What's More Likely to Happen First...

...the State Department recommending the removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, or the State Department recommending the Keystone Pipeline be approved?

Let the Gulf Drilling Bids Begin

One would think this news would be welcome in a bad economy.. 

The US government offered up new areas of the central Gulf of Mexico for drilling for the first time since the 2010 BP oil spill and received $1.7 billion in winning bids, officials said Wednesday.

One might also think such news would deflate the conservative view of Obama as a socialist/environmentalist focused more on promoting oil fields off Brazil than our own.  Yet for some reason there seems to be almost zero national coverage. Hmmm.

SOS!

Never underestimate the administration's ability to turn something around to punish their enemies. Yesterday the president stepped outside the Oval to announce a proposal to limit oil speculation from Wall Street, which was designed to once again take the onus off his policies and put them on 1 percenters. Even analysts on CNN were left a little surprised.

But Dick Morris should not be surprised. Here's what he said back in 2008:

The Democrats are pushing legislation to restore the status quo ante and stop the brokerage firms from playing the oil futures game. Their bill would apply the restrictions on oil futures’ purchases to domestic American companies even if they trade off shore.

If there is any doubt that it is speculation, not the supply and demand for oil, that is driving up the price, look at this week’s history of oil prices. After Bush announced that he was rescinding his father’s executive order and permitting off shore drilling and after OPEC announced a weakening of oil demand, the futures market price dropped $15 per barrel. No new oil gushed through the system. The speculators just switched their bets from up to down. With the Democratic bill, they will just have to double their bets on horse racing and leave oil futures alone!

Some Republicans are reflexively opposing the Democratic proposal, citing the sanctity of free markets. But even Reagan didn’t want to allow unbridled gambling in oil futures. There is nothing wrong with letting the free market in oil determine the price of the product. And there is a lot right with letting it do so. But it is insane to let gamblers magnify the effect of anticipated changes in supply and demand, that may not materialize, by buying and selling oil futures. Oil is just too important strategically and economically to allow that kind of speculation.

Emphasis added to point out how the Obama people will be ready and waiting to pounce on the pushback. They don't throw this stuff out haphazardly. Caveat emptor, GOP. But the same can be said to some of these too clever by half Democrats, as will be pointed out shortly.

Everybody suffers when oil is speculated upwards. Not surprisingly many airlines are in favor of reforming the market back to the pre-2000 conditions, evidenced by this lobbying effort. Obama is trying again to deflect blame by bringing this speculation problem to light, perhaps thinking that nobody in the friendly mainstream will recall that neither he nor Pelosi bothered to make this case in 2006 or 2008. Back then the spikes were conveniently attributed to "oil men in the White House". With a community organizer in the White House it's now Wall St speculators causing the problem, so we need more "cops on the beat". What a tangled web they weave.

By the way, Obama referred to the 2000 reform having to do with Enron; how many people know that Paul Krugman was an advisor to Enron? How many know that Commerce Secretary Brown was accompanied by Enron officials when his plane went down in on his fatal trip to Croatia? Obviously Bill Clinton signed the reform that led to this campaign card--will anyone bother to make that point with Mrs. Clinton right there in the cabinet? Chances are if we hear anything about Enron it will be about Ken Lay, Bush, and Bush. Or Cheney. But those will be words, just words. The peeps will still be paying at the pump no matter what the clowns come up with, just as the Saudis and OPEC want it.

Obama the Venture Capitalist

CBS continues to be the only major news network pursuing the Solyndra story and they broke more news today..



So while both sides are carving away on Romney for being an evil venture capitalist nobody is paying attention to the fact that Obama was giving risky loans to risky businesses (that happen to be in line with his green energy platform), who were then going bankrupt and putting people out of work while dumping the bill on taxpayers.

No doubt the major media will all report on his new plan to acquire higher presidential powers for the sake of streamlining the bureaucracy to his liking, since they know it's really nothing more than a campaign trap aimed at Congressional Republicans.  If they object Obama will say they are hypocrites who don't really want to cut government.  If they give him the power the TEA Party will object, and later Obama will campaign as a cutter of government waste.

This same media--such as the New York Times, who just recently questioned their readers as to whether they should challenge non-factual statements when gathering news--will probably not ask why Obama waited until now to suddenly ask for these powers instead of several years ago when he growing both government spending and employee rolls and running up massive debt. 

Still Waiting

When trying to win back control of the House in 2006 Nancy Pelosi proclaimed the following in a press release entitled, "With Skyrocketing Gas Prices, Americans Can No Longer Afford Rubber Stamp Congress":

“Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies, and increasing production of alternative fuels.”

OK. Here's a chart showing the average price of gas since Nancy took the House gavel:


And here's the price of crude oil over the last 10 years:


It went up after her caucus took power, way up, then it went down. Way down. Success? Or maybe something else. Here's a flashback to November of last year, featuring a usual suspect:

CAIRO, Egypt – Saudi Arabia's king says the price of oil should be $75 a barrel, much higher than it is now, but his oil minister indicated Saturday that no measures will likely be taken until OPEC meets again next month.

And that was a long term prognostication at the time. Meanwhile, the price of oil today reached a new yearly high, 74.72 per barrel, which was explained by saying the European markets might be exiting recession even as we continue shedding jobs. So who knows?

What we do know is that Pelosi and her Democrats didn't do jack squat about gas prices as promised. That is, unless she'd like to say the Democrat plan was to wait for an economic downturn nearly as bad as the Great Depression. But we know that can't be true because the recession is solely Bush's fault, which would mean he would also get the credit. Cue the buzzer sound.