Obama's Great Birthday Conspiracy EXPOSED

All the saints in Heaven, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna and Muhammad preserve us, Louie Gohmert, R - East Wacko Texas, has come up with another conspiracy theory. It all revolves around the August 2^nd deadline for Congress to raise the debt ceiling or let this country, whose full faith and credit has never in its history been questioned, fall into default on its loans. Gohmert now thinks that the date is a fake one, but not  an arbitrary one. In fact, he claims that August 2^nd has been planned all along, just not as the default date.

Gohmert points to the fact that August 4^th is Barack Obama’s own birthday. And on August 3^rd he is throwing himself a birthday party with celebrities in attendance.

Gohmert added 2 and 2 and came up with his latest of a whole stream of wacky conspiracies: Obama is using the debt crisis, one that has been produced and directed by his own party courtesy of his wacky Teabagger followers, to raise campaign funds.

No, I’m serious.

From Gawker:

“‘[W]e find out the president has a big birthday bash scheduled for August the 3rd, celebrities flying in from all over,’ Gohmert told Newsmax TV yesterday. ‘And lo and behold, August 2nd is the deadline for getting something done so he can have this massive, the biggest fundraising dinner in history for a birthday celebration.’ That's right: This whole ‘idiot Republicans are taking the world economy to the brink of financial ruin’ ferrago is just a way for Obama to raise money... from celebrities. ‘Isn't that amazing?’ Gohmert wonders. ‘The timing of this?’”

This would actually be funny if it weren’t for the fact that Gohmert is dead serious, just as he was dead serious about the so-called “Anchor Babies” or the notion that the direct election of Senators was an anti-democratic liberal conspiracy.

But then come to think of it, what better way to show the nation through the entertainers and celebrities that they revere, how Republicans ruined, or more likely, nearly ruined the nation’s economy through their wacky economic notions.

Louie Gohmert is like a gift from Heaven. He is like Manna. Louie Gohmert personifies how crazy the Republican Party has become, because next to some of these people, Louie Gohmert is as sane and sober as a judge.

CBPP: Blame Obama on Budget Deficit? Think Again

When I hear the something for nothing Teabaggers whine about how Obama’s careless spending program is driving our country into the ground, and about how their grand children are going to be paying for them, I just want to throttle them, and then slam some things called facts and data on the table in front of them and make them look.

Neither are going to happen. First, I am a peaceful man not given toward throttling anything but my riceburner’s engine, and second, past experience tells me that shoving facts under the noses of Teabaggers does little good.

So let me preach to the choir instead.

Last week the Center on Budgets and Policy Priorities published this graph (at right) in an article you can read for yourself right here. A supporting data table can be found by scrolling down, but the overall trend is clear.

Projecting all of the major areas of government expenditure out ten years you can see what portions of the Obama stimulus adds to the deficit as compared to other areas, specifically, the Bush Tax Cuts and our Two Wars.

After 2011 the budget deficit includes Obama recovery measures that have become miniscule (by miniscule I mean between $60 billion and $37 billion) while the funding for our Two Wars will taper gradually from a high of $193 million in 2012 to a projected $162 million in 2019.

Bush Tax Cuts, on the other hand, will increase in significance as we go forward should they be extended without impediment, from a low of $295 billion in 2011 growing gradually to $705 billion by 2019. The increase is largely due to added debt service costs should the tax cuts not expire.

In other words, if Teabaggers are looking for a direction to point their fingers, if they are looking for someone to blame for the budget deficit, they need look no further than the 2001 to 2003 tax cuts.

In other words, YOUR grand children will pay for YOUR tax cuts.

Now going forward, how do we fix this because it is very much like getting a junkie off of crystal meth. Like an addict’s system, the American economy has become used to and dependent upon getting a fix from time to time. Going cold turkey, while admirable, is sure to cause upheaval in our fragile economy. It’s like “getting clean” while down sick with pneumonia.

But a balance must be struck here. America is addicted to its own inequitable tax policies where the super rich have benefited the most. And so to continue with the allegory, maybe it’s time to start distributing the methadone while we trim the tax cuts from the top down.

If price of crude oil is dropping, why is cost of gas rising?

That’s the headline of a piece in today’s Houston Chronicle. I take the Chronicle seriously on this subject because, after all, Houston remains the hub of the oil industry.

They should know what they are talking about.

Well, actually, the Chronicle was running a piece written by two AP reporters, Chris Kahn and John Porretto.

So I was wondering just the same thing the other day as I was putting gasoline in my rice burner, and paying $1.78.9 for the honor. Saving a whole 2 cents per gallon by choosing a non-major gas station.

So I looked at the article, hoping to have some answers. Here is what they said:

“The price of gas is indeed tied to oil. It's just a matter of which oil.”

“The benchmark for crude oil prices is West Texas Intermediate, drilled exactly where you would imagine. That's the price, set at the New York Mercantile Exchange, that you see quoted on business channels and in the morning paper.”

“Right now, in an unusual market trend, West Texas crude is selling for much less than inferior grades of crude from other places around the world. A severe economic downturn has left U.S. storage facilities brimming with it, sending prices for the premium crude to five-year lows.”

“But it is the overseas crude that goes into most of the gas made in the United States. So prices at the pump will probably keep going up no matter what happens to the benchmark price of crude oil.”

Well that makes sense. Oil is down but the oil price we track, West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, is abnormally lower than lesser quality crudes that are more likely to be turned in to gasoline.

Wait, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Isn’t the market all about supply and demand as everyone keeps telling me? Shouldn’t a high quality crude like WTI be more likely to be turned into gasoline because it will give higher yields than heavier oil?

And in this, I was perfectly right. They go on to explain:

“Brent North Sea crude, which feeds some East Coast refineries — and therefore winds up at many gas pumps around America — now costs about $7 more per barrel than the West Texas crude. Deutsche Bank analysts say the trend should continue.”

“Historically, West Texas International (sic) crude has cost more. So nobody bothered building the necessary pipelines to carry it beyond the nearby refineries in the Midwest, parts of Texas and a handful of other places.”

“Now that the premium oil is suddenly very inexpensive, refiners elsewhere can't get their hands on it.”

Now that’s just crazy.

That’s not what Republicans are telling me. The Republicans are telling me that the we don’t have enough oil and have to import oil from Muslim fanatics because Democrats won’t let the oil companies drill in ANWR or offshore the pristine beaches of northern California.

Drill, baby, drill.

But now I’m being told that not only do we not choose to pipe WTI to distant oil refineries because it’s usually too expensive and we can get cheaper oil there instead, but also that we use the price of WTI as a benchmark price for oil produced in the United States.

Now that’s just crazy.

So I learned a couple of things today. I learned about a dirty little secret about domestic oil production that isn’t being widely shared. And I learned that when we want to know the price of oil is, we ask what is the price of the most expensive oil that most people don’t use.

So I got more curious, and wanted to know what the price of oil is in other parts of the world. What, for instance, is the price of North Sea Brent? What about Arabian Light? These crudes, they tell me, are being turned into gasoline and sold here at the pump.

And after several tries in a Google search I finally happened on the right keyword combination that found this site.

Where I did see that WTI (aka United States) is definitely about $2.30 per barrel below the world average, just like the AP article said. I also saw that the price of oil is not down.

It’s up.

OK, not up to what it was when we were paying $4.00 for a gallon of gas, but since the beginning of the year, on average, the price of oil has risen by $7.20 per barrel.

That’s a 21% increase in price.

So gasoline is up because the price of crude oil is up. Nothing new under the sun.

Now I have a new question. If gasoline is up because crude is up, why did those two AP reporters jump through so many hoops and negotiate so many tortuous curves to explain the supposedly unexplainable?