Watermelons and "Big Oil"

God! I love the Armorer! One thing I am disappointed in my Bad Boyfriend for is his "gas tax holiday". Who is advising him on this? It's useless, it's counterproductive, it's pandering. The real answer isn't to appease Americans, it's to educate them. It's not difficult. When people ask my opinion on the "gas tax holiday", I explain why it's a bad idea. Most people say, "I never looked at it that way." and the little lightbulb goes on. McCain can do this easily.

This morning, the Armorer explains one of the biggest problem is the "Watermelons". It's fabulous.
Navel-gazing... lessee, two awakening economies (India and China), with 8 times our combined population start buying vast amounts of oil on the world market, making the raw material of gasoline and diesel fuel more expensive, making gasoline and diesel fuel more expensive, and the culprit is... BIG OIL!
Heh. If you've been pricing wood, steel, and concrete lately, that's more expensive, too. Those are commodities that SWWBO and I have been buying over the last few months, and guess what? Prices are high, and rising, there, too. Where is the Congressional outcry against Big Wood, Big Steel, and Big Cement?
Well, the housing downturn has taken some of that sting away, I suppose. At least in terms of noticing it.
Heh. So, now we have the President headed to Saudi Arabia to ask the bankrollers of Wahabism to pump more oil, please? Supply and demand. If the supply is going to remain mostly fixed, or controlled by a cartel, I guess we'll just have to moderate our demand, huh? Because that seems to be about the only solution offered by the Left, certainly. And the Right has managed to mis-manage itself more and more out of power.
Heh. Countries the Left sees as virtual paragons of virtue drill a lot of offshore oil. And have managed without huge environmental disasters. Something along the lines of 1K wells were damaged or destroyed by Katrina... but we didn't see huge oil slicks. Could be the technology has improved? Something like 85% of our offshore oil reserves are fenced off from development... when was the last time we built a new refinery, vice expanded existing ones? Doesn't matter how much raw product you have if your refining capacity can't keep up with the demand.
Of course, many Greens are really Watermelons. Green on the outside, Red on the inside, and this sort of thing is exactly what they want, because it gives them more reasons to exert economic and social control, and there is no better way to expand your power than through an "emergency". See Lincoln, Abraham, Wilson, Woodrow, Roosevelt, Franklin, Johnson, Lyndon, Nixon, Richard (remember those wage and price controls?), and Carter, Jimmy. And the favored boogeyman of the Left, Bush, George W (gotta be balanced).
Heh. This was s'posed to be a blurb. Turned into a rant, didn't it?
The point being, there isn't/doesn't have to be a single solution to the problem. If the "crisis" (mostly of our own making) produces new sources of energy or more efficient use thereof, that's a net good (and the market in action, one would note - unless we're going to take the money away from the people who are doing the research to give to the government - not that some tweaking with tax breaks can't incentivize people...) but it just seems the height of folly to ask the financiers of much of our current troubles to... make more money, when we actually have the tools to reduce their hold on things - if we were but to use them. -the Armorer