Facing gas prices near $4 a gallon and a pivotal national election, congressional Democrats allowed a ban on offshore drilling to lapse in September

But times change, and on Tuesday, the Obama administration - with gas prices roughly half what they were and many Democrats' having been swept into office - blocked offshore drilling plans put in place at the last minute by the Bush administration, including plans to open the national outer continental shelf for drilling.

Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar also announced last week that his agency would block drilling on public lands in Utah, criticizing the Bush administration for releasing its offshore drilling plan just days before leaving office.

Link

When the above was done, 2/11/09, gasoline was $1.81. After peaking around $4.00 it is now $3.72 and trending upwards.

The world wide economy is in as bad a shape as we are and China by itself can't account for what you claim.

And this Senator doesn't think so:

.... most misleading is his claim -- also made by others -- that the United States has "about 2, maybe 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves; we use 25 percent of the world's oil."

Wrong.

In truth, "reserves" is just one of several categories used to quantify oil... To classify a barrel as a reserve, you have to drill, prove the oil is there, and meet strict criteria established by the Securities and Exchange Commission......

....America has an estimated 22.3 billion barrels of oil reserves.... A recent Congressional Research Service report ....found that the United States' recoverable oil resources are estimated at 157 billion barrels. That is seven times as much as our reserves and doesn't even include the roughly 900 billion barrels of unconventional oil resources nearing commercialization.

Consider this: While our nation's oil "reserves" have never reached 40 billion barrels, we've managed to produce nearly 200 billion barrels since 1900. Between 2008 and 2009, America's oil reserves rose more than 8 percent, even as roughly 2 billion barrels were produced. That was made possible by our substantial resource base. Reserves alone have never provided the full picture.

WaPost

The welt was about golf ball size or a slightly bigger. There was a smaller irregular brown spot at the site of the sting and a very large irregular rash area that was slightly smaller than a volleyball. Nasty.

Also among those that disapprove on the liberal side:

13 percent say they disapprove of Obama because he has not been liberal enough - nearly double what it was in May, when the question was last asked, and the first time that number has hit double digits in Obama's presidency.

"Republicans are crazy!"

"Ditto".

Not much discussion there.

The problem with your position is that it is the Democrats who hold the WH and the Senate and you want them to be given credit for things you agree with, and then when the stuff hits the fan, you want us to say things like, "It's not Obama's fault.  He's helpless in all this and it's the Republicans who are bad."

The Republicans, Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor DID NOT call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal.  THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CALLED FOR THAT,"  declared US Representative John Conyers in a press conference held by members of the House "Out of Poverty' Caucus on 07/27/11." link

David Dayen (emphasis mine):

Tim Geithner asked for an increase in the debt limit around August of 2009. This is a vote members of Congress don't like to take, but up until that time it had been fairly routine. But the above mentioned Democrats [Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, Dianne Feinstein, Mark Warner and Joe Lieberman] threatened to hold the debt limit hostage:

Senators from both parties on Tuesday put new pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to turn the power to trim entitlement benefits over to an independent commission.

Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. (...)

(...) Congress is under pressure to raise the cap on what the federal government can borrow by mid-December. If the debt ceiling is not raised above its current $12.1 trillion mark by then, the government will exceed its borrowing limits and will be forced to default on the debt. Economists have warned that the inevitable result would be a lowering of the U.S. credit rating, triggering substantial increases in the interest rates the government is already paying.

But before Tuesday's hearing was over, Sens. Conrad, Gregg, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) publicly vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling if a budget reform commission bill doesn't come along with it.

Kent Conrad went so far as to say, "You rarely do have the leverage to make a fundamental change."

For the first time, perhaps in history, members of Congress tied spending cuts to raising the debt limit. This was the blueprint off of which John Boehner and the Republicans worked. The panel that Conrad wanted, along with Judd Gregg, would have had a mandate to reduce the deficit through spending caps, tax reform and entitlements, and would have submitted recommendations for an up-or-down vote without amendments or the possibility of the filibuster. That's EXACTLY what's in the bill being voted on today.

The Democrats pushing this ultimately backed down. Eventually, President Obama signed a clean $1.8 trillion debt limit increase in February 2010. But that obscures the issue. First, something did get attached to the debt limit bill - statutory paygo, requiring that all new spending be paid for with taxes or cuts. Second, because of the pressure that Conrad and the Democrats put on leadership, they got a guaranteed vote prior to the debt limit increase on their deficit commission. It would have passed if Republicans who previously supported the idea didn't bail at the last minute. At this point, President Obama, who had pivoted onto deficit reduction at the end of 2009, said he would by executive order put together the deficit commission. And so the original Catfood Commission was born. They've been talking about deficits in Washington, in the middle of a jobs crisis, ever since.

And this - from my response to Donald:

It's important to know and understand what the opposition is doing, where it wants to go and what the endgame is, and I think that's true whether you're talking about the GOP or about those within the party; I had hoped to never have to be able to say that representatives of my own party, including the Democratic president, put the safety net on the table, but there it is.  

Undeniably, painfully there.  From now on, the Democratic argument to protect beneficiaries of these programs will be..."but it was Democrats who wanted to cut them..."

And there's no comeback to that.  It's the kind of statement that makes mouths slap shut because there's no argument against it.

No question Republicans are crazy, but you don't fight the crazy by trying to be more like the crazy, or enabling it from your side, or trying to go them one better; in my unprofessional opinion, that's crazy.

He isn't.

He will always look like the twisted freak that he is.

Obama, having taken over the wheel since Bush could not run again, may drive us further down the path to perdition. Our situation as citizens may get worse as this debacle continues.

But Bush will never look better.

Under no circumstances do we need more wars.
Our war spending (c. 5 -6 billion a week) is in large measure what has rendered us bankrupt.

Obviously, if Obama feels his reelection threatened, he will fabricate a real or imagined attack upon us by someone or other.
But that could boomerang and we'll wind up with a McCain or some ex-General.