Maybe high oil prices are our friend.

[tecelote]

Remember Bill Clintons famous quote...
"It's the Economy, Stupid."

As long as high energy prices adversely affect the average citizen's wallet, they will continue to blame the oil President. Everybody knows Bush and oil do mix. Yet, he seems like he could care less if the average citizen can't afford it. In fact, his policies, such as the new bankruptcy legislation, make him even look hostile towards the working class.

Maybe high oil prices are the straw that will break the camels back.

[indepat]

1. But the religious zealots and other ideologues being adversely affected

by W's policies don't give a rats-ass: they see the "big picture."

[Tux]

7. Plus

Some evangelical ministers tell their folks that being a fundie and poor is righteous, pious, and basically a good thing. Won't change a thing for the fundies.

[NuttyFluffers]

11. cultists are naturally a lost cause whenever and wherever they are.

but the rest of "red america" has some common sense somewhere in that cobwebbed locked closet they call their critical thinking brain. eventually a few will realize starving because of lies isn't as patriotic and fun as they previously thought.

[justinsb]

2. Oil (and gas) Prices in the US are very low

compared to most of the world.

[Deep13]

4. True, but ...

... Americans depend on motor vehicles more than people in many other countries, especially away from the city. Also, the $2 mark is politically sensitive and the cost of fuel is adding to the price of everything.

Hopefully, this will help get some of these truckasaurases of the road.

[justinsb]

5. Maybe

But Americans depend on motor vehicles more because for decades the US has been the wealthiest country on the planet and cheap cars + artificially low fuel prices have allowed the US that luxury. Now that other countries are becoming wealthier - China and India for example, there is more demand. I wouldn't expect gas prices in the US to do anything but go up unless cars become much, much more fuel efficient, or a large percentage of the population stops driving or weaker oild producing countries like Iraq and Venezuela are strong armed into selling oil at below market rates.

[Cynot]

14. You are correct.

As much as I hate Bush and as much as I hope a Dem will be in the White House after 2008, the grim reality is that gas prices will continue to go up regardless of which political party is in power.

[bunny planet]

15. Once the price of gas increases closer to the minimum hourly wage and

it no longer pays for the people who are the working poor to fill up their tanks to get to work, the shit will hit the fan. Businesses will not be able to keep their cheap labor to run their stores. It will snowball. Western European nations have higher gas prices but they don't necessarily pay their workers slave labor salaries and they provide universal healthcare for all their citizens, makes a big difference right there even though they have higher gas prices for years now. They also have walkable and bikable cities. Gas at even $4 bucks a gallon will put this economy in very serious shape very quickly.

True, lots of poorer workers take public transportation, that might be a stop gap for awhile, but higher cost of gasoline will make bus fairs go up as well.

[justinsb]

17. The other thing Europe (and Canada) have

is cheap, reliable public transit - buses, trains, subways etc. When I was in Germany in 1985 gas prices ran around the $7-8 US per gallon range - no one drove to work. People drove when they went on vacation, visited relatives out of town, had to carry large amounts of things (shopping trips etc) and would take a sunday drive to the country to keep the (singular) family car tuned up. From what I understand people drive even less there now and gas prices have gone up.

[Travelin Man]

21. yeah, the preponderance of gas guzzlers is a crime

and even though Americans are dependent on cars does not mean they have to drive tanks to Wal Mart.

[phantom power]

3. Maybe, but it might also crash our economy.

The end of cheap oil is more like an inevitable process, and if it happens to take BushCo down with it, we could say that is the small silver lining of a very, very big dark cloud.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Blaming Bush for high oil prices is a poor tactic

If the Peak Oil theorists are correct (and I believe they are), then we are nearing the end of our free ride on cheap oil sooner or later. With China and India industrializing, even our current levels of production won't meet worldwide demand, and prices will go up, no matter who is president.

Unfortunately, no one will tell the American people the truth, because we've allowed our whole lives to become so dependent on cheap oil. The exurbs can exist only as long as oil is cheap, and all those people who bought trophy houses in the cornfields and two SUVs are not going to listen to anyone from either party who tells them that their lifestyle is unsustainable.

And the truth is that oil will get more expensive. There are no more known easily accessible reserves. There are no secret capped wells. The current oil fields will be tapped out in our lifetime.

No president can change that. Bush is playing "grab what you can while it's still available" instead of forcing Americans to face the hard truth that our way of life is going to have to change.

Everyone remembers what happened to Jimmy Carter when he tried to get Americans to think about the future.

If only we had listened to him...

[BrendaStarr]

8. But

Bush was selected by the Big Oil Companies in 1999 as the man who would, as president, boost the cost of gasoline and oil products.

His misadventure in Iraq has actually hurt current world oil supplies.

His administration has not done much to promote alternative energy resources besides pushing for new nuclear energy plants.

Their one announced new program was to promote hyrdrogen power, and especially hydrogen as produced from --wait for it-- oil.

ANWR is as much about the American taxpayer helping to pay for the facilities there as about just allowing oil companies into the region.

The nuclear power promotion also is about getting public funding from you and I for it.

But beyond that, Bush is opening up national parks to oil and gas search and drilling, etc., even though over 90% of current oil licenses are still unused.

This is not a clean business. Whole ranches ahve been inundated by tainted water from nearby wells.

But the beauty of federal lands is that who'll they have to recompense? Bush's minions aren't going to make the poor Oil companies actually pay much for destroying our wild spots and killing wild animals.

BTW, what happened to Carter is this: Instead of supporting the best we could get, the liberal rank and file people sat on our hands, hung around in our liberal groups and griped about him, figuring that if he lost by our doing so, we would certainly have a real liberal win a presidential election in a few years.

Well, we are still waiting.

Get all the info you can. Get out to mixed forums, chats, or even offline (real life) groups. Support our ideas and values. Of course that's only necessary if we want to win sometime. Elections are won months or even years before by the ideas and values that are actively promoted between elections.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Ever tried to talk to an exurburbanite about driving less?

It's just not on their mental map, and most of them don't have the imagination to see how it would be possible.

It reminds me of what Anna Thomas (author of The Vegetarian Epicure, a well-known veggie cookbook of the 1970s, when vegetarianism was still considered fringe) said about most people's ideas of vegetarianism: They imagine a meat-and-potatoes meal without the meat, instead of imagining what vegetarian eating really is, a whole reimagining of the concept of a meal.

Similarly, when exurburbanites imagine driving less or doing without their cars, they imagine themselves trying to live a strip mall lifestyle without a car instead of living an entirely different way where a car is never or rarely needed.

Getting past the idea that cities are "too dangerous" or that every family has to have a big house with a car for everyone over 16 is swimming upstream. You can try to point out that living in the city, you could get by with a smaller house and fewer or no cars, but that's just not how typical Americans envision themselves. Their self-image is tied up in being suburban, because that's "the good life," even though it isn't.

[wallwriter]

10. Raising the price of oil to benefit oil companies

however shady the reasoning. That's just good business. Raising the price of oil through taxes to support research into alternative fuels and transportation. That' socialism.

[Broken Acorn]

12. Sadly, most people have no idea what the Bankruptcy Bill is

I was talking to a very intelligent friend the other day about real estate prices in CA and how many people will default on their mortgages as soon as their 100% variable interest rates go up.

On top of that, I threw in the new Bankruptcy Bill and how much harder, if not impossible, it will make for people to declare bankruptcy once this hard reality sets in.

He had no clue about it. Sad.

[Imagevision]

13. Oil Prices are at record highs and the price at the pumps continue to

down where I live it must be motor city lobbyist's telling Bush to cool it until they unload their SUV inventories.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. High oil prices are NOT our friend

They're real and they're here to stay. To lay that entirely on Bush sets up an expectation that Dems can bring prices down. I don't think anyone can bring them down. It is pure supply and demand. As we all learned in Economics 101, it is 'pure competition' .... the trading of a commodity in ever diminishing supply that faces an ever increasing demand.

The way to hit this and win is to talk about alternative fuels in a way that doesn't scare 'car' people. Talking about mass transit won't do it; no one wants to give up their cars. While maybe NOT the best idea, talking about things like ethanol as an alternative to gasoline is a good thing. People can, for example, get their brains around that new carburetor for the Chevy far easier than they can other notions.

Obviously the **real** answers are far, far more complex, but just talking about somehow lowering oil prices sets us up for inevitable failure. Conversely, talking about real answers will cause eyes to glaze over *or* alienate 90% of Main Street, who would rather give up guns than cars.

[rniel]

18. It amazes me

While bush is piling up a mile high list of crimes, polluting the environment, destroying civil rights...all them good ole' boys won't raise a stink till they're paying 20 cents more at the pump.

[chaska]

19. Everybody please read up on peak oil.

It will soon have a big effect on the way you live.

We have a DU group devoted to the subject. That'll get you started.

Note: Ethanol is not an alternative to straight gas. Some sources report that it takes 1.3 barrels of oil to produce 1 barrel of ethanol. It has some benefits but not enough to recommend it. It's a very mixed bag.

[Stinky The Clown]

20. As I said in my post, the **real** answers are complex and largely

unpalatable to the sheeple. So long as there even a hint of viability in ethanol, it is way to begin to move the debate toward our side (true oil-free energy independence) without lying.