Herman
Cain
Read Herman's bio and previous columns
May 5, 2008
Substance is Beef, But
the Mainstream Media Gives Us Weak Vegetable Soup
A
good country style vegetable soup has lots of fresh vegetables, a thick
beef broth and plenty of beef chunks. It’s a meal in a bowl.
A
bowl of vegetable soup with only a few vegetables, a thin beef broth,
and not a chunk of beef to be found is disappointing, and you are still
hungry.
That was most of the mainstream media headlines last week. As always
they covered the natural disasters and tragic happenings well, but did
very little to give people any sense of hope that the sky was not
falling.
Here are my headlines.
Gasoline prices are going to continue to go up. Food prices are going to
continue to go up. All consumer goods are going to continue to go up.
Government spending is going to continue to go up. Hot air out of
Congress is going to continue to go up, and the Earth is not melting.
Home prices are going to stabilize. The financial markets are going to
stabilize. The national economy is going to stabilize. And there will
not be a world food crisis.
The Democratic presidential nominating race between Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama is going to continue all the way to their convention in
August, because the media will extend Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s 15
minutes of fame.
All of these headlines are inter-related and based on the same root
cause.
Oil!
The cost of everything will go up because the cost of oil will go up.
The cost of oil will go up because world demand will continue to go up,
and OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) said so.
OPEC’s president, Chakib Khelil, predicted that oil will hit $200 per
barrel. I believe him since OPEC is the undisputed leading indicator of
oil prices in the world, and since the United States has remained an
OPIC (Oil Pitiful Importing Country) for the last 30 years.
The housing market, financial markets and our national economy will
stabilize because OPEC does not control them directly, yet. We still
control the largest and most resilient economy in the world, because the
U.S. consumers are still the most resilient and creative people in the
world despite an impotent Congress.
Congress holds useless hearings on things that produce no solutions or
strategic insight into the major issues our nation faces. For instance,
Sen. Hillary Clinton wants another investigation into possible gasoline
price manipulation by the oil companies. A 2006 Federal Trade Commission
Report determined that there was no beef to that suspicion.
Congress is now holding hearings on food prices to determine if there
should be a windfall profits tax on the food companies that make grits,
even though the instability in food prices started in 2005 with
Congress’s mandate for ethanol to be mixed into the nation’s gasoline
supply.
But our resilience is wearing thin with the help of tree huggers,
socialist politicians who call themselves “progressives” and no
coordinated plans whatsoever to even get on a path to energy
independence.
As
our resilience wears thin, our national security becomes threatened
because of our vulnerability to oil. This makes our Islamic fascist
enemies happy, and some of them live right here in the United States.
We
need not ask “Where’s the beef?” in Congress or among the Democratic
presidential hopefuls, because there is none. At least John McCain is
starting to show some signs of substance with his recently discussed
ideas for the economy and health care reform.
The mainstream media hardly noticed.
Too many of them are political vegetarians.
© 2008 North Star
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