ran 4.5 milesIn case you haven’t been keeping up, I’ve been sick and laying low for a few days. I’m almost back up to the top of my hill now and I ran 4.5 miles today. I wouldn’t say it was my best run but it felt good to put my “Running Against Obama” t-shirt on again and to hit the streets.
Sometimes it is good to step away from things. It allows you to reach a level of clarity that habit and routine tend to deny.
With that being said, here we go. The IMF (International Monetary Fund), for the first time, has set a tentative date for the time that America as the “World Leader” will end and the U.S. economy will be surpassed by China. 2016. In only five years, according to the IMF, China’s economy will surpass America’s.
The only reason America has the ability to charge things off to figurative credit cards without ever having to pay the monthly bills is because we are the world currency holders. This could change abruptly. We have got to stop spending! As Barack Obama has so liberally shown, we alone have the ability to print monopoly money to continue the national delusion that everything is okay. If a nation like China, or the other nations who are uniting with them (BRICS---Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as a coalition to be the new world leaders, or world currency holders, achieve that status, then our world, our country, will be entirely different. The Chinese economy is projected to expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. The U.S. economy is projected to rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion in 2016. These numbers meagerly award America with 17.7% of world output and aggrandize China with 18%, rising exponentially. Ten years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s. What this means to us, regardless of when it happens, is that China’s economy is clearly footsteps behind us and it is running at a full sprint while we are dithering in a future of alternatives that have no bridge to connect the reality of our now and the delusions of Barack Obama’s future.
What else? Gas prices. A gallon of gas is more than $2 higher than when Barack Obama took office in January of 2009. To think that this has nothing to do with Obama or his administration is sheer blindness. The Business and Media Institute found that out of the 280 stories covering current oil prices on network evening shows, which have aired since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, only three stories, a whopping 1%, have made any reference to Obama’s drilling ban or any other anti-oil actions pertaining to gasoline prices. Yet, the facts are right there. The president has said himself that he would like to see gas prices increase. He would have preferred a more gradual increase, but this is what he got---soaring gas prices.
The EPA recently pulled the plug on a Shell project in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board decided to withhold critical air permits necessary for Shell to perform. This decision has angered many in Congress and has started a wake of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.
Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion on plans to explore for oil at this site. The leases by themselves cost $2.2 billion. The EPA’s largest argument was that the Arctic drill would be hazardous for the people who live in the area. The closest village to Shell’s proposed drilling site is Kaktovic, Alaska. It is by far one of the most remote corners of the United States with a population of 245 people. The village, one square mile, sits on the shore of the Beaufort Sea seventy miles from the proposed offshore site for drilling. This is how our government and its agencies get things done.
The EPA effectively denied 27 billion barrels of oil. That number represents two and a half times more oil than has flowed through the Trans Alaska pipeline in all its 30-year history. The pipeline is currently only carrying one-third its capacity.
If that’s the direction toward empowering America and embracing our own energy resources to create jobs, to lower the price of gas and to bolster our economy then I think someone has a magnet under our compass.
1,390.6 miles to go.
Sometimes it is good to step away from things. It allows you to reach a level of clarity that habit and routine tend to deny.
With that being said, here we go. The IMF (International Monetary Fund), for the first time, has set a tentative date for the time that America as the “World Leader” will end and the U.S. economy will be surpassed by China. 2016. In only five years, according to the IMF, China’s economy will surpass America’s.
The only reason America has the ability to charge things off to figurative credit cards without ever having to pay the monthly bills is because we are the world currency holders. This could change abruptly. We have got to stop spending! As Barack Obama has so liberally shown, we alone have the ability to print monopoly money to continue the national delusion that everything is okay. If a nation like China, or the other nations who are uniting with them (BRICS---Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as a coalition to be the new world leaders, or world currency holders, achieve that status, then our world, our country, will be entirely different. The Chinese economy is projected to expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. The U.S. economy is projected to rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion in 2016. These numbers meagerly award America with 17.7% of world output and aggrandize China with 18%, rising exponentially. Ten years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s. What this means to us, regardless of when it happens, is that China’s economy is clearly footsteps behind us and it is running at a full sprint while we are dithering in a future of alternatives that have no bridge to connect the reality of our now and the delusions of Barack Obama’s future.
What else? Gas prices. A gallon of gas is more than $2 higher than when Barack Obama took office in January of 2009. To think that this has nothing to do with Obama or his administration is sheer blindness. The Business and Media Institute found that out of the 280 stories covering current oil prices on network evening shows, which have aired since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, only three stories, a whopping 1%, have made any reference to Obama’s drilling ban or any other anti-oil actions pertaining to gasoline prices. Yet, the facts are right there. The president has said himself that he would like to see gas prices increase. He would have preferred a more gradual increase, but this is what he got---soaring gas prices.
The EPA recently pulled the plug on a Shell project in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board decided to withhold critical air permits necessary for Shell to perform. This decision has angered many in Congress and has started a wake of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.
Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion on plans to explore for oil at this site. The leases by themselves cost $2.2 billion. The EPA’s largest argument was that the Arctic drill would be hazardous for the people who live in the area. The closest village to Shell’s proposed drilling site is Kaktovic, Alaska. It is by far one of the most remote corners of the United States with a population of 245 people. The village, one square mile, sits on the shore of the Beaufort Sea seventy miles from the proposed offshore site for drilling. This is how our government and its agencies get things done.
The EPA effectively denied 27 billion barrels of oil. That number represents two and a half times more oil than has flowed through the Trans Alaska pipeline in all its 30-year history. The pipeline is currently only carrying one-third its capacity.
If that’s the direction toward empowering America and embracing our own energy resources to create jobs, to lower the price of gas and to bolster our economy then I think someone has a magnet under our compass.
1,390.6 miles to go.
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