Since the price of crude oil keeps hitting new highs. I think we are now where the price of crude has quadrupled since Bush started his little Clusterfuck War in Iraq.
It's not coming down again. The oil producers are very happy to be getting $120 a barrel for what they were getting $30 for five years ago and $10 for ten years ago. A lot of nations that don't really like us very much, such as Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are flush with money from the price of crude. They have zero incentive to lower the price, for oil that we do not buy because of the Second Bush Recession can be sold to India and China.
Where, for example, do you think the Russians got the money to refurbish their fleet of Tu-95s to begin long-range surveillance missions? Or where do you think they got the money to resume sending their warships to sea? It wasn't because of all of those nice Kalashnikovs they've sold. The money came from the sale of Russian gas and oil. The same oil money that props up Hugo Chavez. The same oil money that allows members of the Saudi royal family to fund the spreading of the Wahhabist sect, the same sect that provides religious cover to al-Qaeda.
Cheney's solution is to drill for oil in ANWAR. But opening ANWAR will only enrichen the oil companies (Cheney's real objective), for unless the field is as large as Saudi Arabia's, ANWAR will not make a bit of difference. Oil is a world-wide commodity, the incremental increase in supply will just be absorbed by global demand. (Besides that, the idea that there is any spot on Earth that hasn't been fucked up to the max by humans makes Cheney froth at the mouth.)
None of this should be a surprise to any sentient being. We've had 35 years to get ready for this day. And we have pissed it away, thanks to people like George Bush and Dick Cheney and John Dingell and many, many others, who were more concerned with protecting their own interests than they were in what was best for the nation as a whole.
The chickens are coming home to roost. Anyone who is shocked by this should look up the definition of "blindness; willful".
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Pretty soon, we're going to have sit down in our own house and decide what goes to cover the cost of gas. Satellite (we're too rural for even cable), dance lessons? Groceries? The mortgage?
It's becoming untenable. Actually, it's already untenable, but we're stuck. We can't move because of the real estate market. Nothing is selling out here and we're likely upside down in our mortgage now. So to fix the problem by moving into town isn't even an option.
But I'm thrilled that the oil companies are awash in cash. And I'm really, really looking forward to the advance on our 2008 income tax refund which means come this time next year we might have to pay taxes.
Sorry. Goodness I just let loose here.
BTW - May be kid is renting an R movie because she knows if she asks me for money to go to a movie, I'll tell her again how broke we are!
I think this time around, the "rebate" is just a straight bribe. It's supposedly not an advance on the tax refund for `08's taxes.
That is, if you can believe anything anyone in the Bush Administration says....
We're in the same position...and we're a one-car household already.
That bribe is going right in to savings, against the harder times I fear are coming.
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