Groundhog Day Forecasts, Veteran Transitions & Today's Biggest Headlines

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote? Because you were the TV remote? Remember when music sounded like this?
Remember when social media was truly social? Hey John, how's it going today? Well, this show is all about you. This is Fifty Plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health, and what to do for fun.

**Dr. Ali Alavi** (0:30)
You know that only the good die young.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:34)
Fifty Plus, brought to you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging. Informed decisions for a healthier, happier life. And by New Promise Neuropathy. Lose the pain and numbness. Get your life back. newpromiseneuropathy.com. And now Fifty Plus with Doug Pike.

**Doug Pike** (0:52)
All right, welcome, I guess to, what is it, Groundhog Day again?
Same forecast. It's gonna be the same for about probably the next six or seven days. Give or take a few degrees in the afternoon. The daytime highs are gonna, they'll tickle the chin of 100 degrees today.
They'll do the same tomorrow and the next day and the next day and however many days there are until Sunday when we top out at 103 in the forecast. And as we all know, that may or may not come to pass. The only consistency in summer days in Southeast Texas is the heat. You might get more humidity one day than yesterday and there may be a little bit of a breeze out of any direction, probably not the north, that might bring cooler air. Although Dallas usually stays hotter than we do, so who knows, that north wind that will eventually bring us cooler air, we may not really want to be wishing for that right now. There are other weather anomalies we don't want to wish for either and I'm not even going to talk about them. That's about the summary on the forecast. Hot, going to stay hot, been hot before, it's going to be hot again, probably for the next at least 45 to 60 days and potentially even longer than that. And to do something I haven't done in quite a while, actually, I'm going to take a little look at the stock market this morning.
It's early still, so I'm not going to dwell on the four indicators that I used to always look at every day. I'm not even going to dwell on gold. Gold's down 52 bucks, almost 53
But it's still above $4,000 an ounce, and that's certainly not chicken feed. But the whole reason I pulled up the Yahoo Finance page was to talk about the price of oil, the price of gasoline. The price of oil, which was 100 bucks not that long ago, and was climbing back toward 100 even more recently, the price of oil this morning was $81.24 a barrel. That's not the $68 to maybe $72, $73 that would really ease prices at the pump. But what I believe we'll see over the course of the next several weeks and months is, first of all, that the people who have been so dependent on the Strait of Hormuz for so many years are finally looking at alternative means of getting oil out of there. Dig a ditch, find a land route, something. They have plans, they've already shown that there are ways to get it out of there without crossing through Iran and being told to pay a toll on their ships, whatever. But the need for alternatives up to recently didn't really outweigh the cost of having them implemented. And so now let's move into the news, shall we? And let's go to the Windy City for this little news bit. And I say little because it didn't impact us, thank goodness. A while back, Chicago went ahead and elected its first socialist mayor who ran on promises that every socialist mayor makes. They're going to give you free this, free that. Cheap food at city-run grocery stores. That's what's coming for New York City. They better be paying attention. And guess what happened three days ago in some of the inner city areas of Chicago, predominantly black and brown people, just three days ago, the grocery chain that was the predominant place that these people could shop for their groceries shut down.
Seven stores boarded up overnight. People were wondering why there were such deep discounts being offered on prices recently, why this was happening, why things weren't being restocked. Well, now you know, Chicago, it's because those businesses, which were being run like businesses and not like socialist places, were not able to make a profit. And grocery stores inherently have some of the lowest profit margins of any type of business. It's usually just a couple of percent. They're not making a ton of money. Well, at least not on individual items. The key to making money as a grocery store is you have to sell tons and tons of stuff. But for this grocery chain, Snap and EBT purchases were down, overall shopper numbers were down somehow. And now some of the people who really were counting on those reduced grocery prices that the socialists were gonna provide for them, well, they've got no place to shop. And I tell you this because we've got our own socialist movement, even here in Texas, they are out there, they are vigorously making the same promises, the same empty promises that socialists all over this country are making. And just about every promise they try to make is fiscally impossible. You can't give away stuff to people in need unless somebody gives. And if the givers get tired of being told they have to give more, they don't just do it and smile, they leave. Look at New York, it's falling apart. I've got another little tidbit about New York I'm gonna share later, but I'll tuck that one away for now. And since today is National Milk Chocolate Day, I'll just give you this one and let you run with it yourself. A new study is supposed to have found that sniffing chocolate between sets might help you crank out a stronger workout. And apparently dark chocolate seems to have the strongest effect. I wonder if Hershey's or Giordeli had anything to do with that survey. One more quick one before I take a break here. Pablo Picasso was suspected of being involved in the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa. And truth be told, I would like to see the Mona Lisa before I die. I doubt that I will, but it's just one of the things I'd have on the bucket list. You know, if you're going and you've got a big private jet and you've got one empty seat, give me a ring. I'd like to join you. All right. Time for a brief word about Midway Meat Market out there on Old Highway 90 Katie and Katie have been out there 57 years, 57 years of just premium customer service, delicious meat products, beef, chicken and pork, however you want it. Grab and go snacks if you're on the way, east or west on I-10. 25 flavors of premium sausage with samples available every day. And they are open seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Keep Midway in mind for deer season two, very convenient place to drop off your deer no matter where you're coming from, west Texas, southwest. Even a lot of people from north Texas bring their deer down here because they know they can trust Midway to take care of them. midwaymeatmarket.com is the website. midwaymeatmarket.com.