Two days of beauty & Nature ...
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Nesting Gator (July 14) - large female alligator resting by her nest
Pretty View (July 14) - a small harbor filled with boats, with rainfall
Baby Sandhill Cranes (July 16) - These cute little things were in a field with cows
Orchids (July 16) - USF Botanical Garden
Did you know that gasoline is going to reach $20 a gallon?
There's an entire book written about this subject by Chris Steiner. Here is a five minute video interview:
http://www.youtube.com/...
I'm very much in favor of expensive gasoline. I saw so many Hummer H2s and SUVs and idling cars today. These wasteful vehicles and behaviors indicate that gasoline is too cheap.
Trying to reason with such people is an exercise in futility. Cheap gasoline is an entitlement and a birthright. Americans feel obligated to burn that stuff up as quickly as possible, too. $4 a gallon gasoline was enough to get the attention of Americans but the consumers forgot that lesson once gasoline dropped to $2 a gallon again.
$4 a gallon gasoline was only a warning. Anyone who imagines that gasoline will stay cheap forever is going to be greatly disappointed by the future. Anyone who entertains any hopeful thoughts about the economy and America's future prospects will be greatly disappointed by the future.
We're all living on borrowed time. America borrowed this time from the Chinese. For the last handful of decades the Americans have been living it up on money borrowed from China and elsewhere. Sustaining the economy throughout this period of irrational exuberance was bubbles. Once one bubble popped a bigger bubble would replace it until the economy ran out of bubbles.
We're already living in a different world. But these are still the "good old days" since the future is very bleak indeed.
Americans are going to lose everything, including their beloved automobiles and addicted consumer culture.
Americans will have nothing. In the decades ahead Americans will have to make peace with impoverishment and deprivement.
Don't complain, though. Billions of humans have lived with impoverishment and deprivement throughout this era of American hyperconsumerism. Those people were always invisble and irrelevant to Americans. They didn't matter when times were good and they won't matter now that times have become bad.
Americans will suffer as billions have already suffered. There's no injustice. Americans are entitled to nothing.
David Mathews
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