Bush has advocated weening ourselves off foreign import oil. If this spurs producers to develop products that can reduce our reliance on foreign oil by as little as 10 to 20%, it will have a desirable effect on prices. That's doesn't sound like him being resigned to high prices.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Americans want cheap energy that isn't produced off the coasts of their states or from national monuments or wildlife refuges.
Such drivel -
Then again it doesn't help that the fools in the GOP congress go along with such a premise and instead of calling on wrong-headed environmental regulations to be suspended (reformulation standards, and refinery regs)...NO....they go and call for "hearings" on price gouging!
The GOP / RNC are such complete fools on domestic issues about stating the facts and not allowing false premises to be set by the MSM /DEMs.
The current gas prices are made to order for the GOP to ram it down the DEM's throats in letting the American public see what their foolish regulations are costing this country.
With that said, GWB should call a 90-120 day halt on all federal mandated reformulations...as well as stop putting oil into SPR.
I suppose the left is all for nationalizing the oil industry, after they empty the reserves so the price can be reduced five cents a gallon.
Bush’s failure to get something done regarding drilling in Anwar when he first came into office has resulted in this mess. He allowed the Democrats to play him like a fiddle and we are reaping the rewords for it.
I wish he had half the cojones with domestic issues as he has with foreign policy.
Other than a temporary tax cut, he has been a miserable failure on the home front.
Bush cannot (politically) afford to just throw up his hands and do nothing, even if practically speaking there is little he can do in the short term. The longer he goes out and keeps making statements like this, the more he starts to resemble Jimmy Carter in that dang sweater....and we all KNOW what the Gipper did to Mr. Peanut with THAT imagery!
Nor can the GOP afford to just run a better witch hunt against the oil industry than the Dems can. Now is the time to stick it to them. Things that should be done starting tomorrow:
- push ANWR again...HARD! NOW! Makes obstructionists pay a price for past failures
- Push for relaxed regs on new refinery construction, NOW!
- Suspend ALL custom clean-air fuel blend requirements for the rest of the summer (and possibly forever)
- Push hard for streamlined approval of new nuke plants
I you cannot make your opponents feel the heat at $3 a gallon (especially when you are on the right side of the free market) then you have no business being in politics.
We have just been handed a giftwrapped campaign issue for 2006 and 2008 both. Even people who don't pay attention to the news, pay attention when they fill up their gas tank at $3 or $4 a gallon.
We need to put the spotlight on this and shout it to the heavens. We have billions of oil offshore we can't drill. We have entire gas fields off limits, we haven't built a refinery in decades, we haven't built a nuke in decades, we're forced to build LNG plants in Mexico, we can't even build wind farms without going through a storm of criticism.
At every step of the way, it is the Democratic Party and their proxies and their minions who are making it impossible for us to do anthing other than import oil from OPEC. Any solution that isn't OPEC, believe it or not, or 30 years in the future, they oppose. They oppose pipelines, gas fired plants, you name it, they want to stop it or shut it down.
That should be our campaign issue. We're suicidal if we don't attack on this issue.
On the one hand they call him "King George" and pronounce the administration to be fascists.
While in the next breath they complain that he's not doing more for them.
So, he's NOT the King of America?
So, the administration NOT seizing control of the oil companies and the market shows they are NOT fascists because they can't in a free market society?
WHAAHHHH!!!! ride a frickin' bike, it's 'greener' anyways.
Fifty years ago my dad bought gas for .12 cents a gallon. The lowest wage here was .25 cents an hour. Do the math. One hour's work bought two gallons of gas fifty years ago.
Today, gas is $2.78 a gallon here. The lowest paid worker here makes about $6.00 an hour. Do the math again.
One hour's work will buy you two gallons of gas today.
So, where is the "High" gas prices per hours worked?
Little Ms. Loven usually gets an auto-barf alert...
What would we have him do? Control prices and have supply dry up? What good is $1.25 gasoline if you can't get any? Confiscate profits- and shut down exploration and development? Decree that henceforth the Arabs must sell us their oil at $30 a barrel? How will that work? I hear too many voices in the stores and cafes blaming Bush for the high prices. He decreed them so that his oil buddies could get rich. And these are mostly people who have voted Republican for a generation.
lift the blended fuels mandate, delay it for one year. DO SOMETHING.
Drilling for oil where oil is and building nuke plants is hardly modest these days. However, the Pres is severely restricted in what he can do. He ought to get the Energy Secy out front, whoever that is, and have him beat the MSM senseless.
He could start looking for price gouging in Texas. Fox News reported that gas is $3.09 in Dallas and $2.09 in St. Paul, MN.
Texans ship most of the oil in the US and refine a good amount of it too, and they are paying more than the energy parasites. Something is rotten about this.
Crude is getting scarce because other countries - China, India and others - have increased their demands.
We've conserved about all we are willing to do, are driving light weight vehicles (we never had cracked windshields back in the day and in my case my family lived on a gravel road!) - the only way left is to increase the supply by drilling, exploring etc. But NOOO-OOO, dims won't hear of that so what's Bush supposed to do?
And I'm all for alternative energy but that ain't happenin' yet.