Category Archives: America

11/27/21

Understanding Energy Pricing

It is very easy to understand gasoline pricing — you drive up to the pump, study the price of different grades of gasoline, insert your card, and pump your gas.

[The price of gas taken together with the price of groceries makes one as intimately knowledgeable of the state of inflation in America as a Nobel Laureate economist.]

Today, when you fill up it costs about twice what it did when Joe Biden was elected President.

Glendale, California — I have a 24-gallon tank. Do the bloody math. Ouch!

But, what really controls the price of gasoline? Is it crude oil prices? Continue reading →

11/26/21

Girl With The Curl — The Future

Imagine this poem by Longfellow spoken in a High Street London English accent, slowly.

 

“Momma, what does ‘horrid’ mean?”

There was a little girl,

            Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,

            She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was . . . . . horrid.

 

Introducing my granddaughter, Eadie Eichholz, a Southern girl of considerable ability from Savannah, Georgia who it is a blessing to know and be related to and is never, ever horrid.

11/22/21

The Worm Has Turned — Employment

The United States, a great country, has about 10.5MM job openings and 7.3MM folks looking for jobs.

This means that employers who want to fill their open positions are ratcheting up their hiring game because this is now a contest in which not everybody can emerge a winner.

So, how do you — wanting to be a winner — do it? Continue reading →

11/20/21

A Well Traveled Lie Promulgated By A Majority Does NOT = THE TRUTH

Comes now the inane case of Kyle Rittenhouse charged and acquitted killer of two and wounder of one in an unfortunate and completely avoidable saga of Shakespearian proportions played out like a Greek tragedy with an attendant chorus of morons.

Just for clarity — a jury does not render a verdict of “innocent.” The outcome of a criminal jury trial is either “guilty” or “not guilty.” There is no “innocent.” Thought that needed to be said.

Green shirt cherubic Kyle removing graffiti from high school prior to events of that tragic night.

 

Armed 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse as tragic events began to unfold.

Continue reading →

11/14/21

Leadership Tone

Leadership is a difficult, broad subject — a constantly evolving, context-dependent, nuanced, and complex issue while being supremely personal and driven by individual style.

Leadership tone

We have spoken before about leadership style, authentic leadership voice, but today I want to speak about leadership tone.

Leadership Style

By “tone” I mean the emphasis or coloration of how the leader’s voice resonates, its intonation, timbre, or temperament, of how the leader speaks and approaches the solving of problems or meeting challenges. Continue reading →

11/11/21

Veterans Day 2021

Respect to all veterans on Veterans Day!

“I, Jeffrey L Minch, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

The-Proper-Young-Lt-in-Korea

I took the above oath in 1969 when I matriculated at the Virginia Military Institute at the height of the Vietnam War. I took it again when I was commissioned a Regular Army Second Lieutenant in the Combat Engineers four years later. Continue reading →

11/8/21

Pimping With Experts

When a politician needs to counter some terrible narrative as it relates to behavior or policy what does he/she do?

They find some EXPERTS to pimp out to support their outrageous behavior or policy.

The Fifty Intel EXPERTS

You will recall during the last days of the 2020 election, candidate Joe Biden was confronted by the allegation that a laptop owned by his son — in the possession of the FBI for a year and supposedly being “investigated” — was filled with damaging information.

Joe had famously asserted that he had had nothing to do with his nefarious son’s business dealings with amongst others, the sovereign nation of China. The information on the laptop showed this was a lie of gargantuan proportions and that not only was he actively involved, but he was the beneficiary of “10% for the Big Guy.”

The information on the laptop began to leak out and showed a drug crazed Hunter Biden engaged in various sorts of churlish and illegal behavior.

What did candidate Joe Biden do? He pimped some EXPERTS. You can read the contemporaneous article here:

5o Intel Pimp EXPERTS Opine

Now, in a move that has been proven a lie and incredibly cynical candidate Joe Biden rounded up “50 former intelligence officials” who warned the naive, gullible, and callow American public that the laptop, the information on the laptop, and Joe’s balding forehead were “signs of a Russian disinformation operation.” Continue reading →

10/31/21

Some Thoughts On Job Creation

Presidents are always puffing up and beating their chests about all the jobs they’ve created by their general goodness, wisdom, and pluck.

Here’s the thing — we don’t need any more jobs in the short term. We have plenty of jobs.

We need folks to fill jobs. Let me show you why I think this:

 1. The US Bureau of Labor Statistic publishes a nifty monthly report called the JOLTs report — Job Openings and Labor Turnover. Catchy, eh?

It always seems to be a little behind the times, because the most recent one was published on 12 October and it had the August 2021 numbers.

 2. The report provides information on:

The number of open jobs;

The number of hires;

The number of folks who have quit their jobs; and,

The number of folks who have been involuntarily laid off, discharged, or “other” separations. Continue reading →