"Texas Paul" made two important points on his podcast this week...1)the oil tankers that made it through the Strait of Hormuz are finally making it into American ports...but they are the LAST of the shipments that will arrive until the Strait is reopened, and then it will be another 45-60 days before those tankers reach US ports. In between is a whole lot of time without oil delilveries. Costs will rise for all sorts of things, beyond just oil and gas! 2) Similarly, the last shipments of fertilizer have reached port...and even if more shipments are released in the coming weeks, you CANNOT plant spring crops in the summer! Once you miss the planting window, it's gone for this year. Expect that crops will receive less than optimal fertilizer, if any, which will reduce harvests...thus increasing the cost of foodstuffs. Plant a garden now, if you can...
It feels like s**t is about to hit the fan.....Another post said that the destroyer that tried to get through got turned around after a warning that they had missiles trained on them. Maybe the military is looking at their duties a bit more seriously now..
In the search for order, I suspect that the US federal administration's strategy will now be a vibrant, open US-Russian alignment, leaving the mid-east and open International trade to China while attempting to label democracy and liberalism as communist threats. It's useful to remember that Mussolini came before Hitler and that Hitler worshipped Il Duce and modelled much of his program on Italy's. Hitler's loyalty was irrational and (lucky for the world) lost him his war. One could substitute Trump for Hitler and Putin (or Israel) for Mussolini and have a useful lens on the situation, leaving the win-lose out of it, because that is not-yet-determined. Or is it? The fateful and failed Italian invasion of Greece, which opened the Balkans to Britain and catastrophically delayed the Third Reich's invasion of Russia is not totally dissimilar to the strategic disaster unfolding now in Iran. Lacking still for a full horror show is a Stalingrad, ie an unwillingness to retreat and regroup. Let us hope that cool military and diplomatic heads somehow prevail. There are examples from WWII for that as well, and not just on the Allied side. But, order? My friend, now sadly passed, the Yugoslavian patriot and partisan, "Boxer", who survived 3 genocides, 2 assassination attempts and even slavery in WWII to be a professor of Soviet history, pointed out once that the only politicians who speak of law and order are the nazis and fascists. Democrats, he said, never mention these things. That was, at least, his experience. Democratic politicians, he pointed out, speak of far more concrete things.
"Texas Paul" made two important points on his podcast this week...1)the oil tankers that made it through the Strait of Hormuz are finally making it into American ports...but they are the LAST of the shipments that will arrive until the Strait is reopened, and then it will be another 45-60 days before those tankers reach US ports. In between is a whole lot of time without oil delilveries. Costs will rise for all sorts of things, beyond just oil and gas! 2) Similarly, the last shipments of fertilizer have reached port...and even if more shipments are released in the coming weeks, you CANNOT plant spring crops in the summer! Once you miss the planting window, it's gone for this year. Expect that crops will receive less than optimal fertilizer, if any, which will reduce harvests...thus increasing the cost of foodstuffs. Plant a garden now, if you can...
WoW your onto of this! THANK YOU!
It feels like s**t is about to hit the fan.....Another post said that the destroyer that tried to get through got turned around after a warning that they had missiles trained on them. Maybe the military is looking at their duties a bit more seriously now..
In the search for order, I suspect that the US federal administration's strategy will now be a vibrant, open US-Russian alignment, leaving the mid-east and open International trade to China while attempting to label democracy and liberalism as communist threats. It's useful to remember that Mussolini came before Hitler and that Hitler worshipped Il Duce and modelled much of his program on Italy's. Hitler's loyalty was irrational and (lucky for the world) lost him his war. One could substitute Trump for Hitler and Putin (or Israel) for Mussolini and have a useful lens on the situation, leaving the win-lose out of it, because that is not-yet-determined. Or is it? The fateful and failed Italian invasion of Greece, which opened the Balkans to Britain and catastrophically delayed the Third Reich's invasion of Russia is not totally dissimilar to the strategic disaster unfolding now in Iran. Lacking still for a full horror show is a Stalingrad, ie an unwillingness to retreat and regroup. Let us hope that cool military and diplomatic heads somehow prevail. There are examples from WWII for that as well, and not just on the Allied side. But, order? My friend, now sadly passed, the Yugoslavian patriot and partisan, "Boxer", who survived 3 genocides, 2 assassination attempts and even slavery in WWII to be a professor of Soviet history, pointed out once that the only politicians who speak of law and order are the nazis and fascists. Democrats, he said, never mention these things. That was, at least, his experience. Democratic politicians, he pointed out, speak of far more concrete things.