I realized I hadn’t bought gas for the trusty RAM1500 for almost two weeks so I hadn’t been paying too much attention to gas prices around here.
I had errands to run after breakfast so I had the opportunity to check gas prices (and gas up the pickup). About a week and a half ago gas was going for $3.55 at my ‘reference’ gas station in my town. Yesterday it was $4.09. Mid-grade was $4.39. (The trusty RAM 1500 requires 89 octane.) I did not gas up there as I did find mid-grade for $4.30 one town over when I was running errands and topped off the tank. With prices this high I don’t like to let the gas tank get much below a half tank because if it does the total can exceed $75 and the pump will shut off, meaning I’ll have to run my debit card through the pump...again.
I figure we’re nowhere near seeing how high gas prices will go. (Thanks, SloJo and WRBA!)
At least I don’t need to drive anywhere near as much as I used to since my employer has made our hybrid work schedule – Mondays and Fridays working from home and Tuesdays through Thursdays at the lab – permanent. That knocks my commute down by 40%. (Not that it’s all that long to begin with, being a little over 9 miles door-to-door.) So between trips to and from work, running errands, and occasional town duties to attend to, it takes about 2 weeks for me to use a little less than a half tank of gas.
Update: I noticed the price of regular at my reference gas station went up another 8 cents to $4.17, seeing the new price this morning on my way back to The Gulch after finishing my pre-church run to Walmart.
==++==
Has Putin bitten off more than Russia can chew?
Seeing what has been happening to Russian forces in Ukraine I’d have to say the answer is yes. They expected a quick “Shock and Awe” victory but what they have instead has been an “Aww S**t!” slog.
While some folks have been pointing out that Russia is huge, and it is as far as land area is concerned, it doesn’t have the economic power it needs, nor is its military nearly as capable as they would have you think. The comments in this Instapundit post make the case that Russia has seriously misjudged their ability to take Ukraine and to do so quickly. They may find holding it will be even more difficult.
You would think they would have learned that lesson in Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
==++==
President * is told a hard truth by the President of Finland..
Biden, speaking on the current situation [in Ukraine], said “You know my predecessor who sat in this seat, President Obama, used to say it would be alright if we left everything to the Nordic countries.”Touché.
Niinistö, responding, then said, “Well, we usually don’t start wars.”
I am proud to see the president of my mother’s homeland willing to not pull punches, particularly when it comes to SloJo.
==++==
I would have expected this is Russia, not in the US...well, except maybe California.
It looks like the totalitarians in New York, specifically the Rochester, New York school district totalitarians have decided they are going to disabuse parents of the notion that they have a right to freedom of speech, particularly parents of students within the Rochester School District.
It looks like the school district has been monitoring the social media of conservative parents, collecting information and then using it to silence those parents by trying to get them fired from their jobs. Just who the hell do these people think they are?
A New York school district has caused outrage among parents after it was discovered that the district set up a program to monitor the social media of conservative parents and then took that info to the parents’ employers in hopes of having the parents fired.Supposedly, posts by conservative parents, and particularly Elena Dinverno, critical of the school districts decision against returning children to in-school education were seen as physical threats against members of the school board by calling for protests outside the board members’ homes.
The spy program was created by the Rochester Community School District, according to a lawsuit filed by parent Elena Dinverno, according to The Center Square.
Dinverno said in her lawsuit that the school’s spy program caused her to lose her job in 2021.
This isn’t the only report I’ve heard of school districts/school boards trying to intimidate parents who didn’t agree with the school district administration decisions and policies that parents saw as damaging to their kids and to their education.
Heck, one Wisconsin school district has decided that parents don’t have the right to know their children’s gender identity, taking the stance that children do not belong to their parents, but to the state in the form of the school district.
That proves to me that we have some major problems with our ‘betters’ that could be solved by
==++==
Anyone who has taken an economics course understands what causes inflation: a shortage of goods, an increase in the money supply, or both.
When goods are in short supply, the cost goes up because the people are willing to pay more to get those goods. Sometimes the shortages are caused by weather, transportation issues, raw materials shortages, natural disasters, war, and so on.
When the money supply is increased more quickly than an economy’s expansion, you have too many dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services. Prices go up to ‘absorb’ the extra money supply.
When both happen at the same time the inflation can be mindboggling. We’ve seen that at an extreme when hyperinflation occurs because the government cranks up the printing presses and cranks out bills that become worth less and less as the money supply explodes. (We’ve seen that recently in Venezuela and earlier in Zimbabwe.) As the money becomes worth less the cost of goods and services goes up. It can get to the point where the money’s value becomes so low that goods and services can no longer be produced or purchased.
But inflation isn’t caused by greed…except when it’s being used as an excuse by economists and politicians infected with the Marxist Economics virus.
We listened carefully to President Joe Biden’s Tuesday night State of the Union speech for what he plans to do about our growing inflation disaster. We were not impressed. Apart from paying lip service to inflation’s impact on working families, Biden’s proposals will, if anything, make the problem far worse.So SloJo, DaHo, Pelosi, Schumer, and the usual suspects wanted to severely damage the US economy. This is how they can go about it and do so while claiming they are doing everything they can do ‘save’ it. And once the economy is damaged, they can then implement new directives that will leave our ‘betters’ in charge and those of us not ‘them’ will be the new serfs in their new feudal state.
--snip--
To begin with, he blamed corporate “greed” for inflation, which is scapegoating of the worst sort. To fix this, he proposed price controls and government subsidies on “computer chips, prescription drugs, health care premiums, weatherization projects, renewable energy, electric vehicles and child care” to get companies to boost output.
Corporations don’t suddenly get “greedy.” And greed isn’t the cause of inflation, as Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman noted in perhaps his most famous pronouncement: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Many others have said the same thing.
Despite being in Washington when the last great inflation occurred, Biden is about to make the same mistakes made by multiple presidents that let the inflation problem go from being a brushfire to an all-out conflagration.
Sounds paranoid, right?
Then how does one explain the eight years of economic insanity during the Obama years and the stupid and ill-advised actions SloJo, Pelosi, and Schumer have been shoving down our throats since SloJo took office?
But one thing I have been keeping in the back of my mind about is an old saw that, knowing SloJo and the gang in mind, more likely applies:
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.These days I am more inclined to believe it’s stupidity, particularly in light of the SloJo’s/WRBA’s mis-steps since he took office.
And so it goes.
==++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where it’s almost 50ºF and sunny, there’s more open water appearing on the lake, and where Town Meeting season is upon us.