SITYS: Oil Prices Drop Sharply As Gas Plummets

You may recall I suggested Oil was going to drop, bigtime.

Here’s a reminder.

The AP business wire is now reporting the bottom’s falling out.

The reason: Simple economics.

“Emori said the current oil market remains “highly exaggerated,” and that if prices followed market fundamentals, they should hover around the low $40 range.

“Although demand still remains strong, supplies are normal, as seen from the U.S. reports,” he said. “Even the current spare capacity is not that tight.” “

Now, I should say, that the Federal Government is saying that prices for actual gasoline will remain high, but the price of crude has little to do with it.

Again, I mentioned that several times, too. So did others.

Ace of Spades HQ comments this morning on the news that the author of the disputed Shaivo memo was a legal council in Mal Martinez’s office.

This sounds (And looks, if you’ve seen the actual memo… I have..) like a lower to mid-level staffer banging out thoughts and acting on his own… and being driven by the short time cycles involved.

I gotta tell ya right off the bat… My typing inhales canal water at rates that would make Venice look dry…. but if the guy who wrote this document considered it a formal document, he was either in one hell of a hurry to knock it out, or he has worse typing and editing skills than I do, or both. (I know, hard to imagine, but there it is) Had it been checked by anyone prior to going out, (As one would expect with any kind of a formal policy statement, I suppose) it wouldn’t have been nearly so typo-filled.

That factor alone should blow away any more nonsense about the GOP as a formal process trying to make use of this.

Update:

Jason Hayes over at Musing, agrees,based on the statements from all concerned, including Tom Harkin… who has been acting unusually human, for him…  saying in part:

“the memo was a worker drone’s working draft that was never ok’d (or asked for) by the higher ups, that was never meant to be released, and was never even meant to be printed… ~ …So it was one guy’s thoughts on an issue and not a whole lot more.”

Bruce Ramsey’s really ticking them off in that bastion of leftist PCism, Seattle.  A couple weeks ago, he came out swinging in support of drilling in the area of ANWR designated for the purpose when it was originally set up. As you might expect in Seattle, thta resulted in a small flood of mail telling him how wrong he was.  In Today’s Seattle Times he blows those objections up, point by point.

You’ll recall I’ve come out strongly, repeatedly for drilling in ANWR.

Georgie Anne Geyer today, writing about Pope John Paul:

“His support of the Solidarity Free Trade Unions would seem to be, first and foremost, political. It was his trip to his native and beloved Poland in 1979, just a year after his investiture as pope, that set the country spiritually afire against the communists. For the first time, Poles said, they realized that it was the communists who were the dissidents in Poland, and not they. “

Billy says, rightly, in his notes on the death of the Pope……

“Most people with a brain in their heads and a sense of history recall 1989, but I do wonder how many people recall 1979.”

But personally, I wonder how many people on this side of the world recall the decades BEFORE 1979, he spent as a Priest and a Bishop, fighting the Communists.

For much of his life, he didn’t hold himself above the frey, and keep himself out of the fight….Rather he stood in it, and became the more persistent fighter. He wasn’t one to demand it all at once, rather playing political game….. And within that context he didn’t try to “go long”, he played a patient game of inches. He went in with the idea of changing one mind at a time, knowing that the cascade effect would eventually take over.

There’s a lesson there, and I wonder if Geyer knows just how hard she’s hit this one. I doubt many would dare to suggest the Pope operated outside of his principles to gain his victories in the political arena, eh?

Ed at Captain’s Quarters says the Toronto Sun now has developed it’s own sources for Adscam info.

This keeps getting better.

Little Green Footballs notes the passing of Saul Bellow at age 89

Hey, Glenn;

Ya blew it…. Bigtime.

I’ve seen the Cornyn speech on C-span this morning.

Cornyn deserves none of the abuse he’s getting from the left… at least insofar as this subject goes. And you’re so far off base on this, I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t by some intent, or pre-disposition.

Here’s a switch hit;

I’ve always been mildly interested in player pianos, and Merry-Go-Round organs that play by player rolls. By extension, then, I’ve also been interested in MIDI files… since the days of the C=64 and SID files.
Here’s a link you’ll wnat to see. Apparently this guy takes old palyer Piano rolls, and translates them to Midi files. Free downloads, too.

Colorado Conservative says Prince Rainier of Monaco, has died.

Beck, who spends a bit more time than I do on planes, has some added into about the Airbus bit I ran recently. Apparently, they plan to re-open the investigation into the crash of 587… as you may recall I expected they would. Details/links at Two–Four

Captain Ed relates, with some amusement:

“In an odd display of twisted priorities, Canada’s Attorney General may start investigating the Canadian blogosphere to find bloggers who have linked back to CQ and broken the publication ban.

Interesting how it comes down to the bloggers, again.
But check this act;

In the last 24 hours, I’ve logged around 1200 hits from Canadian addresses, looking for Ed’s place. These were not linked from Canadian Blogs, but rather are from Google, and Yahoo and Dogpile and so on. I wonder if the Justice ministry will try to level lawsuits against THESE, eh?

Looks like Pulitzer Prizes are out.
Casual comment; When I see them being passed out to Bloggers, I’ll know the bias is gone.

You’ll recall I mentioned a 500 Gig drive Hitachi was touting last week. Well, now they’re claiming they’ll have 1TB PC drives, 20GB Microdrives by 2007.

Yikes.
When things start getting that big, one must wonder; is tape backup still worth it, or is it cheaper to simply buy a second or thrrd drive and mirror or RAID the darned things…

Billy:

Oh, that’s easy… You seem to be expecting that because someone wears a GOP button, that’s a limit on what they’re going to do. I hold no such illusions. As I said yesterday; I have been outspoken in my support of the President, and of a goodly portion of the Republicans… not because I hold any affinity with them simply because they’re Republicans, but because I see them, on the whole, as working toward the end of the reduction of government to it’s original purposes… at the moment. moreso than any other force being brouht to bear at the moment.

At the moment, they are going the direction we need to go. When I see someone come along that has a better change of providing what I seek, at that point THEY will have my support.
However, that situation … Ike… would certainly have been better than another Democrat, in any event.

Now, what makes you think that neolibs wouldn’t find themselves “forced into those positions”, especially since they’re going in to the thing announcing that they’re willing to give up the goodies for the privilege of sitting in office?

Simple; these are different times. Consider with me; Did you really expect a Reagan, or for that matter, a Goldwater in office, so closely following an FDR?  Of course not.

No… what we got was as far to the right as the electorate were willing to deal with at the time. However, we did manage to get a Reagan.. and now a Bush…who ARE willing to work to tilt the scales in the other direction. ANd guess what?  Such rightists have more support now than they would have in say the late 50’s (to keep with our example of Ike) because over that time people learned that when conservative ideals are followed, the world doesn’t blow up.

Like I’ve been saying; it’s a slow process.

Billy responds to my question at Q&O:

Perhaps the best way of answering this sort of dichotomy nonsense, is a simple question: Are other people allowed to have and act on THEIR principles?”

…

with….

That depends entirely on what those principles are. Nobody is “allowed” to, for instance, live by the principle that everybody else should be forced to pay for their medical care.

This person calls it “freedom” when anyone can have their own way at the expense of anyone else.

Two problems, here, the lesser first:
You’re making chocies for them, and imposing your will aren’t you?

See, the problem here is this;

Is it really true that it needs to be pointed out just how wrong that is?

Unfortunately, YES. That’s the whole point. We’re not controlled by some unimind.  That’s BEEN the whole point all along. we’ve gotten so far down this road because there are not enough in the way of people fighting the trend to the left…. articulate people… people of passion.  You (editorial you, in this context) have to convince them of the value of your position. You’re not going to do that by removing yourself from the fight.