Bush: Petroleum reserve won't be tapped to ease gas prices

Bush: Petroleum reserve won't be tapped to ease gas prices


By DEB RIECHMANN
The Associated Press
5/19/04 2:32 PM


WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday rejected Democrats' calls to ease high gasoline prices by tapping the nation's petroleum reserve, saying such action would leave America vulnerable to terrorism in a time of war.

He also chastised Congress anew for failing to pass his energy proposal.

"I anticipated this three years ago," Bush told reporters following a meeting with his Cabinet. "I asked my team to put together a strategy to make us less dependent upon foreign sources of energy. I submitted that plan to the United States Congress."

Of his critics, Bush said: "On the one hand, they decry the price at the pump, and on the other hand, they won't do anything about it. They won't take action. Congress needs to pass the energy plan."


more... http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/business/index.ssf?/newsflash/get_story.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?f0172_BC_Bush-GasPrices&&news&newsflash-financial

... when using the public's money. He's a filthy crook.

and on the other hand, they won't do anything about it. They won't take action. Congress needs to pass the energy plan."


Hey, dumbass! YOUR party controls both houses. Don't blame the Dems for not being able to get your moronic proposals passed.

the good of the country thus far. Everything they do is for their own benefit. So why are they doing this and emphasizing it?

as it goes in. They are putting this stuff in a hole in the ground and who's to know if it will stay put. Like you say they've never done anything for the good of the country. If some day we go to pump it out and some of it can't be recovered they will just shake their heads and say 'what a mystery.'

They expect to get sqeezed with respect to oil flow from countries around the world which object to the PNAC imperialist agenda.

At least, that would be my guess. Plus, they get to help their energy buddies make big bucks at the same time.

underestimated their reserves. When the oil companies need oil to sell, they'll buy it from the US government cheaper than they could get it elsewhere.

as well as to extort money from the middle and working classes, and to blackmail Congress into passing Cheney's secret energy bill, which likely includes allowing drilling in the ANWR, Yellowstone, and other pristine areas.

I think he's right (my head just exploded): the reserve is for emergencies. High prices at the pump don't qualify as an emergency.

On the other: what bullshit. I suppose his "strategy" was drilling ANWR.

But Chimpster is right on this one. High gas prices are not an emergency. I'd agree with a cessation from adding MORE oil to the reserves right now, but there is no reason to draw them down now.

Highlighting Chimpys failures dealing with OPEC is a winning issue, but 'failing' to draw down our strategic reserves is not.

for places with sales/gas tax set as a percentage rather than a fixed cents per gallon.

See! It DOES trickle down...from your wallet into an unquenchable abyss.

He proposes a non solution to the problem at hand.

Giving Bush free reign to drill in Alaska will do nothing to alleviate rising fuels costs here and now.

I'm willing to bite the bullet and pay more... It's all perception folks... What hit's Moron America the easiest... I'd say this is tops on the list.

I'd pay $5 a gallon if I got mass transit, funded schools and universal healthcare.

when junior lowers the gas price in hopes his poll numbers will go up.

And most people know it.

Those reserves are not for market fluctuations, but emergencies.

LOL

Do you have some other way to characterize it?

or rape, or being bludgeoned to death... Better!

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just cause you know everything don't mean that you need to pick on the poor feeble minded surfs....

"The only natural law is the right of the superior over the inferior."

His brilliance, a dazzling light shining on the ignorant masses of the world, consisting entirely of short cutting one-liner which in and of themselves, with their rich and detailed intellectual style, would be more than enough to convince any SANE person of the brilliance of himself and the inarguability of his brilliantly made and brilliantly bolstered with the richest and most detailed facts.

As displayed in this thread, the scholarly wit is too much for those who are inferior. The dazzle of that intellect was enough to make me swoon in obvious deference.

And the debating style! My God, the textbook debating style! Amazing. How can anyone retort such brilliant logic?

You will clearly be working for him one day, and then he'll show YOU, you Filthy Litle Serf!

(oops, I guess he's gonna show me too, which is great because as an Inferior I require the guidance of a Brilliant Superior such as he who debates like a (REDACTED) and may well be one)

and egotistical.

The only one putting on airs of superiority here is you.

And where on earth did you get the idea that I agree with word one of Leo Strauss. I have read two of his books, and find them repugnant in the extreme. Do you simply have a neat little package, whereby anyone who finds your invented lingo strange and unfitted is automatically a Straussian? Must be a nice way to live, so black and white this world. Kinda like Bush hisself, in fact.

Again, I am floored by the depth of your asrguments and the exceedingly tight nature of the concrete way you back them up.

Yep, you sure pegged me. A raving egomaniac.

My gosh, you Superiors are simply amazing! The insight that Inferiors like myself could never hope to follow.

A depth and flow of logic that is beyond my poor power to comprehend.

You undoubtedly have quite a high opinion of yourself. Undoubtedly justified in your mind.

Undoubtedly concretely justified and bolstered in the same brilliant way you have debated all comers into the ground with your Superior's Logic.

Wow. I guess I am in the presence of True Greatness.

But then, you'll bring back the same tropes, which apparently fit any situation. I expect the same replies, over and over and over again, since your posts have little in the way of analysis, much in way of invective, and appear to all be derived from a series of 6 commonplaces you invented some time ago. So I'll know what to expect.

Huh.

Please, back-off.

Why are you doing this? Are you being intentionally divisive or are you just stubborn as all get out?

And they may be (no one has yet responded to me with a post to show me how they are wrong), I will be happy to modify my position. I'd like to see an argument however, and have received only insults.

It's a shame your first insulting post was removed, thus depriving all of us of the historical record.

Those who want civil discourse, start off with civil discourse.

You did not. Of course, that means you think you did. I suspect that, even if the historical record was available, you still wouldn't believe the evidence of your own eyes.

Had you started this conversation with closer to the tone that you are using with JustMe (I guess you want at least one person on this thread not to see you for what you are), I would have happilky responded in kind.

You did not. I responded as I did, which was also in kind.

I very much wish that JustMe could see the deleted posts and make the determination for herself.

I'd characterize it as "steal as much as you can because the Gravy Train could end soon".

I'd characterize it as "If we are going to REALLY give these Oil Addicted Imperial Subjects the PROPER junkie's sigh of relief when bandar and the other Bushfriends lower the prices, we gotta jack 'em up HIGH first!" (see characterizations #1 and #2)

How could anyone be so naive and so blisfully unaware of the extreme "pushing the envelope" levels of Bushevik Corruption and think this is "just another coinkydink".

Please.

Mayhap someone like that would make a great Soviet, Nazi, or Chicom.

"Naah. I don't think Der God-Sent Fuhrer is executing people by the millions in the camps. They disappered due to normal immigrant migrations. And the reason Zyklon-B is so expensive now is due to normal market fluctuations."

Um-hmmmm.

Sure.

the Sovietization.

Corporate TV Pravda.

etc., etc.

So nice to see my fanclub daring to make it over here.

As to your reply, as bereft of debate as I would expect from the HE tom_paine Fanclub (Gern? USA?):

You believe the Free Press is strong, vibrant & independant?

You believe there is no blatant and Orwellian Double-Standard in media coverage?

You don't believe there has been across-the-board demonstrable corruption from the Busheviks indicating fraud on a massive scale in other places (providing ample precedent for other frauds)?

Certainly, as a member of the HE tom_paine Fanclub, I wouldn;t actually expect any replies to my questions.

So perhaps some more juvenile sneering and borderline insults is in order.

Well? I'm waiting.

Plus, I thought you guys hated the term "Bushevik" more than "Corporate TV Pravda" or did you think bringing that up might blow(COMMENT REDACTED)r cover?

So, my money is on more juvenile blather and personal insults. My money's on an almost studious avoidance of my questions in favor of some more borderline insults.

Well?

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the last couple of years?

I was just wondering.

Personally, I feel pretty confident that "the market" is not controlling these companies as much as these companies are controlling "the market".

But, that is just my opinion.

It likes snappy one-liners.

It likes to feel Superior and Superiors do not debate with Inferiors.

You have to understand the mentality of something like that. To attempt to engage in debate with it is frustrating and pointless.

If the Superior were here. he'd undoubtedly tell you to shut up with your usual nonsense.

Maybe he'll show up later and do just that. He'll show you, real good, you unedumuctaed Serf, who your intellectual superior is!

And he will do it with the snappiest of one-liners decrying your nonsense, which, as any SUPERIOR would know, should be all the explanation an Inferior like we are should require.

No one can steal your integrity, tom_paine,...no one.

Not even close.

Thurgood Marshall was brilliant
Jonas Salk was brilliant
Albert Einstein was brilliant
The original Tom Paine was brilliant
Carl Sagan was brilliant
Bob Somersby (www.dailyhowler.com) might well be brilliant or close to it.
Sy Hersh surely is brilliant in reporting skills, perhaps the greatest investigative reporter EVER and certainly the Current Champ of a sickly, small crop of "Investigative Journalists"
Will Pitt might well be brilliant, too, IMHO, at the very least he is a gifted and fantastic writer.

In my younger days, I may have had the chance to travel that road and see if I could become like so many I admire, but I chose something else, another road in life.

I accept full responsibility for any "underachieving" I did and blame no one for the choices I made. I live a good, happy life now, and so I have no reason to complain.

Again, I thank you for the high praise. (if only you could see my face and neck and the lovely shade of red you made them :-) ) But I truly am not worthy of it.

I'm not sure how my post was deleted, yet your unending insults remain.

In any case, I'll say again:

1) I have no idea what fan club you are talking about.
2) You have yet to make any argument other than the usual rantings.
3) I am not a conservative, nor even close to one. I believe the Bush administration is corrupt and engages in fraud, and I believe the press is biased toward the right for economic reasons. I can believe all that, and still find certain narrow and disabling historical analogies laughable.

One need not launch into a series of nonsensical rantings to make one's point. Then, of course, you seem to imagine an enemy behind every post and tree, which strikes me as a pathology. I'll just note here that your version of "it" is not only "totalitarian" in its dehumanization, it is also sociopathic. I suppose "it" puts the lotion in the basket?

While you throw out "pathology" and "sociopathic", I want to tell you (being a person who has completed masters courses in clinical psychology) that, it is you who is being comparable to a narcissistic disorder or, to some degree, even anti-social.

Chill out,...back-off,...take a breath,...open your mind.

Moreover, just remember,...our world operates on "theories", especially our economic world in this country. I would strongly urge you to explore the possibility that those theories upon which our capitalistic democracy operates,...could very well be proven WRONG.

Just, some thoughts.

I'll consider it. I'll also consider that you are being extremely partisan in your analysis. Please re-read this thread and determine whether I initiated the "war," or whether I merely responded to an extremely hostile post from your brilliant friend. Now, consider whether your brilliant friend - assuming that my disagreement meant that I was a) part of some internet cabal that secretly hates/loves him or b) a Straussian neo-conservative - is not the one who is out of line here.

She would see that it was you who cast the first contpemtuous stone.

Perhaps you are getting me confused with your disagreement with trumad. I don't know. Without doubt, you ripped me first, and pretty hard. Twice.

Also:

a) The tom_paine Fanclub does exist on Conservative Underground. As I ignore them (after a quick look for curiosity's sake) like I'll shortly be ignoring you), I have no idea what they are up to or saying (you might enjoy it, but of course it is very possible you have your own markses fanclub over there) since my first and only looks about a month ago. It is as real as your contempt and your measn one-liners substituting for substantive debate.

b) Even if you aren't a conservative Bushevik (what commonplace would that be?) you certainly have the ego of a Straussian. You talk like one, too. Well, except when you suddenly decided to be civil to JustMe for what reason I cannot know but can certainly guess because I've seen the "man, at least one person has to like me" syndrome in Mean people enough times to speculate strongly.

Glad you caught the reference. It's called a joke, but I certainly would understand how superior people would not want to descend to the crude device called humor by Inferiors. It is called rhetoric, and sometimes we Inferiors use it to make a point.

I am simply amazed that you posted more than a mean one-liner this time. You are very kind, sir, to condescend so to the likes of me.

1) If you don't, never mind. Somehow I still think you do. Although you seem to have read far more of my posts than I of yours, and seem to give an infinite (anything, even 1/8th, is infintiely greater than Zero) amount more effort into reading my posts that I yours. So, even if your aren't in THE HE tom_paine Fanclub, you certainly could apply for "Junior BobbySoxer" status.

2) I will respond with something other than "the usual rantings" when you start actually responding in a civil debating fashion. I responded to your initial posts and insults to myself and trumad in kind. Naturally, I would indeed expect you to accuse me of what you are doing yourself, which is eschwing debate in favor of the ad hominem, then crying :cry: :cry: when some Inferior has the temerity to return the same to you.

3) If you found said "narrow and disabling historical analogies laughable", you might have brought up a specific example by now, or attempted to engage in serious debate, which I would have happily returned in kind (too late, now I think, though I maybe not, if your response is civil and we can ratchet down from your contempt and mine which rushed up to meet it). Instead you went right for the mean and contemptuous one-liners from the first.

One last thing. Please to read Post #42. Now I realize to you that is merely one Infverior praising another and thus invalid to such as yourself. However, like it or not, I have gotten dozens of these types of compliments (not all quite so over-the-top, which is ego-stroking and kind of cool in a way) in the past 3+ years and actually a recent spate of them in the last 3 months.

Thus I know that for every sneering ad hominem such as you have levied from your first response, there are roughly 3 who think the exact opposite.

Yes, yes, I know, three Inferiors don't even equal your great Dane, but there you have it.

So I am relatively immune from your usual nonsense.

Know how I guessed you were in the tom_paine Fanclub? If you disliked me so much and had such contempt for me, you would have put me on ignore long ago as I am about to do to you now after reading far fewer of your posts than you have of mine.

Now, now, I can hear your Ego-Saving dodge right now "But you're so amusing I can't stop looking."

Yah. Right. Sure. I'm buying that. :silly: :crazy: :crazy:

Perhaps before casting stones at my "fetishes", you migth want to consider your own tom_paine fetish and why you have pursued it this long.

You can respond, but I won't see it. You're going on ignore. THAT is what you do to people who you think are nonsensical, not fetishize them.

Bye now. This was fun, in a diseased sort of way. Thanks again for revealing to me your psychopathologies and fetishes while you ranted away at mine.

:hi: :hi: :hi: :hi:

1) I admit that I didn't get your "joke." Since to believe that you designed it thus, I'd have to think that you were putting me in the position of a victim, and yourself in the position of a sociopathic murderer, I suppose I both didn't see how such an image would benefit you and didn't understand how it would be funny. So I thought it was just a pompous accident you'd been caught out on. Woosh. Right over my head! As for rhetoric, I clearly don't know as much as you about sophistical tricks and sloganeering, so I'll have to go check out Aristotle and Cicero for where they said speaking like an infamous fictional murderer helps your arguments. Book 3 of De Oratore perhaps? Help me with the reference.

2) Since your posts are utterly repetitive, one need only read 5 or 6 to understand precisely what will happen in each. I, however, have read far more than that, as the set-pieces - however repetitive - do occasionally hit, somewhat like a broken clock being right twice a day. Maybe 20 of the long ones. If that qualifies me for "Junior BobbySox," or some other such conceit, so be it. They are memorable, in any case, in a propagandistic sort of way. It is interesting that your sloganeering (which is what I commented on in my first post to you) has much in common with the totalitarian propaganda you claim, so vehemently, to despise. As a final note: I do not have anybody on ignore, and I never have, in my 2 1/2 years on this board. I simply don't believe in it.

3) Speaking of my first post to you on this thread, that would be post #18. Insulting? Vicious ad hominem? Perhaps mild, but hardly of the insulting character of your post #17 (to which #18 was a response) in which you suggest that anyone so naive as me would be a good Nazi or Soviet! Your subsequent post #19 only intensifies your vitriol. Now, did I post something nasty to trumad? Yes. Should I have? No. I'll even apologize for that. But I won't apologize for responding to being likened to a Nazi by you. Since you make such a big deal out of my "deleted posts," I should note that my deleted post to you came after you likened me to a Nazi or a Soviet. Two posts later, in fact. So much for your "responding in kind argument." Unless you were rushing valiantly to the defense of trumad?

4) As for my comments to Just Me from which you imagine such contempt, my point was fairly straightforward. Just Me attempted to act as an arbitrator, and I felt her arbitration was biased. I used Post #42 as evidence of that. Period. Since my use of "brilliant friend" was limited to that point, the rest of your self-praise is irrelevant, if telling.

Your trope of the Superior and the Inferior is a nice rhetorical gambit, but that is about all it is. I would be happy to discuss why I think the tropology of Soviet totalitarianism (which I distinguish from fascism, in any case) is disabling and unfitted for the current dangerous political environment, and why such analogical sloganeering is ultimately ineffective. That may have to be a different thread, however, since we've obviously hijacked this one.

Know that I will NEVER see it. Your words die in your throat unheard, metaphorically speaking (I know you have difficulties with jokes, irony, and rhetorical device so I thought I'd lay it out for you).

Naturally, and having studied the ways of foolhardy, cocksure, arrogant people who consider themselves Superior, I can say with almost certainty that you knew that, and that your message wasn't REALLY directed at me but your "audience".

And THAT's REALLY pathetic, dude.

You know what would REALLY make my evening? To come back here and see that you are continuing the futile exercise of responding to someone to whom you are now invisible.

I also take comfort that your tom_paine fetish is going strong and that you are too hurt or neurotic to put me on "ignore" as you should and forget about it.

I'll check in one more time to check for your pathetic next message I'll NEVER SEE the contents of.

Just seeing the "ignored" stamp will be enough to understand that it was impossible to forget your tom_paine fetish.

I am laughing. Can you hear me? Laughing hard now. People are funny, aren't they. Sometimes sad and pathetic.

But you know that, don't you?

Sure you do.

This time it's really goodbye. Thanks again for the entertainment and for you fetishistic obsession with me. I'm flattered.

Shuttered and afraid.

And childish.

That implies that at some point in the future the prices could come back down to a reasonable level. With several major oil companies recently cutting back on their predicted oil reserve levels remaining in the ground, I think this is much more than a market fluctuation. This is starting to look a lot more like there isn't enough oil remaining to satisfy world demands. The reduction in oil output from OPEC would then be a way to stretch out the remaining reserves a little longer before having to announce the wells are effectively empty.

I'm not sure. It may well not be a market fluctuation, yet I think the reserves should be, well, reserved. At this point, anyway.

record prices?

But I can't. And I'm 99% certain it won't be substantive, but rather arrogantly dismissive.

Such things are likely a waste of time for you or I to even bother with.

I'm reasonably certain George W. Bush has some self-serving reason to continue stockpiling petrol despite the record prices, but an unintended consequence could very well be that people stop buying inefficient cars.

See, eg, regarding "gas guzzler" sales being down:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x567682

And they anticipate that war, indeed, they are counting on it.

lower gas prices much like the 'Medicare bill' doesn't lower drug prices, much like the 'Clean Air initiative' doesn't make the air cleaner, much like the 'Healthy Forest' thing doesn't save any trees or prevent wildfires, much like the tax breaks don't help the economy, much like the changing of scientific data doesn't make anyone safer. When are Repubs going to wake up?

Nothing is your fault chimpy! While you sit back and play the blame the middle class is once again getting screwed! If you gave a shit, you would get off your pampered ass and do something about it, but I suppose that is asking to much.

is what will do the trick... say in August?

Seriously, what about a temporary lift in the federal gas tax? Is it still 18.4 cents per gallon?

Bush Inc, is talking about "tapping" the reserve, Kerry proposed halting the "buying and filling of the reserve" to ease the price on oil. Like the first poster said the govt. is buying high, to keep the prices up. Look at profits for the oil companies, they are at record highs. This is a sweetheart deal for them as PAYBACK. nothing but dirty rotten crooks!!!!

60 million barrels over 45 days in the run up to the election.

1 and half million barrels a day, take about 4-6 dollars a barrel off the price.

(My guess)

someone just mentioned it on Ed schultz show

Usually this is called blackmail. Show us Cheney's energy papers and maybe we'll think about your oh-so-foolish plans.

That's enough motive for two lifetimes.

on foreign sources? You anticipated that three years ago? Jimmy Carter was saying that back in the '70's, asswipe, but Ronnie and your Daddy reversed any progress that he started to make on that front.

If you are familiar with the bushonian m.o. described by Al Martin, we can expect not only the use of taxpayer funds to drive up the price of oil to boost windfall profits by the energy industry, but at some point on the other side we will find that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been converted to unknown dispositions and that billions of dollars worth of fuel are unnaccounted for.

:tinfoilhat:

Unless you rebarrel the Iraqi oil and market it as US oil.

give up their gas hogs to conserve on this precious power resource?

(paraphrase) "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it hardly constitutes a viable energy policy"

devoting quite a bit of time to it. Seems it works to draw out the reserves when the price of oil gets high-both Carter and Clinton did it successfully as part of a PLAN (which bush doesn't have) to drive the cost of oil down. The reserve only contains about a months worth of US usage but it does impact prices. As to the reason bush won't do it, well that is obvious, isn't it? This way he gets to keep the prices high for his cronies, throw in a scare about terrorism and blame someone else. Another trifecta! And if you find yourself agreeing with bush-look deeper into the issues and you won't.

paying the oil companies up front in the event of a terrorist attack on pipelines.

:mad:

Texas-produced oil is reaping Bush's Texas oil friends winfall profits.

They send their oil out to sea, then re-import it to southern refineries, calling it imported, and jacking up the price, sticking the US consumers.

Its sort of like what Bush and Cheney did to California a couple of years ago. Bush's ordering the 'US reserve' to purchase oil is done so as to bump up oil's price.

Why open up reserves to ease the burden on gas hogs? Conserve in the short run, strategy for renewable resources in the long run. Opening the reserves only hides the problem.

folks get burned badly. It may be the ONLY way for those zombies to wake up.

The Strategic Oil Reserve doesnt exist so we can lower gas prices from time to time.

Its there to fuel our war machine when we finally piss off everyone and they stop selling us oil.

Don't any of his minions ever point out that drilling in the ANWAR is a bit more than just sticking a faucet into the ground and pouring out oil? Does he know that it could take years to get that oil out of the ground? (Not to mention the damage it would do, but I know he doesn't give a shit about that.) How is that supposed to help end whatever the hell it is that is going on now?