It's time to start LOUDLY blaming BUSH for high gas prices!

[El Fuego]

As I was filling up my tank today with $2.35 regular, I started thinking about what would have happened if KERRY had been elected. Can you even imagine how the right wing would spin the high gas prices if Kerry were president? We'd be hearing non-stop from the MSM that the price of gas was the hallmark of the Failed Kerry Presidency. The uninformed person on the street would know only one thing, that there was a direct cause and effect relation between the election of John Kerry and the price of gas.

The right wing would spin it so hard that the story would become airborne, and 100 years from now the history books would have only one footnote about the presidency of John F. Kerry: the era of astronomical fuel costs.

And you can't blame OPEC, it really is bush's doing. With their massive deficits, increasing trade deficits and tax breaks for the rich, the value of the dollar has plummeted.

We pay for oil in US dollars. If the US dollar falls, the price of a barrel of oil rises in inverse proportion. You need only look at Europe as a test control factor to see how bush's economy alone has driven up the price of oil. For Europeans, the net rise in oil prices over the two years of the Iraq War has been just 9 percent, or less than 5 percent per year.

But no one is blaming bush, the complicit media is silent. Bush wrings his hands like an old woman and mutters that it's OPEC's fault.

IT'S TIME FOR DEMOCRATS TO GET VOCAL ABOUT THE REAL BLAME FOR HIGH GAS PRICES! Next time you hear someone groaning about prices at the pump, make sure you tell them "It's the bush economy, stupid!"


:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[coloradodem2005]

1. AMEN!!!!!

[Terre]

16. And if you haven't already voted

You can choose between the following 3 possible culprits at MSNBC's Question of the Day:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080261/

Currently at:
Bush 56%
Oil Companies 36%
Congress 9%

[AWorkerBee]

2. Good thing we have an oil man for prez

NOT!

[Jacobin]

3. no no no no

You see, its all because those evil democrats in congress won't let him drill in ANWR. All that oil would power all our SUVs for a hundred years!!!

/sarcasm

[El Fuego]

6. And the little detail they don't talk about...

It's estimated that there is only a six-month supply of oil in the Alaska NWR.

[Jacobin]

9. shhhhh

You might make SUV sales decline!!!

Why do you hate our freedoms?

;-)

[El Fuego]

18. LOL!

:7

[Pool Hall Ace]

29. Does that poor depressed Sen. Stevens dispute this?

Just wondering what the reply is from the repubbies.

[SnowGoose]

45. And of course, all the oil would be sold in the USA.

*snarf*

In reality, of course, the oil would simply go onto the world market, rather than into American gas tanks. Nice.

'Goose

[solinvictus]

4. Local talk radio blames environmentalists..

No shit. Because of enviro-whackos, they can't drill new wells anywhere. Of course, it has nothing to do with the diminishing purchase power of the dollar as Chimperor Bush drives our deficits up.

[brainshrub]

5. That will backfire because this isn't his fault.

Peak Oil.

If we had a real leader, she would be tackling the issue head-on.

[ClarkUSA]

11. It has to do with the instability in the Middle East due to Bush's wars

as well as the fact Bush refuses to release any oil from the U.S. Reserves to ease prices.

Peak OIl is certainly not the biggest reason for this run-up in pricing.

[woosh]

7. I'm in favor of high gas prices

It's just I'd like to see them high from a sin tax as opposed to fillng oil companies pockets. Look what they have done to GM and Ford this week, they can't give away an SUV.

[lostinacause]

23. Perhaps you should think of high prices as more money leaving America

and America's overall competitiveness decreasing. A higher tax is much better then higher prices. The overall effect hurts the American consumer greatly.

[woosh]

30. Did you even read my post? I said high prices through taxes

would be the best case, but anything that can reduce the trend toward higher consumption is better than cheap gas.

[lostinacause]

50. Apparently I didn't .

I’m going to chalk this one up to being sleepy. My apologies.

[kliljedahl]

8. There's this quote

"Higher gas prices are a sign of a failed presidency." - Dick Cheney, 1998





Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Jacobin]

10. Hmmm, great Daily Show fodder there....

[El Fuego]

12. We should put THAT on a billboard!!

Excellent quote.

[cajones_II]

13. why do neocons believe

that the future doesn't exist past today? That's the thinking behind idiot quotes like that. It's why we find ourselves in the fix we're in today.

[grooch]

14. gotta love Cheney

kliljedahl... where'd you find that quote?

[kliljedahl]

20. At "About.com" Political quotes section

The political humor section is a gold mine.


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Richard Steele]

15. That's a great quote!

[kliljedahl]

19. And that's a great graphic

Is it yours? Helluva job if it is. I bow in awe to you, Swamp Rat & Distressed American



Keith’s Barbeque Central

[holboz]

31. LOVE IT!

I think using the Repugs own words against them is the best tactic. Democrats can talk all they want but there's something so satisfying when we can shove the Repugs' words right back in their faces.

I agree with the folks who say we need billboards with this quote, and they need to be all over the blue states!

[NewJeffCT]

17. Don't blame Bush anymore...instead

Put the blame on Republicans in general. If we keep demonizing Bush some Republicans will run & win because they run against Bush. We need to paint them all together.

[eridani]

21. Don't agree at all

The high prices are permanent. See the DU Peak Oil group for more details.

[El Fuego]

22. Even if you don't agree . . .

Blame him anyway! :evilgrin:

[Hidden Stillness]

24. Bush Wrings His Hands, Just Like a Male, and Does Nothing

This whole issue of corporate price-gouging, and the complicity between the now-unregulated corporations, and the oil and etc. executives in the Bush Administration and the Republican Party, is one of the great untapped issues that Democrats could be using: it is a crisis in the nation, it is killing the middle class and the poor, corporate-run government is to blame, and it is a moral issue. This issue is so easy to reach people with, and get them involved and excited, as if someone will finally help them with something real; price-gouging is the single biggest burden people have.

People can feel these issues, they don't need special "framing" crap, they are problems experienced in the real world, and you can point to causes. You can start with the fabricated gas crisis, but it spreads to all other issues these devils touch. This is the Administration of Enron, Halliburton, the Bankruptcy Bill written by the exploitive credit card industry, deregulation of safety measures for food, scandals, payoffs, conflicts of interest, all the rest. Every single act of this Administration and the Republicans has been of collusion between the members of the rich, property-owning class; going to benefit corporations and rich people at the expense of all the rest of us. Middle class and poor people know they can hardly even afford to drive to work anymore, they cannot eat healthy because food costs so much, bills for unregulated utilities and insurance are just total price gouges that don't even match up with the meager "services" you get, you can't get your car fixed and fear all the more being cheated by that unscrupulous industry. People who get prescriptions from their doctors, who can't even afford to get them filled. The whole corporate world is like the sense of overprivileged, organized, greedy rich people, bleeding the life out of us.

This gas crisis highlights several ongoing practices that should finally be hammered away at--the way Republicans in Congress have totally shut out Democrats from helping to shape bills in committee so that Republican-contributor corporations can write these outrageous bills instead; the fact that they have done nothing, all these years, to address a single concern of the American people; and of course, Bush's infuriating dismissive arrogance--"I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow. I'd do that." Unbelievable; we should make one ad after another using that rich boy's slap in the face to all of us. We are drowning in debts, and we get this bastard's snide refusal to help anything, then pretending it is all due to nebulous, "natural," world "trends" that of course always, only benefit the rich class. Sometimes the tide turns completely on "small" details like that, the "Let 'em eat cake" moment of awakening to what it all is. It reminds me of when Old Bush was President, and Sheikh Yemani of OPEC disagreed with Bush and wanted to lower oil prices after another "shortage", and Bush wanted them kept high--a totally incomprehensible situation to me, at the time. Yemani was going to recommend lowering prices again, and Bush arranged to have Yemani, the honest one, fired. Remember that?

We let them get away for too long with this "taxes are too high" crap, until they shifted rich people's taxes onto us, and polls showed most people never even believed that taxes were an important issue, so Democrats were totally led around by the nose on that issue. Now it is time to finally start referring to the real world again, and deal with this issue of price-gouging, but now, you really have to turn and face the devil. This is where it really shows itself as a moral issue. Get a real sense of rich people, with all their resources, and all the good they might have done, conspiring and organizing instead to rework the economies and the governments of all the world, to so completely disable us, that they can then rip into us, take everything away from us, force anything they want on us, and we will be powerless to act. To think that they would go to such a monumental effort to do so much evil and cruelty to all the ordinary good people who now have no laws to turn to and no way to get help; there are any number of ways of realizing what a powerful, historical threat this eternally threatening class of rich, greedy capitalists is. Don't give people "sappy framing" about how you will help them--the only way to help them is to fight!

[El Fuego]

28. VERY good post

There are so many issues the Democrats could jump on, issues with real-life consequences for ordinary people. AND YET, the GOP has managed to brainwash people by hijacking the "party-of-the-people" populous message and using it for their own evil ends.


(On edit: You're right, I should have said "wrings his hands like a man.)

[kentuck]

25. Next time we'll vote an insurance man in as president and VP....

and watch the price of healthcare decrease....because they know the business....uh-huh...

[fighttotheend]

26. Doesn't he own an oil company..if prices are high his pocket is full

[Roland99]

27. Bravo! Well said. The dollar's crash is having a huge impact

on our entire economy.

[cajones_II]

32. Someone put stickres on the gas pumps in my neighborhood

Right over the price part , and they say " Thanks, President Bush! "With and arrow pointing to the price.

[dubyaD40web]

33. Shameless plug for "pump labels"

The Labels:


How To:


More Info:
http://www.dubyad40.com/html/stickershock.html

[cestpaspossible]

34. I love it, but I think I'll print up my own

[dubyaD40web]

35. That's fine. Just get the word out.

We're all in this together.

[Dave Sund]

36. NO, It's time to LOUDLY blame REPUBLICANS for high gas prices

Bush isn't up for re-election.
They are.

[borg5575]

37. If Bush is to blame for high oil prices...

Then who is to blame for the rise in oil prices in other countries? It has gone up at a faster rate in Europe than it has here. The same applies to Canada where gas prices are over $4 per gallon in US dollars. Bush isn't the president of those other countries too. So why are prices going up in those countries? Couldn't there be something here that we are missing?

When someone brings up this point what am I supposed to say then?

[dubyaD40web]

38. I don't know about Canada but.....

Here's something interesting I saw:

Gas Prices Skyrocket Under Bush
http://www.democrats.org/specialreports/gasprices/statedata.html

[anakie]

39. gas/petrol prices are rising around the world

because oil is sold in US dollars. When the value of the US dollar falls oil prices will rise. So yes it is Bush's fault due to him fucking up the US economy.

[borg5575]

40. I hate to keep arguing, but...

I have to differ with you. OPEC some time ago allowed purchases in either euros or dollars. Most European countries buy their oil in Euros, not dollars, and then you have to take into account the UK's North Atlantic oil fields which have nothing to do with the state of the dollar.

[anakie]

41. point taken

maybe I should have prefaced my post with 'in Australia'. Where I live (southeast Queensland) in the last 6 weeks we have seen petrol prices rise from about 87 cents per litre to now around 1.05 p/l. Oil is quoted in USD per barrel and as the US dollar sinks in value v the Aussie dollar we have to pay more at the pump. At least petrol prices may remain relatively stable if we all could buy it in Euros.

[borg5575]

43. You have Howard, who is almost as bad as Shrub, isn't he?

I hate to say that Bush can't be blamed for something. He is the pits, and as I said, Howard is no angel either.

But we need to keep our facts straight. If we don't, we merely give the right wing more ammunition to use against us.

[yellozebra]

44. In the interests of information

Recent Rolling Stone piece on "global oil-peak production."
Worth a read.

[elehhhhna]

42. 3rd nomination. go straight to greatest page!

[Paintedlady]

46. It is his fault!

That stupid war Bush started is keeping a lot of Iraqi oil from getting to the market.
I know Peak Oil is also a big part of the problem, but the average Joe doesn't know it, so I say lets blame it all on Bush.

[amjucsc]

47. How to turn gas prices into a Dem winner...

Frankly I don't think you can particularly blame the cost of gas on W (though he may help a bit around the edges). Economic growth in India and China, simply means that a surging demand is pushing up the cost and supply remains mostly flat. But that dosen't mean that we can't start to turn energy prices into a potent Democratic weapon.

Personally I hold that oil will keep getting more expensive. New oil discoveries haven't kept up with supply growth in recent years, and India and China aren't going away. The Dems should redouble their efforts to get government funding for alternate energies, tax breaks for Priuses, and make a lot of noise about it. At some future point when the public starts to howl for the government to do something about the cost of gas, we can claim that the Republicans have been ignoring the problem while we've been telling people how to solve it for years.

[Name removed]

48. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Pepperbelly]

49. HELL, YES! Hang it right around his neck, the rat-bastard!

It belongs to Bush.

Remember what those useless sons of bitches were saying about Bill when the price spiked to a buck and a quarter? Worthless shit-sippers every one.

And it must be SHOUTED that this corrupt son of a bitch INSISTED on filling the national petro reserves as the price was rising, driving to even higher. We have to hang that arourd his fucking neck.

[cquik18]

51. Only thing funnier...

..is watching the dimwitted Republican lemmings who got suckered by Rove/Cheney/Bush's "the gays are gonna be able to git married and have abortions if you vote fur Kerry!" ploy actually have the NERVE to grumble about how gassing up their pickup trucks and SUV's is so expensive now...I say....GOOD. I hope they have to eat Ramen noodles til November 2008!

[mzmolly]

52. Agreed. They wouldn't have wasted a second railing Clinton.

IN fact they did. I had people say "if Clinton would drill in anwar" :eyes:

I tried to recommend, but the thread is more than 24 hours old. Please keep beating this drum.

:hi:

PS. Send Howard Dean your thoughts!