Trump lashes out because he got what he wanted
By the time a baby is able to walk it has learned the concept of "cause and effect".
President Man-Child has yet to learn this basic concept.
The price of oil is going up (in an election year!), and oil traders are predicting the return of $100 crude for the first time since 2014.
“The market does not have the supply response for a potential disappearance of 2 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter,” Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. co-founder Daniel Jaeggi said in a speech at the S&P Global Platts Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference, knows as APPEC. “In my view, that makes it conceivable to see a price spike north of $100 a barrel.”
Why would so much oil being going missing from the global oil market?
Mostly because President Man-Child defied the advice of his allies and advisors, and went ahead with a reckless foreign policy that no one outside of Israel and Saudi Arabia wanted.
Iranian oil exports have plunged about 35 percent since April, the month before Trump ripped up the diplomatic deal that Barack Obama negotiated to curtail Tehran’s nuclear program and announced new oil sanctions."Iranian oil exports are coming down pretty hard," said Roger Diwan, a veteran oil analyst at consultant IHS Markit Ltd.
The bigger-than-expected reduction, with more to come, is a win for Trump, who made a tougher stance on Iran a cornerstone of his foreign policy and imposed the sanctions despite opposition in Europe and open hostility from China and India, the top buyers of Iranian crude. When the sanctions were first announced, their unilateral nature prompted many in the oil market to question their effectiveness.
Yes, "a win for Trump".
I'm sure that all the Trump-voters who drive gas-guzzling trucks will be celebrating Trump's win every time they fill up.
In another month crude oil prices should be at $90.
BTW, Iran's OPEC representative Hossein Kazempour had some advice for The Donald.
‘The Trump administration is pushing politics into the OPEC, and is aiming at spreading the members and securing their own interests by getting lower prices and so forth. I am telling him, keep quiet, do not do any tweets, and then you will be better off in the prices.’
Comments
It's almost like the Dems were counting on him to fuck up.
And just so we could move back to right-of-center from far-right? These morons have no vision.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
I wouldn't give the Dems that much credit
I'm sure that they opposed Trump for knee-jerk reasons.
And Repubs never thought past doing Israel's bidding.
But oil prices are only the first cost of the Iran sanctions. If Europe starts trading oil in Euros, then it's game over.
*sigh* Israel is a client state. When will people get that?
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Care to expound on "client state"?
I don't understand what that means. I'd have to correct part of gjohn's statement and say ALL of our politicians do Israel's bidding, not just team R.
It's the other way around.
Israel does our bidding in the middle east, as does Saudi Arabia. In exchange, they lobby our government for aid. Think of them as modern day vassals.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Got links?
This book convinced me otherwise (old but 3rd edition is from 2003, according to Wikipedia):
They to Dare Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby by former US Rep from Illinois, Paul Findley.
Here's the wiki. Note the NYT's review lol. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Dare_to_Speak_Out
Laws all across the country against BDS = nail in coffin as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah. I think it's the other way around
We are Israel's puppets and when they say jump we ask how high. The wars in the Middle East are to make Israel the only superpower and they get our boys and girls to do their fighting for them. Look at how many congress members dual citizenship with Israel. Schumer once said that he voted for Bolton because Bibi wanted him confirmed.
I'm wondering how long countries that buy oil from Iran will be able to obey our boycott? When the price of petrol goes through the roof the leaders are going to hear from their peoples. It's one thing to sanction a country, but it takes big brass ones to make other countries comply with them.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Exactly, sd. Exactly n/t
And once again you show you don't understand how empires work.
If Israel really had as much power as people say they, America would be a very different place. So many people here make assertions that the US is the big bad empire and then contradict themselves by whining and bitching about how a client state like Israel controls our gubmint. Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
Guys like Netenyahu are arrogant, useless idiots. The US Empire's top brass know this fully well.
Going full right-wing is always a terrible idea.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
@The Aspie Corner It's called
It's called turning the tables on someone. It's far from impossible. |
Yes, the U.S. is the big bad empire, and yes, our military could crush Israel or Saudi Arabia and its hangers-on, but without a ready and copious supply of petroleum and methane, where is the U.S. military? Where is the U.S. economy? And where are the copious profits of the American wealthy who are making bank off the petroleum industry (one way or another)?
If the U.S. has no allies in the Middle East, the entirety of the Middle East is liable to turn to Russia, or China, or both. IOW, the other empires will take over. The United States has to have some of the Middle Eastern countries on its side; it can't do to all of them what it did to Iraq, or the entire region will give its loyalty to the United States' competitors. That would cause the United States serious problems.
So yes, you can have it both ways.
EDIT for typo
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
That's how client states work.
That's also how Empires work. That's how they rise and fall. It happened before our current quagmire, it'll be the same long after we're all dead. Yet for some reason the folks here can't, or won't, understand that. You think Israel is the only shitstate that does that kind of crap? I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts the Saudis do the same damn thing. They'd have to.
The problem is that folks would rather talk about Israel or Saudi Arabia as though they're some outside force that has full control over our government. I'm real sick of that crap. That's not at all how it works. And no, we are not Bibi's client state. To even imply such a thing is outright idiotic.
If we're going to get anywhere in changing or even uprooting the damn system, let's at least acknowledge how the fuck it works first. Perhaps we're too stupid to change. And even if we do, we're just going farther to the far-right anyway. We can't let go of capitalism, after all.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
@The Aspie Corner I'd be
I'd be surprised if anybody here thinks "our government" is somehow free of blame, or powerless, in relation to Israel or Saudi Arabia (maybe I've missed some comments). It's true that our elected officials are ass-kissing the hell out of the Likkudniks and certain portions of the Saudi government, for the reasons I listed above--certainly they don't want those countries to turn to China or Russia--but those same elected officials don't seem particularly fussed about having to genuflect wildly every time Netanyahu enters the country. They seem to do it willingly.
More significantly, elected officials in the United States probably have less power now than they ever have in our history. Which is not to say that they have none. The President and his cabinet, in particular, retain some power in comparison to the legislators, most of whom are a bunch of absurd puppets. In other words, what "our government" even is is in question. This complicates the question of whether or not "our government" is in a position of superior power over Israel and Saudi Arabia, or if we're in a wag the dog situation.
To clarify, when I talk about the power of elected officials, I don't mean power over us little guys. They probably have more power over the little guy than they ever have. But they have less power over what the United States, as a nation, does, than they ever have. The real power which determines policy lies in the alliance between the most powerful industrialists and bankers, on the one hand, and people like the CIA on the other.
And I have no idea what "going far right" has to do with any of this; nor do I understand what "going far right" even means in the context of where the United States is right now. We can't go far right. We're there. Saying we could be even more far right means little when we're far right enough to field a police state Himmler would doff his hat to, have simultaneous wars in over 100 countries, set up an economy that funnels wealth and resources to the upper 1/2 of one percent to the extent that we're facing system collapse, use a largely privatized prison system as a substitute for paying people to do essential work and continue an institution of racist slavery, rig elections so that right-wing people always win, use communications infrastructure to practice far-reaching censorship, including the ability to alter the content of private emails, use that same media to promulgate continual hatchet jobs on anyone left of Ronald Reagan, with the aim of permanently repressing political activity on the left, give the police wide-ranging powers, arm them like paramilitary troops, and turn a blind eye to their systematic, methodical murder of black and brown people, endanger the existence of life on earth because doing so protects the profits of petrochemical barons, and top it all off with the rancid cherry of trying to start World War III.
If that isn't far right, then what is it?
What are people afraid we're going to lose by moving far(ther) right?
Are they afraid of martial law? Rationing? Government agents kicking in the doors of (more) people (with white skin and citizenship papers)? People getting dragged to jail for openly criticizing politicians or industrialists or bankers? What?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@gjohnsit Or in
Or in yuan.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
How about Chomsky?
https://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/8/noam_chomsky_what_israel_is_doing
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Isreal does our bidding . . .
like when they announced expanded settlements while their good friend Joe Biden's plane was sitting on the Tarmac in Israel?
The Israelis do as they damned well please. Any president who dares to raise questions is told to shut up and sign the check.
In Bush language, I try not to
"misunderestimate" the other side.
I used to work at a large firm. From time to time, "the other side" of some transaction or other would behave in some way that I could not fathom.
Hoping for some insight, I would ask colleagues about it. I wish I had a nickel (okay, a C-note) for every time the reply was "Because they're stupid." But, then, it turned out that the other side had quietly outsmarted us. And some of my colleagues were the smartest people I have ever encountered anywhere. So, I learned a life lesson.
Are some Democratic politicians, pundits, strategists, advisors, etc. "stupid?" Without a doubt. Heck, even Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton has exhibited monumental atupidity on occasion. And don't even get me started on the former Editor in Chief of the Harvard Law Review. But not all of them are stupid all of the time.
@The Aspie Corner The Dems themselves have
The Dems themselves have enforced similar policies under Clinton and Obama. Obama showed, at times, a greater reluctance to continue with this crap, which is why the Iran agreement happened, and why he initially drew back from greater troop commitments in Syria in 2013 (once he saw that it had little support among the American people or the British government). Then that reporter got his head cut off on video, and that was that. Obama then gave the most satirical speech I ever heard from him.
"We know these policies will work because they've succeeded so well in Somalia and Yemen."
Obama is no saint, but he knows a stupid policy when he sees one, and this one is stupid. That said, his primary characteristic is protecting his own bottom line. He will never challenge power in any serious way. So he hopped to.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
More like, we knew he would fuck up
In fact, he has with everything he has touched, except he has kept his donors happy (for the most part).
Who knew that tearing up the Iran deal would lead to higher oil prices? Derrrrrp.
(Admittedly, I'm not an official Democrat, but that makes me more likely to oppose Trump rather than appease him like, say, Schumer.)
Do you think that
Iran is the only oil-producing country?
Do you expect us to sympathize with OPEC, the body that caused world-wide spiral of inflation in the '70's? Maybe you weren't around then.
dfarrah
No and no
I think that taking all that oil off the market is driving up the price of gas, and that will hit Trump-voters the worst.
I don't know how you got anything else out of this.
Replace "Middle Eastern countries" with "Israel," or, perhaps,
"Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE," and he'd be closer to the truth.
As for him pursuing this stupid Middle East policy, it's a variant of what's been done, more or less, since Reagan. The last President to push back against it seriously was Carter, and it ended his career.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver