Thoughts On A Sunday

The summer heat that was forecast to arrive yesterday didn’t materialize until today. “Highs in the 90’s” for Saturday turned into “highs in the low 70’s” instead. It was quite humid throughout the day, so it wasn’t quite as comfortable as it might have been. Because of the forecast of a hazy, hot, and humid day to deal with yesterday I made sure to get all of my weekend chores done by 1PM. (Fortunately the forecast was wrong, at least as far as the temps were concerned, both yesterday and today. It did reach into the mid 80’s today, but with the humidity it felt oppressive.)

One of those chores was paying the boatyard for winter storage and pre-launch maintenance of the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout. BeezleBub picked it up from the boatyard after work yesterday, taking it to his place so I can load all of the gear onboard. (I usually remove all of the gear from the boat before it is stored away for the winter. This includes the cushions from the cuddy cabin and the stern seats.) Today I am focused on cleaning the aforementioned gear before returning it to the boat. At least I am able to do the work in the garage which kept me out of the direct sunlight.

The plan is to launch the boat after work on Monday as there’s no way I or BeezleBub wanted to go anywhere near the boat ramp at our town docks on a sunny and warm weekend. I’m not that much of a masochist.

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The endless war in Ukraine continues, with the Russians making little if any progress in the south while the Ukrainians have pushed the Russians back in the north and east and continue destroying Russian trucks, tracks, aircraft, missile launchers, anti-aircraft systems, and fuel and ammo dumps.

What I find surprising is the calls for Ukraine to “lay down and play dead”. To quote Glenn Reynolds, “Why would they do that when they’re winning?”

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Gas at my local reference gas station hit $4.799 for regular Friday. The station where I buy gas for the trusty RAM 1500 (which uses 89 octane) was charging $4.849. This was 15¢ cheaper than 89 octane at the reference gas station.

Gas prices are even worse at the gas docks, with my reference marina (across from where I dock the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout) charging $5.179, but the highest price for 89 octane on the lake $5.899, in this case on the north side of the lake. The overall highest price seen was $6.259 for 93 octane.

The ‘official’ start of summer, Memorial Day Weekend, will likely see even higher prices. I’m betting regular will $6 by July 4th and gas dock prices will be closer to $7.

It’s this that makes me glad I can work from home 2 or 3 days a week and that my boat doesn’t use nearly as much gas as so many others.

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It seems the Covid train is running out of track, so The Powers That Be have come up with a couple of new diseases to use to assert control over the populace. One is the hepatitis afflicting young children and the other is ‘New And Improved Deadly Disease’, monkeypox.

I have to wonder how long it will take before the news media starts terrifying the populace with scenarios of people dropping dead in the streets.

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I like the question Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has been asking: Why is Biden begging other countries for oil production while stifling it here? That’s a question I’ve been asking for over a year. As a number of others have asked, why is it he thinks foreign oil will generate less CO2 than domestic oil?

CNN reports that Biden and his team have worked to arrange a kiss-and-make-up session with Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman, whose government Biden previously called a “pariah,” among other things.

When Biden needed some oil, he changed his tune … and got snubbed. With inflation being driven by high oil prices, suddenly MBS is a prince rather than a pariah...

What did everyone expect when Biden and WRBA decided to cripple our domestic energy industry with the stoke of a pen?

Oil producers need capital to explore leases, and they don’t have it — thanks in no small part to Biden’s oft-expressed hostility to new drilling. His EO 13990 makes it far more costly to explore and extract, and his promises to curtail drilling make capital investment in new oil production an investment dry hole. That is hypocritical anyway, given that Biden wants other countries to produce oil for our use anyway. It’s not the drilling and extraction creates emission concerns — it’s the end-stage usage of the products. And Biden wants more of it now because inflation from the predictable increase in gas prices is suddenly a problem for his political party.

It’s as if Biden and WRBA have no understanding of economics or the energy industry. Who’da thunk it?

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And I am now off to clean the boat gear and get it to the boat, so that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where we’re seeing a preview of summer, the folks from away are everywhere, and where we shy away from looking a gas prices.