Some people aren't happy unless they're miserable | Hour 2

Now, okay, look. I get it. Some people... are not happy unless they are miserable, okay? I get it. I understand. Miserable disposition equals satisfaction. I mean, I don't have that myself, but I recognize it. I flirted a bit with that, with that you know, pessimism morphing into a cynicism. I get it. I, so I, I, I understand I was on that path years ago myself. Okay. However, I would simply submit if you would like to not be on that path because you're actually not happy being miserable. You're just kind of miserable, you know, but you, you, you know, you tell yourself this lie that like you have access to the real truth, the information and all of that stuff. Um, So the antidote, I've said this many times, the antidote to the black pilling is gratitude. That's recognizing what you have and appreciating what you have and recognizing that it could always be worse. That's not to say that you don't criticize. I mean, Lord knows I do that every day here. I criticize things and issues and policies and people. Sure. But I'm always grateful that I have the ability, the freedom to do so, right? I mean, we live in a point in human history in a country that has never had an equal to it when it comes to wealth, standard of living, lifespan, conveniences, freedom. All of these things. We are a unique specimen in the course of human events. We are incredibly lucky. We are blessed to be living here and now. And so that is my sort of baseline that I go off of. And that has worked pretty effectively for me as a guard against spiraling into nihilism. So I offer that to you. You can ignore that. That's totally your call. I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. I'm just pointing out that. You have a choice. You have agency. You can improve your station in life. You can improve your outlook on life. Rush Limbaugh used to talk about this too, that the natural disposition of people is more towards pessimism than optimism. But once you start training your brain to be more of an optimist, it becomes way easier, and then it becomes the default. And it's a better way to live. It's a happier way to live. So I would submit gratitude, recognizing the blessings that we have. Okay, so that's sort of the general heading here for the hour, but Specifically, we've been talking about the price of gas. And I pay for gas myself. I drive into the studio every day myself. I have a wife who drives to work every day herself. We are spending more money on gas, no doubt about it. But as Thomas Sowell famously said, there are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. So what are the trade-offs? When it comes to the Iran situation, what is the trade-off? You eliminate a global terror threat, prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon, bring some modicum of stability to the Middle East. Maybe, don't know, but maybe. Better chance than with Iran still being run by the murderous, barbaric Islamic Republic of Iran, the IRGC, right? And if that means gas prices... go up by $ 1, $ 1. 50 for a year, then come back down? Is that a trade-off you'd be willing to make? Recognizing there are no solutions. See, that's the thing. Utopia, just like we say with the leftists, utopia is not an option, okay? It's not one of the options available to us on the table. Perfection is not attainable in this fallen world, right? So what are the trade-offs? Now, maybe you don't think Iran would get a bomb. Maybe you don't think they would use it if they did get the bomb. Maybe they would just use it for self-protection. That's it. And then they would stop funding all of their proxy armies around the region. They would stop trying to destabilize and take over countries like they did in Lebanon. They would stop doing that once they got the bomb. I mean, that's a theory. I would submit it's an uninformed one, but that is a theory. So when I look at it, I say that trade-off... is probably worth it. Does that guarantee success? No, it does not. And when I look at the progress, I look at the last, what is, you know, almost, what has it been now, nine months? When I look at what's been done to Iran, where they are now versus where they were, I find it to be laughable, like literally LOL laughable, that you can look at the metrics of what Iran is like now and what it was before, what America is now and what it was before, and to view these two things and say Iran has the upper hand or Iran has won, we're losing, whatever. That is a laughable position to me. That's wish-casting, and I suspect there is an underlying motivation, whatever it may be, in whatever individual circumstance— but there's an underlying motivation to adopt that position. All right, let me jump over and get Jerry on the program. Hello, Jerry, how are you? Hello, hello. I just had, and you sort of touched on this, for the brilliant CNN lady and for some of the naysayers who are touching you today, I'd propose we ask this question. Assuming we have enough oil available, control enough oil in this country. Would you support having enough refinery capability at our disposal that we could actually satisfy the energy needs of our country, period? And see what they say to that. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what Scott Jennings was getting at with his question, right, where he said, do you support building a single refinery, just even one? And nobody answered the question. Nobody would say yes to that question because it's essentially the same question you're asking because if you build more refineries, then we can refine the oil that we are producing more so than any other country. We can't refine it all. And so we have to export some of it, and we have to import some refined products. But yeah, to your point, if we were to have the refinery capacity, then we would be completely energy independent. Sure. So, Pete, I think I'd submit that it's not the same question. I think what we'd be asking is, would you support us doing what we needed to do, because it's within our capability, to be energy independent? Right, but then they would say yes with solar and wind and hydro, right? They would say we need to do all of the renewables. Yeah, true. Not build any more refineries, phase out the fossil fuels. Let's make them say that, and we know where that has led thus far. No, they don't believe that. And that's the hilarity of this position, too, is that you've got people on the Democrat side that are arguing that, oh, our gas prices are too high and all of this, when they are the party that has been advocating for high gas prices in order to force people to. out of the fossil fuel markets, right? To force people to not buy gas-powered lawnmowers and weed whackers and vehicles, right? They want to dismantle the whole fossil fuel industry in America. Exactly. And that is the actual discussion. And you're right. It's hard to have that discussion with people who already have the position that they're not going to waiver from, and they're not going to really have a true discussion about it because they don't want to talk about the alternatives. Right. Well, they're using the gas prices as a weapon to defeat Republicans, and they're pretending that they have an answer that is not high gas prices. And so they don't want to have the discussion, to your point. They don't want to have the actual discussion because then they would be revealed as in favor of the higher gas prices. They just know you want lower gas prices. And so they will speak that language to you to get your vote, and then they will go and do what they want, which will keep gas prices high. Same on a number of topics. We don't want to talk about what we think we would like. We just want to talk about what you do that we think doesn't work. So give me your idea, right? No, we're not going to do that. We're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about what we think is wrong with yours. Right, exactly. Yeah, Jerry, I appreciate the call, sir. Have a good day. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. Create-A-Video's skilled team will professionally transfer your family's stories onto easy-to-use USB drives or DVDs, that won't deteriorate over time like the old photos and tapes are doing right now. They will create a keepsake video that you can share and copy and keep forever. I can see it now. You're gathered around the holiday table with your loved ones watching all these memories and people of your lives. You're sharing laughs, maybe some tears, telling stories that make your family uniquely yours. Beat the holiday rush and get your memories in now. Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. So as I do, sometimes I read through the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Refinery Capacity Report. You know, just for fun. The United States petroleum refining industry sits at a genuine inflection point this year. This is a piece at theworlddata.com, which is the world statistics website, theworlddata.com. This was from back in May, okay? So the inflection point this year one where decades of infrastructure dominance, record-breaking export performance, and some of the highest capacity facilities on the planet are running alongside a wave of closures, shrinking margins, and a structural shift towards renewable fuels that's beginning to permanently reshape the domestic refining map. As of January 1, the Refinery Capacity Report, which is the most authoritative federal survey of domestic refining infrastructure, it documented 132 operable refineries. That's how many we have as of January 1. 132. Total capacity, 18.4 million barrels per day. Okay? That's what we refine. 18 million barrels per day at 132 refineries. That was unchanged from 2024. However, that obscures a more complex story unfolding beneath it, which is the closure of the Lyondell Basel Houston Refinery. That shut down in January 2025. That took 264,000 barrels a day capacity offline. The Phillips 66 Los Angeles Refinery It started its phased shutdown in October 2025. That took 139,000 barrels offline. Then there was Valero's Benicia, California refinery. Closure April 2026 takes another 145,000 barrels per day from the supply chain. And so together, that's about 550,000 barrels per calendar day of refining capacity gone. Okay? Understanding... The U.S. Refining industry in 2026 requires holding two realities simultaneously. On the one hand, the country's refining complex remains the most productive in the world. U.S. Petroleum products, product exports rather, set a new annual record of 6.5 million barrels per day in 2024. Refineries are operating at... 95% utilization. Okay? So these things are running basically full bore. The Gulf Coast refining corridor, which is home to more than half of the national capacity, continues to supply not just the domestic market, but growing volumes of diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline to Latin America, Europe, and Asia. On the other hand, there's a thing called crack spreads. I don't make up these terms, people. Okay. The crack spread. This is defined as the critical margin between the crude oil input costs and the refined product selling prices, right? So what does the raw material cost and what does the finished product yield? That's the crack spread, okay? That spread has been declining steadily since its post-pandemic peak in 2022. Okay. That makes marginal and the midsize refineries increasingly unviable. Right? So you're talking about the profits there. How much profit can you capture from the oil inputs versus the product output? Refinery margins for gas and diesel fell between 26% and 29% year-over-year in 2024. and the forecast for U.S. refining capacity will shrink to 17.9 million barrels per calendar day by the end of 2025, a 3% contraction driven entirely by closures, closures of these refineries. We are the world's largest refining nation, but the closures represent a significant structural adjustment, and it's happening faster than most market observers anticipated. So I mentioned we have 132, maybe 131 now. You know what we had 40 years ago? 301. So we have less than half of the refineries that we had 40 years ago. This is a choice. These are choices. There are definitely market forces at play, but a lot of this is regulatory burden. and policy shifts towards renewables. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real, it's in your name, and 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. Let me go back over to the text line. 980 number says, I get the speculation on oil and gas, but how is it that you have four gas stations, excuse me, on four corners of an intersection and they all have the same price? Do all the gas companies buy their gas at the same time? He asked other questions, so let me take these one at a time. So the gas stations will look at the other gas stations on the corners and set their prices accordingly. They do have some bit of flexibility, but not a lot. They're allowed to run promotions. It's been years, okay, years since I did a breakdown on this, and so things may have changed, but I doubt it. So you're allowed to run a promotional period with lower gas prices, like if you open a gas station, a brand new gas station, you're allowed to do like a promotional period, cheaper gas, that kind of thing. Do they get their gas at the same time? I don't know about the same time, but they get their gas from the same place. Remember the colonial pipeline? Remember when that thing got shut down? Remember, I don't know, 15 years ago, there was a bad storm that came through and knocked one of the pipelines offline. We get our. Our supplies from the Gulf Coast. There's another one. There's the Colonial Pipeline. There's, I forget what the other one is called, the two main ones. And so you have contracts that, like in this part of the state, most of the gas stations are under a contract, which means that they're going to get their gas first. A lot of the gas companies up in the mountains, they're smaller gas stations and And so like locally owned mom and pop shops, and they will buy their gas on the spot market, which means yes, they can get gas cheaper. But if there's ever a, a crunch on the supply, the, the gas providers are going to give the gasoline to the, the contracted customers first. So that's why a lot of the small, I remember this happened about six or seven years ago up in Asheville. And a lot of the smaller stations weren't able to get gas. And that was why. Because they did not have contracts. They were buying on the spot market. And so again, they can get a better deal on... gasoline here and there and whatever. However, if the supplies get constrained with like a cyber attack, which is I think what happened at the time there was a, and it shut down the pipeline, right? Something like that happens. The contracted customers get their gas first. Um, How is it that two gas stations, same name, only 10 miles apart, have different prices? I believe that has something to do with the franchise owners. Like there could be a different owner of the individual gas stations, right? Two different owners. And they have some degree of flexibility for their prices. And then there's the promotional period again. So there are all sorts of rules about that. Airlines supposedly have fuel contracts and purchase gas at a contract rate for a period of time. That's yes. If talking about commodities, how are grocery stores charging different prices for fruits and vegetables? Well, cause they, cause they sell other things and then they can make up the, they can like, for example, turkeys. I learned this. Talking to a guy who runs a grocery store chain and years ago, and he talked about how, For like 50 weeks out of the year, turkeys are a loss leader. In other words, they lose money on turkeys all year long. But then they make it all back in the two weeks at the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Then they make the money back. So they have to keep them stocked. but people don't buy enough of them, so they get donated or thrown away or whatever, but they are a loss leader. They lose a lot of money on the turkeys, but they make money on other products that then offset those losses. In gas stations, the gas station doesn't really make much money on the gas. Very little of their profit comes from the actual gas. They make their money inside. on all of the chips and the drinks and all of that. That's where they make, that's where convenience stores make their money. Not on the gas. John says, I may have missed this, but has anybody said why the diesel refineries are closing? It seems like there's a market for it. I always trust the market to solve problems. So why is an Exxon or someone building a huge refinery like in Texas or Louisiana where there are friendly governors? Well, they have a lot of them there. This from the report at world data is, The facts collectively frame a U.S. refining sector that is simultaneously the world's most productive, but under mounting structural pressure from multiple directions at once. So we set a record for exporting petroleum products. So the end use, right, the products that are made from the raw materials. So that demonstrates the competitive strength of U.S. refining infrastructure. American refineries are producing more fuel and refined products than the domestic market consumes, generating $ 102 billion in net trade income back in 2022. Yet the closure pipeline tells a different story. Three major refineries removing a combined 550,000 barrels per day of capacity in the span of 15 months represents the fastest contraction of U.S. refining since the post-1982 downsizing that cut the industry from 301 facilities down to under 200. So there are a lot of different influences here. They also mention in the report the regulatory burden's the renewables, right, policies, moving us away from fossil fuels and the like. And again, you are in a global market. Now, California closing its refineries is a particular problem for them because they don't have any pipelines down to Texas and Louisiana. They're actually now importing a lot of their stuff from Asia because they don't have the capacity anymore. They've voluntarily done this. Just like we saw in Europe when Germany took all of its nuclear plants offline. New York is taking a nuclear plant offline, Indian Point, right? And they're like, oh, this is going to, you know, make energy cost less. Like, that's insane. It will do the exact opposite. And as we see in Germany, right, you've got people that are shivering in the cold because they can't get the energy during the winter. And they're now more reliant on Russian oil than they were before they closed down their nuclear plants. These are choices. Alan says record profits. Aren't the flex. They want it to be when profits are being measured in devalued dollars, all the things that go along with that are endless, but also includes your gas prices. Uh, yeah, the devaluation of the dollar, uh, plays a role in this as well. Um, Jeff says he's right. We don't buy as much whiteout and olive oil, so gas should be much higher because it's more demanding. Yeah, there's higher demand for the supply. If you think gas is high now, let the Democrats get in control and you'll find out what high gas prices are. Yeah, this is the other thing. I said this yesterday. It's completely illogical to me that you got Democrats running around complaining about high gas prices, saying put us in charge. We'll make things cost less, as Roy Cooper is promising. yet all of their policies are to drive fossil fuel prices up, to shut down the Keystone pipeline, stuff like that. Like, you have to be an idiot to believe them when they say they will bring down gas prices. They never have. This is from Vito, who says, I remembered paying a dollar a gallon... back in 1980 when gas spiked and then never came down much for very long. I went to the trustee inflation calculator and the price in 2026 inflation adjusted dollars is 407. Hmm. Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. Thank you for that math. I appreciate that, Vito. Seth says, I need to trademark this before anybody else. Oilmerica. Let me ask you a fourth time. Sorry. Oilmerica. That was my fault. I did that. 980 number says, did I miss the segment where we talked about how much cheaper gas is now compared to its peak in 2022? I don't recall all of the TDS inflicted calling in to complain back then. Oh wait, they. Justified it to support the electric vehicle market. And it was a good thing to them back then. Yeah. This is why I say like, I, I don't understand. It's not logic to say, let's put the people who close refineries, right? Slap taxes on a gallon of gas and try to force everybody off of fossil fuels for Gaia earth, you know, to put them in charge and they'll bring down the gas prices. I, it doesn't make any sense. Um, seven Oh four number says, um, I was confused for a while about producing our own oil would make the braces go down prices. I think go down, please people, uh, spell check your voice to texts, but it's a global market and prices will go up and down. According to the global economy, producing oil at home seems more like a national security guarantee rather than a low price guarantee. It, If I help you explain this to people, I'm sure I don't have the verbiage right, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about and can explain it better if you choose to, my friend. Right, no, and I talk about this too. I mentioned it with the Saudis. These other countries, if the price of oil gets too low, they will then start ratcheting down their production because they want to keep the prices artificially inflated The Saudi break-even point is about $ 60 per barrel because they fund so much of their government operations and their welfare programs and all of that off of their oil revenue, right? So that's why we call it a cartel. The OPEC is a cartel. It's price-fixing at a global scale, right? But now we, being the number one producer of oil, number one refiner of oil, we are exporting a lot of the final products to if we had more refinery capacity, we could dominate and everybody would be buying from us. And it would basically put a lot of these middle Eastern countries out of business, you know, or they would have to, they would have to ramp up more production to try to compete. Um, this, uh, Jennifer says the same people blaming everything on Trump would never give him credit if everything was perfect. Um, yeah, I agree with that. Uh, Ian says, uh, you are describing the sort of mindfulness that has worked wonders for me the last few years. Uh, that's talking about gratitude. That's favorite. Russ says, fortunately for me, I got rid of my mid-sized E 85 SUV for a full size premium gas truck just in time for the spike in gas. Yeah. Uh yes it's like washing your car right before it rains um Candy Crusher, back again. My favorite thing to do is crush up a nice little black pill and bang it straight into my frontal cortex and then text into the Pete Callender show. It's always such a racket until Pete starts dropping white pills. That always kills my high. You don't get high from the black pills, Candy. You're not getting high from black pilling. Jonathan. Jonathan. Says we're not just giving up a dollar more for gas to eliminate a nuclear threat from Iran. We're also giving up a dollar more for rent, a dollar more for health care, a dollar more for utilities, a dollar more for mortgages, a dollar more for food, prescriptions, get our car fixed. It all adds up to a whole lot of dollars. And then you have to ask yourself, was there really a nuclear threat from Iran? Yes. When you take into account mutually assured destruction. Yeah, that's the thing. Mutually assured destruction only works if you're dealing with a rational actor. And if this conflict does nothing else, it should solidify the understanding of who we're dealing with in Iran, okay? If you didn't think that they were dead-enders before, if you didn't think that they were willing to wipe out their entire society for Allah, right? This should prove it to you. Um, and what you're talking about though, is not all based on Iran. This, the inflation, the price of all this stuff, I've gone over all of these things. Like you're, you're, you're bringing all of these different, um, uh, all of these different price, uh, uh, issues into one basket and then saying it's Iran. No, as I've talked about many times, right? The most of the things that you describe in that list are things that the government is already heavily regulating. And that's why you end up with the higher prices. More government in an industry equals higher prices because you're short-circuiting the free market. Jeff with a G says, I'm old enough to remember the first time in history gas ever exceeded $ 3 a gallon. It was after Hurricane Katrina rolled through and knocked out all the refineries in the Gulf region. But it settled back down a few months later after Bush got all the refineries back online. Then along came Hurricane Obama, started shutting down refineries on purpose, gave us a new record of $ 4 a gallon. Trump gave us gas under $ 2 a gallon for a little while until Hurricane Biden cut all of the production again, got us back up to $ 4. And remember, drained the strategic reserve too. Um. Chris the Troll says, I wonder if Elon Musk wants to get rid of fossil fuels. I don't know. He burns a lot of them when he sends his rockets up, so probably not. Maybe Canada, Mike says, maybe Canada can help us with executions. They don't seem to have problems with their maid program. That's, I mean, well, that's true. Also of note, an all-female execution team. Make of that what you will. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete Kaliner show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.