That he probably doesn’t know the price to the penny in San Mateo is neither here nor there. He knows exactly where oil and gasoline prices are overall and where they’re likely to be in the future. The higher they go, the happier he and his big-oil buddies are.

Record oil company profits are not attained by lowering the price at the pump.

Okay. CBS News reported: “AAA spokesman Geoff Sundstrom told the Times it was possible gasoline prices could hit $4 a gallon this summer.”

That reads to me more like an over-reported musing than a serious forecast. Is a possibility the same as a prediction? Let me be the first to say that it is possible that gasoline prices won’t hit $4 a gallon this summer. It’s also possible that gasoline prices will top $4.25 this summer. However, many OPEC ministers predict that softness in the US economy will depress consumption and that oil prices will begin fall.

Any way it goes, I hope that GWB isn’t getting his industry forecasts from CBS News.

You’re right. In America we prefer our politicians to pretend that they know everything about everything, even though they don’t, and prefer for them to pretend that they have absolute control over everything when they don’t. Remember darling, it’s better to look good than to feel good.

Anyway, I wasn’t looking to criticize you for blogging this story. It is what it is. But I’m bothered by the inevitable chorus of howling monkeys who have nothing more to say than Bush is an idiot. Please everyone; criticize his policies and effectiveness as President. Doing so requires some intelligence, understanding, and analysis. I love to read witty critiques. But warming over the stale joke that Bush is cognitively challenged is simplistic and itself moronic.

That still doesn’t give junior a pass. I’ll never forget his reaction on 9-11, and how he disappeared for most ofthe day, letting the undeserving Giuliani steal the spotlight. I’m not going to bother mentioning many of Junior’s other policy failings which are costing all of us in tax dollars, and respect abroad, except for the fact that he reinstated the gag rule on his first day in office, which has undoubtedly resulted in a slew of extra births in the developing world, rendering the world even more unstable for the future.

Asleep at the wheel, that guy.

Since when does any politician get a free pass? To hold a public office and not expect criticisim is unrealistic. Here in the U.S., we’ve a time-honored tradition of criticizing elected officials, be it the President of the United States of America, or your local school board (who are elected officials, in these parts, anyway).

Of course this applies to those of us who write (or comment) in the public realm as well, as Robert mentioned yesterday, so no free pass for us, either. :-)

In our Republic’s early days Congress was disturbed by the elaborate scale and expected cost of the new Executive Mansion proposed by George Washington. Their complaints were stopped cold when Washington responded simply, “I require it.”

The San Mateo story is peripheral and merely presented as an example that in some places $4 gas is already here.

But Bush is the President of the United States not the mayor of San Mateo or governator of Cal-ee-fornia. As of this morning Triple-A Texas repots that the national average per-gallon price of regular self-service gasoline is $3.16, a far cry from San Mateo’s over taxed and over regulated fuel price. Let’s be reasonable and hope that the President has better things to do than memorize the high and low gasoline prices for every municipality in the US.

In somewhat positive news, I noticed that OSB and plywood have actually gone down $1/sheet over the past few months at Home Depot. It’s either because there’s oversupply, or HD is trying to undercut other stores. I haven’t checked Lowe’s prices.

What do you think Bushs pain threshold for the price of gasoline is? I don’t think he has to worry about it now an certainly won’t in the future.

So the prez won’t say how bad it is. And the opposition will say it’s utter doomsday. And the truth is the sun will set and rise again the next day like it always has, and the economy will go up and down like it always has. But someone will promise us they can defy the laws of economics and usher in an age of “prosperity for all” if we just give them the power.