Leon Panetta says that Iran would be crossing a “red line” if it blockaded oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. Granted, disruption of oil supplies from the Middle East would have a devastating impact on the world economy, including China, Europe and the United States. But at the same time, wouldn’t the oil exporting countries of the Middle East (including Iran itself) have as much or more to lose? Things could get even dicier for Arab despots if they couldn’t afford to give their people all the perqs that flow from selling oil. After all, the rest of the world would still have access to oil produced elsewhere. With conservation and some hardship, we could get by for a while, but the producers’ entire economies would be suspended. So, shouldn’t it be the oil producers who are drawing red lines and threatening to unleash all those weapons the USA has been selling them for years so that they could maintain order in their neck of the woods? As Popeye used to say, “Let’s you and him fight.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz6X8g754oE

Does anyone else wonder why the Chinese don’t use their trillion dollars of US treasury bonds to buy up stock in American companies? They could own a significant part of the country without firing a shot. Half of Congress is beholden to the same companies, so the Chinese would have significant control of our government as well.

My first post explained that I would like to figure out how to get an excerpt from my blog to show on the goldenbarker.com web site. This proved to be trickier than I thought it would be. But . . . . I finally did it.

So far, I haven’t actually integrated it into the site, but I created a test page to try it out. If you want to see what I did, you can go look at it by clicking here. If you see anything weird, please let me know.

Sometimes I really wonder if dogs were intended to have web sites . . .

Time speeds by, doesn’t it?  It seems just yesterday that Cleo expressed her relief at not being elected president in 2008.  Since then, campaign headquarters at http://www.goldenbarker.com has remained as it was on election day.  The Golden Barker hasn’t published a new edition for nearly three years.  That’s okay.  It’s fitting that Cleo’s last column contained her reflections on the campaign and the future of the country under its then new president.  Politics was her passion.

So, moving on . . .   I created this wordpress blog and put it in a folder on the goldenbarker.com web site.  So far I haven’t put anything on the site that links to the blog though.  What I would like to do is create a space on the opening page of the website where someone would see the title and the first couple lines of the blog, so they could click on it and come to here and read the whole thing.  Does anyone know how to do that?  I’m pretty sure it can be done because I think I’ve seen sites that did that.

If I can figure that out, then I’ll do some updating and rearranging on the web site.  I’m sure Cleo would want me to put it to some good use.  Does anyone have any ideas?

Heh Heh.  That last question is a subtle way of getting you to comment on this blog so that I can see how the whole comment thing works in wordpress.