up in the, shall we say, finer aspects of killing people, it was 1966, and we had 500,000 of our best draftees, like me, fighting - and dying - in the jungles of Viet Nam.  You see how a little skirmish can grow into a full-blown war?  Into which professional pool players like me, guys who just wanted to race cars and chase girls could have been drawn?  And he was preparing us for the house-to-house, village-to-village fighting we would surely face.  A fight with the cards stacked against us.  Because it was their country.  Their village.  Their back yard.  And we'd be trying to take it from them...

You see any parallels to the war Russia's waging against Ukraine?  Putin expected, I'm assuming, to waltz right in to Ukraine and be welcomed as a liberator.  I guess that's what his generals have been telling him, because that's what he wanted to hear.  But this has been the single most monumental military miscalculation in the history of the world, I'm guessing.  Any student of the "Art of War" by Sun Tzu would tell you Putin has blundered without equal.  There will be Ukrainians "hangin' in a tree" during what I predict will be the most punishing and costly occupation any country has ever attempted.  He doesn't have the forces.  They don't have the supplies.  

Putin has done the very same thing Hitler did when it attacked Russia during World War II.  It outstretched its supply lines.  Armies run on food, and fuel, and ammunition. 

And I predict it will be out of all three in just about a month.

Oh yeah, and they also run on morale.  Morale is at all all-time high in Ukraine, fueled by its intense hatred of Putin.  And morale among Russia's military, now 95% committed to the fight, will go nowhere but south.

It took us more than two decades to cut our losses and seek an exit from Viet Nam.  It took Russia more than two decades to seek an exit from Afghanistan.  One can only wonder how long it will take Russia to seek an exit from this war-of-it's-choice which has turned it into a pariah, almost completely isolated nation.

The "friends for life" Chinese and Russians have formed the new "Soviet-style" bloc.  The new cold war has begun.  And, perhaps so has World War III.  The battle lines are now drawn.  It's good versus evil.  As Sun Tzu said, "In times of peace, prepare for war."  I'd like to think our Americans would react as have the Ukrainians were the situations reversed. 

I'd like to think that, but I just can't...

SOTU...

Those of you fortunate enough to have avoided witnessing President Joe O'Biden's traincrash of a SOTU (State of the Ukraine) speech the other night, I, The Chuckmeister, your Scribe Without Portfolio, your Journalist Without Agenda, will hereby summarize it for you:

The first one-third of the speech was all about Ukraine and how we're with them, and how much we're with them, and here, let me show you a couple of people from there, and we're really, really with them, and like that.  Yeah, I know I write funny.  I talk like that too...

Then he spewed out a completely disjointed word salad of obviously poll-tested one-liners designed to gather applause.  And to be used later this year in Democrat reelection campaign commercials.  He rambled around like a BB in a boxcar, flitting from one topic to another, never fully explaining a position.  Dana Perino, famous ex-White House correspondent, quipped, "It was like he tripped and fell on the way to the lectern, and then picked them up in no particular order and started reading."

Poorly.

An example?  Sure.  At one point he blurted out, "Don't defund the police, FUND the police!"  Okay, nice.  But where did that come from?  No rhetorical segue.  No explanation.  No apology.  Especially after his Party has done its very best to bleed our police dry.  But that was it.  Nothing else about it.  And then he careened off on another tangent.  

The very best part, however, was the chance to witness our own poll-selected Vice President Kamala Harris and the Speaker of the House San Fran Nan Pelosi put on a show behind good ol' Joe.  They literally vibrated with glee at each of his mumbles.  They clapped furiously and jumped to their feet repeatedly.  But the best was when Nancy stood up and rubbed her knuckles together manically while readjusting her dentures that got me.  You had to see it.  It was pure theater.

But he ended with a promise, fellow Patriots.  You gotta' listen up America, 'cause he's promised to accomplish the following:

     *  Beat the Coronavirus.

     *  Treat mental health.

     *  Support our veterans.

     *  And, of course, cure cancer.

He made no mention of solving global warming, or curing worldwide hunger, or somehow convincing the Chicago gangs to stop shooting at each other.  Or making electric cars run on fairy farts.  Or welcoming a Bigfoot or three to the White House.

Or talking Vlad (The New Impaler) Putin into putting down his weapons and playing nice.

A poll taken the day after O'Biden's speech gave us the public's stark reaction: now just 35% of us support what he's doing.  That's an all-time low.  Oh yeah, and only 25% of the Independents.  That's the folks who are responsible for electing Congressweenies and Presidents.  And they're not happy with this one.

But hey, Joe, you be sure to keep it up!  Just like our boy Putin, you're like a mushroom.  Kept in the dark, and covered over with somebody else's s**t... 

"Biden's War."

There's a concept in the law called "but for."*

The short definition goes something like this: "but for" this or that happening, then that other thing likely wouldn't have.  Or, if you hadn't have done so and so, then such and such wouldn't have happened.  Or if little Johnnie hadn't thrown the ball at Mrs. Brown's house, then Mrs. Brown's window wouldn't be in pieces.  It helps to assign blame, as well as legal liability.  And it's worked for first England, and then us, since the Magna Carta.  More than 500 years.  

Okay then, fellow Patriots, leaning on that concept, I'm saying that the blame for the tragedy ongoing in Ukraine is just as much the responsibility of our Joe O'Biden as it is Vlad Putin.  Why?  Goes like this:

     -    But For Joe O'Biden's having shut down the Keystone-XL Pipeline on the morning of his first day in office; and...

     - ...But For his having "green-lighted" an extension of the Strategic Arms Agreement between us and Russia, early in his first year in office, without first having demanded necessary changes; and...

     -  ...But For his having killed all drilling in Alaska's ANWR, good for more than 500,000 barrels a day, finally open after more then two decades of our trying; and...

     -  ...But For his having issued an Executive Order killing all future oil and gas leases on our public lands, which comprise more than 85% of our Country, BTW; and...

     -  ...But For his having approved - without any negotiations at all - the continuation and utilization of Russia's Nord Stream 2, a pipeline running straight THROUGH Ukraine, directly to Germany; and finally...

     -  ...But For feckless, barely-there Joe O'Biden having personally engineered and overseen our disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan, leading to the senseless loss of 13 of our best warriors as we withdrew, perhaps the very worst and most humiliating defeat America has ever suffered; 

Then I say Vlad Putin, Russia's very own dictator, witnessing all of this, and being on record for more than two decades as having said the very worst geopolitical disaster Russia ever experienced was the fall of the Soviet Union, picked exactly this time to exert his will over the world and tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

So yes, it's Putin's fault.  Of course.  He's a cold-blooded ex-KGB operative, with (up to now) firm control over Russia, with a big yacht and a big house and $20 Billion in the bank.  And he wants in the worst way to make Ukraine knuckle under to his will.  To permit him to re-install a puppet regime, like he had before Zelensky and the popular revolt of 2014.  And it seems he doing it in the very worst way.

But notice, all you prospective haters out there, Putin didn't attack for the entire four years of the Trump Administration.  Nor the Geoge W. Administration.  I think he knew better.  But he took the Republic of Georgia in 2008 during the Olympics while Joe O'Biden was Obama's Vice President.  And he took Crimea while Joe O'Biden was Obama's Vice President.  See a pattern here?  Joe had a ring-side seat for what was to occur.

And so did all of those who voted for him...

*     Two little add-ons: Yes, I write long sentences.  I have long thoughts.  And second, I was trained by the Army to figure stuff out before it happens.  And to then prepare for it so it doesn't interfere with the mission.  And if it does, to "eliminate" it.  Maybe the White House could use a few folks with that training to help get their tit out of this wringer.  The wringer they put it in...