You're Weekly Increase in Gas Prices

How much higher can the price go?

Lets revisit, from the latest news items backwards to our recent past the litany of reasons we've been given for why gas prices must go up, yet again.

- BP (foreigners) gunked up the Alaska pipeline and can't clean it without shutting down the entire pipeline. Hope it doesn't inconvenience a continent. We're snaking it as fast as we can.

- Israel and Lebanon are bombing the crap out of each other and the U.S. won't step in and stop the fighting. Middle East tension = increase in gas prices. Question: When the f*ck isn't there tension in the Middle East?

- There is a bill before Congress for off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. You won't let us drill off-shore you pussy environmentalists. Gas Prices go up.

- Drilling in the Alaska still not permitted? Gas prices go up.

- Energy demand from record heat wave. Electricity and natural gas are somehow remotely related to oil production, a surge in any energy use means...gas prices go up.

- Its hurricane season. Gas prices go up.

- Tension in the Middle East. Gas prices go up.

- Its summer and we know you will drive more. Gas prices go up.

- North Korea sneezed and tried to launch a rocket or two at the same time somewhere near Japan. Japan uses energy, Japanese cars are popular in the U.S.; therefore, gas prices go up.

- More killing in Iraq and tensions in the Middle East (we know, this happens everyday, but its our stop-gap reason for raising gas prices when we can't come up with a rationale tied to a current events).

- etc., etc., etc....

Do a Google search for "gas prices go up" and you get 89 million hits. Some of our favorites: What happens if gas goes up to $5 a gallon? Why doesn't Bush care more about the American middle class getting squeezed by high gas prices?

"Before I talk about energy, I do want to share with you some thoughts about the war on terror."

A one track (and rather small) mind, or as they say in Texas - a one trick pony.

Perhaps a more visionary President, rather than linking a tax-cut for the estate taxes of the wealthy to the increase in minimum wage would have combined it with an energy relief act to hold fuel prices down for the middle class? Guess we'll never know. So its a contest, which runs out first - your money or the crude oil?