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?

As the odds against Hillary Clinton grow seemingly insurmountable, there is no limit of pundits and politicians lining up to write her epitaph.

Unfortunately for all of them, Hillary’s still breathing, and she still has some options left.

The most likely is what Sean Hannity has dubbed “the nuclear option,” in which she will force a Democratic Party rules committee to decide whether to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida. Both states’ delegates had been refused seats at the upcoming convention because they had broken party rules and held their primaries too early.

Clinton won both states and wants the delegates, 366 altogether, counted. Barack Obama, who lost Florida and pulled his name off the ballot in Michigan, doesn’t want to give Clinton the chance to cut into his delegate lead.

Clinton may have an advantage with this strategy, as she has several allies, including former members of her husband’s administration, on the committee.

Merely seating the delegates from the two states won’t likely be enough for her to win the nomination. But it will bring her close enough to Obama’s totals to give her a shot at persuading the superdelegates, highly placed party officials who can completely overturn the vote tally if they wish, that she would stand a better chance in the general election against John McCain.

Obama has been unable to make much if any headway with Clinton’s constituency, and he is downright unpopular with many Americans because of his association with the racist anti-American Jeremiah Wright and the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers.

A possible contributing factor may be that Clinton’s raw determination to take Obama to the mat, in contrast with his perceived self-righteousness, will win her new fans. Many members of the mainstream media, who are in for Obama, see her as delusional, but in middle America, many voters are starting to admire her pluck.

Given the Democratic Party’s history and its members’ general feelings of entitlement, it shouldn’t be a surprise if the August convention devolves ultimately into a courtroom battle, possibly even rioting.

Whatever the final result, it seems Clinton, who has promised to spend more of her own money if needed to keep up with Obama, has crossed her Rubicon and won’t rest until she walks into the general election either with her shield or on it.

It’s such a rare thing for politicians to actually attempt to help average people that voters may be feeling a bit overwhelmed at the sudden propagation of plans to cut back gasoline taxes.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain have both gotten behind the idea of a federal gasoline tax “holiday.” Now, several states, which often inflict much higher taxes than do the feds, are considering following suit.

The governor of Florida has been fighting to get a two-week drop of 10 cents in July. Legislators in Missouri, Texas and New York are also working on tax holiday proposals. The idea has also caught on in North Carolina and Indiana, where gubernatorial candidates have debated various proposals.

“It’s about trying to serve the people and trying to understand and have caring, compassionate hearts for what they’re dealing with at the kitchen table,” said Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, according to the New York Times.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has built his campaign on bringing “hope” and “change” to the middle class and poor, has dismissed the idea of a gas-tax holiday as a stunt.

He’s probably right that such efforts are just political moves designed to look good but not really allow government revenues to suffer. If any politicians were serious about lowering gas prices, federal and state taxes would be permanently limited, and Congress would stop obstructing drilling in our own oil fields.

And such tax holidays won’t likely produce much savings for consumers. For example, a 10-cent reduction in the sales tax over two weeks, for a car with a 15-gallon tank that was filled up three times in that holiday period would only produce a savings of $4.50.

Plus, there’s a great likelihood that such plans could backfire. When tax holidays were enacted in Illinois and Indiana in 2000, and Florida in 2004, drivers began hoarding gasoline, knowing that the price was going to go up again soon. The result was that demand rose, and so did the price of gasoline, even without the tax.

Only a permanent tax cut would provide any real long-term savings, but good luck finding politicians who are disciplined and honest enough to make the corresponding cuts to government spending that would allow a decrease of taxes.

A far better plan for helping consumers would be to inject some common sense into our energy discussions by abandoning goofy global warming legislation and low-efficiency “alternative” energy sources, developing our own resources and stop diverting corn for fuel, which has in turn driven up food prices across the board.

It’s probably the only thing Obama’s ever gotten right in his campaign, possibly in his entire career, but gas tax holidays, though popular, may turn out to be just costly gimmicks.

With prices at the pump rising daily, it’s very fashionable right now to blame oil companies, OPEC or even President Bush for our situation, but is that really placing blame where it belongs? Consider:

• Oil companies only make about 8 percent profit on gasoline, far lower profit than many companies make on their products.
• About 20 cents of the cost of each gallon of gasoline is federal taxes.
• Between 10 percent and 30 percent of the cost of gasoline is state taxes, depending where you live. In California, for example, each gallon has tacked on state and local sales tax, an excise tax, and an underground storage tank fee, for about 50 cents per gallon.
• Besides taxes, states and the federal government add to the refining costs with mandates about different fuel mixes at different times of year to try to moderate air pollution.
• The Democratic Party, in league with the environmentalist lobby, has been the primary source of laws blocking development of new, more efficient refineries.
• The cost of oil had been fairly stable for much of President Bush’s term in office. It began going up about the same time Congress was handed over to the Democratic Party majority, which has as a major policy plank the reduction of the oil supply to “save” the planet from global warming.
• The cost of crude oil has risen more than 60 cents per gallon since January, largely due to commodities traders speculating that the future oil supply will be reduced.
• It is estimated that more than 90 percent of oil fields in the world are controlled by governments, while oil companies own only about 9 percent.
• Democratic lawmakers, at the urging of environmentalists, have blocked any oil drilling in Alaska, off the West Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, requiring us to import most of our oil.
• The largest sellers of oil to the United States are Canada and Mexico, non-OPEC nations.
• Democratic lawmakers have been the primary blockers of nuclear power and new hydroelectric dams, both of which are clean energy sources that would greatly decrease the national need for oil.
• Lawmakers have an incentive to keep oil prices high, both for the revenue and as a “stick” to help pass global warming legislation, which will further raise energy prices and increase legislators’ control over citizens’ private lives.
• The people who created this mess keep getting re-elected by US. …

So, now, who’s to blame? …

The audacity of the global warming crowd knows no bounds.

Despite all the warnings about how temperatures are rising, icebergs melting, polar bears drowning and so on, many people have noticed that the average temperature has not risen for 10 years. And with NASA’s revision of its numbers a few months ago, warm-mongers can’t even claim any more that most of the hottest years have occurred since the mid-90s. Still, that hasn’t stopped them.

BUT …

The journal Nature now reports that German scientists using a new climate model have determined that the next decade is likely to see no warming.

Russian scientists have been saying for years that we’re headed for a cold spell based on known solar cycles.

The German scientists in the new study based their model on the action of ocean currents. If they are correct, that will mean there will have been no warming for two decades!

This would seem to support the Russian assertion, as well as the assertions of skeptics that man-made global warming is a great hoax.

BUT …

According to the scientists, this “natural cooling” (gee, doesn’t that imply that warming might be natural, too?) will only DELAY man-made global warming, which will resume again after the cooling. (Wouldn’t that make it … cyclical? Hmm.)

According to the BBC’s article, other pro-warming climate scientists welcome this study because it will help societies plan better for the future. (Read “global warming legislation will go forward no matter what!”)

My favorite quote, though:

“One message from our study is that in the short term, you can see changes in the global mean temperature that you might not expect given the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Noel Keenlyside from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University.

That would be the U.N.’s IPCC he is saying got it wrong, ladies and gentlemen — the source of the claim that there is a scientific “consensus” on man-made warming. Whoops. …

The twisted thinking that has to be applied to prop up the global warming scam is like the minotaur’s labyrinth. I doubt we’ll see such furious gymnastics again until the Olympics.

Just to throw a little TNT on the fire of Barack Obama’s burning election hopes, a new story has come out about how Sen. Obama received more than $100,000 from a donor whom Obama then helped obtain a state grant.

According to the Los Angeles Times, when Obama was an Illinois state senator, he began receiving an $8,000-a-month retainer from Robert Blackwell Jr. to provide advice to his technology company Electronic Knowledge Interchange.

At the time, Obama was struggling with debts from an unsuccessful bid for Congress, and he was so strapped for cash that his credit card was rejected for a rental car at the 2000 Democratic Convention, according to Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope.”

The monthly payments from EKI supplemented Obama’s state Senate pay and finally totalled $112,000, according to NewsMax. Yet, Obama’s disclosure forms for 2001 and 2002 did not specify that EKI was the source of most of his private-sector compensation, the Times reported.

According to the Times story: “A few months after he received his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.”

The day after writing the letter, Obama received a $1,000 donation to his Senate campaign from Blackwell.

Killerspin, which promoted table tennis tournaments and gear, eventually received $320,000 in grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments, the Times reported.

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political adviser, denied the story: “Any implication that Sen. Obama would risk an ethical breach in order to secure a small grant for a ping pong tournament is nuts.”

Obama’s Web site reports that Blackwell is committed to raise $100,000 to $200,000 for the presidential campaign.

Obamites will no doubt vivisect, downplay and rationalize this story, but for thinking people, this fits right into the pattern we’ve seen from the self-annointed agent of “change” and “hope.”

Anyone started a pool yet on how many days till Obama drops out?

Barack Obama’s winning praise from a number of media outlets and liberal blogs for his denunciation Tuesday of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but it may be too late to save his campaign.

In case you missed it, Wright embarked on what was supposed to be his rehabilitation tour this past weekend, with several media appearances in a few days. But what started out with a soft-peddled interview on PBS rapidly began to devolve a little more at each stop, until Wright’s rehabilitation tour turned into a full-fledged crazy tour. By the end, Wright’s derangement was obvious even to many of Obama’s willfully blind supporters.

On Tuesday, Obama finally admitted what most of the world has known for months, that Wright’s hateful, anti-American, prejudicial views are way outside of the mainstream. “His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church,” Obama said at one point.

Since before the start of his campaign, Obama had sensed that Wright could be trouble, yet he clung to the man who was his pastor for 20 years, who married him and his wife, who baptized his children and who inspired an entire book. That long relationship had raised serious questions about the judgment of a man who wants to be president, but supporters tried their best to downplay the importance of the issue.

But Obama was finally forced to implicitly admit his critics have been right: “Obviously, whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed. I don’t think he showed much concern for me; more importantly, I don’t think he showed much concern for what we’re trying to do in this campaign.”

Except for willing followers who might be persuaded by Obama’s 11th-hour realization, those who have left the Obama camp don’t seem likely to come back. The real issue has been too clearly defined now: Obama’s lingering refusal to part with Wright indicates the candidate is either too spineless to stand up to a hatemonger, or he agrees with the pastor. At this late date, how can Tuesday’s remarks be seen as anything but a desperate political maneuver?

And there may be worse up ahead. Rev. Wright wasn’t the only live grenade in the Obama bunker. Still waiting to explode is the senator’s relationship with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and indicted real estate developer Tony Rezko. Plus who knows what other time bombs may be found in Obama’s past?

If you haven’t seen Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled” yet, I highly recommend you take the opportunity.

I finally had the chance to see it, and I came away feeling that everyone should be made aware of the issues it raises. As attested by the nearly empty theater I saw it in, however, the truth is it will probably only find a small audience.

The subject of discussion in the film is the Darwinian theory of evolution and the competing theory called “intelligent design.” This in itself will keep away most people, particularly those who have been brought up to accept evolution as unquestionable fact or who have been trained by the media to view ID theory as just repackaging of a right-wing creationism.

Still more will be turned off by the derision from hard-core atheists and liberals who have labeled this film propaganda.

But those who are open-minded enough to give this film a chance will find that, while the subject discussed is Darwinism, the real topic of the movie is freedom of thought and speech.

Stein, made famous as the teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” who couldn’t get a rise out of his class (”Anybody? Anybody?”), does a good job of delving into what happens to scientists who question the prevailing academic support for evolution by daring to point out patterns they believe could point to an intelligence behind the development of life on Earth.

Stein doesn’t actually spend a lot of time delineating the differences between evolution and ID theory, nor does he dwell long on the scientific shortcomings some scientists now see with Darwinian evolution. He has bigger fish to fry.

What he does spend the first third of the film doing, however, is interviewing academics from various fields and institutions who have been punished by the scientific and academic establishments because they looked into possible evidence for intelligent design.

Unlike certain documentarians who have become wealthy and received numerous awards for their one-sided propaganda pieces, Stein actually includes numerous representatives from the evolutionary camp for balance, including the infamous Richard Dawkins and various highly trained scientists and skeptics of ID theory.

Although Stein clearly personally favors ID, the point he makes is that the freedom to pursue scientific evidence wherever it may lead, and the right to ask unpopular questions as part of scientific inquiry, is being squelched by a rigid establishment that applies scientific, academic, political, social and even legal pressure to enforce its particular worldview. (The same could be said about global warming, stem cells, cancer research or any number of other scientific issues.)

Then Stein asks the question of where such an authoritarian attitude might lead, and he finds a disturbing answer in the beliefs of the Nazis. Stein’s no fool. He points out that Darwinism in itself doesn’t lead to Nazism, but he makes a strong historical case that rigid Darwinian beliefs were certainly key components of Nazism. And he points out disturbing modern parallels, such as the “right to die” movement, or selective abortions, that can come about because of the belief that it is OK to simply get rid of the sick and unfit.

Underlying all of the discussion is the theme that this conflict between evolution and ID theorists is less scientific in nature than it is religious, but Stein makes the case that it is atheism that is the religion being promoted. In one of the most telling portions of the movie’s many interviews, Stein pins down Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion,” on how he really would feel if someone were to find persuasive evidence for design in molecular biology. Dawkins admits that he wouldn’t have a problem with the idea that life on Earth was designed, say by aliens, so long as the “designer” wasn’t God.

Whether you accept all of Stein’s points or not, his overarching theme that scientific inquiry must be open, honest and unrestricted resonates strongly in light of the issues of today. The impulse in academic, political and media circles to declare debates closed, issues resolved and consensus established, while labeling the open-minded as “deniers” or “fringe,” is totalitarian in its essence and if ignored its practitioners will only become more prevalent and determined.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor and mentor to presidential candidate Barack Obama, has come out of seclusion, doing an interview with PBS.

In bits of the interview released Thursday, Wright complained about the recent media treatment he has received that has reflected so poorly on his man Obama. Complaining that broadcasting videos of his sermons — in which he said from the pulpit, “God damn America,” “U.S. of KKK A.,” “Hillary ain’t never been called a n—–,” and other spiritually enlightening things — was “unfair” and “devious,” Wright said that he found the negative reaction to his sermons “very, very unsettling.”

“I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt — for those who were doing that — were doing it for some very devious reasons,” Wright told “Bill Moyers’ Journal.”

He also complained about the sound bites being “sermons preached 15, seven, six years ago and now becoming a media event, not the full sermon, but the snippets from the sermon.”

I recall when I used to live near a family whose teenage daughter was in a local gang and whose friends were all sorts of juvenile delinquents. The alleged adults knew what was going on, but they never stopped whining that it was just so unfair when neighbors would repeatedly report their poor little dear and her chums to the police, or when the darlings were instantly suspected whenever something was vandalized in the area.

The Rev. Wright is the same kind of sociopath. Somewhere inside he knows what a despicable anti-American, racist lout he is, but if YOU notice it, then it’s devious, unfair, unsettling and, of course, untrue. And most intelligent people can’t help but think that Obama, as Wright’s parishioner and friend for 20 years, is made in the same mold but is just better about hiding it.

No matter what the Rev. Wright or Obama say, if you are dumb enough to sell DVDs of your hate-filled rhetoric through your church gift shop, or if you are dumb enough to sit through 20 years of anti-American ranting without saying a word in protest and then to run for president, there’s nothing unfair about the media pointing it out.

Obama and his surrogate whiners need to man up.

Among the most distressing developments in the ongoing global warming hysteria is watching the continuing fall of Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the Jedi Council.

He stunned fans a year ago when, in what was supposed to be a debate with Sith puppet Sen. John Heinz Kerry, he publicly surrendered his light saber to the warm-mongers, saying global warming was real, the “crisis” had to be dealt with, apologizing for the GOP’s lack of “action,” etc. — the whole litany. It was like watching Richard the Lionheart convert to Islam.

Now he’s made a commercial with Borg Queen Nancy Pelosi (yes, I know that’s “Star Trek,” not “Star Wars” — this is a multi-conventional blog). See the commercial here.

Normally, once you go to the Dark Side, that’s it. The path back is too hard for most mortals.

However, there may be more to Newt’s story than is recognized by the leftist Sith. …

Newt has posted on his Web site the following explanation for why he participated in making the above commercial:

First of all, I want to be clear: I don’t think that we have conclusive proof of global warming. And I don’t think we have conclusive proof that humans are at the center of it.

But here’s what we do know. There is an important debate going on right now over the right energy policy, the right environmental policy, and making sure we do the right things for our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. Conservatives are missing from this debate, and I think that’s a mistake. When it comes to preserving our environment for future generations, we can’t have a slogan of “Just yell no!”

I have a different view. I think it’s important to be on the stage, to engage in the debate, and to communicate our position clearly. There is a big difference between left-wing environmentalism that wants higher taxes, bigger government., more bureaucracy, more regulation, more red tape, and more litigation and a Green Conservatism that wants to use science, technology, innovation, entrepreneurs, and prizes to find a way to creatively invent the kind of environmental future we all want to live in. Unless we start making the case for the latter, we’re going to get the former. That’s why I took part in the ad.

Is Newt a spy in the house of the Sith? Is he just playing a dangerous game?

There may be hope yet for the former Jedi master. …