Oil prices: An election connection?

Could high oil prices be connected to an effort to manipulate the outcome of our presidential election?

A drop in economic activity and declining demand for oil will coincide with an increase in supply, resulting in lower prices, according to a Lehman Bros. report issued last week.

In the short run, Michael Waldron of Lehman says, pump prices will continue to rise, but beginning at the end of 2008, new refineries will start coming online in the Middle East, China and India, taking the price per barrel to about $83 in 2009, then as low as $70 in 2010.

The report notes that much of the increase in oil prices has been driven by sovereign wealth funds, perhaps encouraged by the weak dollar. These “commodity index flows” have totaled some $40 billion in the year to date, more than all of 2007.

Waldron estimates these flows into the energy commodities market are responsible for $20 to $30 of the increased price per barrel.

Much of the sovereign wealth fund money has come from the Middle East, according to the British newspaper the Telegraph.

In this election year, this is an important point considering the mileage Democrats have gotten and hope to continue to get out of blaming President Bush and his supposed oil connections for our current situation.

Consider that the war against terrorism has always been multifaceted and not confined to battlefields. Terrorists not only have access to large bank accounts courtesy of wealthy supporters in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and other oil-rich countries, but they have used wealth as a tool to manipulate the media and politicians via front groups and lobbyists, in this country and others.

Just Friday, one of presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama’s advisers on Middle East policy, Rob Malley, resigned after reports surfaced that he had repeated contact with members of Hamas. The Obama campaign has insisted that Malley’s meetings were all undertaken with the full knowledge of the State Department.

Recently, Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef, asked about Hamas’ willingness to meet with either Democrat presidential candidate, came out with an endorsement of Obama’s candidacy: “We don’t mind -– actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance.”

Obama has spent a good chunk of his campaign denying that he is Muslim or has any connection to radical Muslims, yet Hamas has made it clear who the world’s terrorists are rooting for in the presidential race. That’s a fact, not a smear.

It’s also clear whom the terrorists hate: It’s Bush, Cheney and by extension the main part of the GOP, because Islamo-fascists around the globe are tired of getting their teeth kicked in. Obviously, they’d much rather have a morally obtuse, mentally soft milquetoast in the office, as Jimmy Carter was and they hope Obama will be.

Islamo-fascists wouldn’t be the first foreigners to try to sway American elections, if that’s what is going on. The Chinese make a sizable investment every four years (remember the mysteriously wealthy Buddhist monks who raised money for Bill Clinton). Before them, the Soviet Union was particularly skilled at making sure its people infiltrated the halls of power. Then there are ultrawealthy individuals like George Soros, whose hobby is crashing entire economies.

And the politicians just go along as dupes, willing or otherwise, occasionally making a show of calling for an investigation of oil companies, which own only 9 percent of the world’s oil fields and make about an 8 percent profit. This is all depressingly normal Washington politics.

But never have we had a presidential candidate who was so close to winning the White House with so many questionable anti-American associations and an endorsement from a terrorist group.

And now we’re facing record oil prices that are predicted not to ease until after the election, in large part due to Middle East funds.

Do we dare do the math on this?