"The United States is at a civil liberties cross-roads right only NOW instead of with passage of first USA PATRIOT ACT because the Bush Administration and certain senators like John Ensign (R-NV) and the odious Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are completely right on the issue of "oil speculation" NOT being the root cause of high gasoline prices in the US.
Melanie Morgan and John McCain are absolutely WRONG that anything Bush says an impact on the price of crude oil. We've written it before. Crude oil markets are random-variables, distributed log-normally, and this obey mean-variance behavior, meaning that what seems like large short-term changes are optical illusions. The high-level of crude prices and the high-volatility in crude markets can create big swings --$10/day either way. The natural-logarithms of the changes would not be different if oil were $30/bbl.
Melanie Morgan is just a nobody, however, who probably didn't finish high school. John McCain has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer so I don't blame them for falling for and participating in a talking-points campaign shell game. I expect a little better from Democratic Senators. I expected a lot WORSE from the Bush Administration but as the text of the NPR report shows, Republican senators Ensign (R-NV) and McConnell (R-KY) as well as the administration through the silly voice of Dana Perino are all absolutely right on this issue."
