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McCain Credits Bush's Voodoo Magic For Lower Oil Prices
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Amazingly, according to John McCain, George W. Bush is still our savior whenever luck infrequently wafts our way like a fragrant fart. At Wilkes-Barre, PA today, McCain actually credited Bush for the slight lowering of oil prices (that so far hasn't resulted in under four-dollar-a-gallon gas at the pumps) by getting rid of his own father's executive ban on offshore drilling.
The problem is, the White House isn't having any of it. WH Press Secretary Dana Perino said, "I don't know if we fully deserve the credit ... We don't predict what happens in the market. We can't really tell."
Even conservative journalists such as Stephen Covington doesn't buy it, either, realizing that we need to invest in alternative energy sources.
But that doesn't matter much in McCain's La La Land anymore than it matters that there's still a Congressional ban on offshore drilling that Congress hasn't even considered rescinding. Neither does it matter that Bush, for the umpteenth time, feigned helplessness in affecting oil prices, claiming that he didn't have "a magic wand."
It's obvious that the only magic wand we've been seeing during this cash grab is the one Saudi Arabia, speculators and the oil cartels have been shoving up our ass.
McCain is also conveniently forgetting that offshore drilling, even if it continues despite the Congressional ban, won't commence for another decade, which won't affect oil and gas prices today. So why should George W. Bush be credited for inching down gas prices?
It's the "psychology" of the market. Phil Gramm lives, bless his black little charcoal briquette of a heart.
However, McCain also said that the oil and gas crisis is "an energy issue, an environmental issue and a national security issue." You know, kind of the same thing that Al Gore said on the 17th:
Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges - the economic, environmental and national security crises.
As always, when Democrats make sense, Republicans often follow (without attribution). McCain thinks it's possible to credit both Bush and Gore without acknowledging the great ideological chasm that divides these two men.
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Tagged as: bush, economy, mccain, recession, oil prices, phil gramm, magic wand, republican psychology
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