Sunday Morning Openings -- April 17, 2016; Regional Ski Shop, 47 Stores, Succumb To Lack Of Snow, Global Warming

Back on April 6, 2016, I had a short blurb on The Obama Doctrine aka "we're sitting this one out." It appears the folks over at The Boston Globe finally got around to reading the article and agree with me: the Obama Doctrine has made the world more dangerous.

When you have The Boston Globe opining that Obama's foreign policy has made the world more dangerous and McKinsey and Consulting opining that Obama's only domestic "success" is a huge failure, it's hard to find much positive about how historians will eventually summarize the Obama years. I assume it will be in Section IV: Failed Presidencies.

Anyway, whatever, back to The Boston Globe op-ed today:

But Obama is better at deploring other people’s foreign policy messes than at learning from them. The lesson he takes away from the Iraq war was that the United States has no business intervening militarily in the Middle East — and that the greater the intervention, the greater the resulting fiasco. The facts haven’t borne out that conclusion. But Obama won’t be budged.

Fathomless ignorance. Their words not mine.

So much more at the link, but time to move on.

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North Dakota Ethanol Plant Out Of Debt; Showing A Profit

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

RICHARDTON -- The Red Trail Energy ethanol plant is heading into the 2016 farming season free of debt and with its sights on the future.

The nine-year-old investor-led company, which crushed corn into more than 54 million gallons of ethanol last year, informed investors at the company’s annual meeting March 17 that it had paid off its final $5.5 million in debt.

“I think it was a surprise for them,” Red Trail Energy CEO Gerald Bachmeier said. “I don’t think it was expected.”

Red Trail Energy was scheduled to be paid off over the next three years.

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Another Connecticut Company Calls It Quits

Meanwhile, out in Los Angeles, Sports Chalet is closing all stores and stopping all on-line sales, I guess, which is another way to say Sport Chalet has gone out of business. I think I've spent half of my life in the US out in California and I don't recall ever seeing a Sports Chalet. They must have been located in the more upscale parts of the metropolis. The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

The regional chain, which was purchased in 2014 by a Connecticut company named Vestis Retail Group, will remain open for several weeks while merchandise is cleared out, Sport Chalet said on its website.

Sport Chalet started in 1959 when German immigrants Norbert and Irene Olberz bought a tiny La Cañada Flintridge ski shop, which they built into a publicly traded retailer with more than 50 locations.

On Saturday, the struggling sporting goods chain began going-out-of-business sales at its 47 stores and closed its online sales operation.

I assume global warming and the lack of snow led to the demise of this ski shop.