Monday, June 23, 2008

Blame dem Dems

Leave it to Junior to spend the rest of his mercifully short tenure in office playing the blame game with the price of oil. Now he's trying to convince us that the high price of gasoline is because the dems have been blocking further drilling in Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (hitherto referred to as ANWR). Oddly enough part of what he says is true. Part of the problem is supply. But that's where his understanding ends. What he doesn't know or at least what he refuses to acknowledge is that it isn't necessarily a given that ANWR oil will end up in your gas tank. All oil goes through the world commodities market & then resold. It doesn't necessarily go direct to a refinery.
Second, Bush sees no problem with permanently endangering a delicate wildlife preserve for very temporary gains.
Third Junior has conveniently forgotten that for six of his 7+ years, the Republicans controlled congress. They're the same guys (and precious few) gals who led this country into the deepest deficit in history.
Which leads to the fourth point. The value of the US dollar on the world market is extremely low. That's because there are so many of them out there. That's because we have a huge deficit. (Imagine poor Junior trying to follow this!) Oil is traded in dollars, hence, a dollar buys less oil than it once did and it will get worse until someone comes along to control the deficit. This is all complicated by speculators trading on the world market. But when anyone tries to explain all of this to Bush, he takes two aspirin and calls Cheney. Oh sure, the oil companies are taking their profit but don't expect the good old oil boys to do anything about that. That's the American way. No matter that the concept of competition is a joke & that basically what we have is a monopoly. When's the last time you saw a price war at the gas pumps?
What Junior should be doing is taking steps to cut the deficit and urging conservation. Those are the things that will eventually solve this problem. I wonder if McCain & Obama know that.

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