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Republicans must think Americans are really stupid.
Sarah Palin blasted President Obama on Tuesday for what she called his “anti-drilling mentality” and said the president was waging a “war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production” that was resulting in high gas prices for Americans.
And:
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney pumped his own tank of gas on Friday and blamed President Barack Obama for a surge in prices that are straining American pocketbooks.
And:
Rep. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma who delivered the GOP’s weekly radio address, said “gasoline is at the top of the list” of concerns from people in his district. He said “prices at the pump have nearly doubled since President Obama took office, making everyday life like driving to work, buying groceries, picking up kids at school and visiting family more expensive.”
And as you can see, by “more expensive” Lankford means “still cheaper than it was under Bush/Cheney.”
Gas prices rose dramatically while George W. Bush was in the White House and the GOP controlled all three branches of government (after they complained that gas prices were too high under Clinton/Gore and promised to lower them), dropped significantly during the Bush/Cheney recession, and are now, because of the recovery, returning to the previous trend.
It would be helpful if some reporter would ask these Republicans spouting this nonsense what they were saying while gas prices went through the roof under President Arbusto and Vice President Halliburton. But there’s also something absurd about Republicans demanding that the government do something about gas prices.
Wouldn’t that be interfering with the free market?
(Graph courtesy of zfacts.com.)
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They only believe in the “free market” when it benefits them – otherwise, it’s bring on the Socialism (think NFL owners as primary examples of above)
And, and, and Obama setup a new bipartisan commission to study the situation. Sternly worded report to follow—after due consideration and earlier release of minority (GOP) report.
That’s a good one.
year-GDP(B)-GDP(2005$)
2006 13,399 12,976
2007 14,062 13,229
2008 14,369 13,229
2009 14,119 12,881
2010 14,660 13,248
current-dollar and “real” GDP (2005 dollars)
http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp
In 2005 dollars, GDP has increased 0.14% 2008-2010
couldn’t obama instruct the cftc to do something about commodities (especially oil) speculation?
I am getting charged 4.82 for a gallon of liquid propane. Consumer demand dropped 8% due to conservation and in response to high prices. Did the price drop??? Nope. This is just highway robbery and no one is doing anything about it. They are all a bunch of crooks.
R’s complaining that O is responsible for oil price rise? That’s rich.
Voters tend not to vote for the party in power when economic conditions in their lives are shit and scary — and the party in power doesn’t seem to either be able, or try, to do anything to improve those horrific conditions.
And why should they? Sure, the Republicans caused this (with the help of Blue Dog Democrats) and the poisonous klaxon of the right wing media propaganda heaps all the blame on Democrats and Obama — but the truth is, the Democrats have not done everything they could do to reverse this major recession.
At some point, shouting in the wilderness, “But the Republicans started this/are more to blame!” doesn’t deserve to be heard, if the Democrats aren’t acting in good faith.
This argument that prices are still less than under Bush/Cheney is going to last about another, what, month? Don’t fall into the trap of saying “it’s not so bad as it was under your guy” because, before you know it, it’ll be much worse.
Better to press for “oh, yeah? what should Obama do about it, exactly?” when these free-marketeers try to blame him for not allowing exploration, an entirely specious argument when oil producers won’t engage on current leases.
But that’s only part of what I’m saying. Also, I’m pretty sure the price of gas isn’t going to increase 300% in Obama’s term.
Gas prices “dropped significantly during the Bush/Cheney recession, and are now, because of the recovery, returning to the previous trend.”
IOW, the price of gas plummetted with the rest of the stock market in the crash of Fall, ’08. However, speculation has returned to its pre-recession frenzy. Greeeaaaat. Lessons were *obviously* learned about the dangers of speculation./s
Well, to be fair, most Republicans I talk to, they aren’t in favor of government “doing something” in the sense of, say, imposing price controls – that really would be screwing with the market. Instead most want government to “do something” that would increase supply and would therefore, via market forces, bring prices down. (At least that’s the theory.) There’s a significant difference there.
And I am with Teddy Partridge – what is the point of an ‘argument’ like this? Democrats blamed Bush for high gas prices, Republicans now blame Obama for high gas prices. That is the way the game is played. We all know the real reason for high gas prices is complicated, and it can’t be pinned on one single person. Heck, if anyone is to blame is Bernanke, who has inflated the currency, made the dollar weaker and therefore driven prices higher.
The most effective way to control rising energy costs is on the demand side, things like CFLs, hybrid cars, trains, etc. Oh wait, conservatives hate those things. Drill, baby, drill!
i don’t think the recession explains the collapse in gas prices, nor “the recovery” the current run up. that would imply that the costs are a function of demand which, btw, feeds into the right wing narrative of needing to increase domestic exploration and production regardless of the environmental issues.
it was clear that the 2008 peak was primarily the result of unregulated speculation (as even senator levin and his committee determined was the driving force of rising prices in 2006! (see, for example: http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2006/PSI.gasandoilspec.062606.pdf )
in 2008 when prices went through the roof, congress held a bunch of hearings at which mike masters and michael greenberger (ex cftc under brooksley born).
i highly recommend mike masters’ prepared testimony:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/062408Masters.pdf
http://archives.energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/110-oi-hrg.062308.Masters-testimony.pdf
levin and stupak started to prepare some regulation in response, and apparently that spooked the index speculators who then ran for the exits starting around july 15, 2008.
Threefold: one, refute the notion that Obama’s to blame for increase in the price of gas; two, demonstrate that Republican “solutions” to the problem clearly don’t help; three, paint Republicans as hypocrites for complaining about supposedly high gas prices when they increased much more dramatically under them and they oppose ending Big Oil subsidies and windfall taxes — not to mention alternative energies, green tech, etc.
Great post!
True. But the current problem goes back several months before George W. Bush took office. Already before summer 2000, gas prices were manipulated so that Candidate George W. Bush could blame it on OPEC and campaign on the bs notion that he knew how to work with OPEC and could get them to turn up supply:
It was all bullshit. It was never about supply. It was about distribution and speculation. And it’s a major piece of the puzzle as to how the US economy has been systematically decimated over the last 10+ years.
Yeah, it’s not a recession-caused drop in demand that caused the drop in prices…it was investment bankers fleeing the commodity markets. IIRC–please correct me if I’m wrong–food prices were also spiking in 2008 before they fell dramatically along with other markets that fell that year.
no rational person would ever try to respond to republican BS with rational arguments. You might as well be pissing in the wind.
Yes, that “jawboning OPEC” line is linked above in the post.
Interesting, Selise.
How much of the price of oil is a fear premium? With Ossama dead that number should go down right? How much of the price of oil is free market speculators driving up the price of oil?
Don’t the oil companies have hundreds oil oil wells in the Gulf they drilled and the capped but are not pumping any oil from? They could be using those wells to lower oil prices but instead they take their oil profits and limit oil supply to further increase their profits.
But the GOP wants to defend tax breaks for oil companies. I want this fight but will Obama make this fight?
But who really believes that anyway? Sure there are some committed Republicans who believe that, but they are beyond persuasion anyway. The guy in charge is going to get blamed regardless. The president gets blamed for everything.
How has this been demonstrated?
Republicans blame Obama, Democrats blamed Bush, Republicans blamed Clinton, Democrats blamed Reagan, etc., etc., and the game goes on. Big deal.
Could you be more specific about the subsidies for Big Oil that Republicans support? I’m also not clear on how ending subsidies and imposing windfall profit taxes would lower gas prices.
When you put together the levels of abuse, manipulation and fraud committed by many of the wealthiest Americans, all with the assistance of Bush and the GOP since 2000 and now of Obama and the Democrats, too, it almost seems reasonable to argue that they’ve done far more to destroy the American way of life than Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda could ever have dreamed of doing.
Historians will not be kind to these a$$holes.
Make the problem worse.
Because the price almost tripled under Republicans.
The GOP is playing the same game here as they are with the deficit. Reagan tripled it, George W. Bush doubled it, and letting them pretend it’s been caused by big-spending Democrats is a mistake.
Similarly, letting Republicans rewrite history and say, in effect, “the price of gas was much cheaper when Republicans were in charge” is just crazy.
The graph demostrates the case very well. Sometimes facts get in the way of some people’s arguments, I suppose.
first, the narrative that the deficit is some kind of problem to “solve” is mythology. as in the world is flat. except far more dangerous in our current political and economic reality. i hope you will consider reading this diary: USG deficits: The Economics, the Politics, the Banksters and You.
completely agree. but to ignore the responsibility obama has for letting prices run up again imo makes it easier for nonpartisan readers to dismiss your argument as biased by partisanship.
It is Obama’s fault.
When you QE and throw free money at bankers gas prices will go up. The bankers can keep more of the value of what they’re given by buying oil or metals with it because they know more money will be printed, DEvaluing the dollar. Why would they keep it in a safe, or lend it at historically low interest rates? They can speculate with it, and maybe someday these institutions will actually be solvent, instead of blood funnels for bankers. This is the plan for ‘fixing’ the banks, on your back.
This is Obama’s fault, he’s the bankers bitch.
I think it’s pretty obvious by now that the president does not have a “lower gas prices” button, and that the best response to increased fuel prices is to invest in infrastructure/transit and green tech.
Raising the gas tax to keep prices more stable would be a good start.
Raising the gas tax to keep prices more stable would be a good start?
What the hell kind of sense does that sentence make? I’m sorry man, you can’t just make up shit.
No kidding. But as we’ve already seen, some folks on both the left and the right are going to bash away anyway, in a situation reminiscent of Terrorist Strategy 101 (though fortunately with somewhat less violence):
uh, no. obama has the next best thing to your “button” which is regulating speculation. last time i heard the cftc had the legislative tools and gensler was obama’s choice to head it.
maybe best long term, but not short term (also best for environment!). wish the dems had done more when they had the chance, and wish obama had been making the case since day one.
raising the gas tax would, at least in the short term, raise gasoline prices. it would also help push us harder into the double dip that looks to be coming.
i’m all in favor of a carbon tax (with 100% dividend as hansen has been advocating), but not a gas tax which would hurt low income/no income people the most… and piss everyone else off without getting the job done.
Um, what responsibility? Really, what responsibility? Can you actually prove what you’re saying, or are you telling BT to literally make something up just so he won’t risk being accused of (“eeeek!) partisanship?
Being “partisan” isn’t the GOP’s problem. It’s being wrong, and knowingly so.
Oh Yah.
“….Campaign on the horrors of the drug war and the need to stop criminals from shooting people in Mexico in furtherance of this activity. Once in office set up “Project Gunwalker” and “Fast and Furious” allowing more than 1,000 illegally-purchased firearms to be transported to Mexico, some of which are then used to shoot both Americans and Mexicans. Oh, and to make sure the Mexican drug lords can pay for those guns allow a major US bank to launder nearly $400 billion dollars of Mexican drug money and get off with a tiny little fine instead of sending everyone involved in that scam to prison and revoking the bank’s charter.
Tell the public you are being elected their President to stand and fight for the “little people.” Once in office, however, allow more than 150,000 perjured affidavits to be filed in furtherance of stealing the common man’s home, and instead of directing your Justice Department to empanel a grand jury and indict everyone involved work behind the scenes on a sweetheart deal where these very same firms promise – very nicely – not to do it again.
In keeping with the same premise, demand and pass not one but two 2,000 page monstrosities of bills, one attempting to force everyone in the country to buy a thing they may not want to (Health Insurance) and the other claiming to fix “too big to fail” while doing nothing of the sort, refusing to force the unregulated credit default swap and other derivative markets to come under margin supervision and public exchange posting of pricing and spreads. When challenged on the cost-savings of your health reform bill wave your hands, scream and shout – right up until you’re caught double-counting alleged savings and your HHS Secretary is forced to admit you did it in a Congressional hearing.
Advocate and get passed a bill called “Cash for Clunkers” that is claimed to be intended to help the auto industry and middle-class America. Ignore the fact that it also caused a huge number of affordable cars and their most-valuable parts to be intentionally destroyed, thereby dramatically increasing the cost of acquiring basic transportation for those who are in the lower economic strata…..”
http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=185666
so BT’s demonic opposition are republicans. what does that have to do with anything?
lots of evidence in my comment @13 (some of it from dems too boot — for example michael greenberger).
Book Salon up with Tad Daley’s Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World hosted by Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson
You and the Peak Oil folk need to talk — like you they think Obama’s doing the wrong thing, but they disagree with you on what it is:
All Bernard Obama had to do was refuse to give the bankers free money. That’s all. Then they would NEED DOLLARS, increasing the DEMAND FOR dollars, increasing their value in relation to GASOLINE, lowering the cost of that GASOLINE people put in their CARS.
But no, he didn’t do that, PW. And you sit there asking for fucking PROOF?
thanks! was looking forward to it… even if just to lurk.
the evidence i’m aware of does not back that up.
though it’s quite possible i’ve missed something crucial, and if that is so i hope you will share the evidence.
How does your evidence explain the price of oil rising? Demand, lol? Inflation expectations, lmfao?
: )
PW is correct about that, the bankers are using the free money to speculate because the value of free money will always be less than oil, as I said above, this is not difficult.
And what, specifically, did Republicans do to cause the gas price to triple? If Obama doesn’t have a “lower gas prices” button, how did Bush get a “raise gas prices” button?
But does that make Obama just as bad if not worse than Bush-Cheney, as you seem to be saying with this (and as you seem to do with most of your comments)? No.
And again, the Peak Oilers and other enviros have long mocked the whole speculation theory as denialist, as well as something pushed to further postpone the transition to non-fossil fuels. In fact, with the July 2008 release of the CFTC Report on High Oil Prices, the Oil Drum — probably the most reputable and reality-based of the Peak Oil proponents — has largely stopped discussing the issue as they feel that the “speculation” theory has been conclusively debunked:
I don’t think the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan helped, do you? But it’s not so much what they did to cause the increase — it’s that their policies clearly don’t lead to low gas prices.
They’re making two claims here, both false: Obama’s policies caused the price of oil to double, and we know how to fix it.
“Because the price almost tripled under Republicans.”
You want it both ways. You on one hand say poor powerless Democrats can’t do anything, but on the other hand you blame the Republicans when they were in office – either Bush/Obama can affect oil prices or they can’t. If you’re saying they’re powerless, it doesn’t matter how much prices went up when Bush was in office, but if you’re saying they’re not powerless, Obama is responsible for how much the price of gas has gone up since he’s been in office.
“I don’t think the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan helped, do you? But it’s not so much what they did to cause the increase — it’s that their policies clearly don’t lead to low gas prices.
They’re making two claims here, both false: Obama’s policies caused the price of oil to double, and we know how to fix it.”
Last time I checked Obama’s policies were to continue the invasion and expansion in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the occupation caused prices to go up, wouldn’t ending the occupation cause prices to go down? If occupation is what is driving oil prices, Obama himself upped the occupation in Afghanistan.
Please point to the part of the post where I blamed Republicans for the increase.
And it’s Republicans that want to have it both ways. They are saying “our policies will lower the price of gas” when prices nearly tripled under Bush/Cheney.
They’re also saying “Obama’s doubled the price of gas” — implying that low gas prices were a feature of Bush/Cheney.
Both are lies.
Right here:
No – they’re saying that in unadjusted dollars, the price of gas has approximately doubled. It’s not a “lie”.
Please state specifically what Bush/Cheney did to cause the price of gas to triple.
“Please point to the part of the post where I blamed Republicans for the increase”
You cited the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan @41.
“And it’s Republicans that want to have it both ways. They are saying ‘our policies will lower the price of gas’ when prices nearly tripled under Bush/Cheney.
They’re also saying ‘Obama’s doubled the price of gas’ — implying that low gas prices were a feature of Bush/Cheney.
Both are lies.”
Your own graph says the price of gas has doubled under Obama and you are citing the price of gas under Bush/Cheney as if it was a feature…either it is a feature for both of them or it is a feature of neither of them. Even in your own post you say that Obama is on the same “trend” as Bush, so gas prices could very well could at least triple under Obama as per your post the only thing that would stop the price of gas quadrupling under Obama would be another recession.
You’ll note that “@41″ is not “the post.” You’ll also note that was a hypothetical question. And you left off my comment immediately after it. Strike three.
And saying “the price of gas has doubled under Obama” is dishonest political hackery, because it implies that’s it’s double what it was when George W. Bush was president in 2008.
I don’t know why I have to point this out but, “almost tripled under Bush/Cheney” — which is factually correct — is not the same thing as “Bush/Cheney tripled the price.”
I also don’t know why, in the face of this evidence above, that people actually want to defend Sarah Palin’s and Mitt Romney’s argument, which is: “Obama is to blame for high gas prices and we Republicans know how to keep the price of oil low” since both are so obviously false.
you are reading something into my comments on this thread that is not there.
here’s my pov: attempt to judge both by the same standards. confirmation and other cognitive biases makes it hard to do so i’m not saying i do it well, only that i try.
My son ask me what is President Obama is going to do about the gas prices?I thought for a moment, and said what do you think. My problem with Obama is he is not delivering for the people on the Left. He signed Bill OF Attainder. So much much for teaching constitutional law. That was wrong. He sign a bill to bail out Wall Street, believing it would save main street. Can anyone say Reaganomics.He was wrong to the trickle down degree.He did nothing to the crooks and rouges who stole our money. Who said white collar crime doesn’t pay? He extended the Dub ya tax cuts. That was wrong.He did not extended the Ninety-Niners Unemployment. That was morally ambiguously wrong. He is trying to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security . That is most definite wrong. There is no serious investigation in oil price speculation.Which is a serous pocket issue. That is wrong.Can you hear me now? Do not get me started on the last administration crimes against humanity. This President and his Cowardly dog Eric Holder fail to bring to justice any of those sadist. That so freaking wrong to the fifth degree of what the hell is going on. Will somebody get me a score card ? I want to find out if this guy is on our side. So he silence OBL. OBL just one of” The Guns of Navarone” Located in Pakistan this time. I know it will probably take ten years to clean up Du ya mess . Please somebody get this guy a map, MapQuest, GPS, or by word of mouth that he going the wrong way on a six lane highway .
I just wish that either the Rethugs or the Democrats would crack down on our out of control financial sector because one way or other, they are to blame. Either because of speculation or because they’ve over leveraged to such an extent that they’ve effectively destroyed the monetary system.
appeals to authority don’t cut it, for me. especially when there is such good data against. still, i’d be happy to read the cftc report, if the reference link wasn’t broken (if you can find it and leave it here, i’ll come back to take a look).
where is the data? what are the arguments debunking mike masters (and micheal greenberger)?
and btw, your link is hilarious because it was posted on july 23, 2008 — just as commodity prices had peaked and started to crash.
……………
btw, nothing i’ve written here is meant to contradict the issue of cheap oil depletion (measured in return on energy invested, not dollars), which i have no reason to doubt. (and have even posted a diary on, if you’d like some proof)
what evidence? where is your evidence that the cftc can do nothing to curb speculation or that speculation has nothing to do with gas prices?
just because there is something the obama administration could have done or can do (or dems on the hill could have helped before nov 2010) via the cftc, does not mean that obama is solely to blame or that the republicans have a clue (and especially not palin or romney).
Uh, this post isn’t about speculation. It’s about the Republicans making false claims.
So, if you agree with Mitt Romney that he knows how to lower gas prices, and that the current prices are Obama’s fault, vote accordingly.
has nothing to do with voting.
you wrote that your goal was to “refute the notion that Obama’s to blame for increase in the price of gas”
i had asked @4:
if the run up in gas prices has anything to do with speculation, and if the obama administration has anything it can do about the speculation… well, then isn’t that some reason to think that obama might actually be, at least in part, somewhat responsible for the current price of gas?
your post may not be about speculation, but by leaving speculation out you’ve left a big hole in the argument that obama bears no responsibility for the increase in the price of gas.
p.s.
oh, please. i wrote, in the comment you were replying to and bolded this time for emphasis: “does not mean that obama is solely to blame or that the republicans have a clue (and especially not palin or romney).”
just be cause i disagree with you about the role of the obama administration in regulating (or not) speculation has NOTHING to do with agreeing with romney or palin or republicans in general.
news flash: it’s possible to disagree with you AND with republicans.
Isn’t hectoring Republicans for dishonesty sort of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted? In this example, the horse bolted somewhere around 1998. I expect this sort of tribalist horsehockey at Crooks and Liars or Balloon Juice, not here.
Not in this post, Selise.
I think when the GOP says the government should do something about gas prices, they mean the government should STOP doing things to restrict exploration and development of oil and gas resources. That is not “interfering with the free market.” The government’s bans on exploration and exploitation of oil and gas resources are interfering with the free market. Not that I expect anyone here to understand this.
Yeah, that worked so well from 2001-2008. Such low gas prices!
Here we go…with the great relativity shtick:
George Bush REALLY fucked us over…but since Barack Obama is fucking us over 20 cents a gallon less, let’s all make sure that he gets a chance for another 4 years of the kind of “leadership” that led us to the great victory in the mid-terms.
I. Don’t. Think. So.
sorta beside my original point @4 which i wished you would have addressed with something more than implying, or more, that i’m agreeing with republicans….
…but i’ve already done exactly that:
i disagree. don’t think she has a clue. @58
disagreed @13.
disagreed @60
You are of course right, but you are suggesting a causal connection when you then suggest later on that Republicans aren’t to be believed when they claim to have a method to lower gas prices. If Republicans didn’t cause the price of gas to triple, then why should Republicans’ current plans to lower the price be prima facie rejected? It seems you’re just engaging in rhetorical tricks. If the purpose of this article is about how to construct a deceptive argument in order to fool people into believing that Republicans aren’t to be trusted on the issue of gas prices, then I think you’ve succeeded. But if the purpose of this article is to discuss what’s really going on with gas prices then I think your logic is faulty.
Incidentally in the articles that you cited, neither Palin nor Romney claimed “I know how to keep the price of oil low”. That appears to be an invention that you made up. NOBODY has the power to “keep the price of oil low”. It’s a global oil market you know.
The real point is that it is ridiculous to blame any one President for high gas prices or give any credit to any one President when the prices go down. No one person has that kind of influence on gasoline or oil prices (I think the OPEC ministers would dispute that any US President has any influence over oil and gas prices).
But, of course, this circus will continue until the end of time or the last drop of oil. The President in power will be blamed for gas prices going up if they do go up during his term. The other side, whichever side the President is not with, just enjoys it too much.
Like the rest of most our political dialogue, a lot of emotional hot air based on nothing except the general principle, “The other side must be wrong.”
Reps and dems are ripping all of us off. Would you want any of them in your family? They are the other side, and their respective bases are mouthbreathing idiots.
That’s what I think anyway.
I agree with you, Transparait.
If the world’s demand for oil were up by a sizable amount, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries would’ve made plans to increase their oil production. Since they didn’t, the world’s demand for oil is probably not up — at least not up by any sizable amount.
The value of the dollar has an inverse relationship with oil prices. So whenever the value of the dollar moves down, as is the case today, oil prices move up. And since the world is losing confidence in the dollar, commodities are usurping the dollar as a safe haven for investors. This also helps explain why oil prices shot up over the past 18 months or so.
The Fed putting its pedal to the metal, both in terms of quantitative easing and dropping interest rates, didn’t alone cause oil prices to shoot up, but it did set this ball in motion. Ben Bernanke is the invisible man behind the eight ball in terms of rising oil prices. And he’s probably also the invisible man behind the eight ball in terms of social unrest in the Middle East. When the cost of food eats up roughly 80% of your income, as is the case for most people living in the Middle East, and when food prices around the world have increased by roughly 30% over the past year or so, you too would be all fired up and ready to kick some dictator butt!
So it shouldn’t take a PhD in economics to realize that the recent parabolic rise in oil prices, including most other commodity prices, is largely due to the Fed’s ongoing actions to hand out gigantic sacks of nearly interest-free cash to our TBTF banksters. So why is the White House and why is the mainstream press trying to mislead us into believing that the oil companies and the oil speculators are to blame for this?
All I can figure is that our bankster-owned White House and our bankster-owned press are still trying to hide that fact that our banksters are still too far into debt to function without taxpayer-backed handouts from the Fed. What the oil speculators and the oil companies are doing is merely symptomatic of a diseased banking system created by Bennie and the Fed…
From the bears who explained Quantitative Easing, we now get a crash test dummy simplifying the Federal Reserve’s current outlook on life, the universe and everything, courtesy of Bennie’s very first press conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T64Loi2FJT8&feature=player_embedded
Oil companies are reaping windfall profits, fouling our planet, speculators are bargaining up oil futures, food futures, etc, and driving countless millions into starvation, suicide, etc, and the people here are arguing about partisan politics, working Democratic one-ups-manship, as if THAT is the most important issue. The oversight of our commodities market, the derivatives market, the stock market, is nil, the “market” doesn’t work when huge, multinational corporations control our politics, the media, our economy. People are starving, losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their families, their LIVES-see a post here, recently:
http://dumpsters2011.wordpress.com/
and the “blogosphere” here is so concerned about D v R “blame”, discussing the “rise in gas prices” and WHO could be responsible? How about the FRAUD in the housing market, that drove the world-wide economy into a depression? WHO could possibly prosecute THAT? I despair for the left, I really do. What does it take to finally deconstruct the reality of what we are living, and accept the fact the neither party as we know it today has any concern with the actual living standards of the hoi polloi? When do we stop making excuses, and stop defending right-wing policies if they’re being sold by “our side” (the Dems)? Are they REALLY “our side” now? Or are they on the side of their corporate benefactors? (after all, Obama needs a BILLION dollars for the next campaign – as if THAT amount couldn’t relieve an incredible amount of suffering-ask your local food bank, eh?) My political views are not nailed around my party “identity”, rather around what’s true, and what’s right.