On the price of gasoline...

When I first started driving in the late 80's gasoline cost about 90 cents a gallon for the cheap stuff.
With the exception of the first Iraqi conflict, I never paid much over a dollar a gallon until GWB was elected (if thats what you call that fiasco) into office at the end of 2000, and then it was as if inflation had finally caught up with the price of gas. Within 6 months of GWB's so called election, gas spiked 30 cents and never looked back.
Today I paid $4.10 for gasoline.
What the hell!!!???
From 1989 to 2001 the price of gasoline stayed nearly flat, but in just over 7 freaking years the price more than quadruples here in the U.S. Just since this past Christmas the price has spiked by over a dollar a gallon.
No other country on the planet (that I've heard) has seen as high a proportionate increase in gasoline as we have.
True, in Europe, gas prices are at or over the equivilant of $10, but they have been paying triple the price we have for decades, and proportionately, their price run up is much less than the over 400% rise we have seen here in the U.S. since GWB "took over" the oval office.
Much of the price run up on gasoline is directly related to the cost of a barrel of crude, and for anyone who pays attention to it, the price for a barrel of crude oil closed today over $136 dollars(thanks to those asshole speculators) but that isn't the only reason for the run up in gas prices.
The run up is also blamed on rising "global" demand and a lack of refining capacity.
I may just be an average guy, trying to live an average life, but when the hell did 'global' demand for gas have anything to do with the price of gasoline here in the U.S.?
And what happened to our refining capacity? I haven't checked in a while, but last I heard about any increase in demand for gasoline we Americans had was back in 2003 when prices were still under $2 a gallon (bet we'd all love to see that again eh?). Regardless, what happened to our refining capacities? I know that some of it was lost to hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, but that was 3 years ago. Any disruption caused by those hurricanes should have been taken care of long ago.
Anyways, I digress. The reality is, $4 a gallon gasoline is apparently here to stay, and many are predicting the price to hit $5 by summer's end.
Scary thought isnt it? $5 a gallon gasoline? Personally, I didn't think I would ever live long enough to see gas priced so high.
Now, there are all kinds of idea's floating around out there about how to resolve this problem, the scariest of which is why we don't just start drilling in Anwar (for those who dont know, it's in Alaska and supposedly there is enough gas there to supply America for the next 4 or 5 decades) and off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico.
I take that back, those ideas dont scare me, they me piss me off to now end and bother the shit out of me.
Here we are, in the perfect situation for America and it's people to set the proverbial "bar" in transportion again (remember, it was us who first perfected the cumbustible engine, the automobile and its mass production) and take the next technological leap in individual and mass transport (as I think of it) and the best solutions that our "best" thinkers come up with is too "drill in Anwar. There is enough oil there for domestic use for decades!"
You have to be kidding me? This is the best they can do? Hell, I can come up with a lot better than that while taking a dump on the toilet!
But those idea's will have to wait for another blog.
Till then...