Show Notes: Oil Spike, Ukraine Update, & Conservative Hispanic Network
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Clip of the day:
Surging Oil Prices
The price of oil surged over the weekend following renewed speculation of Russian oil no longer flowing to the United States. Oil pushed near $140 a barrel, a metric not seen since the financial crisis in 2008. Oil briefly dipped to $20 a barrel at the peak of the COVID pandemic in 2020. The strange piece of this puzzle is sanctions are not in place yet. 70% of Russian oil has no buyer as companies are “self-sanctioning.” Here’s more:
The national average for gas is $4.07/gallon. - Axios
Oil traders eye $200 a barrel. - Fox Business
U.S. taps Venezuela as possible Russian oil replacement. - WAPO
Wall Street cuts economic forecast as oil spikes. - Marketwatch
Oil spike worsens inflation fears. - CNBC
Ukraine Update
Russian forces continued the shelling of civilian areas in Ukraine and further prevented humanitarian efforts from entering the war-torn country as peace talks reconvened in Belarus. Russia was unable to make advancements in Kyiv but pushed further into Mariupol, Irpin, and smaller cities in southern Ukraine. Here’s more:
War crimes against Putin? - WAPO
Morgan Stanley sees Russia set for Venezualian-style debt default - Bloomberg
Russia recruits Syrians to help fight Ukraine. - WSJ
Thousands were detained in anti-war protests in Moscow. - NPR
UN: 406 civilians killed in Ukraine. - CNN
Permenant troops in the Baltic? - WSJ
Democrats tie COVID relief bill to Ukraine aid. - CNN
Ukraine’s Secret Weapon
The common consensus in the intelligence community was Russia would control the majority of Ukraine in just a matter of days following the invasion. Twelve days later, Russia is far from controlling the county. The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating profile of Ukrainian special forces who deserve much of the credit.
“We go out to hunt and destroy them,” said Volodymyr, a Ukrainian special-forces team leader, as his squad, armed with a British .308 sniper rifle and British-made antitank weapons, waited for the latest Russian attack. “They certainly didn’t come here expecting that, expecting that we know how to fight.”
…
“Ukraine is fighting in a way nobody expected, not the Russians and not our Western partners,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser and member of Kyiv’s delegation at cease-fire talks with Russia. “Kyiv was supposed to have fallen in three days.”
In part, that is because Ukraine has deployed elite special-forces units, trained by the U.S. and allies over the past several years, to defend Kyiv. Armed with British NLAW and American-made Javelin antitank weapons and Stinger antiaircraft missiles, they have helped blunt the Russian advantage in aviation and long-range missiles and artillery.
Conservative Hispanic Network Launches
Democrats are extra worried as news broke over the weekend that a conservative Hispanic network will kick off tomorrow.
The nation’s first Spanish-language conservative network launches Tuesday morning on satellite radio, opening a new front in the political information wars targeting Latinos in the United States and beyond.
The network, called Americano, arrives during a crucial inflection point in U.S. politics, as more Hispanic voters show signs of drifting right and Democrats continue to sound the alarm about Spanish-language right-wing disinformation on social media and local radio, particularly in Miami, which is also Americano’s home base.
Progressives Deny Reality
Rep. Jayapal claims that more oil will not mean lower prices. She clearly missed high school econ 101.
The rest of the news
DeSantis defends the badly mischaracterized “don’t say gay” bill. - CBS
A group is targeting Trump lawyers’ livelihoods. - Axios
On the cusp of an economic singularity. - Doomberg
Democrats’ problems with Hispanics gets worse. - CNN
Possible Biden Saudi trip? - Axios
Zelenskyy wins Ronald Reagan Freedom award. - Fox
Nickel prices spike 60%. - Bloomberg
November can’t get here fast enough. The Democrats are living in a world apart from reality. They are destroying the country.
A couple thigs:
1. As for importing oil and gas from other countries rather than produce it here: Does it somehow matter less to Mother Earth that the oil and gas we consume was produced somewhere else? Is foreign mined oil and gas somehow less evil than ours? Given the fact that Russian gas is at least 30% "dirtier", that is, containing a larger sulfur content that U.S. produced gas, and that Venezuelan oil has a higher sulfur content and has fewer of the fractions which are most valuable when refined (gasoline, kerosene, industrial chemicals used for agricultural chemicals and plastics manufacture, for example), exactly what overall environmental benefit do we accrue from using foreign oil and gas?
2. Forget trying to make sensible arguments to hard core Marxist progressives like Rep. Jayapal. For such people, the ideological cause somehow makes them believe that they can implement policies which make no obvious sense altogether, for they believe that because the policies fit the ideological mold, they will somehow work. This is the reason why otherwise sane, reasonable people keep flogging the long dead horse of socialism. Perhaps a reading of Einstein's famous definition of insanity to them would help, but I sadly doubt it.