Uncle Joe

[Shirley]

Oil has entered a bear market, down 23% from the October high.

Baring any unforeseen events, (and there are always, always "unforeseen events"), it's currently expected that the average price for a gallon of gas in the US will fall to ~ $2.99/gallon, soon. Nevermind OPEC+ is meeting at the end of November...

Thanks again, Joe!

[jfish26]

Oil has entered a bear market, down 23% from the October high.

Baring any unforeseen events, (and there are always, always "unforeseen events"), it's currently expected that the average price for a gallon of gas in the US will fall to ~ $2.99/gallon, soon. Nevermind OPEC+ is meeting at the end of November...

Thanks again, Joe!

ELECTION INTERFERENCE

[Sparko]

For the first time in almost 40 years, the United States economy outpaced China:

economichttps://www.meidastouch.com/news/u-s-economy-ou ... n-40-years

[jfish26]

For the first time in almost 40 years, the United States economy outpaced China:

economichttps://www.meidastouch.com/news/u-s-economy-ou ... n-40-years

Well yeah, the CCP got Hunter's contact info through TikTok and then bribed him through payments to offshore accounts of shell LLCs to get Joe to take the lead because the next step is Joe making good on the bribe and tanking the US economy right AFTER the 2024 election so that China has four years of prosperity.

This much is obvious, if you've just done the research.

[Sparko]

For the first time in almost 40 years, the United States economy outpaced China:

economichttps://www.meidastouch.com/news/u-s-economy-ou ... n-40-years

Well yeah, the CCP got Hunter's contact info through TikTok and then bribed him through payments to offshore accounts of shell LLCs to get Joe to take the lead because the next step is Joe making good on the bribe and tanking the US economy right AFTER the 2024 election so that China has four years of prosperity.

This much is obvious, if you've just done the research.

It is like Mission Impossible following their logic. . .

[Shirley]

Oil has entered a bear market, down 23% from the October high.

Baring any unforeseen events, (and there are always, always "unforeseen events"), it's currently expected that the average price for a gallon of gas in the US will fall to ~ $2.99/gallon, soon. Nevermind OPEC+ is meeting at the end of November...

Thanks again, Joe!

(This is from Seeking Alpha. I'd post the link, but it would give you access to my account there so, no.)

If only Joe Biden wasn't old:

Crude oil bounces as further OPEC+ production cuts said to be on the table

Crude oil rebounded Friday from four-month lows hit in the previous session, as traders see a growing likelihood that OPEC and its allies will work to stop the nearly 20% plunge in prices since late September.

Reuters and Financial Times both reported that OPEC+ is expected to consider whether to make additional oil supply cuts when the group meets later this month.

Saudi Arabia, Russia and other OPEC+ members already have pledged total cuts of more than 5.1M bbl/day, or ~5% of daily global demand, in a series of steps that started late last year, but Reuters reported at least one unnamed OPEC+ source believes the existing curbs might be not enough and the group likely will study whether more could be implemented when it meets starting November 26.

OPEC+ members also are angry about Israel's war on Hamas and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, according to Financial Times, which reported additional cuts of as much as 1M bbl/day could be on the table.

While no repeat of the 1970s oil shock is planned, "you should not underestimate the level of anger there is and the pressure leaders in the Gulf feel from their populations to be seen to respond in some manner," a source told FT...

[MICHHAWK]

i wonder why no one from the uncle fanclub has wished uncle happy birthday. maybe they think if they don't say anything the world won't know he flipped the calendar on another year.

[jfish26]

You’re right, MICH. People aren’t talking about Biden’s age and so best to let sleeping dogs lie on that one. Finger on the pulse as usual.

[Overlander]

i wonder why no one from the uncle fanclub has wished uncle happy birthday. maybe they think if they don't say anything the world won't know he flipped the calendar on another year.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who had a birthday on that same day.

Surely, you wished them all a Happy Birthday…right?

[Shirley]

Today In: Thanks, Joe!

Florida gasoline prices keep going down as many residents begin their Thanksgiving road trips.

Prices reached a new average low of $3.04 per gallon Sunday, according to the AAA-Auto Club Group. That’s 15 cents less than last week’s record low.

AAA-Auto Club Group spokesman Mark Jenkins said more than half of gas stations in the state have prices below $3 a gallon.

'While there could be some fluctuations in the coming weeks, AAA expects gas prices to remain low through the holidays, unless oil prices suddenly spike,' Jenkins said.

Last week, the price of U.S. crude oil was $72 a barrel. To compare, the price was $93 a barrel in late September, $21 higher.

[...]

[Shirley]

So...Much...Winning!

Thanks, Joe!

From Seeking Alpha:

On Monday the benchmark S&P gained 0.7%, fully recouping the 10% decline that meets the standard definition of a correction in just 16 trading days. That is the fastest rebound since the 1970s, according to data from Dow Jones.

The recent "moves for the S&P now leave the index at its highest level since early August, having now advanced by +10.4% since the low in late-October," Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid said. "In fact on a monthly basis, the index is now on course for its best performance since July 2022."

[jfish26]

Today In: Thanks, Joe!

Florida gasoline prices keep going down as many residents begin their Thanksgiving road trips.

Prices reached a new average low of $3.04 per gallon Sunday, according to the AAA-Auto Club Group. That’s 15 cents less than last week’s record low.

AAA-Auto Club Group spokesman Mark Jenkins said more than half of gas stations in the state have prices below $3 a gallon.

'While there could be some fluctuations in the coming weeks, AAA expects gas prices to remain low through the holidays, unless oil prices suddenly spike,' Jenkins said.

Last week, the price of U.S. crude oil was $72 a barrel. To compare, the price was $93 a barrel in late September, $21 higher.

[...]

Somewhat of an aside but: in a just world, someone who drives a full-size (or bigger) pickup for vanity reasons would be prohibited from complaining about gas prices. Or, at least would be loudly shouted down by members of his own tribe.

[jfish26]

I've seen a concerted shift among the media, to frame 2024 in terms of stakes, not odds. This (which is well-supported by the links that are not embedded in the excerpt below, but are on the post itself) does a very nice job putting a bow on where things stand coming into this morning.

November 20, 2023

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... er-20-2023

Yesterday, David Roberts of the energy and politics newsletter Volts noted that a Washington Post article illustrated how right-wing extremism is accomplishing its goal of destroying faith in democracy. Examining how “in a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics,” the article revealed how right-wing extremism has sucked up so much media oxygen that people have tuned out, making them unaware that Biden and the Democrats are doing their best to deliver precisely what those in the article claim to want: compromise, access to abortion, affordable health care, and gun safety.

One person interviewed said, “I can’t really speak to anything [Biden] has done because I’ve tuned it out, like a lot of people have. We’re so tired of the us-against-them politics.” Roberts points out that “both sides” are not extremists, but many Americans have no idea that the Democrats are actually trying to govern, including by reaching across the aisle. Roberts notes that the media focus on the right wing enables the right wing to define our politics. That, in turn, serves the radical right by destroying Americans’ faith in our democratic government.

Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele echoed that observation this morning when he wrote, “We need to stop the false equivalency BS between Biden and Trump. Only one acts with the intention to do real harm.”

Indeed, as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo puts it, “the gathering storm of Trump 2.0 is upon us,” and Trump and his people are telling us exactly what a second Trump term would look like. Yesterday, Trump echoed his “vermin” post of the other day, saying: “2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL!”

Trump’s open swing toward authoritarianism should be disqualifying even for Republicans—can you imagine Ronald Reagan talking this way?—but MAGA Republicans are lining up behind him. Last week the Texas legislature passed a bill to seize immigration authority from the federal government in what is a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution, and yesterday, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that he was “proud to endorse” Trump for president because of his proposed border policies (which include the deportation of 10 million people).

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has also endorsed Trump, and on Friday he announced he was ordering the release of more than 40,000 hours of tapes from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, answering the demands of far-right congress members who insist the tapes will prove there was no such attack despite the conclusion of the House committee investigating the attack that Trump criminally conspired to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and refused to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

Trump loyalist Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) promptly spread a debunked conspiracy theory that one of the attackers shown in the tapes, Kevin Lyons, was actually a law enforcement officer hiding a badge. Lyons—who was not, in fact, a police officer—was carrying a vape and a photo he stole from then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and is now serving a 51-month prison sentence. (Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) tweeted: “Hey [Mike Lee]—heads up. A nutball conspiracy theorist appears to be posting from your account.”)

Both E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted yesterday that MAGA Republicans have no policies for addressing inflation or relations with China or gun safety; instead, they have coalesced only around the belief that officials in “the administrative state” thwarted Trump in his first term and that a second term will be about revenge on his enemies and smashing American liberalism.

MIke Davis, one of the men under consideration for attorney general, told a podcast host in September that he would “unleash hell on Washington, D.C.,” getting rid of career politicians, indicting President Joe Biden “and every other scumball, sleazeball Biden,” and helping pardon those found guilty of crimes associated with the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. “We’re gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing—anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents,” Davis said. “We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.”

In the Washington Post, Josh Dawsey talked to former Trump officials who do not believe Trump should be anywhere near the presidency, and yet they either fear for their safety if they oppose him or despair that nothing they say seems to matter. John F. Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, told Dawsey that it is beyond his comprehension that Trump has the support he does.

“I came out and told people the awful things he said about wounded soldiers, and it didn’t have half a day’s bounce. You had his attorney general Bill Barr come out, and not a half a day’s bounce. If anything, his numbers go up. It might even move the needle in the wrong direction. I think we’re in a dangerous zone in our country,” Kelly said.

Part of the attraction of right-wing figures is they offer easy solutions to the complicated issues of the modern world. Argentina has inflation over 140%, and 40% of its people live in poverty. Yesterday, voters elected as president far-right libertarian Javier Milei, who is known as “El Loco” (The Madman). Milei wants to legalize the sale of organs, denies climate change, and wielded a chainsaw on the campaign trail to show he would cut down the state and “exterminate” inflation. Both Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, two far-right former presidents who launched attacks against their own governments, congratulated him.

In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took on the question of authoritarianism. Robert J. Biggs, a terminally ill World War II veteran, wrote to Eisenhower, asking him to cut through the confusion of the postwar years. “We wait for someone to speak for us and back him completely if the statement is made in truth,” Biggs wrote. Eisenhower responded at length. While unity was imperative in the military, he said, “in a democracy debate is the breath of life. This is to me what Lincoln meant by government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’”

Dictators, Eisenhower wrote, “make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems—freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.”

Once again, liberal democracy is under attack, but it is notable—to me, anyway, as I watch to see how the public conversation is changing—that more and more people are stepping up to defend it. In the New York Times today, legal scholar Cass Sunstein warned that “[o]n the left, some people insist that liberalism is exhausted and dying, and unable to handle the problems posed by entrenched inequalities, corporate power and environmental degradation. On the right, some people think that liberalism is responsible for the collapse of traditional values, rampant criminality, disrespect for authority and widespread immorality.”

Sunstein went on to defend liberalism in a 34-point description, but his first point was the most important: “Liberals believe in six things,” he wrote: “freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, the rule of law and democracy,” including fact-based debate and accountability of elected officials to the people.

[Shirley]

Excellent post jfish, thanks for sharing it.

That being said, it's almost too depressing to contemplate.

And yet, we have otherwise obviously good people like pdub and Gutter, and to a lesser extent mjl, who have gone on record here saying that while they don't like Trump, they can't/won't vote for Biden. I get not being enthusiastic about Biden, he was never my first choice, either. BUT, it becomes more and more obvious every day that a vote for anyone other than Biden, or even an abstention, makes a second presidency for Trump more likely.

And that, I don''t "get'.

[MICHHAWK]

run a candidate that ain't gonna be 82 on swear-in day. problem solved.

[jfish26]

run a candidate that ain't gonna be 82 on swear-in day. problem solved.

Would you vote for Whitmer over Trump?

[jfish26]

Also, just to avoid any mischaracterization: if, with all of the information available to us, one would vote for a non-Biden D over Trump (but not Biden, due to his age), then one does not remotely understand the threat that Trump and his puppeteers pose. Someone who thinks that way has fallen - hook, line and sinker - for the right's false equivalency.

[DeletedUser]

If my 2 choices are Biden or Trump then decent chance I don't bother to vote this year. I will not vote for Trump under any circumstances. I would only vote for Biden if I thought it would matter, and in Illinois it doesn't.

What a pathetic duo of candidates. Such a low bar.

[Shirley]

If my 2 choices are Biden or Trump then decent chance I don't bother to vote this year. I will not vote for Trump under any circumstances. I would only vote for Biden if I thought it would matter, and in Illinois it doesn't.

What a pathetic duo of candidates. Such a low bar.

What, specifically, is your problem with Biden?

[pdub]

Someone who thinks that way has fallen - hook, line and sinker - for the right's false equivalency.

Nah fam.