I hear the price of oil has gone up due to what may happen in the Gulf of Mexico. Why is it that they can raise the price on the possibility of a future event? Shouldn't the price be raised when it has becomes a reality? Wouldn't that reflect the market supply and demand?
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Among other news sources, NPR is reporting this morning that higher gas prices drove down traffic fatalities. The reason is that fewer people were on the roads. And that was part of the news as analysts reported that gasoline prices are down a good deal since their high in July. St. Louis, they say, has the lowest average: $3.77. The price is down not, they report (oh what a surprise!), because oil prices are down - those have fluctuated and are back up where they were two weeks ago, while gas prices are down from that two-week mark. Why? Because, just like the reason for lower traffic fatalities - people are driving less - because of high gas prices. Just as we have always said, all the squawking aside about higher oil prices and international relations driving the price of gasoline, the price of gasoline is driven by what the traffic will allow, so to speak. Oil prices are a factor, of course, but only over the long haul. Gasoline producers and sellers are going to charge you whatever you are willing to pay. They learned that in Economics 101. The lowest prices we had here in Galveston were $3.44 (.9 of course), and they're already on their way back up again.*
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
*Strike that. Looks like we're down to $3.41.
President Bush prodded Congress on Friday to allow oil drilling in offshore waters and in the Alaskan wildlife refuge, citing "tough economic times" for the American people.
And they’ll do it, too, won’t they, Congressman Wexler?
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
May. 16, 2008RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Bush is appealing to oil-rich Saudi Arabia to increase production just as oil prices have hit another record high.
[...]
The White House says the president's visit is intended, in part, to celebrate 75 years of formal U.S.-Saudi relations. But the rising price of oil undoubtedly will overshadow the talks.
May 17, 2008RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Bush failed to win the help he sought from Saudi Arabia to relieve skyrocketing American gas prices Friday, a setback for the former Texas oilman who took office predicting he would jawbone oil-producing nations to help the U.S.
May 17, 2008US President George W. Bush said on Saturday that a hike in oil output by Saudi Arabia would not solve American energy problems.
"It's not enough, it's something but it doesn't solve our problem," Bush told reporters in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
So why'd you ask?
The president says the solution to high gas prices is drilling for more oil and building more refineries.
Because the rapture is near and, while “marching to Zion” sounds inspiring, driving there in a pickup truck would set him apart from the common pilgrims.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Oil prices spiked to a record $117.40 a barrel after a Japanese oil tanker was hit by a rocket near Yemen and militants in Nigeria claimed two attacks on pipelines.
Alternative energy never looked so attractive, eh? You might have guessed that, oil barons sitting in high political positions, we would have to bleed every last dime out of the earth’s oil supplies one way or another before we might get some serious government attention to it, though. Just who was on Cheney’s energy panel?
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
In 1990 and 1991, I worked for the Chenega and Chugach Natives of Alaska on trying to get Exxon to pay up to save the remote villages of the Sound. Exxon’s response was, “We can hold out in court until you’re all dead.”
And that’s exactly what they’re doing with the aid of the Bush courts. In this article, Palast recaps the illegal and immoral actions that created the disastrous oil spillage created by the Exxon tanker and ties it to the Bush Administration and Republican values. But most of the article is devoted to depicting John McCain’s evolution from “maverick” to GOP tool. Go read.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Admit it: You don't know where the !@#$% Tajikistan isby Greg Palast
Or Kyrgyzstan. Or Turkmenistan. But as your kids will be fighting there among the oil pipes, you should kiss Ted Rall's crazy ass for going there first - and getting it all down in a book of dead-on cartoons and reportage, Silk Road to Ruin
Rall almost didn't make it back. The [Talib gunman] who was supposed to execute Rall spoke English - the gunman picked it up as an NYU grad student.
[...]
Rall caroms through the 'Stans by bus, barfing and bribing and joking his way past sex-starved, over-armed fanatics and avaricious body guards. He's too whacked by dehydration and diarrhea to worry about the stark-raving danger of such a journey in war-time (it's always war time in the 'Stans) to tell us the story you won't find in the captions of Bill [Clinton] shaking hands with a despot du jour.
Read all about it at Greg Palast.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
At the pump, U.S. retail gas prices surged 2.1 cents overnight to a record national average of $3.267 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Gas prices are likely to rise much higher this spring; estimates range from about $3.50 a gallon in the Energy Department's latest forecast to $3.75 or even $4 a gallon according to some analysts.
Here are my two predictions for a Democratic win in November: 1) the price of gas is above $3.50 a gallon, and 2) no new major attacks on U.S. soil. No, make that, U.S. mainland.
European, Asian Markets Sink After Wall Street's Drop Renews US Recession Worries
Venezuela, Ecuador deploy troops in Colombia dispute
US Launches Airstrike in Somalia
Let's see...what was it the ex-CIA head of the bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, told NPR last week? We'll go after terrorists wherever there's oil. (Particularly if someone else stands to get control of it.)
I'll be heading up to Ft. Sill to attend my son's Basic Training graduation ceremony and spend a little time with him before he ships off to Maryland for AIT. After that...well, who knows where he'll be sent? I am trying not to think about it.
So...what will happen this week while I'm away from the computer? Will Musharraf resign? Will Hillary pull out all the stops in her losing race against Obama? Will the price of gasoline go so high I will have to odd-job my way back to Texas?
Hold down the fort, people, and remain calm.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
And this ridiculous scrambling about trying to cork a bleeding economy is utterly ... well, ridiculous. The economy doesn't perk along beautifully and suddenly crash. The stock market can do that, but the economy has to build toward something. If we have our economy directly tied to and dependent on the stock market, we're idiots. All that smiley crap about how great the encomony was, and then suddenly, everything's crumbling is a bunch of B.S. The subprime lending fiasco was a fiasco when it started and was permitted. The enormous national debt secured to support corporations and the military has been climbing for years. Offshore business didn't just come into the picture this winter. Etc., etc. It's not like old Alan Greenspan didn't see the problems coming. It's that he either couldn't do anything to mitigate them, or wouldn't. But he was shrewd enough to bail just before things tanked publicly.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Go Joe.
A fire at a pipeline from Canada that feeds oil to the United States killed two people and sent oil prices soaring before burning out Thursday morning, officials said.Two workers fixing the underground pipeline were killed when fumes apparently escaped and ignited the blaze in Clearbrook, about 215 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
From a Venezuela Weekly News Roundup email:
The winter season is approaching, and the Wall Street Journal reported Monday on the danger posed by rising heating oil costs in the US. A solution to the crunch is presented by a Venezuelan aid program that provides the essential resource at subsidized costs and will benefit some 250,000 needy families in 23 US states in the coming months.
Damned socialist.
About 30 million low-income American households who will need help paying heating bills this winter from a U.S. government program will be left in the cold because of a lack of funding for the program.[...]
The government's Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, only has enough funding to cover 16 percent of the 38 million poor households eligible for the program.
The current $2.16 billion LIHEAP budget in only $300 million more than what the program had when it was created by Congress in 1981. Despite higher energy costs, the Bush administration has proposed cutting the program's budget.
With the cost of oil hovering around $100 a barrel, this winter's heating bills are going to be more than many poor people can afford. How many will die this winter for lack of heat or from trying to heat their homes in deadly ways?
About 30 million low-income American households who will need help paying heating bills this winter from a U.S. government program will be left in the cold because of a lack of funding for the program.The poor, already digging deep to pay for expensive gasoline, also will face much higher heating fuel costs, especially if oil prices stay near record levels.
[...]
The government's Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, only has enough funding to cover 16 percent of the 38 million poor households eligible for the program.
Federal research shows that while both rich and poor families increase their expenditures on home fuel during the winter, poor families offset this cost through decreasing food purchases, with an average 10 percent decrease in caloric intake. Parents know that children can freeze to death more quickly than they starve to death, and so most decrease food purchases first to pay for heat. Many inevitably sacrifice on both fronts, living with food scarcity while heating their homes with cooking stoves and space heaters, both of which dramatically increase the risk of fires, burns, and carbon monoxide poisoning.
President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.
And since we can privatize military operations, hiring mercenaries from the poor of third world countries, there isn't as much call any more to keep breeding our own.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Corexit: More toxic than the oil
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
