Remember when, 16 months ago, I warned you that Bitcoin buyers were going to get fleeced? Readers said things like:
The Value [of crypto] comes in the form of faith that it cannot and will not be manipulated.
Then, three months later, I warned you that Elon Musk was manipulating digital currency.
Now we see NPR running stories about people losing their life savings because the bottom fell out of the crypto pyramid scheme.
Yep. I called it.
Today, the Biden administration announced that it is selling another 20 million barrels from the US oil reserve. It’s obvious at this point what the administration’s plan is- they are selling our nation’s future security in order to safeguard Democratic election chances by depleting our nation’s reserves of a vital war material.
When Biden took office, the US oil reserve was 638 million barrels. As of July 17, the US strategic oil reserve stood at 480 million barrels. In the 189 intervening days, there were 158 million barrels removed from the reserve, with more already earmarked to be removed and sold. Accounting for all promised sales, the reserve will be less than 340 million barrels by October 1. That means nearly than half of our oil reserves will have been sold by the administration in less than 9 months, and represents the lowest amount of oil in reserve since 1983.
The graph below, found at this location, outlines the depletion of our reserves, but keep in mind that this graph was created on June 17, which was before the most recent sales and releases that were authorized by the Whitehouse.
Keep in mind that Biden announced in March the release of 240 million barrels. This administration has no choice but to continue selling oil at this rate all the way through the election. What this means is that we will continue bleeding oil from the reserves at the rate of more than a million barrels a day.
It’s much worse than that, however. The SPR contains two kinds of crude: medium-sour, and light-sweet. Typically, US refiners prefer medium-sour crude, which can easily be processed into gasoline and other products. The light-sweet in the reserves has a much lower density, and is not as favored by refiners. So far, 85% of the oil removed from the SPR has been the medium-sour crude.
By October, the SPR will hold only 179 million barrels of medium-sour crude. Clearly, Biden is running out of firepower and out of time. By 2023, the US SPR will be virtually out of medium-sweet crude in the SPR.
Should that happen, you can expect gas shortages and when you can find gasoline, expect to see prices hit $10 a gallon or more.
This article is a bit whiny. I work shifts of 12 hours without breaks many times. Even though people think that’s illegal, it isn’t. There is no Federal law that says you have to get a break, and Florida law only requires breaks for minors.
On Saturday, I posted that the government can’t fire an employee without due process. That is, a government entity has to follow certain steps before terminating the employment of their employees. Many of you disagreed, but I will share with you why I feel that this is so important:
There is a teacher I know who was terminated in violation of this law. Gerry Buell had been teaching for Lake County schools for over 22 years. He was selected as the county teacher of the year. Just a few months later, he posted on his private Facebook page that he was opposed to gay marriage.
On his personal Facebook account, outside of school time, Buell posted a reaction to New York’s passage of homosexual ‘marriage’ saying he “almost threw up.” He also referred to homosexual unions as sinful and referred to it as part of a “cesspool” of behaviors. The local media got ahold of it.
Just for the record, this is his exact comment:
I’m watching the news, eating dinner when the story about New York okaying same-sex unions came on and I almost threw up. Then they showed two guys kissing after their announcement. If they want to call it a union, go ahead. But don’t insult a man and woman’s marriage by throwing it in the same cesspool of whatever. God will not be mocked. When did this sin become acceptable?
By the way, if one doesn’t like the most recently posted opinion based on biblical principles and God’s laws, then go ahead and unfriend me. I’ll miss you like I miss my kidney stone from 1994. And I will never accept it because God will never accept it. Romans chapter one.
“It was my own personal comment on my own personal time on my own personal computer in my own personal house, exercising what I believed as a social studies teacher to be my First Amendment rights,” he said.
He was 100% correct, but that didn’t matter to the Lake County school system. Some parents filed a complaint with the school superintendent. Shortly afterwards, he was suspended. Two days after being suspended, he was fired for “violating his professional ethics.”
“We took the allegations seriously,” said Chris Patton, a communication officer with Lake County Schools. “All teachers are bound by a code of special ethics (and) this is a code ethics violation investigation.”
According to the school system, what Buell wrote on his private account was disturbing. They claimed that they were especially concerned that gay students at the school might be frightened or intimidated walking into his classroom. Patton also disputed the notion that Buell’s Facebook account is private.
“He has more than 700 friends,” Patton said. “How private is that – really? Social media can be troubling if you don’t respect it and know that just because you think you are in a private realm – it’s not private.”
So, according to the Lake County, Florida school system, whether or not a government employee has the right to free speech depends on how many people are listening.
Patton said the school system has an obligation to take the comments seriously. He said Buell will not be allowed back in the classroom “until we do all the interviews and do a thorough job of looking at everything – past or previous writings.”
To accomplish that, he said people have been sending the school system screenshots of Buell’s Facebook page.
“Just because you think it’s private, other people are viewing it,” Patton said, noting that the teacher’s Facebook page also contained numerous Bible passages.
Buell hired a lawyer, who sent a notice of intent to file suit for terminating him in violation of his First and Fifth Amendment rights. The school caved in. If government employees were “at will,” that never would have worked.
I want you to ask yourselves- just who in government service needs to have their Constitutional rights protected? In these days of school boards shutting down discussion and declaring that parents are terrorists, do you think that leftist teachers have any fear of being fired? Or do you think it is conservative teachers?
I myself was fired from that same exact school. In October of 2016, we were told to discuss the gay and lesbian lifestyle* and its benefits in the classroom. Click on the link to see the actual handout we were given. I refused. Less than a month later, I was attacked in my classroom by a violent student.
I had worked for that school for exactly one week less than a year, so I was still on “probation.” I could be fired for any reason. I was placed on paid leave. Two months later, the school system told me that, if I resigned, they would not pursue any other actions and would simply tell future employers that I had resigned. The union wanted me to fight. I didn’t think the job was worth fighting for, so I quit.
A month later, the school system tried to have my teaching license revoked by pressing formal charges with the state. Had they been successful, my medical license would also have been revoked. They accused me of attacking the student and even tried insinuating that I was a pervert that was attracted to the teenaged girls in my class.
I wound up spending several thousand dollars on a lawyer, got a hearing, and won my case. Throughout the process, the school hid evidence, manufactured evidence, and played every dirty trick they could. My attorney was livid. After the administrative hearing was over, he wrote a letter to the director of Florida’s DOE, telling them that he had never seen the kind of outrageous behavior from a school system before.
Be careful what you wish for. Remove constitutional protection from government jobs, and the left will be free to eliminate the conservative minority.
* Note that I mentioned this in 2016. This grooming thing has been going on since before Trump was elected. Note also that the CRT stuff has been brewing since at least 2020. I mean to say that both grooming and CRT have been in our schools for at least a decade, perhaps longer.
If it weren’t for the constitutional protections that government employees have, the only voices our children would be hearing are the ones grooming them for the left. It’s important.
After it was pointed out that, should Americans switch to electric cars, it would require 4 times more electricity to charge them than Americans use on air conditioning, CNN tells us that we don’t need air conditioning because Europe doesn’t use it.
Let’s begin with a geography lesson. Berlin, the town where the author of the article lives without air conditioning, is at 52.52 degrees north latitude. The entire continental US is south of that line. The closest North American city to that latitude is Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, which is located at 51 degrees north.
Rome is located at about the latitude of Boston. Atlanta is on the 34th parallel, which places it as far north as Beirut and Tripoli. Orlando is near the 29th parallel, which places it as far north as Kuwait city. Miami is near Luxor, Egypt in latitude.
During the summer, Rome is ten degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Miami, on average. Hell, in Arizona it gets too hot for airplanes to fly. The US is warmer in summer, and colder in the winter than most of Europe.
Right now, all I am seeing on the news is the people in Europe whining like little bitches about how hot it is over there, because it is 100 degrees in the afternoon. Here in central Florida, we call that June, July, and August. They are closing roads because it looks like this:
Pussies. Our roads look like that when they are new. And what’s this about house fires? Do British homes spontaneously combust at 100F?
So Europe can go fuck themselves.
Radio personality Paul Harvey used to do a bit called “The Rest of the Story” where he would tell a story. The end of the story would have a surprise ending, revealing a connection that the listener wouldn’t suspect. He would then close with the tagline: “Now you know… the rest of the story.” In homage to that show:
Stop me if you have heard this story before. New York police attempted to arrest a 21 year old man for driving with a suspended license. His 30 year old brother tries to physically prevent the arrest. Before it is over, 16 cops wind up involved. At the end of the day, the 30 year old brother winds up dead, and two cops are injured, one with a broken kneecap, and one with fractures in his back. The year was 1978, and the man’s name was Arthur Miller.
The son of that 30 year old man, Lamor Miller-Whitehead, was only six months old when his father died. Whitehead was arrested in a $2 million identity theft scam in 2006. When he was arrested, he was wearing a long mink coat like some bad 1970’s stereotype.
Whitehead and former girlfriend Valerie Rodriguez had access to personal identifying information of customers of the Honda dealership where she worked. They created fake email accounts and voicemail boxes using stolen identifying information, filled out fraudulent loan applications, and bought cars with the proceeds.
He was was convicted of one count of Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, one count of Attempted Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, thirteen counts of Identity Theft in the First Degree, and two counts of Identity Theft in the Third Degree. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
He served five before being granted parole. (He claims that his conviction was overturned, but I can find no evidence of that. In fact, every one of the many appeals that he filed was denied, at least that I could find.)
Whitehead founded his own church when he got out of prison in 2013, and gave himself the title of “Bishop” just two years later. As the leader of this church, it appears as though the charity most favored by Whitehead’s church was Whitehead himself; he regularly drove the church owned vehicles: a Maserati, a $350,000 Rolls-Royce, and a Bentley. His church has over a million online followers, who he regularly urges to vote for politicians that he favors.
Whitehead is also a “community organizer” and has donated large sums to political causes. One politician that he favors is close friend Hizzoner Eric Adams, the mayor of NYC. In fact, he has called the mayor his “mentor” and is frequently seen with him.
It’s obvious what is happening here, at least to me. This guy is a scam artist, a convicted felon, and con man. He is using his fake church to con people out of money, then donating it to politicians so that they will look the other way. This is what community organizing is: criminals donating dirty money to corrupt politicians. If it seems like the criminals are running this country, that’s because they are.
Still, let’s stick with Whitehead’s story. So here we have a convict parolee who is running a fake church while driving multiple cars worth $300K apiece, while wearing ten thousand dollar outfits adorned with hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry.
That’s why I really don’t care that members of his flock decided to redistribute some of his property at gunpoint during a livestream of a church service.
Now you know the rest of the story.
Here is something familiar to any man who has ever had a wife or girlfriend.
Woman: What do you want for dinner?
Man: Steak.
Woman: No, I don’t feel like that.
Man: Chinese
Woman: No, I don’t feel like that.
Man: Burgers?
Woman: No, I don’t feel like that.
<ten minutes and two dozen other suggestions>
Man: So just tell me what you DO want?
Woman: Whatever.
Man: Dammit.
Woman: I don’t understand why you get so upset.
Then you finally get somewhere, and she orders a f*cking salad, which she could have gotten at any one of the places that she shot down.
A fight broke out in the parking garage at Universal Studios on Saturday night, and the Orlando police evacuated the parking garage “out of an abundance of caution” due to “a fight between several juveniles.”
We all know that the police don’t evacuate major tourist attractions because of simple fist fights, and we also know that “juveniles” is a code word used by the local press for black teenage gang members. To understand what a HUGE thing this is, you have to understand how Universal Studios is set up:
You can see the two parking garages. There are elevated walkways that run from the garages to a rotunda, also elevated. (I marked the rotunda with a 5 pointed star). In the rotunda, there is a security station where they inspect bags and run everyone through a magnetometer.
That parking garage is the ONLY parking garage for the three main USO attractions: Universal Studios Orlando, Islands of Adventure, and Orlando City Walk. So the police evacuating the parking area means closing all three. Since it happened at midnight, the only thing open would have been City Walk, which is a Universal owned attraction of restaurants, bars, stores, mini golf, and other associated businesses.
So theoretically, no one is armed past that security station and the magnetometers that are located in that rotunda. I say theoretically, because that security station has been in place for nearly a decade, but I have made a hobby out of smuggling firearms past it. While I will admit that Universal has better security than Disney, it isn’t foolproof. They have even tried to claim that they are a school.
The area where Universal is located is a bad neighborhood to start with. Once when I was leaving the park, I missed a robbery of a nearby store by seconds.
The police claim that there were no weapons found or shots fired.
So with all of that being said, I can’t see the OPD evacuating a major tourist attraction to the point where people fled and left personal belongings behind, to include vehicles.
The news is calling it a “shooting scare” and blaming guns, even though there is no evidence that any guns were involved. Note that the parking garage was evacuated, which means that the “fight” occurred in the area outside of the security inspection station.
Me? I don’t see there being an evacuation of a major theme park unless someone in the OPD overreacted, or unless there really WERE shots fired.
This is the weakness in having a gun free zone with security inspections: you have an area where victims are guaranteed to be disarmed, and are easy pickings.
Many times we hear about public employees like teachers and cops being suspended with pay. Many people think that this is some sort of slap on the wrist that is simply a paid vacation, and the public employee will face no further discipline. That is simply not the case.
That paid suspension is actually a part of the employee’s constitutional rights. The case was Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, a 1985 case that was decided by the US Supreme Court. The underlying question for the case was:
“Can the government remove a civil servant’s property rights to employment before providing an opportunity for that employee to respond to the charges offered for his termination?”
The court said that the Constitution prevents the government from depriving anyone of their property without also providing that employee a chance to defend themselves. Calling witnesses, having counsel, a hearing, and all of the other due process rights that any other person would have before the government can take something from them.
So back to our cops and teachers. A cop or teacher is being considered for termination or unpaid suspension. In order to do that, the administrative authority who will take that action must hold a hearing where the employer (the government) will present its reasons for terminating or suspending the employee. The employee then has an opportunity to bring their own witnesses, present their case, and respond to the allegations. Only then can the employee be terminated or suspended.
Until that hearing has been held, an employee cannot be deprived of anything. That includes their job and their pay. So this leaves the employing agency in a quandary: Do you leave the disgraced employee in his or her job? Many employers choose not to, and will suspend the employee with pay, pending further proceedings.
After the punishment has been imposed, the employee has the right to appeal that decision in front of a court. If the appeal is successful, then the employee will likely be reinstated with back pay. This appeals process can sometimes take years.