Lucky you! Next week’s Inspection arrives early with a truly frightening big Halloween boo!
Maybe, but hey! Joy of all joys! Gas prices have plummeted! Yet shouldn’t this raise as many questions as the higher prices?
Look, I get enjoying lower gas prices. As the Bush II era progressed my business started to enter the danger zone due to rising gas prices. Luckily it survived due to a local contract, but I know all too well how high priced gas can devastate small business. I’ve heard, and never really believed, all the lame excuses, the most current and frequent being “speculators.”
OK, if so, and I have my doubts, wouldn’t out of control speculators make a damn good case for regulations and enforcement? Want to bet if pols actually pushed that (fat chance) prices would drop?
I do remember when we started stomping all over oil country with our military boots I understood that “game over” was approaching for most of the touring side of my business. But I have had my share of chuckles, like when Bush, Junior, said in a debate if prices went that high (Horrors! About $1.55 a gallon nationally according to this site. Just use your cursor on the graph.) and he were president he’d go over there and confront them. Reminded of this, again and again, an annoyed Bush finally did go over and… kissed them, literally. OK, I understand: local custom. But irony can be a mirth filled quaff. Then when prices went back up during Obama the same defenders who claimed a president really had little control over prices, who never brought any of this up after Bush said he’d go over there and straighten them out, blamed Obama.
If you have a great long term memory it’s been a comedy act indeed. But I’m no longer laughing. Why? Considering where prices are going I should be prancing with joy, dreaming of returning to my 9 month a year tour life, right?
At 60 going on 61? Eh, maybe not.
But, no, I’m not celebrating. Why? Well, because my cynical, suspicious, conspiracy seeking nose seems to have sniffed a whiff of sulfur straight from the pits of hell. These odoriferous gaseous emanations may have arrived at my nostrils via extremists: extreme Muslims, extreme Christians and extreme war mongers all eager to serve their causes, and eager make America march back into the quicksand we never should have walked into to begin with. “Eager” because financing the acts of fanatics might get more of our brave, mostly well intended, soldiers dead, while handing more freedom stealing power over to pols and extreme theists: some who long to hurry up the end times. All to help satisfy blood lust driven by prophets and profits.
Is there some huge cabal working to bring all this back on line, or just evil, greedy and fanatical people with similar goals? If the results are the same, does it matter?
You see, like all the suspect reasons given for radical price changes before, it is said that the reason prices are dropping is because, essentially, the oil countries are obsessed with the fact the US has become a leader in production and they’re trying to drive these mother frackers out of business. Really? Good luck with that. And I seriously doubt they’re so stupid to think that even possible.
Most conspiracy theories suffer from a terminal complexity virus, though personally I find the official theory about what really happened on 9/11 seems to have at least exhibit mild flu symptoms in comparison to, say, some of the Ebola-based speculation. Speaking of Ebola, really…. Barack Obama wants America to be ravaged by Ebola because it’s only fair if they have it there we have it here? What, because of his “Kenyan” roots from a father he hardly knew? That just one of the latest twisted illogical conspiracy muses a certain ego bloated talk show host has attempt to pass on as “logic.”
Boo!
A nurse in Maine who wants to go bicycling is going to be patient zero: some secret agent hired by Barack to create a pandemic?
Boo!
By the way, if we’re going to lock away a symptom-less nurse, maybe we should at least detain Pan who is the real source of all these pandemics we see around us?
Boo!
Yes, I’m joking, though it makes about as much sense as, oh, Obama’s parents: pre-birth, saw his potential for becoming president and had his birth certificate forged with the help of… of… OK, it’s falling apart: as it always does examined too closely. And we must be aware that accepted theories can also fall apart “examined too closely.”
But, no, there’s a simpler explanation for the celebrated lower gas prices. And it’s Halloween scary. So let’s go for it!
Those who sell gas, process it, distribute it, obviously seek profit: and the past 10 plus years of war have provided astronomical amounts of profit. How can they suck the consumer: the oil addicted American people, back in to the big profit bubble: a people who are tired of perpetual war? Well, if they get oil on the cheap, increase consumption, while encouraging those who might make Americans lust for war again… seek revenge: hey that might do it.
Who’s selling oil on the cheap?
ISIS.
Ever since John McCain helped fund these bastards and then came waddling back here to blame Obama my conspiracy radar has been on alert. A well funded ISIS makes for more beheadings, more ISIS insanity, more anger and more war. What a “great” formula! More war equals higher gas prices and more profit. All we have to do is get America to push for marching back into a bigger, more expanded war and start sucker punching terrorists again, kind of like Ali’s rope strategy. Success! We have more war, more product needed for the machines of war, ISIS gets what it wants, Muslim haters in America get what they want and those who seek profit get to climb back aboard the high priced, high profit, blood drenched, blood-based, gravy train again.
A “Gravy Train” even Fido would turn his back on. But hate and profit do combine well with ignorance and sociopaths. “Well” if you’re suicidal as a species.
And, as a reminder, you do know that Congress has made insider trading legal: but just for them, right?
It’s a win win formula: for everyone but soldiers and humanity in the long term.
But could some of our leaders: corporate, religious and political, be so sociopathic they would either conspire, or at least find common ground, to implement this scheme from Hell? Could we be funding those who behead innocents every time we fill up our tanks? Couldn’t all this serve those who wish to keep us afraid, make us give away more of our freedoms, be more compliant, and serve the 1984-ish perpetual war machine?
One hopes not.
But possible?
BOO!
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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