The Washington Post today reports that Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) today praised Sen. Barack Obama for denouncing his former pastor, but warned that Republicans will use the association to try to “Swift Boat” the Illinois senator if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee this fall.

Bayh, who is supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, said he hoped other issues — the economy, gasoline prices, health care and the cost of college — will drive the decisions of most voters in Tuesday’s Indiana primary. Obama has struggled in other states to win the votes of white, working class voters, and they could be the deciding vote next Tuesday.

Noting that even Obama has called the controversy of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright “a legitimate issue,” Bayh said that in a presidential race, those voters will take more than the economy into their decision making before the primary.

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Maybe Senator Bayh is just stating the obvious. Maybe he is trying to spread FUD in order to promote Clinton. There is no doubt the Wright controversy is real, and there is no doubt the Republicans have already determined the strategy they will use in the event Obama is the nominee. But for Senator Bayh to wrap the ‘Swift Boating’ strategy around his hopes that the American people will judge the candidates based on the larger issues seems to be somewhat disingenuous. This is hardball American politics at its best…

From Yahoo! Finance -BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe’s two biggest oil producers, posted forecast-busting first-quarter earnings on Tuesday thanks to record crude oil prices that are expected to bolster profits across the industry.

The combined profits of $17 billion reignited calls for a windfall tax on oil profits as consumers struggle to pay for food and fuel.

BP posted a 63 percent surge in first-quarter net profit to $7.6 billion (4.9 billion euros), while Shell reported a 25 percent rise, to a record $9.08 billion (5.81 billion euros).Shell’s earnings from oil production rose 52 percent to $5.14 billion (3.3 billion euros), due almost entirely to the price increases. The company said combined production of gas and oil equivalents increased by less than 1 percent to 3.4 million barrels per day, as a 9 percent rise in gas production outweighed a 6 percent fall in oil production.

Shell’s Chief Financial Officer Peter Voser said oil companies are not to blame.

“We don’t understand the oil price at this stage,” he said. “The fundamentals will not justify an oil price as we see it at the moment.”

“It seems that better marketing and trading were able to offset the weak refining environment,” analyst Alexandre Weinberg of Petercam.

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Marketing and trading, huh? That’s spot on. The fundamentals don’t justify these kinds of prices, but profits do, so that means the oil companies aren’t to blame. Back in the 70′s during that oil crisis, the oil companies kept tankers on the water that were full of oil and gas, just to keep the price pressure on, now they have the marketers and traders to keep the price pressure up. This is a perfect storm for them…high prices, blame the market, don’t ever suggest that the crisis is really not a crisis. Keep that momentum going. This is what happens when there are 2 or 3 big players in an industry. The government has shorn their duties with respect to anti-trust. it’s time to show them we aren’t going to take it anymore. Cut back wherever you can.

Maybe we should refresh out thinking on monopolies.

From The Linux Information Project:

Standard Oil Company

In 1870, Rockefeller, together with his brother William, Henry M. Flagler and Samuel Andrews, established the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. This occurred while the petroleum refining industry was still highly decentralized, with more than 250 competitors in the U.S.

The company almost immediately began using a variety of cutthroat techniques to acquire or destroy competitors and thereby “consolidate” the industry…

CNN Money reports today on new records for oil and gas prices. Oil prices hit an all-time high near $120 a barrel Monday after a weekend refinery strike closed a pipeline system that delivers a third of Britain’s North Sea oil to refineries in the U.K.

The shutdown comes amid supply outages in Nigeria that have helped to support oil against a strengthening dollar.

In the U.S., retail gasoline also hit a record for the 13th straight time. The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded rose to $3.603, up four-tenths of a cent from the previous day, according to auto organization AAA.

“We’ve got a confluence of a number of events that have really disrupted crude oil supply,” said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. “That’s what’s driving oil to a new record even though the U.S. dollar actually strengthened a bit.”

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Confluence of a number of events alright. The oil companies and traders even get a sense of prices coming down, then any excuse in the book will send the prices back up. Strengthening dollar? No problem, use the strike as an excuse to send the prices higher. A strike is a predicable event. Workers have used strikes for ages as a negotiating tool. It won’t go on forever, and there probably won’t be violence or plant destruction involved.

We need to reduce demand in the short term as much as we can. Support all the green efforts you can.

MSNBC is reporting that oil prices rebounded Friday from the previous session’s steep drop, fueled by supply concerns after a Nigerian militant group reported that it sabotaged another oil pipeline.

Oil prices had initially extended Thursday’s decline of more than $2 a barrel, with a stronger U.S. dollar prompting investors to book profits. But after oil dipped below $115 a barrel, news of the new threat to supplies put it back on the upward track.

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Sounds like a familiar theme doesn’t it?  Spread the fear of a threat to production, and the prices just keep going up. Nigeria ships some 1.23 million barrels a day. Shell Oil shuts in 170,000 barrels (temporarily). Just enough to move prices up. Everyone has this figured out but the consumers. We need to start slowing the consumption down significantly in the short term to pull the prices back. It’s the only thing oil companies will understand.

One glimmer of hope is a potentially huge find off the coast of Brazil:

Potentially huge Brazilian oil deposits good news for fuel supply

Now if we can just not invade them…

CNN is reporting that Florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the Miami Heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion.

The Florida Legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a Christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words “I Believe.”Some lawmakers say the state should be careful. Rep. Kelly Skidmore said she is a Roman Catholic and goes to Mass on Sundays, but she believes the “I Believe” plate is inappropriate for the government to produce.

“It’s not a road I want to go down. I don’t want to see the Star of David next. I don’t want to see a Torah next. None of that stuff is appropriate to me,” said Skidmore, a Democrat who voted against the plate in committee. “I just believe that.”

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And therein lies the core problem of religious intolerance. “I don’t want to see the Star of David next. I don’t want to see a Torah next. None of that stuff is appropriate to me” says only Christians (and presumably mainstream Christians) are welcome. It’s no wonder that America is viewed as it is today with respect to religious tolerance, or the lack thereof.

If more people would do some research, they would find that most religions were started pretty close to the same time frame. Isn’t that a coincidence. While I don’t doubt that there is an all knowing and all powerful deity, to say that He (or She) belongs to only one religious group is what keeps the religious wars alive. Isn’t that a coincidence too? How many people have been killed in the name of religion?

No doubt this person who beat up a Muslim woman would be the 1st in line for an “I Believe” plate:

USAToday reports today that the stock market’s movements were somewhat erratic, as investors kept an eye on fluctuating oil prices. Oil initially pulled back but then rebounded as the government reported a rise in crude inventories but a drop in gasoline stockpiles. A day earlier, a record high price for oil had helped send shares skidding.Crude stocks rose 2.4 million barrels last week, when analysts had forecast a 1.2 million barrel increase.

Gasoline inventories fell 3.2 million barrels, more than the 2.3 million barrel draw analysts had forecast.

“I think you’re just going to get continued volatility,” said Kevin Shacknofsky, co-portfolio manager of the Alpine Dynamic Dividend Fund in Purchase, N.Y. He cited investors’ concerns not only about rising energy prices, but also the health of the financial sector.

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This price volatility is not going to stop until we show the energy companies that we as consumers just aren’t going to take it anymore. One day it’s the fear that supply will be disrupted, then the uncertainty of the emerging markets impact on demand, the doubt that a major storm will interrupt production.

The oil companies and traders are loving this. They have the system now right where they want it. They control the price.

It’s up to us…the oil companies certainly don’t want this gravy train to stop, and the government certainly doesn’t have the balls to pass any kind of cohesive energy policy, so like everything else these days, we have to be our own advocates.

Do what you can to reduce your energy consumption. As you can see, even when oil was $88 a barrel, the oil companies were under fire for price manipulation. What’s changed since then?

The New York Times reports that Marcus W. Brauchli will step down as the top-ranking editor of The Wall Street Journal after less than a year in the job, four people briefed on the matter said on Monday, just four months after Rupert Murdoch took control of the paper.

Journal newsroom employees say that Mr. Murdoch and the publisher he installed, Robert J. Thomson, have made it clear that they think the paper has too many editors, and have instructed Mr. Brauchli to thin the ranks, potentially making room in the headcount for more reporters. Two people briefed on Mr. Brauchli’s thinking said that had become a major point of contention.

Under an agreement between the News Corporation and the Bancroft family, who owned a controlling interest in Dow Jones for more than a century, sole power over the newsroom was to rest with the managing editor – Mr. Brauchli – and Mr. Murdoch could not remove him without the consent of a committee of independent overseers. But even the people within Dow Jones who supported that pact said that it would be all but impossible to keep the new owner from having his way.

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Fear that the most respected newspaper in the country would become another another New York Post. Uncertainty that editorial independence would survive under News Corporation control. Doubt that well respected independent journalists would make it in the new regime. All of these questions are being answered now. The Wall Street Journal, the most respected newspaper in country, is slowly making its way to newspaper mediocrity, and is turning into a mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch, just as many feared it would. Here is an interesting take on the “globalization” of the news gathering business.

http://marquette.edu/polisci/ITJWeb/JusticeConfPapers/McCormick.pdf

From Yahoo! Finance – Rising gasoline prices tightened the squeeze on drivers Monday, jumping for the first time to an average $3.50 a gallon at filling stations across the country with no sign of relief.

Crude oil set a record for the sixth day in a row — this time closing above $117 a barrel — after an attack on a Japanese oil tanker in the Middle East rattled investors.

Diesel prices at the pump also struck a record high of $4.20 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That’s sure to add to truckers’ costs and drive up the price of food, clothing and other goods shipped by truck.

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The silence from the oil companies is deafening. No positive comments to try and bring price stability back to the markets. They have it right where they want it. Traders, brokers and speculators now control the price of oil. Supply or demand have little to do with the price now. A Japanese freighter is attacked an loses a few hundred gallons of oil, and the price per barrel goes up 79 cents. This is the perfect storm. Each side can blame the other all the while raking in huge profits, at our expense. The ONLY way to bring the price down is to cut our use drastically in the short term. That’s all they understand is this quarter. If we cut our usage by 20% over the next 6 months, prices would be cut in half. Not because long term demand is down, but because it would hurt the quarterly numbers. Now that would get their attention.