Did Bush actually want gas prices high? Think about it...

[originalpckelly]

Now we all know Mr. "LittleOilCompany" and Mr. Halliburton have close ties to oil, I mean oneself is about as close as ties get, so what if this was the scenario:

They start having people investigate them...to stop the investigations and redirect the focus of the public and the Congress, BushCo ring their friends and say raise the prices. Bushes ratings go down, but he stays in office because Congress is too busy passing anti-oil legislation and trying to save its collective ass.

I mean it works perfectly. We are all talking about the gas prices, not the NSA or Iraq War, or anything else, just gas. Gas prices go down in a few weeks, and people have completely forgotten about the NSA and other crap. The only people still paying attention, us. They can write us off as left-wackjobs. The moderate Americans will believe them, just like they have with everything else. NSA is marginalized, and Bushes ratings go up again right before the election. They might have to catch Osama or some other terror fella, just to make sure.

I mean this isn't that much of a stretch. Demand for oil did not increase 13% in one month, which is what it would have to if this was all about demand (that comes from the fact prices rose 40 cents a gallon to $3, divide .4/3 get .13 <- I rounded down.) I mean no one really knows where this all came from, but we all think Big Oil had something to do with it. They get profits, Bush gets ratings; quid pro quo.

What do y'all think?

:tinfoilhat: *Temporary member of tinfoil hat brigade* :tinfoilhat:

[FogerRox]

1. ummmm think inflation

[Mountainman]

2. I just heard Greg Palast say so on KPFK.

He was talking about his new book which will come out in 2 weeks. I am writing from memory but he said that they love $3.00 a gallon gas. He said it is all about petro dollars. The money we spend on oil comes back to fund the deficit or the tax cuts and the spending on corporations. That is why the administration does not like Hugo Chavez because the money spent on oil there stays there to improve the lives of the people.

[napi21]

5. I don't see how $$ spent on oil funds the deficit.

Some Pub nut on FOX the other day said the higher the price of gas the more Fed $$ in the treasury. That's WRONG! Fed tax on gas is per gal, not per $$. The only benefit I see is the damn stock market!!!!!!!

[Frustratedlady]

3. One thing is for sure...

He sure doesn't seem to be too upset about the high prices. Think we're being punished for being so nasty?

[napi21]

4. Hmmm, I doubt it. I think Shrub knows as long as he has a Pub congress,

he's safe in office! The high gas prices are a very bad omen for the incubants! I think he's shying awway from any possible gouging penalties etc, because they're such good friends, but I really don't think he "wanted the high prices".

[neoblues]

6. Still, it works as a distraction--even if he's partially blamed...

and the rush of gratitude that would result if he was seen to bring about a big drop in gas prices thus bringing them back to what they were before... would, I suspect, be considerable. That he and his cronies were probably (actually, since I cannot see any other reasonable explanation, it would seem likely that it has to have been almost undeniably just a collusive decision to engage in price gouging) somehow behind this spike, wouldn't matter. After all, to the Republican "Leadership" it doesn't really matter if Bush's popularity numbers take a "hit", he's not going to run for President again (hopefully that won't change)(and that hope includes the notion that he doesn't remain President into 2009 and beyond--that is, hopefully we will still be having Presidential elections by then (2008 and beyond))(what a shocking notion; and yes, I think it would still be considered a paranoid fantasy)(note too: Shrub himself has repeatedly made statements to the effect that he himself couldn't care less what "the People" think about him (since he's so sure that History will vindicate and venerate him).

If nothing else, I would expect to see some trivial Republican political plan presumably designed to reduce gas prices enacted just a week or two before the November elections... and even if it's just a brief, temporary and artificial reprieve secretly agreed to by the powers that be behind the major Oil Corporations, but a reprieve nonetheless that actually does rapidly drop the price of gasoline. Just a couple of weeks of dropped prices would be enough to generate the kind of sense of relief they need the public to feel and for which Republicans could take credit... It could make all the difference in the world in the few tight races Republicans face. Just another Rovian manipulation of the public's psyche. Then, after the race is over, the mysterious "market forces" or "increased demand" could begin to rebound "unavoidably" (gradually, perhaps, to help prevent the whole thing from easily being called a Republican ploy) and the Corporations could continue their raping and plundering... "Everybody Wins!"--where "Everybody" refers only to those who "matter" (Republican Elected Office-holders, Wealthy Oil Corporations and their owners/major investors)(isn't it cute that 98% of the Republican "Party" would not be among those who "matter"; hurt by their own leaders--par for the course)(the foregoing assumes this really is a thuglican conspiracy). Of course, if as the election approaches they realize they don't need such a trick, they could decide not to forego the lost gasoline profits for even those few weeks.

--edit--
Oh yeah, and as for the "distraction", one can hardly deny that much of the focus and emotion felt by the public over Bush's many transgressions--even if the MSM is relatively amazingly glossing them over and trying to leave us with the idea that each has been examined, found unimportant and having convinced the "majority" that (a) there wasn't anything to them, and (b) they were just the complaints of whacko left-wing troublemakers--is/are being redirected onto the pains they feel in the pocket at the gas pump. That's direct, immediate and personal pain; by comparison such esoteric considerations as losing Constitutional protections (which most people have scarcely realized a specific awareness of) and especially when the MSM is constantly assuring us aren't anything to be worried about... If I haven't repeated myself too many times in one paragraph, it just seem apparent to me that a majority of "average" Americans are going to be successfully manipulated--whether the gas prices were intentional or caused by top Republicans or not. Manipulated by having their thoughts redirected and as others have said, after some time passes, the real issues owing to Bush will seem "old news" (and that's even assuming people don't mostly fall for the MSM's manipulations!).

The MSM's manipulations are potent... By merely presenting a patently false version of popular public opinion (in which everywhere you look in the MSM you get the same apparent version, over and over)--it works (it "must be right"). Particularly when the average person looks back on (revisits after a period of time/distraction) what they thought was an example of a Presidential or governmental crime/abuse of power, if the only available/apparent view of the public's final conclusion about it was that it wasn't a crime after all, but merely a misunderstanding or an attempted political dirty trick by left wing "radicals"... they don't really know what to believe! They may still have some suspicion, but unless they've truly accepted (internalized/believed) that the MSM actually presents LIES, deceptions, total omissions and misleading information and analysis up to and including totally false, completely fabricated history (reports, conclusions, polls, quotes, whatever), then they're susceptible to this. And, all too many people still trust the MSM to far to great a degree; they may now be so clever as to want to compare the reporting of more than one news agency, but they haven't recognized how pervasive the desception is. They just cannot believe that here, in the U.S.A., we're being lied to and presented with totally false versions of reality. It just couldn't be true...

If only it weren't.