I'll just stay bent over and take it since it's the patriotic thing to do. </sarcasm>
Yes, it is, because the higher prices stay in the short term, the sooner alternative fuel capacity will be developed in the North American oil shales and tar sands, and the sooner we can tell the Muslims and Hugo Chavez to go piss up a rope.
We'll have (relatively) cheap fuel from our own back yards for three hundred years, beginning right about the time the Mideast oil fields get sucked dry. We'll not only be the unchallenged military and economic superpower, but we'll also be in the position OPEC is now in. We will bend the entire world to our will.
-ccm