A thank you to our administration (/sarcasm)...

The retail price of gas baffles me. I don't know why it is so low and why it ever goes down. The price of gas has never gone above what people are willing to pay. At the highest prices the retail sales never dropped enough to make a difference.

I had 2 cylinder Chev Sprint (made by Suzuki?) that AVERAGED 48 MPG for 100,000 miles and then I stopped counting. Around here people commute 10 miles in a truck which will tow a boat trailer over Stevens Pass at 75 MPH.

 

TYPO!!! 3 Cylinders, not 2

But I had a two cylinder 500 CC Honda CX500 M/C whose engine would have made a great engine for a small car.

 

Gas is still a necessity in much of the country. Not everyone has access to timely public transportation, especially when you have children and God knows what else to take care of before or after your commute.

 

I wish I could walk places too, it'd be nice. Even if you could walk to the grocery store how would you get all the groceries home? It's just a necessity these days.

 

Gas in my town was $3.25 this morning. By this afternoon, the price was $3.39 a gallon. Our local news radio station warned us today that prices are expected to rise to over $4.00 a gallon. Crazy!

 

There is no way to know yet whether the revolutions in Islamic countries is a good thing, a bad thing, or a disastrous thing. If they come out the other side without dictators or fundamentalists governments, but a parliamentary government ... then it will be a good thing.

Oil, and thus gas, is a finite resource. As it is used up the price will rise. It is past time for the US to start developing good public transpiration. If I lived here in Prague all the time I would never buy a car ... there is no real need for one. I have been able to go to the tiniest villages via public transport with no long delays.

 

Try paying over $7.00 a gallon If this keeps up we could be up close to $10 a gallon.

There is a HUGE problem here - the west has crawled into bed with dictators and tyrants for years because they kept providing relatively cheap oil. It is tough to continue to do so and still claim to love liberty. This is a massive dilemma that goes WAY back before President Obama.

The answer of course is domestic self-sufficiency, but the start up cost with be HUGE and the price will have to be paid somewhere - probably at the pump.

 

You are absolutely correct. This is a huge problem that most Americans are either unaware of or simply do not want to confront. Too many would rather have millions upon millions of people continue to live under cruel dictators than to pay more for gasoline.

The answer of course is domestic self-sufficiency, but the start up cost with be HUGE and the price will have to be paid somewhere - probably at the pump.[/QUOTE]

And even with domestic exploration in time there will be a shortage. It is a finite resource.

 

You are right to a certain extent. But, in the interim there is a vast supply of oil right in the good old USA yet your hero (Obama) and eco nut jobs don't want us to drill for oil here, build nuclear power plants, burn coal, etc. which would keep us going for many many years. But no, global warming is a problem or no it might hurt some obscure mouse or microorganism. In fact it might just help us to continue to maintain a good quality of life and liberals just can't have that. We need to be on the same level as some third world banana republic.

 

I love how the ones telling us we love dictators are the ones flying back & forth to Prague all the time.

 

The start up cost of drilling and processing the oil is going to be huge and pump prices will rise. The problem stems from the fact that no administration has been willing to make the change and deal with the tremendous costs. It has been cheaper and easier to just but cheap oil produced by freedom denying tyrannies.

Are Americans willing today to pay the price required to switch to US oil?

 

Americans will put up with a high cost, and as supply increases, and we get better at it, price will come down. Just like the prices of everything comes down, when supply increases, and the manufacturing process gets simpler. People payed $4,000 for flat-screen TV's when they came out, and now they cost about 10-30% of that.

 

But flat screen TVs were a new thing. I am not sure that people have the foresight to pay a higher cost in the hope that it will come down one day. I am also not sure that US oil companies will ever lower the prices once people are used to paying $5-6 a gallon. I do however think it would be worth it paying that if the US were relieved from foreign dependence and the need to make pragmatic foreign policy decisions.


There is no easy solution to this - as long as OPEC oil is cheaper that US oil I suspect the US will overlook and even cater to tyranny in order to buy it.

 

Either way the prices are going to be high. But, as the prices rise so demand goes down along with the prices. It seems that the oil companies are chomping at the bits to drill on US soil and in US waters. They want to build more refineries. Out west they want to build solar power grids. In Nantucket they want to put up wind turbine generators. In all cases the liberal wing is opposing it. Whether its power from a traditional source or an alternative source liberals are opposing it. Do they want the US to fail? It seems as if they do. We simply can't win with the current administration.

 

Politicians won't tough the issue, just as they will not touch the Defense Dept. budget, Social Security and other entitlements as it would cost them votes. They will do something only when it becomes such a crisis that they can no longer ignore it.

 

I'm not saying we will use it at today's level, but the price will come down, and usage will increase.

Roger & C.T.Boy, Americans like me have been yelling about drilling our own oil, uising Nuclear Power, and all manner of other methods to bring down energy prices for years. To lay this problem at our feet, blaming our lack of love for freedom, and telling us we turn a blind eye to tyrants is a complete misrepresentation.

It is disgusting, to me. I cannot find words to describe my disappointment in you, Roger.