World oil producers quake at prospect of Newt
Rick Perry, now consigned to spinning on behalf of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, this week demonstrated the energy-industry expertise he has gained during his service as Texas governor:
“As a matter of fact, perception is everything in this world we live in, and if the perception is Newt Gingrich could be the next president of the United States, that will have a worldwide effect, I will suggest to you, on the price of oil. And people who watch these markets and people who deal with these markets understand, that when you see the type of approach that he’s talking about — opening up federal lands and waters, opening up that pipeline from Canada, clearly giving incentives to drill in America for domestic energy, and then an all of the above policy, whether it’s wind or nuclear or whatever it might be — that will have a dampening effect on the cost of oil in particular and the other energy prices as well.”
That’s right, just the mere perception that Gingrich could be president would be enough to cause global oil prices to fall. But of course, in the extremely unlikely event that it did so, a lot of the higher-priced drilling operations in Perry’s home state of Texas would become uneconomical and cease operation.
Because, you know, that’s what happens. If oil drops to $70 a barrel, the incentive to look for it and drill for it falls as well, which drives the price of oil back up.
And as already documented, oil production in the United States has jumped by more than 20 percent in the last five years, while domestic consumption has fallen by more than 2 million barrels a day. Yet despite America pushing on both sides of the supply/demand equation, global oil prices have continued to rise.
Then again, those global oil prices have yet to experience the power of the Newt.
– Jay Bookman
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
554 comments Add your comment
They BOTH suck
February 24th, 2012
3:44 pm
TD
I was just joking about Lott and the incident…………. He was referencing the time Strom was a Dixicrat, but in the big pic…….. I think the “brown water” was flowing and it came out in a way that could be used against him………… I didn’t lose much sleep
And yes, like many career politicians from both sides he loved his Mississippi projects and earmarks…………
AmVet - “A lot of so-called conservatives don’t know what the word means." ~Barry Goldwater
February 24th, 2012
3:44 pm
If you can manipulate news, a judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail, a smart accountant can keep a thief from paying taxes, a smart reporter could ruin your reputation- unfairly. ~Mario Cuomo
I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories. ~Dave Barry
Bosch
February 24th, 2012
3:45 pm
Reb,
Nah, we all do it. I’d share my biscuits with you if you were here! I wouldn’t with some people here, biscuits are just too precious.
Pea,
Those aren’t real. You are eating chemicals shaped like bread.
Learn to make your own! It’s so worth it!! And you can eat them anytime!!!
DoomsDay
February 24th, 2012
3:46 pm
Thulsa, dear – Hemp? You’re my kind of radical. I’ll bring along my autographed copy of “Rules for Radicals.” For sh1ts and giggles. See ya later.
Bosch
February 24th, 2012
3:47 pm
irRational,
Go north and west….hang your head out the window and smell….you’ll make it by dinner time!
(ir)Rational
February 24th, 2012
3:47 pm
Bosch – The biscuits from Red Lobster are real. Sorta.
Seriously though, my dad does some work at the plant in Rome that makes the mix for them. Says you can’t breath in there when they’re mixing it for Red Lobster with all the spices they have floating around.
Doggone/GA
February 24th, 2012
3:50 pm
is anyone else still having problems with these blog pages jumping around? I still am, and these are the only ones that do that.
Brosephus™ - Some things simply make you think WTF??
February 24th, 2012
3:50 pm
That Guy @ 3:37
I think my neighbors heard me laugh at that one.
AmVet - “A lot of so-called conservatives don’t know what the word means." ~Barry Goldwater
February 24th, 2012
3:52 pm
No technical difficulties with the blog at AmVet World Headquarters in Doraville, Doggone.
Sometimes the site is slooooooooow to load, though…
Thulsa Doom
February 24th, 2012
3:52 pm
“Not a stretch for Reagan……he advocated for segregation in Philadelphia, Mississippi…plus check out his stance against Hispanics as Governor of California!”
Reagan did not advocate for segregation in Philadelphia, MS. That’s total BS and is just your opinion giving something that happened in Phil. decades earlier. You’re reading a lot of symbolism into it of your own accord.
Anti- Hispanic? The illegal alien amnesty under Reagan says otherwise. You bring opinion. I bring a fact.
Lott’s voting record is anti-minority…..Goldwater was anti-affirmative action and anti-civil-rights…….this is a matter of public record…….
So if someone thinks affirmative action is in fact reverse discrimination then they’re automatically racist in your world view?
If you want to take it even further….Rand and Ron Paul can be added to the list……….
And of course I guess if they don’t reflect your views, particularly on affirmative action, then they too must be racist too.
For the record I myself believe in affirmative action but like any program I think there are instances where it goes too far and ends up discriminating in reverse. But then I guess that also makes me a racist in your world view.
For once HDB you really should just drop the race baiting and quit looking for the racism boogeyman in every nook and corner and under your bed.
Common Sense isn't very Common - Papist Independent
February 24th, 2012
3:53 pm
2:24 pm
That Guy
Run for president?
Nah, I don’t have the patience to smile quietly while people attempt to dissect every single thing I’ve done in my lifetime. I don’t think many people would connect with the Angry Black Man candidate.
————————————–
It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are white.
Thulsa Doom
February 24th, 2012
3:54 pm
“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”
Doggone/GA,
I didn’t bother looking it up because from what I remembered it was very trivial. Thanks for proving my point.
Real Scootter
February 24th, 2012
3:55 pm
Doggone/GA
February 24th, 2012
3:50 pm
I’m not having any problems Doggone.
AmVet - “A lot of so-called conservatives don’t know what the word means." ~Barry Goldwater
February 24th, 2012
3:56 pm
Republicans have not connected with Hispanics; the candidates’ approaches to immigration are not compelling and lack substance, from talk of double 30-foot electrified fences to anchor babies and self-deportation. In fact, it could very well be that the 20 Arizona Latino voters on the cover of TIME and half a million more will turn out to vote in Arizona and flip the state to Obama.
Obama comes into the election with 196 electoral votes from safe Democratic states. If he takes Arizona and if Hispanic voters help him flip Missouri, which McCain won by fewer than 4,000 votes, and help him retain Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and North Carolina, then Obama wins with 279 electoral votes, nine more than the 270 needed. If he can retain Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia or Wisconsin, also populated with many Latino swing voters, then he could win in a landslide.
And lest we forget that rotten apples don’t fall far from the tree…
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/424816_346648708699731_174612345903369_1059648_579031809_n.jpg
Thulsa Doom
February 24th, 2012
3:56 pm
Doomsday,
Otay. I’ll bring the turner diaries for you to read. See ya tonight!
Thulsa Doom
February 24th, 2012
3:58 pm
@ 3:50,
Most likely operator error ma’am.
Thulsa Doom
February 24th, 2012
4:03 pm
They BOTH Suck,
I missed that on Lott but as I said I just found the man to be a despicable POS. Now HDB may in fact be right and perhaps he is a closet racist which would make him even worse of a man. It really wouldn’t surprise me at all. I just don’t think its something she can prove with one statement that doesn’t really prove anything. I’m just glad the man left Congress a long time ago. People like him are the whole problem with Congress and have been for awhile.
HDB
February 24th, 2012
4:04 pm
Thulsa Doom
February 24th, 2012
3:52 pm
Doom…Reagan said: “I believe in states’ rights.”; that statement was the covert way of supporting segregation. I’m not the only one who believes that…..
….from Slate:
”
In its simplest form, this multitiered message relied on code words. No one who used the phrase “states’ rights” in living memory of the massive resistance movement against forced desegregation could be unaware of the message of solidarity it sent to Southern whites about civil rights. (The phrase, of course, had been bound up with racism at least since John Calhoun championed it in his defense of slavery in the 1830s.) But because the term also connoted a general opposition to the growth of the federal government’s role in economic life, nonracist whites could comfort themselves that politicians like Nixon and Reagan were using it innocently—and thus shrug off any guilt they might feel for being complicit in racist campaigning. It was a dog whistle to segregationists. In the same vein, Reagan’s use of phrases linked to insidious racial stereotypes—his talk of Cadillac-driving welfare queens, or “young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps—pandered to bigots while making sure not to alienate voters whom starker language would have scared away.
More important, even where code words weren’t at work, Reagan’s very ideology contained a strong dose of racial conservatism. On one issue after another, Reagan’s image and appeal was shot through with a hostility to assisting minorities with positive measures—affirmative action, legal protections for criminal defendants, welfare programs (which mainly helped whites but were perceived as mainly helping blacks). As a standard-bearer of the conservative movement, the Edsalls have written, Reagan in 1980 “revived the sharply polarized racial images of the two parties … with racial conservatism contributing decisively to the GOP advantage.”
As Crespino notes, the triumph of the civil rights movement and its assumptions about racial equality forced conservative Southerners to find other issues with which to galvanize voters. On these fronts, too, racial politics nonetheless shaped the debate. Southern candidates created private religious schools, for example, that could escape court-ordered integration, thus recasting the fight as one of religious freedom. In my own research, I’ve found that today’s right-wing attacks on the “liberal media” have roots in George Wallace’s relentless war in the early 1960s against the national news agencies whose reporters, he and other Southern whites believed, distorted the terms of their struggle to maintain Jim Crow.
The upshot was that by 1980, race and ideology had become so commingled that one’s stand on racial issues served as a proxy for one’s partisan preference. Previously, economic issues had been the chief dividing line between the parties. By 1980, though, according to the Edsalls, the changes that followed the civil rights movement had crystallized, and racial politics figured just as strongly. Almost 69 percent of the public, for example, thought the Democrats were likely to aid minorities, compared with just about 11 percent who thought the same of the Republicans. Conversely, roughly 66 percent thought the GOP “unlikely” to aid minorities, while about 12 percent said the same of the Democrats. Even talking about domestic government spending carried a tacit racial message, since public opposition to spending was highest and most intense when it came to programs devoted to the needy and to blacks. By contrast, support for government spending on Social Security, education, health care, and the environment remained robust even during the heyday of Reaganism.
Building on the efforts of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon before him, as well as of a generation of Southern Republican leaders, Reagan succeeded in altering the terms of political debate when it came to race. Stripping away the crude bigotry that had cost the white South the rest of nation’s sympathy in the 1950s and 1960s, he and other conservative political leaders fashioned an ideology in which racial politics were implicit, and yet still powerful. Ever since, their followers have been able to indignantly claim that any allegations of racism are smears and slurs—and discredit the entire discussion by making it about personal prejudice rather than public policy.”
As I stated, check Reagan’s history as Governor….check his anti-Hispanic measures when Cesar Chavez wanted to organize the grape pickers into the Farmworkers’ Union……..there’s more than you realize……that’s also fact!!
I can deal with someone who opposed affirmative action on certan legal principles…..but that was not the case with the Pauls!
I don’t have to look for a boogey man….he makes himself quite evident on his own…….
Thulsa Doom
February 24th, 2012
4:14 pm
HDB,
Well allrighty then. You and a magazine arbitraily decided that if you support states rights against an all powerful central govt then you automatically support segregation. Otay. You just made a bigger leap than Carl Lewis in the long jump in the 84 olympics. Plenty of conservative politicians today who want a less intrusive, less powerful, less expensive and smaller federal govt. Does that make them also racists?
Don’t know much about the Pauls except that I’ve heard Ron called crazy on foreign policy and a few other things. Have never ever heard anyone on here or anywhere else assert that they were racists. You are the only one to suggest this. Therefore it has no credibility with me.
The racist boogeyman makes himself quite aware to you? Yes. I’m sure this happens every day to you.
Brosephus™ - Some things simply make you think WTF??
February 24th, 2012
4:17 pm
NoCom
Why you gotta out me like that!!??
Doggone/GA
February 24th, 2012
4:21 pm
“I didn’t bother looking it up because from what I remembered it was very trivial. Thanks for proving my point”
It would appear from what happened afterwards, that the Republican establishment didn’t find it QUITE as innocuous as you do.
Oscar
February 24th, 2012
4:22 pm
Thulsa Doom
When people complain about a powerful central government in the south it ususally goes back to the sixties, the civil rights act and other efforts of the governemnt to end discrimination. They even forced the south to let blacks vote. That’s why people who talk about big government are accused of racism.
Now, there are people who are opposed to other laws regarding the environment and waste in governement programs. Feds even force companies that own mines to observe safety codes and food producers to provide safe food for us to eat and clean water to drink. Obviously, everyone reasonable would be against those things (sarcasm)
You are just being jugded guilty by association.
Common Sense isn't very Common - Papist Independent
February 24th, 2012
4:28 pm
Bro – you gotta come out of the closet sometime
Brosephus™ - Some things simply make you think WTF??
February 24th, 2012
4:30 pm
If I come out of the closet, then who’s gonna make people afraid of things that go bump in the night? Somebody has to be the monster hiding in the closet.
ODD OWL
February 24th, 2012
4:38 pm
The wall st. hedge fund managers are playing the oil and gas, option futures market and artificially driving up oil and gas prices.. Why ??? Because Republicans blocked Democrats Congressional legislation that would have regulated the option market and prevented the hedge fund managers from ripping off the American people… Republican obstructionism… Bibi Netanyahu and the Zionist occupiers are destabilizing the whole Middle East by beating the war drums against Iran and the Palestinians.. Bibi Netanyahu hate President Obama and he and the land grabbing Israelis will do anything to prevent the President from being re-elected… The Zionist Amen corner… These are the reasons why oil prices are going through the roof and gasoline cost more than $4.00 a gallon…
Common Sense isn't very Common - Papist Independent
February 24th, 2012
4:46 pm
Bro – I saw those pictures the other day with a beautiful little girl, but who was the guy?
The necktie was a dead giveaway it wasn’t you.
Towncrier
February 24th, 2012
4:51 pm
“Stripping away the crude bigotry that had cost the white South the rest of nation’s sympathy in the 1950s and 1960s, he and other conservative political leaders fashioned an ideology in which racial politics were implicit, and yet still powerful. Ever since, their followers have been able to indignantly claim that any allegations of racism are smears and slurs—and discredit the entire discussion by making it about personal prejudice rather than public policy.”
Many of my forbears were born and raised in the south (unlike me) and from some of them have gained an idea of what true racism smells and feels like. I simply don’t see it in Reagan, try as you might to persuade people to that view. I think it might be fair to claim that there was some residual conscious or subconscious bigotry in many white politicians of earlier decades, but that is not the same as being racist. I mean, I suppose it could be argued LBJ was racist (from presidential recordings and other biographical evidence) but he did sign the Civil Rights Act into law, so I am not ready to call him one.
Brosephus™ - Some things simply make you think WTF??
February 24th, 2012
4:55 pm
NoCom
Unfortunately, it was me. One of very few times I’d be caught wearing a tie. If I would have had my way, I would have probably been in jeans and a polo shirt, but the lady was not having it.
Towncrier
February 24th, 2012
4:56 pm
“Lott said: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”
If nothing else, Lott demonstrated in that single pronouncement a decided lack of judgement. I wish I could feel confident that most of our leaders in Washington had considerably more of it.
Joe Hussein Mama
February 24th, 2012
4:58 pm
Towncrier — “You seem to evoke the worst in me and I suspect I do the same in you.”
I think that’s the first thing you’ve said with which I agree unreservedly.
They BOTH suck
February 24th, 2012
5:01 pm
Towncrier
While I do not believe Reagan to be a racist, I do think the announcement to run in Philadelphia, MS was probably made by his campaign and it could have been a continued play for southern white voters via the Southern Strategy that had been employed since the late 60s throughout the south…….. with much success
Strange with the history in that town and Reagan living in Bel Air and Santa Barbara that he would make his announcement in MS if there was no play at all on the Southern Strategy.
Of course I could be totally wrong and he just so happened to be a regular in that town or it was picked out of a hat with the names of 100s of other towns
Racist……. no
A subtle continuation of the Southern Strategy that 2 of the last 3 RNC Chairmen have apologize for on the behalf of the Republican Party???? …………. possibility
Joe Hussein Mama
February 24th, 2012
5:01 pm
Peadawg — “Olive Garden”
YACK
Common Sense isn't very Common - Papist Independent
February 24th, 2012
5:02 pm
Totally off subject
Would the right wing be pro-choice IF prenatal testing could determine if a fetus was going to turn out gay?
Joe Hussein Mama
February 24th, 2012
5:10 pm
Papist Independent — “Would the right wing be pro-choice IF prenatal testing could determine if a fetus was going to turn out gay?”
I don’t think so. I think they’d try to do some sort of intervention, and I think you’d see spurious ‘prescriptions’ and programs advanced by hucksters on the Right to supposedly turn gay kids straight as early as possible in their lives. I don’t think the Right would start advocating abortion just because some sort of in-utero ‘who’s gay’ test became widely available.
I have a large extended family; my mom is one of nine kids and I’m in the middle of a pack of over 20 first cousins on my mom’s side. I clearly recall seeing and hearing my grandmother correct my litttle left-handed first and second cousins when they picked up a Crayola in their chubby little left fists. Granny apparently thought there was something wrong with being a left-hander (I never understood it, since Grandpa and most of Mom’s brothers were lefties), and so she tried to ‘train it out’ of her grandkids and great-grandkids.
I imagine that righties who had a problem with having gay kids would do something similar.
Common Sense isn't very Common - Papist Independent
February 24th, 2012
5:14 pm
Joe – you’re probably right, I can just see Michelle Bachmann leading in the endevour of training the kids from birth.
Towncrier
February 24th, 2012
5:22 pm
“While I do not believe Reagan to be a racist, I do think the announcement to run in Philadelphia, MS was probably made by his campaign and it could have been a continued play for southern white voters via the Southern Strategy that had been employed since the late 60s throughout the south…….. with much success”
Perhaps so. I think the heartening thing is that bigotry and racism has palpably declined in the last 50 years. While some of the changes I see in our society alarm me, it is interesting to see so many of our youth acting as if they were color blind.
Orange12
February 24th, 2012
5:25 pm
$3.65 per gallon at the Quick Trip. That’s a 10 cent increase in 24 hrs.
They BOTH suck
February 24th, 2012
5:25 pm
“While some of the changes I see in our society alarm me, it is interesting to see so many of our youth acting as if they were color blind.”
TC…….. I can agree. Some changes have been good and getting better while there are things that should cause people to at least be alarmed as to what is occurring.
Thanks for the feedback.
You have a great weekend
GT
February 24th, 2012
5:45 pm
The power of Newt now there is a bumper sticker for the ages. He lowers the price to 70 dollars a barrel and even the fracking business shuts down. But to make this happen Newt has to either become dictator of the world or get along with people. Neither is going to happen. The man can’t even keep a wife. I imagine the same tension that exist today will triple and prices will too. One thing Iraq taught us these people don’t scare as easy in real life as they do in the movies
Fred ™
February 24th, 2012
5:45 pm
ragnar danneskjold
February 24th, 2012
1:27 pm
Dear Fred @ 1:22, I did not mean to suggest that struggling through Econ 101 would make you less ridiculous, just that you would sound less ridiculous.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Silence is all that would make you look less ridiculous. Your obvious parroting of folks who talk about things you have no clue of is apparent by your misuse of the stolen material.
Towncrier
February 24th, 2012
5:50 pm
“Granny apparently thought there was something wrong with being a left-hander (I never understood it, since Grandpa and most of Mom’s brothers were lefties), and so she tried to ‘train it out’ of her grandkids and great-grandkids.”
Dunno, but it may be because the meaning of sinistra (the etymological root of the word “sinsister”) in Latin means left-handed. Just a thought. If memory serves, graduating high school students at one time needed to know both Greek and Latin. I believe I read that in connection with Naismith’s story.
Towncrier
February 24th, 2012
5:50 pm
“You have a great weekend.”
Thank you, TBS. I wish you the same.
Joe Hussein Mama
February 24th, 2012
5:54 pm
Towncrier — “Dunno, but it may be because the meaning of sinistra (the etymological root of the word “sinsister”) in Latin means left-handed. Just a thought. If memory serves, graduating high school students at one time needed to know both Greek and Latin. I believe I read that in connection with Naismith’s story.”
I suspect my grandmother didn’t go to high school, or at least didn’t complete it. She was married at 15, which is what folks did in that part of Appalachia — get married young and then pump out younguns.
I imagine it may have been some folk belief or superstition that she held.
Brosephus™
February 24th, 2012
6:04 pm
$3.65 per gallon at the Quick Trip. That’s a 10 cent increase in 24 hrs.
That free market’s kicking ass!!!
Fred ™
February 24th, 2012
6:17 pm
What’s with all these pantywaist Republicans crying for a socialist take over of the oil market?
Common Sense isn't very Common - Papist Independent
February 24th, 2012
6:23 pm
Another reason gas prices are increasing is that speculators are borrowing at extremely low rates to fund the speculation in oil futures.
Fred ™
February 24th, 2012
6:37 pm
Common Sense isn’t very Common – Papist Independent
February 24th, 2012
6:23 pm
Another reason gas prices are increasing is that speculators are borrowing at extremely low rates to fund the speculation in oil futures.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Isn’t that the ultimate rape in this whole game of bend over while we stick it in and break it off?
Common Sense isn't very Common - Papist Independent
February 24th, 2012
6:50 pm
Fred – yes it is, but some would rather blame OBAMA
Orange12
February 24th, 2012
8:51 pm
“That free market’s kicking ass!!!”
Yeah, kicking our ass!!!
independent thinker
February 25th, 2012
6:03 am
All that mental flatulence of Newt, Perry, Cain, Limbaugh, Hannity, and other right wing mouthpieces could be harnessed as alternative energy. That too should bring the price of oil down.
Paddy O
February 26th, 2012
2:31 am
The oil market is not a free market. It has been cornered by Goldman Sachs. also, the oil industry is perceived as being predominantly verticallly integrated. Exxon drills for oil. Exxon sells to consumers. Does Exxon own ANY refineries? If so, why are they selling on the open market?
Paddy O
February 26th, 2012
2:34 am
Why do the governed permit the contrived gov’t to manipulate their behavior? Speeding tickets without a crash? Tickets for not using a seat belt? No knock warrants to bust a drug house? Probable cause can not actually be determined by a police officer.
Paddy O
February 26th, 2012
2:35 am
Where do you think all those traders manipulating the power grid at Enron went after enron collapsed? What % had their trading license revoked permanently?
Mighty Righty
February 26th, 2012
9:37 am
“Because, you know, that’s what happens. If oil drops to $70 a barrel, the incentive to look for it and drill for it falls as well, which drives the price of oil back up.”
The above economic truth doesn’t seem to apply to Obama’s green energy venture capital cronyism. But then the Obama green energy program is merely a way to launder tax money into his campaign coffers by using green energy as an excuse tro pay off big donors. Borrow from the chinese, give the money to donors in the form of governent grants and the benefactors donate a percentage of that money back to the president. What a country. Let the future yet to be born pay for Obama’s personal ideaology.