Thats about the only conclusion I can draw from her proposal to open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to lower gasoline prices. President Bush has been dead set against this idea and he is absolutely right on this point. Unfortunately we're probably going to see plenty of more dumb ideas from politicians about to how to deal with high gasoline prices as the election gets closer.

Oil reached $135 a barrel recently and it looks like some of the American people are starting to smarten up. Sales of SUV's and light trucks have crashed, public transit usage is way up and gasoline consumption is basically level or dropping now after many years of continuous increases. Unfortunately the past stupidity still has a long way to run. This is apparent in a number of ways. The resale value of gas guzzlers has plummeted and many people are still stuck with them.

The title may sound hyperbolic but I think it's an appropriate description of the reluctance of the military junta in Myanmar to allow foreign aid efforts after last weeks cyclone. France's suggestion that the security council take stronger action to force the Burmese government to allow more aid into the country is emotionally appealing but I'm not sure if it's practical. Meanwhile a 100,000 plus people are likely to die due to the actions of a few stubborn men.

One of the most important goals of both Republicans and the financial services industries is the privatization of social security. To that end they continually predict that SS will be bankrupt by such and such a date. Those predictions are based on various assumptions one of which is life expectancies. Well it looks like those predictions might be wrong but not for the reasons normally provided by supporters of SS. For the first time life expectancy fell for a significant proportion of the US population.

My very first diary here are at the forvm was a discussion of oil prices,energy policy and the American public.

The American People are stupid

Here it is a few months down the road so I thought it was time for an update. Recent happenings.

Mexican oil production has peaked with total output declining 7.8% in the first quarter of this year.

I'll leave the answer to that question up to the individual readers (I'm sure that the deniers feel that they're misunderstood geniuses!) But in order to help everyone else come to their own conclusions I thought it would be interesting to post the latest climatological data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Climate data

A couple of highlights

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the 16th warmest on record for the December 2007-February 2008 period (0.58°F/0.32°C above the 20th century mean of 53.8°F/12.1°C). The presence of a moderate-to-strong La Niña contributed to an average temperature that was the coolest since the La Niña episode of 2000-2001.

The American people are stupid. A provocative statement that's sure to
provoke a strong response from some. I'm not a politician though so I
don't have any need to tell the American public how wonderful they are. One of the reasons the American people have been able to get away with being stupid for so long is because they have for the most part been insulated from the cost of their stupidity. There are exceptions here and there (e.g. people who thought that the real estate boom would go on forever) but when it comes to the grandest stupidity of them all the American public has not had to pay a price for being stupid. That's about to change. I am speaking of course about energy policy. Oil is approaching $100 barrel as I write this. Unlike previous price spikes which were caused by political issues (e.g. wars or boycotts) this one is because there is simply not enough oil available to meet demand. At this point economists would respond that the high prices will lead to increased production which will reduce prices. Unfortunately that's not happening. World production has been flat for 2 years now even as prices have skyrocketed. The fundamental problem with the economists view is that the world does not in fact produce oil. It's a finite resource that we extract. Big difference. When the resource is gone it doesn't matter how high the price goes you won't be able to extract any more.