Jumpin' Gas Prices! It's a Flash! Flash! Flash!

Too cold to start a fire

I'm burning diesel, burning dinosaur bones - Rusty Cage, Soundgarden 1991

In 1973, the bloated, complacent, and backwards thinking U.S. Automotive industry took a wallop when OPEC introduced an Oil embargo and took steps to wrest control of the oil market from US and European backed oil companies.

American cars of the 1970's were ridiculous monstrosities and American automakers weren't invested in the type of innovation and design investment necessary to stay competitive.  The 30 years after WW2 had led to a malaise of over-confidence.  German and especially Japanese car makers were ready to pounce on the small car market, with advanced vehicles that not only were far more efficient and better cars but, also what a large segment of the customer base in the United States wanted.

Of course, since then the sad truth is the American car industry has still not learned the lessons of 1973.  Today, gas prices across the country are reaching the highest real cost as well as the highest relative price ever.  And are drivers in the United States equipped to handle this? 

Nope.

You see American car shopper sucks or to be fairer, consistently makes the bad vehicle choice, especially when given the chance to make that choice.  Every time gas prices relax a little bit, Americans go out and buy giant gas guzzling monster vehicles.  Now maybe it's a symbiotic relationship between car makers and consumer.  As the giant land yachts of the 1970's didn't go away they were simply jacked up and retitled Sport Utility Vehicles and Trucks.  Everyone wants a big truck.  Even so-called midsized trucks like the Ford Ranger, Honda Ridgeline, or Chevy Colorado would be big trucks in an earlier era.  Of course, some really small Utes have just been reintroduced; the Hyundai Santa Cruz and Ford Maverick (also as a hybrid) but, it's way late to finally introduce these smaller more efficient models.

Additionally, while the hyper car market is tiny and geared towards the super rich, it's moving to electric vehicles.  But, the "affordable" luxury and performance market isn't getting great gas mileage either.

Brazilian Fascists love TrumPutin 
and hate President Biden and Trudeau
I guess Glenn Greenwald is having
a real impact!

So, thanks to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, energy prices are spiking across the globe.  And Americans are once again moaning about paying at the pump.

Unbelievable.  Or... in reality it isn't... because the American dream of cheap energy derived from fossil fuels is yet again another cornerstone of the endless Republican assault on the United States.   

43 years ago President Jimmy Carter, a good and decent and deeply religious man put solar panels on the White House.  President Carter called for 20% of American power to be procured from solar In Year 2000.

This was a smart, forward-thinking plan and one which would have helped usher in the electric car revolution far earlier as well as combat what executives and scientists working for the fossil fuels industry  already knew in the 1970's; that climate change was going to destroy the planet and kill millions (or more) people.

Instead, what we got in 1979 was an Iranian Revolution because the Shah of Iran, whom the United States and British had placed into power in 1953 to help the oil from Persia flow, was a brutal dictator and murderer.  The Hostage Crisis opened the doors to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave for the villainous Republican Party. 

And in 1981, Ronnie Raygun stepped into the White House with his oil-drenched hairdo, phony cowboy demeanor, and chickenhawk warmonger swagger and promptly took the solar panels off the roof and declared the United States would never break its' addiction to fossil fuels or foreign entanglements.  Reagan was already a brain-addled fraud in the pocket of Big Oil, before being shot and suffering brain damage.

So Reagan's handlers told him to open areas of the United States to exploitation and ruin and in 1986, Raygun gave a speech "crowing" about how "freedom", "the marketplace", "the entrepreneurs and businessmen and women of America" performed miracles after he decontrolled Oil from The Government.

No Eternal Allies only
Eternal Interest in Middle East Oil

What a fucking asshole.  Reagan's fraudulence set the course to tie the United States to the Middle East and for the next 40 years the American people have suffered because of it.  Reagan incited and assured Saddam Hussein the US would support him and Iraq against Iran.  Well that led to 30 years of violence in Iraq and Iran didn't it? 

And opening the United States to haphazard oil drilling ushered in disastrous oil spills via the Exxon Valdez (1989), BP Deepwater Horizon (2010), too say nothing of all the lesser spills you've never heard about, and the monstrously destructive 21st century fracking boom with all it's accompanying environmental destruction.

But, this post is already too long and I've barely touched the disastrous W(orst President Ever) Maladministration drilling policies or Former Republican Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and all his associated crimes*, misappropriation of funds, and abuse of authority.  And that's the problem; it takes a lot of reading and the acknowledgment of background information which bad actors on the Right are unwilling to engage in because they've mastered the art of the Meme and the bumper sticker and conservatives have entered an Era of having their own facts.  

They simply assert High Gas Prices Biden Fault shorthand.  So, instead of getting a fuel efficient vehicle or investing in an electric vehicle, a whole bunch of Americans who asserted it was their right to get the gaudiest, biggest, least practical, non-efficient Truck are now crying about high gas prices and petulantly pouting that mean Pete Buttigieg said they should buy an electric vehicle  

*- Career Criminal Traitor Trump showed Republicans they had been a bunch of "Suckers and Losers", when you have authority you commit crimes and you keep committing crimes non-stop because the media isn't interested in following them all up.

Unleashing America's Energy - the Port Neches Explosion

"They share our desire to Unleash America's Energy..." Traitor Trump announces how he rolls back Safety Regulations. 

"You don't really realize how close to danger you are until something like that happens in your own backyard," said a Port Neches resident.

Over Thanksgiving holiday 50,000 Texas residents were told to evacuate their homes, by a mandatory evacuation order due to multiple explosions at a petrochemical plant operated by Houston based TPC Group in Port Neches. Witness The Unleashing of America's Energy...

Eliminating Obama's Presidency was one of the main reasons conservatives voted for Trump. Part and parcel of Undoing Obama is eliminating any regulation, treaty, or agreement affiliated with President Obama.  Of course, rolling back "burdensome" clean air and water and safety regulations has been a goal of the Republican Party for decades. Republicans repeatedly assert eliminating regulations actually helps the EPA, saves money, and protects Americans. It's a game the Republicans have played for a long time; often with the concept of Regulatory Capture; i.e. placing an implacable foe of regulation in charge of regulatory bodies. Often Republicans would claim any regulation, any enforcement, any interference with Private Enterprise is burdensome, costly, and unnecessary. But, nowadays in the Era of the MAGA Cult, they have dispensed with the need to even put the facade of enforcing laws to hold back the rapacious Capitalist corporations. Instead, all Republicans need do is invoke President Obama's name and claim This Law is Socialist! and conservatives willingly assist in their own poisoning.

I would like to say Trump and the Republican Party policies are, figuratively and literally, blowing up in their faces. But, the world doesn't work that way. Republicans are shielded from the consequences of their actions on guns, on healthcare, on terrorism, on climate change, on relaxing safety regulations. Instead the fallout from Republican policies indiscriminately kills all Americans regardless of political belief.

But, despite predicted massive oil spills, toxic pollution, plant explosions, mine collapses, poisoned drinking water, preventable deaths on the job Republicans understand most people don't care as long it's not happening in their backyard. And for those that do care there is the powerful sense of 'what can I do?' and the despair at feeling powerless against these corporate behemoths who are fervently protected by Republican politicians.

So, Republicans continually trot out the Myth of Self-Regulation** and the lies about eliminating regulations actually making Americans safer because they know too many Americans are struggling with day-to-day concerns to keep track of and hold Republicans accountable for the rightwing agenda of oppression, intolerance and shackling Americans into perpetual Wage Slavery and Corporate Bondage.