Tag Archives: Gas prices

Obamalot’s dwindling approval

Fifty-seven percent of Independents now disapprove of what he’s doing. And their votes are likely to determine the election. They certainly have a lot to be concerned about, as Sarah (yes, that Sarah) outlines:

“…a debt crisis that has us hurtling towards a Greek-style collapse, entitlement programs going bankrupt, a credit downgrade for the first time in our history, a government takeover of the health care industry that makes care more expensive and puts a rationing panel of faceless bureaucrats between you and your doctor (aka a “death panel”), $4 and $5 gas at the pump exacerbated by an anti-drilling agenda that rejects good paying energy sector jobs and makes us more dependent on dangerous foreign regimes,

“a war in Afghanistan that seems unfocused and unending, a global presidential apology tour that’s made us look feeble and ridiculous, a housing market in the tank, the longest streak of high unemployment since World War II, private-sector job creators and industry strangled by burdensome regulations and an out-of-control Obama EPA, an attack on the Constitutional protection of religious liberty,

“an attack on private industry in right-to-work states, crony capitalism run amok in an administration in bed with their favored cronies to the detriment of genuine free market capitalism, green energy pay-to-play kickbacks to Obama campaign donors, and a Justice Department still stonewalling on a bungled operation that armed violent Mexican drug lords and led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.”

If only that 57 percent holds until November. Probably won’t, though. I figure most of them voted for him to begin with because of the novelty, i.e., his skin color. They certainly didn’t know much about his radical preferences because big media hid it from them. And none of that has changed.

Plus big media (his court media, after all) will be banging their tin drums for him and against the Republicans just like they did in ’08. Have the Independents figured out yet what shills they are? Gad, I hope so.

Tumbling oil prices

Could it be the oil sellers were more impressed by President Bush’s elimination of the executive order banning new coastal drilling than they were on the Dems refusal to follow it up? The former was not widely reported but the oil business heard about it. Or could it be simply a reaction to Americans driving less and buying smaller cars? Something is pushing oil below $130 a barrel for the first time in months. If it keeps dropping, gas prices have to follow. I’d hoped to see what the Seablogger, who follows the market closer than I do, had to say, but he’s busy blogging from his passage on a 160-foot tri-mast sailing yacht off the northeast coast.

UPDATE:  The Seablogger thinks the oil price has peaked and the only question now is how far its price will fall. 

Mac’s cure for high gas prices

"…promise to offer a $300 million [federal] prize for the development of a battery that would ‘allow the leapfrogging of the current generation’ of electric and plug-in hybrid cars." And, of course, drilling off our East and West coasts and in Alaska for more oil.

Hey, a prize was good enough to spur Charles Lindbergh to fly the Atlantic. All Baby Barry has come up with is fining the oil companies. As if that would do anything for gas prices.

Canary in the oil mine

Most of us, me included, figure what goes up must come down, and the prices of oil and gasoline have to get back to normal sometime. Hopefully sooner rather than later. But what if they don’t? What if gas goes to seven bucks a gallon, and the price of everything else runs up (diesel is already almost five dollars a gallon and almost all of our goods are shipped by truck), like it did in the oil pinch of the mid-1970s? The price of cars, alone, tripled. The Oil Drum, which is not exactly a fun read, considering its affirmative take on the "peak oil" argument, is nevertheless a timely and interesting one. And none moreso than this post on Hawaii’s plight with rising oil and gas prices. Their tourism industry seems to be cratering, as a result, and they don’t have a whole lot else to sustain them. Hope they figure it out.

Image

Heh

image009.jpg