What will bring down gas prices?...... A government controlled by the citizens, it's called Democratic Socialism. "Extremely large industries, like energy, might require some type of government ownership or control, but the main goal would be to keep the economy under the control of the general public."

Or a more immediate fix is simply to force delivery of thousands of barrels of oil to the gated communties where the commodities traders live and lazily operate from!

When Cheney and company took Iraq for their oil supply the actual supply of oil on the world market dropped because of the termoil. I first thought of how foolish they were since the price of gasoline increased from their blunder. The I realized that from their perspective the loss of supply increase the price of oil so their profits went up because the cost to extract oil did not change. What a sweat deal for them. Now they can take advantage of the Iraq's oil with the prices up even further. Depends on what side of the pump you are standing!

Your blog has all the answers, but no solutions. That's ok though, neither does the Executive Branch or our government. One thing is for sure, your first sentence is correct. American's are screwed.

Someone NEEDS to get Obama's ear! " As a matter of national security, anytime gas prices go over $3/gal. average at the pump, the government should ban export of refined gas and diesel. " He shouldn't need congressional approval and if he did, are the R's going to vote for higher gas prices? I bet less than 5% of the US citizens realize we are exporting so much fuel. Even the threat should cause a lot of oil magnets and banksters :-) to get brown stains in their shorts! If I were President for a day, that would be my first declaration!

Thom, I understand you read these. I am so proud that listening to C-Span in the AM two recent callers have quoted you. (without credit) One on the "two santa theory" and just the other day, someone had a full explanation on the pipeline including the Chinese investing in 500K Hectars. The Rebublican congressman, of course, had no idea what she was talking about!

I guess if you own shares of Exxon you're an oil baron? There's more to this than these 2 paragraphs. Supply & Demand are at play here. With India and China competing for the same oil supply that we had the corner on for decades and willing to pay more for it - we get squeezed at our pumps too. If you increase WORLD SUPPLY( that means drilling, pipeline Canadian Sands oil, off shore drilling...) then WORLD DEMAND is satisfied and prices go down. The Economic paradigm has not changed - just the players-there's more at the table now ... And the political Spin of the day...

From memory it seems that every time there is an incumbent Democrat president in an election year, gas prices go up just before the election. This doesn't seem to be the case for Republicans. I would be interested to know if there are statistics to back this up. Could this be a way that big oil tries to influence elections?

I guess what I don't undrstnd is that everyone is blaming everyone else.

I have not eard a word about speculators from anyone.

The orders come from somewhere in Corporate America... Not one word about them...

Speaking of banksters....Bankster of America is ticking off it's customers once again....now they are going to charge a fee to checking account customers who don't use on-line banking. I guess they must think their customers have very short memories....and BofA will eventually find a way to rip off their customers...if they keep trying. On-line banking is about as secure as trying to keep your information private on Twitter, Facebook, or Google. Well, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration. But lots of bank customers have lost lots of money by hackers that knew how to game the system. The banks don't want you to know about this.

Yes, and Google is currently in the news because, as they have been warning us for a while now, Google has changed their on-line privacy policy (nice of them, wasn't it, to warn us in advance?) whereby they will be collecting (even more so than before?..yup..so they say) information on what we watch on YouTube and what we search for. Big giant straw from the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security...not to mention ALEC and Grover Norquist's home computer...stuck into Google's data base monitoring any hint of dissent and deviation of the "right kind of thinking".

But back to BofA .... and more specifically on-line security...as it relates to banking. As I pointed out in yesterday's blog...there are lots of big sucking sounds from people's bank accounts from hackers that pose as man-in-the-middle fake bank sites. When you go to what you think is your bank web-site....a hacker could latch on to your attempt to "connect" to your bank then stop your "connect" actually going to your bank. He/she has copied the bank's web-page and sends that web-page back to you. You think it really is your bank..it looks authentic. So the hacker has managed to steal the banks certificate of authority and any further encryption that is established will be between you and the hacker. The hacker has established encryption to the bank. Session Cookies are passed that ensure that any further connect is from the bank (except it is to the man-in-the-middle). You type in your bank account and passwords and the hacker now has them and can go in anytime he/she wants to empty out your bank account. He/she can fix it so that any future on-line transactions that you make with your bank will display what you think should be in your bank account and you would not even suspect that your account has been drained until you get a statement or until you go to the bank, or an ATM to see that you have no money in your account. Your money has disappeared...most likely to some foreign country.

This has happened many, many times and the banks don't want you to know how insecure it is to have on-line banking. Even the courts have ruled in favor of the banks when the customer takes the banks to court. This has happened all over the world many times and both businesses and individual bank customers have lost lots of money.

You don't need on-line banking to have your money disappear, of course, electronic transfers can be initiated. It happened to me once, but I was lucky it was for a very small amount, and the bank investigated and restored what was lost. But had I not noticed it on my statement, they would have gotten away with it. And had the amount not been so small, I wonder how enthusiastic the bank would have been in restoring my loss if the amount were really large? The banks have been just writing off some of these losses...but they wouldn't just write off really large losses...they'd likely fight it...in court...and the banks are winning against their distraught customers. Safer to keep your money under your mattress...or maybe even under your front door mat.

But having on-line banking gives the bank the excuse that you were negligent with your passwords and account numbers...and/or home computer security and surfing habits. And if you surf the internet a lot you could easily get a key-stroke logger that monitors every thing you type on your keyboard...including passwords and bank account numbers. The banks could question your surfing habits and try to blame you for your loss.

If you do on-line banking, it is supposed to be safer if you use an Apple Mac (because it doesn't use Windows OS) or if you have a Windows box you should temporarily use a Linux OS (called Linux LiveUSB) that resides on a thumb drive only (and doesn't let viruses get stored on your normal Windows OS hard drive) so that you can temporarily cut Windows out of the picture and use Linux to do your banking. Then switch back to your Windows OS for whatever else you normally do on a computer. It's easy, just a matter of putting your LiveUSB into your USB socket...then power up and you boot up on Linux (which could be any flavor of Linux...like Ubuntu). Then when you want to go back to Windows OS just remove the LiveUSB and then power up again...which boots into WindowsOS. That way no virus...keyboard logger...can get installed on your computer. But that doesn't avoid man-in-the-middle attacks, which is remote from your computer. Just don't use on-line banking!! But monitor your account frequently using an ATM or at the bank teller.

And now Bankster of America is now going to be charging a fee to anyone with a checking account with them if they are not set up to use on-line banking. Maybe a lot of people have come to realize that on-line banking is very dangerous because of the history (much of it hidden or suppressed) of people and companies (oh, excuse me...companies are people..I mean corporations are people....lolol) who have lost money using on-line banking. And the courts have been in favor of the banks...essentially saying that the banks are not responsible for your money and if you get ripped off by a hacker then you are just out of luck. This is happening all over and the banks don't want you to know about it. It is very profitable for the banks to cut down on the overhead by getting rid of traditional bill paying and they want electronic money to replace real money. Problem with electronic money is that it can easily disappear and all they have to do is say some hacker stole it. And when you have on-line banking...it gives the banks the ability to claim that you must have given out, or been careless with, your passwords. But how do you defeat a man-in-the-middle attack who pretends to be your bank when you type in your passwords? Or how can you detect and defeat a key-stroke logger residing in your computer? Most people are not computer savvy enough to even know about these things...let alone guard against them. Your money down the rabbit hole. And, of course, this is happening big time.

Factory Farming Must End.

"Factory Farming" is a key element to the dismantling of the old world colonial system of rob, rape, and pillage.

We are FINALLY Waking up to the Fact that colonialism and slavery still continue. The old model: that is OK to make a profit off the suffering and exploitation of others and the Earth -- is coming to and End. Thank Heaven.

Rather than issue-by-issue thinking, the entire "debate" must be seen thru a united lens, and seen clearly for WHAT IT IS: WRONG. It doesn't matter how much you spin, PR it, Lie about it, Hide it, Deny it, Dress it up in expensive suits and corner offices.
To profit thru theft, deceit, cruelty, and bullying is just flat out wrong and is no way to run a civilization.
It is immature.

We are growing up and seeing the connections between the suffering we endure thru food and toxin induced illness.
We see the advertizing lies, and the devastation done to our land, our water, our communities, our kids, and our grandparents
-- we are done. AS Randi says: We are done with it.

Out with Cruelty -- in with sanity, health, mercy, and fairness.

Why do we have this situation and insist on social systems that creates have,s and have-not,s and as the gap between the rich and poor accelerates every every year we can expect civility to disappear,the thought that we can not afford a civil society is causing the society to no longer be civil.

The reason for all off world,s economic problems is that the purpose of the economy is to generate profit-it,s called the profit survival mentality.

The real purpose of the economy a new model that would work for our planet is to generate wealth.

The definition of wealth at the moment is possessions and power the more things you owned ,power over,people,places ,cars, houses ,stuff things we call asset,s this as defined by the old spirituality encourages us to have dominion over the earth but we have interpreted this to mean domination this is fallacy and an imagined reality that creates demise and goes against what works for humanity to evolve.

However when humanity embraces the New Spirituality wealth will be defined not as possessions and power ,but as access and happiness-we are talking about the use of rather than the ownership of the stuff of life and that would create a better life for all and who does not want that!!

So finally we can reduce the economy not grow it and everyone could have access to and use of many things as we shift from a possessions and power economy to a sharing and cooperation economy.

Remember two-thirds of the world have very few possessions the west have an obsession with possessions this new model would provide so many beneficial side effects.

Fewer manufactured things and items sitting idle 95% of the time that are currently used by individuals and families.

This new spiritual model will declare that we are all one and say there is enough and if we take these messages to heart we will at once devise way,s of treating everyone as you would want to be treated giving and providing everyone with what you would want to be given and provided with.

namaste