Why the Jump in Oil Yesterday?

I said yesterday morning:

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) suggested that oil companies may be manipulating energy markets as Enron did in 2001, and that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Federal Trade Commission needed to more aggressively regulate all futures markets

Do you understand? Their answer is… more regulation, and more aggressive regulation. Rather reminds one of a bunch of drunks in a car. The driver notes they’re going in reverse, and decides the answer is to hit the gas harder. Blinking idiots.

That’s why.
The price jump yesterday can be traced directly to the attitudes and policies of the Democrats in Congress. The comments of Cantwell and others, show clearly that Congress is not ready to do what needs be done. Rather, they’ll continue down the path of trying to regulate their way out of the situation, rather than simply get out of the way, which is in reality the only way out. The controls being applied by Congress are working in the favor of those who are causing the price spikes. Congress announcing it plans to do more of the same, made things worse.

Still want the Democrats to stay in power, America?

Interesting poll from CNN this morning.  It seems that John McCain and Barack Obama are tied in the polling numbers;

In the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted entirely after Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee, he leads his Republican counterpart 49 to 46 percent among registered voters — a statistical tie, given the question’s 3 point margin of error.

The poll is the first conducted entirely after Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee.

McCain and Obama aren’t alone: independent candidate Ralph Nader and Republican-turned-Libertarian Bob Barr are both vying with the two major-party candidates for independent voters.

But at this point, it looks unlikely either will play a spoiler role: the margin between Obama and McCain is virtually unchanged, with the Illinois senator leading 47 to 43 percent. Nader pulls in 6 percent, and Barr 2.

This is interesting because it was just last week that Obama had several points worth of bounce out of finally getting over the top in delegate numbers. Now, all of a sudden, CNN can’t be bothered to mention this fact.  I also find the comment of Bob Barr and Ralph Nader not playing a significant role of interest, given the closeness of the last several cycles.  Seems to me, that a point or two either way is all that would be needed for one of them to play spoiler.

By the same token, then, this is also important:

A hypothetical Obama/Clinton ticket would currently get 52 percent, compared to 46 percent for a hypothetical McCain/Romney ticket. And if she’s not on the ticket? Sixty percent of her Democratic supporters would vote for Obama, 17 percent would vote for McCain, and 22 percent say they would stay at home in November and not vote for anyone.

(Pic Credit: UglyDemocrats.com)

That, in fact, is the most important marker of the selection thus far.  It seems clear that if Obama has any shot at winning this election, it’ll be because the Clintons are playing some role that he sets, and it will have to be a prominent role.  Understandably, he is reluctant to do that, for all the reasons that have been mentioned here and elsewhere.  Of course, given that CNN has been in the pocket for Hillary Clinton for some time now, they’ve failed to make mention of the reverse also be true; that being that there are a number of people who would withdraw from voting in this race, if Hillary Clinton were involved in a hypothetical Obama administration.

No matter which way that goes.  He’s going to cost himself some substantial amount of voters. Mind you, I am not convinced we got all the factors in just yet. but barring some kind of major bombshell.  Between now and November, I can’t imagine something that would swing 20 points off the Democrat vote, as this situation looks to do.

• Leave it to The SUN to get it wrong. Oh, no question that this woman has bigguns. (Warning: NSFW) But I’ve always considered the biggest boobs in the world were Ron Paul supporters, myself.
• Look, Snooper. We’re not going to get through this if you don’t loosen up and tell us what you really think.
• Let’s see… we need $45 trillion dollars to satisfy Al Gore’s wild fanstasy? Forgive me if I don’t stand up and salute.
• Oh, speaking of that… We had two bozos climbing the NY Times building, yeserday. Yeah, preaching about Global warming.  Arrested at once, both of them. With any luck, they’ll remain there. Why that building? Can you think of any better way to ensure national, televised coverage of your global warming fantasy? Apparently mere facts don’t change people from chasing their ‘Hey, look at me” stunts.
• You say what you will about Tom Delay, I may agree. But make no mistake, here; He’s got Obama tagged.
• Clint Eastwood says Spike Lee should STFU. I tend to agree. I find most interesting Lee’s complaints abotu why Eastwood would want to do “Byrd”. Hasn’t it been clear since “Gauntlet” that Eastwood is a hard core Jazz fan, and is in fact the ideal person to direct such a project? Or is it that only blacks can really appreciate Jazz in Lee’s view? How post racial…
• Oh, speaking of entertainment and the like, we appear to be bound for another Hollywood strike. The last one worked so well, after all…
• I see where KSM is complaining about pictures drawn of him in court. Doesn’t like his nose. Too broad, says he. Too jewish, perhaps? Yeah, like this guy’s not easy to see through. And why are we concerned about taking his apparently bigoted vanity into consideration? Didn’t this moron lead the charge to kill thousands? Priorities, people. Priorities. Like, make him aware how lucky he is to have survived to get to the courtroom, for example.
• Billy gets into it with McPhillips, on the occasion of the latter’s 700th post.
  

  McP:

  “My confession about all this is that I don’t work as hard here as I used to in the old Usenet sewers, and I hear from both Beck and Mike Soja that it’s harder for them to get down with a subject on their blogs than it was to get ready for the fire fights down in those dark passages. There’s a certain edge missing here in the blogworks.”

  This was obvious to me almost instantly upon getting started on a blog, but it’s not all there is to it for me. A great deal of my problem is that the prospects for individualist (i.e. — American) politics in my homeland have only ever gotten worse during my lifetime and they are getting worse every single day. This is creeping resignation, you see.

  Well, first off, try me on this when you get to 9000 posts. And trust me, Martin, you’ll get there. I’ve seen this thing often enough to know.
  I wonder though, Billy, if your complaint is not simply a function of what Martin is talking about, here? I suspect that the degree of isolation being higher here than it was back in the Usenet days is a part of your perception of how tings are. As you say, it’s not the whole thing, but a chunk of it, I think. The discussion… both from the bozos and the people with the ability of actual thought, was often, a spur to shedding light on it as the bozos plied their nonsense, and cause to be reassured as the thinkers chimed in. In the degree of isolation that blogdom as it has evolved, brings, I don’t wonder that it’s harder to find the inspriation to speak up.  That’s one of the reasons I’ve kept up on comment areas on other blogs.

  As for Martin’s ‘writing is rewriting’ thing, I have to tell you that the act of writing, when the topics are those which this blog is mostly about, tend to clarify my thought process. When I attack a subject, particularly in the longer forms, I often jot stuff out half formed, and remold them, as I unpack each part of the subject I’m addressing, and thereby have a better overview of my own thoughts on the subject.  That tought refining process USED to be refined still further by means of discussion, when we were on usenet. Less so, here.  Still, keep going, Martin.  The ‘spehere would be a poorer place without your voice.

• Surber has both the questions and the answers. A very efficient fellow, Don.

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Sis reminds us that it’s been four years, now that the Gipper’s been gone.

As important as this image is, though, I don’t think he’d want to be remembered that way. Perhaps this is more fitting:

It’s a measure of his greatness that liberals are still running aganst him.

¼/p>

An interesting story yesterday, on the AP wires:

Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.
The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

Well, OK. Leaving aside the security/morality issues involved, we can make use of the data collected, in the following way;

We may assume that we are talking about phones somewhere else in the world, given that as they suggest such a study would be against the law, here.  Likely, then, given that and given the raw numbers, we’re talking about the EU. What we have is a picture of mobility, or the lack thereof,  in Europe.

Well first, that meshes because at $6 and $8 per gallon of gas, no bloody wonder nobody ever travels. But more;  We’re so often told about the wonders of mass transportation, as they have it in the EU.  However, if we are to take this study at face value,  we now have a better idea why it works so well; Nobody really goes anywhere… they’re not nearly the Mobile society that we ar here in the ‘states.  It’s not because the system is so great, it’s that people tend to avoid using it.

Seems to me that this negates all the worship of the European system of transportation… high gas taxes, heavy relience on mass transit. Because, as this study points out, nobody really goes anywhere. The result of the European  way of handing problems of transport is people simply avoid travel, altogether.

Is that really what they want for us here in the ‘states?

Man bites dog, sanity enjoys its day in the Senate.  Michelle is reporting that the Senate, in temporary bout of sanity, has killled the Lieberman-Warner tax increase bill.  

Good news: The Lieberman-Warner eco-boondoggle is set to go down in flames today. But this is no time to rest. While the massive tax hike/green slush fund bill will most likely be shelved, it’ll come back sooner or later. And when it does, keep your eyes on “moderate” Republicans such as John Sununu who will try to appease their red-faced greenie donors and lobbyists by pulling a “for it before I was against it maneuver” this morning a la John Kerry.

 This horrid idea will not be dead until all the criminals who support it, like Dirty Harry Ried, are removed from the Senate.   Hard working American families will not be safe when political terrorists like Reid and Barabara Boxer are trusted with politcal power.  Politicians who support higher energy prices are not our friends.

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Give a thought, today, to the people on that beach, 64 years ago.

I wonder how many of us, and how many Europians, will mark this day, and how. 

You didn’t hear about this yesterday, I’m willing to bet. The Senate Commerce Committee met on Tuesday, trying to figure out what to do about the sharp increase in prices on oil. I mentioned the other day that George Soros was one of the people there. I’ve mentioned the reasons here many times…. simply getting government out of the way, at every stage from dead dino to your gas tank.
But guess what their answer was? Exactly the opposite, and one that Soros must have been cheering… The Hill:

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) suggested that oil companies may be manipulating energy markets as Enron did in 2001, and that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Federal Trade Commission needed to more aggressively regulate all futures markets

Do you understand? Their answer is… more regulation, and more aggressive regulation.  Rather reminds one of a bunch of drunks in a car. The driver notes they’re going in reverse, and decides the answer is to hit the gas harder. Blinking idiots.

And oh, by the way, the markets reacted predictably to the ‘solution’ proposed… the price of crude went up by $5/bbl, yesterday. It’s clear, that the Democrats, and some of the Republicans simply don’t get it.

This war is lost.  Let us set a timetable and leave, Allison Klein, Washington Post:

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it will help keep criminals out of the area.

Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers’ identification and ask whether they have a “legitimate purpose” to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away.

We should be in involved in a civil war.   Declare peace and leave.

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• Been getting downright crazy traffic the last couple months, and none of it bigger than the last week or so. No particular reason I can see. Usually when we get traffic spikes it’s due to one article or another that some other blogger or feed site has linked. Not so, here. No idea why, but I’m enjoying it.
• Boortz wonders about something I’ve been asking for some months, now:
  

  Can anyone name a more inexperienced presidential candidate in modern American history than Barack Obama?

  Well, no, though Ross Perot and Ralph Nader come really close. It does strike me though that this comparison is apt, in that the supporters of Nader and Perot thought his lack of ties to Washington (Nee; Experience) a net positive.

• Speaking of Boortz, I remarked last night about Rezko. Neal does this morning. I dunno as Rezko will of hismelf be a deal-breaker for a White House shot, but I do think it’s an additional leak for the SS Obama, a ship already showing many such leaks. As Boortz suggests, we’re talkinga botu someone who has at each opportunity shown a serious lack of judgement. Eventually, this stuff has to catch up with him. Hopefully, before he actually attains the White House.
• Terence P. Jeffrey over at CNS makes the same point I’ve been making about oil for some months and years, now:
  

  Contemplate this the next time you spend $60 or more filling up your tinny little car with gasoline made from imported oil: The U.S. government knows where it can get its hands on more untapped petroleum than exists in the proven reserves of Iran or Iraq, which have 136 billion barrels and 115 billion barrels, respectively.This unexploited stock of crude is greater than what the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports is in the proven reserves of Russia (60 billion barrels), Libya (41.5 billion barrels) and Nigeria (36.2 billion barrels) combined.

  It is more than Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela has (80 billion barrels). It is more than is now known to sit beneath the waters and sands of Kuwait (101.5 billion barrels) or the United Arab Emirates (97.6 billion barrels).

  So, where is all this oil? And why aren’t they pumping it?

  What cartel is holding it off the market, to drive up prices at American gas stations and American supermarkets? What insidious power is stifling the free market for this vital commodity and thus threatening the vitality of our economy?

  It is us, of course. We are the culprits. We are responsible for artificially increasing oil prices. It is our oil that sits untapped beneath our deserts, our forests, our swamps and our oceans. It is our politicians — the ones we freely elected, and re-elected, and re-elected — who are not allowing our oil to be drilled by us and sold to us.

  All in the name of ‘the environment’ of course. Joyner points up that George Will is saying the very same thing.

• I”m sooooo verrrry tired of this, you don’t know. Would they feel better if the toddler had been killed by a Prius?  Heck, I doubt it would have made the news at all. So much for the myth of Fox being the voice of the right, by the way.
• You likely won’t hear much about this, either.  Can you imagine the lawsuit because the doctor didn’t manage to kill the kid outright? Sorry, Gang, but the moral implications of this stuff is obvious.
• I see where Iran is threatening to sue western nations for ruining it’s reputation. Isn’t that kinda like Eliot Spitzer and his call girls suing the press?

¼/p>

From the New York Post today:

Of course, with his wealth and power, Kennedy would get good treatment anywhere. But the same care is available to every American.

Not so – if we make the health “reforms” called for by Kennedy and other liberals.

Filmmaker Michael Moore gives their standard line when he says: “There are problems in all health-care systems, but at least Europeans and Canadians have a health-care system that covers everyone.”

Problem is, governments that promise to “cover everyone” always wind up cutting corners simply to save money. People with Kennedy’s condition are dying or dead as a result.

Consider Jennifer Bell of Norwich, England. In 2006, the 22-year-old complained of headaches for months – but Britain’s National Health Service made her wait a year to see a neurologist.

Then she had to wait more than three months before should could get what the NHS decided was only a “relatively urgent” MRI scan. Three days before the MRI appointment, she died.

Consider, too, the chemo drug Kennedy is receiving: Temodar, the first oral medicine for brain tumors in 25 years.

Temodar has been widely used in this country since the FDA approved it in 2000. But a British health-care rationing agency, the National Institute for Comparative Effectiveness, ruled that, while the drug helps people live longer, it wasn’t worth the money – and denied coverage for it.

And therein is the point that the left hopes you’ll ignore. And you know what? It was exactly this kind of thing I had in mind when I posted my original comments.

I can’t help but wonder what Senator Kennedy thinks about his private health insurance, now. of course, what is private health insurance doesn’t pick up the federal government will, meaning you and I will be paying for it regardless. I suspect, however, that one comment that you won’t hear from the left is how only the rich get the kind of health care that Senator Kennedy is getting, between now and whenever

Others   Rhymes With Right Betsy’s Page, :Don Surber, Flopping Aces

Here’s a headline you won’t see much of, today:

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.  —AP- A military jury acquitted a Marine intelligence officer Wednesday of charges that he tried to help cover up the killings of 24 Iraqis.

Cheers erupted as the seven-officer panel cleared 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson, who was the first of three Marines to be tried in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving Iraqi deaths linked to the war. The verdict came just five hours after deliberations began.

The judge, Maj. Brian E. Kasprzyk, admonished the noisy courtroom, saying: “There will be no more of that.”

Grayson, who has always maintained he did nothing wrong, was not at the scene of the killings of men, women and children on Nov. 19, 2005, in Haditha. He was accused of telling a sergeant to delete photographs of the dead from a digital camera and laptop computer.

Outside the courtroom, a visibly emotional Grayson said the verdict was an end to a terrible ordeal.

That’s great news, all the better because:

Grayson’s attorney, Joseph Casas, said he believed the verdict could influence pending prosecutions.

“I think it sets the tone for the overall whirlwind Haditha has been. It’s been a botched investigation from the get-go,” he said. “I believe in the end all of the so-called Haditha Marines who still have to face trial will be exonerated.”

Prosecutors did not make themselves available for comment.

Jack Murtha had no comment.

For one who running for president based only has his self-proclaimed judgenent, Barack Obama has a really poor track record.  Gabriel Malor, Ace of Spades Hq  posts these two stinkers.  First, BO on Tony Reako:

“I’m saddened by today’s verdict. This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew,.”

And BO on the Reverend Wright:

“I’ve known Rev. Wright for almost 20 years. The person that I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago.”

Michelle characterizes BO’s Rezko quote as “I’m a clueless dupe…again!”

Given BO’s woeful judgement, no wonder he conflates himself with Moses:

“the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”

Courtesy, Eric, Redstate.

So what that difference between Barack Obama and the late Charlton Heston?

Heston claimed to have played Moses.   BO thinks he is Moses.

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Couldn’t resist this one, since Donna’s into lighthouses:

WELLFLEET, Massachusetts (AP) — Local historians for decades thought the 30-foot tall lighthouse that once overlooked Wellfleet Harbor had been taken down and destroyed in 1925.

Turns out it had just been moved to the California coast.

The fate of the cast-iron tower was uncovered last year by lighthouse researchers and reported by Colleen MacNeney in this month’s edition of Lighthouse Digest.

How do you move a lighthouse across the country like that, particularly in 1925? They actually get into that in the story. Interesting.

Some interesting thoughts from The War Room, this morning on that Obama tape, on their radio show this morning.

Sources, apparently, are telling The War Room, that the tape (Actually, a digital vid) does in fact exist, and is in the hands of, among others, the Clinton campaign.  That report brings up some speculation.

Between this and the Rezko conviction David reported here last night, might these (Along with possibly other things) be among the reasons Clinton ‘suspended’ her campaign, as opposed to dropping out, altogether?

Consider with me for a second; David is quite correct, in that Larry Johnson doesn’t have the brains to be a point source for this kinda thing, regardless if it’s real or made up.  Particularly, he wouldn’t be the one fabricating this stuff, in my estimation… he’s simply not that smart.   So, how would he know such a video exists? The only logical conclusion to draw is that he got told this by the Clintonistas. That part certainly fits in with why he knows it exists, but doesn’t have it. If he actually had the thing, he’d show it on his blog before the echo died from the download.

So, that means Hillary Clinton’s  people still have it, and have not released it. But, why then would Clinton hold onto the thing?  Leverage. The most powerful weapon is often one you don’t actually use. This constitutes the Clinton nuclear scenario.

“Hey, Barry, about that VP slot…”

Again, this is speculation, but it fits.