How do you spell moron? Another Congressional hoax.
I was fascinated this morning to see clips of the Senate debate on a national energy policy, as reported on CNN. It is amazing to me how the major news gathering agencies buy in to all the bullshit that the government spews and report it to the public as if it were real.
Republicans are taking shots at the Democrats, who are refusing to pass a bloated and misguided energy bill before the summer recess. The key to the energy bill is off-shore drilling, which the oil companies (and hence their Republican lackeys) want, and they want it bad. The Democrats, hardly knights in shining armor, are opposed to off-shore drilling and claim it will not have an impact on the price of gasoline, which is really what all the hoopla is about. This time around, for a change, the Dems have it right. Drilling for oil in the Gulf will not affect the price of oil one iota and it certainly would have zero impact on gas prices.
Big Oil is experiencing record windfall profits. Where is the money going? Certainly not toward developing new sources of energy. Exxon-Mobil, one of the ugliest companies in history, has reported all time profit taking. Dutch Shell just today announced an increase in profit of 33% from last year. That’s 11.6 Billion US Dollars if you are counting. All that cash and the cost to fill your tank still keeps creeping up and up. The national average for a gallon of regular is hovering around $4. 12 states report averages higher than $4.
Here’s a fact: THE PRICE OF A GALLON OF REGULAR WILL BE $5.00 THIS TIME NEXT YEAR.
Do I need to repeat myself? It has absolutely nothing to do with anything the wind bags in Congress would like you to believe. It has nothing to do will domestic off-shore drilling, nothing to do with the commodities markets, nothing to do with scarcity or the rising cost of refining crude. And it has nothing to do with the cost of a barrel of Saudi crude. The jerks in Congress, the jerks we elected, do not want to tell us the truth because they know that if they told the truth, not only would they not get reelected but we’d probably tar and feather the lot of them. The price of a gallon of gas was agreed to years ago and what we are caught up in is just the steps being taken to ramp up the price to that average. Barring some colossal disaster or a new development in the Middle East, like a nuclear blast in Tel Aviv, that’s where it’s going. As we get closer to the election, the price of gas will dip and we will hear squeaks and squeals from the oil and gas lobby about how we can’t wean ourselves from foreign oil if we don’t drill in Alaska or off the coast of Louisiana. Then someone will get elected and the price will continue towards the target price point.
What is sad is that these Congressional pinheads are using this information to play politics as usual. They have the audacity to get up in front of the world and point fingers across the aisle and blame the other guys for what they have already agreed to. What a bunch of snake oil salesman they all are.
It matters not if the next president is Obama or McCain, it will have no effect on the price of gas. And it also means that all of those emails circulating on the net telling us to boycott this oil company or that are also meaningless blather. I have no problem if you choose to personally boycott Exxon or Gulf (in fact I have refused to purchase gas at an Exxon station for many years for reasons of my own), just don’t think it tells anyone anything other than you don’t like them. They don’t really care anyway.
Our challenge as citizens is in finding and electing officials who will tell the truth, vote with the big picture in mind, make decisions on what is best for America instead of their war chests, protect our environment, educate our children and take care of the health of our people. They also must protect us from our enemies, to be sure, but they also must do whatever it takes to raise our stature with the rest of the world, and not just by means of shock and awe.
And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of some of these beautiful suckups who disguise themselves as news reporters and find some Edward R. Murrows to get our information from.
