May I let my voice be a clarion call. I will use these words for justice. I will use these words for truth. And humour.

Monday, November 6, 2006

 

Who is this Goldman Sachs, and what do they have to do with gas prices around election time?

Tomorrow is election day. I saw the price of gas as low as $2.27 today, down from above $3 a few months ago.

I've had my suspicions, but this(also linked above), and this help clarify what's going on behind the scenes...

1. Major financial player Goldman Sachs is trading petroleum futures at a loss to drive prices down.
2. The Saudi oil producers are producing extra petroleum to drive prices down.
3. American oil companies have made SO MUCH $$ in profit the last few years that they can afford to have a month or two of losing money (or more likely, gaining money with relatively slim profit margins).

Perhaps the professional pollsters and psychologists have already figured out that the effect of gas prices on individual pocketbooks is actually a secret major voting factor... I wonder, America. I wonder where you stand. Corrupt voting tactics aside, are issues of welfare, environment, liberty, and peace as important to you at the polls as the price of gas? After seeing those people picketing gas stations for lower gas prices a few months back, I am left wondering how we got here. No, I think I have a fair understanding of how we got here.

In any case, it will be interesting to see a graph of the average price of gas from June to December of 2006. [emoticon: sardonic]

lyrics:
So I'm born again for the last time
One last stand for this dying man
can we get a round of sympathy
I think it's too late he was never forward or straight
much like the one watching over me
Dizzy with greed now you've got everything you need
as you cling to the one who stands second to none.
-Corrosion of Conformity, Born Again for the Last Time

colors: cornflower blue, and oil-slick rainbow

mood: procrastinatey

chant/prayer/mantra: keep cleaning up. i went to a wonderful museum yesterday with a rock star (who shall remain anonymous) and his family. in one room, there were some 17th-century mirrors on the wall, and i noticed that while they were good enough to see if your hair was combed straight, they looked pretty dingy. today's mirrors, when cleaned so they're not covered in toothpaste flecks, are much more accurate in their reflection. i am thinking that as we have progressed into the information age, the mirror humanity holds up to itself has become more accurate, so that now we can see the human condition more accurately than ever before. then again, we've also been able to manipulate that perfectly reflective mirror (think of the curved clown-like mirrors), so that it magnifies the parts we want to see, and occludes the parts that might be less savory for viewing. perhaps our job as global ministers is to bend that mirror so its as flat as euclid would have it, and to provide all the necessary pastoral care to help people cope with what they see.

of course, we all bend our own personal mirrors as well, and that's probably related as a precursor to the issue directly above.

huh, that post got kind of hijacked from oil prices to mirrors - i think i might be seeing art in a different way lately..


pax hominibus,
joel

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