Things I’d Like to Post About Today ….. (072208, Morning)

But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

(Some final closet cleaning [until the darn thing fills up again when I'm not looking], and some other more recent items)

• Cincy gas prices are down about 4% from a week ago, and (not pictured) more like 5% from 8-9 days ago:

  

  All 15 low-end listings at the site are $3.78 or lower.

  Of course, President Bush’s Executive Order, his release of 3.9 million acres in Alaska for immediate access, the building pressure on Congress to get off their collective butts, and the fact that Congress has to proactively renew a drilling ban that expires on September 30 have nothing to do with any of this (/sarc).

• BothWaysBarack — Well done.
• Back to gas and oil — If there was time, this would be a NewsBusters post. The AP’s Andrew Taylor deceptively used different rules for disclosing time frames to (in my opinion) deliberately hide a very important point:
  

  Dems try to spur oil exploration on available land

  …… Democrats pointed out that any new offshore leasing — sought by the administration, most Republicans and some Democrats — would not produce oil for a decade or so and therefore would not effect (sic) today’s $4-plus per gallon gasoline prices.

  ….. Bush this week lifted an executive prohibition on drilling for oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf. He acknowledged that getting any oil to market would take a lot of time. An annual ban by Congress remains in place.

  The time frame in the FT.com article about the 3.9 million freed-up acres (since sent behind the subscription wall) was something like “a few years.” In fact, a third graf excerpted at another blog (sorry, I lost track of it) before the wall came up says that “the Alaskan land that will now be offered requires no other approvals and will be up for leasing in the autumn.” Beyond that, Captain Ed at Hot Air cites a New York Times article noting that production could begin there as early as 2010 (”2010 to2012,” per the Times).

  I believe Taylor avoided being specific about the Alaskan acreage because he didn’t want to dilute the Democrats’ totally bogus “10-year” talking point.

  The AP demonstrates once again that it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.

• It will be a test of US media interest in accuracy and completeness to see if they report this item noted at Spiegel Online (HT Hot Air) relating to the world tour currently being taken by the presidential candidate I refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama – Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) — “Is Obama Speech Site Contaminated by Nazi Past?” I expect them to flunk the test, and not report it.
• I knew that the welfare (”Benefit”) system in the UK has a lot of free riders, but …. wow:
  

  In February government welfare adviser David Freud suggested less than a third of the 2.7 million people claiming the benefit were doing so legitimately.

• Barack Obama’s home city of Chicago is so out of control (HT Tom Elia via Michelle Malkin) that “Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Wednesday raised the possibility of bringing in state troopers or even the Illinois National Guard.” This is the price the Second City is paying for years of overaggressive gun control, which Barack Obama supported wholeheartedly until his post-Heller decision flip-flop — one of 34 you can find at Weapons of Mass Discussion’s Flip-Flop Collection (See Update 9 at that post, or go here for a fuller description).
• This Reuters item about what Iraqis think of Obama seems like a cross between The Onion and a DNC press release. Michael M. Bates at NewsBusters reported over the weekend that the wire service put out a Kill Alert on it, but it is not known why. Nor is it known why the “killed” story still hasn’t been taken down as of 7 AM this morning, with no noticeable changes.