CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE WEEK

Sorry about last week’s hiatus—I was just a bit overwhelmed, and something had to give. However, I’m back with a new one. Since Monday was Tax Day (and yes, I filed then, like I pretty much always seem to do), I was going to talk about taxes, but, as you’ll see below, I’ve been more concerned about other things.


One of the things that has been overwhelming my psyche as of late has been the sheer quantity of potential, active conspiracies going on right now. I may examine some of them in more detail later, but seriously, the more I think about some of these, the more I think that everyone is seriously nuts, and we're all screwed. Examples--in the last week or so:

The New Hampshire phone-jamming case now has a strong White House connection, so that Senate seat was almost certainly stolen in 2002;

Bush is going to nuke Iran, whether it’s a good idea, or a really really terrible one that will weaken the United States for decades, wreck our economy, and get us added to the Axis of Evil (link);

The housing bubble is about to pop. Now, strictly speaking, the bubble popping isn’t a conspiracy, but, say, Alan Greenspan keeping interest rates artificially low for years after it was a good idea in order to make sure the economy was humming so Bush could get reelected, is. The housing bubble is just a symptom of that conspiracy, and the bubble’s deflation is just a correction to earlier mendacity.

This guy got paid $190K last year. A day. Even on weekends. (I want his job for, say, two weeks. I’m sending over a resume now)

More on oil, and oil guys. Oil execs like this were huge supporters of Bush, and the Iraq war. Part of is relatively simple to understand--high-income industrialists tend support the Repubs and Bush regardless of what industry they're in. And Texas oil execs are Bush's people, his golf buddies from his years spent trashing oil companies and providing his Dad's rich friends with tax write-offs. However, what if there's more to the story?

Remember Gulf 1? This war, despite claims to the contrary, was really about keeping oil prices low. The U.S. Economy could not tolerate 40% of the world’s oil supply in the hands of a hostile nation. Therefore, we had to act, and as a result we kept oil prices much lower than they otherwise could have been.

The current Iraq war, however, has dramatically increased the price of oil, by removing Iraqi oil from the world market, and has the potential to increase still further if the U.S. does something to piss off the rest of the Islamic world (see “nuking Iran,” above). Higher oil prices were an easily predictable result of the Iraq war, and are even more obvious consequences of any conflict with Iran. If oil prices go to $150 a barrel, Exxon Mobil, with fixed extraction costs for its own oil of around $15 per barrel, will make hundreds of billions of dollars in additional profits. These guys support Bush for a reason, and it’s not just to lower their tax bills.

And this is just a taste. Way too much to keep track of. I'm going to go hide under my desk and whimper for a while. Have a nice week.