Dennis steams toward Florida as a category 4 storm, promising more destruction, even as some just begin repairing the damage of Ivan. It makes you wonder how many people will leave the area permanently. Pensacola seems to be right in the path of the storm just like last time. Wow.An idiot on Fox News Channel right now is interviewing the chief of police of Mobile, Alabama... and he keeps pronouncing it "MOH-bull." As in moveable. Idiot.
Anyway, good luck to those in the path. It's making landfall during the daylight, so we'll see some spectacular coverage, I'm sure. If the anchors can learn to pronounce simple town names.
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"The gathering storm over China's unsolicited $18.5 billion bid for a U.S. oil company is the latest evidence that China has become the meta-issue of U.S. economic policy."
China is becoming a tremendous financial power in the world, and this is just another way they are slowly chipping away at American competitiveness in the world market. Trade deficits have never been higher and it is becoming worrysome.
Not enough to make me stop eating sweet 'n sour chicken, but still worried.
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6 comments:
Maybe fake out the Chinese, get 'em to buy the "Mobile" Oil Company?
Here's an idea. Let's find alternative sources of energy and then oil won't matter. Oh I forgot there are too many F-ing greedy people running our country that profit off of it...
I think anyone who doesn't see that China will be a (if not THE) super power within 20 years is fooling him-/herself. What concerns me is how we will deal with this reality. At the same time, we will need to deal with the growing influence of the EU (assuming it doesn't implode). I think America's days as a mighty nation are numbered. How we answer that will determine whether we're really as great as we think we are.
As Kerouaced points out, alternative fuels are a potential answer. The problem is that the oil companies are INTERNATIONAL conglomerates who are not interested in making less money next year or in having the Auto makers produce alternative fuel vehicles which do not utilize petroleum.
I hold with the idea that over the next fifty to one hundred years we will see the continuing expansion of the INTERNATIONAL conglomerates into every country on earth. Government agencies will provide little more than police forces, revenue collection services, and the occasional judicial edict.
China is likely to overtake us in the next century in very much the same way as we overtook England in the century before. They own the largest percentage of our debt and god forbid they ever call it due - printing enough unbacked cash to cover that just isn't gonna work.
Add to this the increasing value of the Euro and the fact that it is backed and you begin to understand that time is short. We need to change the way we do things on so very many levels. The potentially unfortunate thing is that things will ultimately change with our without our participation.
RCS
We use biodiesel in our four old Mercedes Benzes. That's to counteract the eleven children for the environmentalists.
And, I make sweet and sour sauce from scratch.
If I could figure out how to make a solar generator from a 1978 Popular Science article in the 3rd grade, there is no reason we can't come up with viable alternative sources of energy.
And, I prefer Kung Pao Chicken.
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