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McCain Credits Bush's Voodoo Magic For Lower Oil Prices

Posted by Jurassicpork, Brilliant at Breakfast at 9:39 AM on July 24, 2008.


"Amazingly, according to John McCain, George W. Bush is still our savior whenever luck infrequently wafts our way like a fragrant fart."
bushmccain

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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.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.


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Be interesting to know what really happened
Posted by: ReallyBearish on Jul 24, 2008 2:13 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Back in 2006 the Bush Administration got the price of oil down during the election by getting Goldman Sachs to remove a substantial percentage of oil from its commodities index. This forced the sale of billions in oil futures that forced the price down. The idiot Washington press corps were absolutely clueless.

I suspect that something along those lines happened in the futures market to force the longs to sell. We'll have to see, but the brain dead media isn't going to report squat.

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THE BIG BOOM IN THE PRICE OF OIL HAS BEEN DEMAND. THE DEMAND
Posted by: Raymond Emerson on Jul 25, 2008 1:56 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
of the shell companies owned offshore by the very self same oil companies that are producing, refining, and marketing the oil. More simply, they are fixing the prices. There is no one to stop them.

The democrats, minority that they are, are trying to send messages to the politically astute. The House attempted to bring the sale of 10% of the strategic reserves to market. The republicans blocked it. Watch them. They will bring it to a less critical, not 2/3rds, vote and pass it. Then the senate will refuse to consider it. They won't be able to get the 60 votes to get it to the floor. If there is enough public pressure to get 10 1/2 republican votes then Bush will veto it. In truth if the whole thing were dumped, the price of oil would tank. It has all been artificial anyway. It would be interesting to see if they would just try to buy it all.

Reminder. I pass idle oil wells every day of my life. They have some fairly plausible excuse for not pumping them like "It is not economically feasible." The rules of business privacy do not allow that assertion to be tested. I can tell you this. Fast pumping wells are pumping oil and water. Slow pumping wells are pumping oil. I see the slow wells idle. We mustn't have that nasty overproduction must we.

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Oil-ogopoly Election Year Price Manipulation
Posted by: FoonTheElder on Jul 26, 2008 2:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Every election year the gas prices magically start to go down before the November elections and then magically go up after.

Just more evidence of a corrupt market controlled by the oil-ogopolies.

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LKH
Posted by: lkh1066 on Jul 27, 2008 1:22 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
For a long time, the oil industry has wanted to get the ban on off-shore drilling dropped,
and has anyone considered that their desire to get this done before the end of Bush's term is the biggest reason for the high cost of gasoline? What better way to break down Congress and the American public than continue to raise the prices to consumers until the public clamored for help. The oil industry would be waiting in the wings with off-shore drilling, and Congress would cave, thinking that they would lose the election if they didn't. The fall in prices for no real reason after Bush dropped the executive order has no explanation except to give false credibility to the propaganda that drilling off-shore would solve the price crisis.
Someone needs to raise questions about this, and look into the possibility that this is a created crisis inorder to drill or to kill the Democrats, or both.

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