Why I Love To Blog, Reason #5 -- September 28, 2015

Why I love to blog. Yesterday I asked rhetorically "how is Saudi's oil strategy working out?" I thought I might be getting ahead of my headlights on that one, and then Don sends me this very, very interesting link. Peak Oil is reporting:

On Tuesday 22 September, Middle East Eye broke the story of a senior member of the Saudi royal family calling for a “change” in leadership to fend off the kingdom’s collapse.

In a letter circulated among Saudi princes, its author, a grandson of the late King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, blamed incumbent King Salman for creating unprecedented problems that endangered the monarchy’s continued survival.

“We will not be able to stop the draining of money, the political adolescence, and the military risks unless we change the methods of decision making, even if that implied changing the king himself,” warned the letter.

Whether or not an internal royal coup is round the corner – and informed observers think such a prospect “fanciful” – the letter’s analysis of Saudi Arabia’s dire predicament is startlingly accurate.

Like many countries in the region before it, Saudi Arabia is on the brink of a perfect storm of interconnected challenges that, if history is anything to judge by, will be the monarchy’s undoing well within the next decade.

Read the rest of the story at the link and see if the writer said anything more or less than what I wrote over the weekend:

• Saudi is losing about 10% of their cash reserves annually by giving away oil for $50/bbl (but the article above suggests it could be significantly more)
• Saudi apparently had an unsuccessful 5-year, $35 billion program to significantly hike crude oil production
• Saudi recently completed two new refineries
• Saudi has huge desalinization electricity demands -- and growing annually; oil used to produce electricity
• Saudi recently canceled huge solar energy projects
• Saudi put on hold all new capital-intensive projects in addition to aforementioned solar energy projects
• Saudi has been told explicitly by President Obama that the US has no responsibility to guarantee Saudi Arabia' security
• Saudi has major terrorist threat in Yemen
• Saudi has embarked on major weapons acquisition program to defend itself against regional neighbors
• sanctions on Iran recently lifted resulting in a) Mideast nuclear arms race; and, b) $100 billion in "new" money for Iran to pursue military objectives (I thought it was $156 billion but this article says $100 billion).

My disclaimer still holds. 

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Theory Of Law Evolves ... 

Or Have We Already Seen This Movie?

My hunch is that the Hillary e-mail issue will evolve into a new theory of law for the US. [I'm not sure if I'm using the phrase correctly, but it's good enough for now.]

My hunch is that "transgressions by the president, vice president, and certain cabinet members are political and not legal issues as long as they do not rise to the level of treason." Transgressions by select members of that oligarchy will rest in the hands of the US Attorney General and short of treason will be allowed to play out in the court of public opinion.

There is a precedent (there are probably many precedents) but this one is perhaps most famous and least contentious. From wiki:

In 1804, the last full year of his single term as Vice President, Aaron Burr killed his political rival Alexander Hamilton in a famous duel. Burr was never tried for the illegal duel, and all charges against him were eventually dropped, but Hamilton's death ended Burr's political career.

And perhaps once we get through this (the most recent Clinton scandal), ten or twenty or thirty years from now, maybe even treason by select members of the oligarchy will be a matter for the voters to decide.