Clearing Out The In-Box -- April 8, 2018

Updates

Later, 9:52 p.m. Central Time: why I love to blog. See #1 and #7 below. Now this from twitter --

It's hard to believe, but Hillary is actually hoping that Trump fails on this initiative. Sad. As President Trump would say. But she's not the only one. At least three-quarters of the US Senate and three-quarters of the US House hope Trump fails. Really sad. Twenty years from now, we will look on Trump's four years as something incredibly special and it was too bad his contemporaries did not "get it." Their personal politics took precedence over what was best for the US. Sad.

Original Post 

Because of family commitments, I am way behind. I apologize. I may not get to all the e-mail that has accumulated in the past six hours. So, some notes:

1. Politics: This is going to make a lot of folks question my sanity, but that's fine. The more I read, the more I listen, the more I understand President Trump. I haven't found anyone that can explain Trump as well as Scott Adams. And one cannot compare Rush and Scott Adams; they are in two different arenas. Rush is totally in the "political" arena. Scott Adams is in the "persuasion" arena. I will leave it at that. I don't watch any television except for sports and Big Bang Theory re-runs.

2. Sports: Due to family commitments I missed the Texas Speedway NASCAR race today -- I drove right by the Speedway today twice -- going/coming to soccer practice for our middle granddaughter. Looks like I missed a great race. Curious how Keselowski feels about being taken out of the race through no fault of his own.

3. Sports: I also missed the Masters. From what I saw, it most likely was one for the record books, one of the best Masters ever. The fourth (and last) round should have been "match play" between Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed. It turned out Rory must have had too much adrenaline: he bogeyed three holes on the front nine, including a par 5. In these tournaments, one "never" wins if one doesn't get birdies on par 5's. On the back nine, two more bogeys. Are you kidding me? Not only was that bad for McIlroy, but it was really, really bad for Patrick Reed. Reed had no competition and, therefore, wasn't playing his best. Reed had three bogeys including two in the first six holes. Bad, bad, bad. Out of nowhere, Jordan Spieth shoots eight under and came close -- but then he bogeys the last hole. Hmm, hmm, hmm --- quite a day.

4. Global warming: I learned a lot this past week. Both Williston and Tioga (both in the Bakken) set new all-time record low temperatures. And, yes, a lot depends on where the thermometers are placed. I've talked about this before. In the big scheme of things, very few thermometer locations exist even in the most population-dense part of the world; there were even fewer thermometers centuries ago; and, most of the earth still does not have thermometers or satellite coverage. Garbage in, garbage out. I think a climatologist can get any outcome she wants. And that's just recording the temperatures; nothing about analysis.

5. Worst news of the day: Diamond and Silk, two African-American women, and pro-Trumpers, have been labeled "unsafe to the Facebook community." So, expect them to be shut down. Amazing. But the folks saying they hope Trump dies are still getting their coverage and keeping their social media sites. Pretty scary.

6. Irony: a fake caravan will allow President Trump to do exactly what the pro-illegal-immigration folks feared most: he will militarize the southern frontier. Yes, the military is highly restricted in what it can do, but the national guard will bring more to the party than a lot of folks think.

7. North Korea: the tea leaves suggest China and North Korea are serious about calming the nuclear rhetoric. This is very similar to what happened along our southern frontier. Trump militarized the sea lanes around China -- something China really did not want to see happen. China wants Trump out of their waters, and the only way it's going to happen is if Kim Jong Un decides he wants to become part of the civilized community.

8. Mideast. This is a big, big story and it seems -- because it's so quiet -- that it's off everyone's radar scope. It's hard to believe that this "quiet period" will last to the end of 2019.

9. Tesla. Twelve more months. If by the end of 1Q19 Tesla is still maintaining some kind of production schedule, the company will be a going and growing car company and all the naysayers will be proved wrong. A lot of folks thought that would happen one way or the other by the end of 1Q18 -- but we were wrong.

10. The stock market: I could not be happier. Scott Adams talked about this in his "periscope" earlier today. He and I are on the same sheet of music.

I can now delete a lot of e-mail. I like to answer all e-mail but I won't be able to do it today. The notes above pretty much cover everything that was sent to me.

Oh, one more thing.

11. California's gasoline prices: this article will let you down. It's a "mystery" story and unfortunately the mystery was not solved. A huge "thank-you" to the reader who sent it to me. The article started out great; and with a lot of data points along the way, it was a great article -- for about two-thirds of the way through. And then, poof ... it sort of just dwindled away. No there there. I have to re-read the entire article again -- I think there is a simpler explanation for the mystery -- but the author did not mention it -- if he did, I missed it. The mystery may not have been solved, but it eliminates a few suspects. And maybe that's as good as it gets.