Hey now.   Work has been dead, so in between texting and reading CNN on the phone, i've just been listening to the radio and jotting down different stuff.   Mostly ideas for jokes but I had a doozy of a theory today.  Over the next couple of minutes, I'm going to lay out for you why the Republicans doomed their chances in the South East region for the next few election cycles.  At least 2, could be more.


First, you have to understand that for years now, no president has ever been able to win an election without winning the south.  The south, for the most part, decides the election.  Scary thought, I know.  We're good people, honest.  Its just the stupid ones who make it on camera.   Anyways, back to the (R)'s shooting themselves in the feet.  Since 2003 we've been bent over the more and more expensive barrel of oil that we were promised would go to $22.   Rupert Murdoch, owner of Newscorp, said oil would go to $22 if we went into Iraq.   He just left off the 1 in-between the $ and 2.  Oil skyrocketed. 

Oil companies made more money because the product was skyrocketing in price, without a drastic jump in the cost of extraction.   Everyone at the companies were making money.  So mid-late July, the commodities bubble popped and Oil started its crash back downwards.  If you have a company that takes one product, turns it in to another, then sells it to a buyer on a regular basis, thats all you do, you would be doing what the gasoline refineries do.  It cost them a certain ammount to refine the crude oil into gasoline.  If the price of the oil that they're refining is going down, when they're continuing to refine and charge companies what it was earlier in the week, the refinery is making money.  Imagine your profit margin shooting up if the base cost of your products went from $147 to $90?   Now realize that your charging your customers what it cost you to refine the gasoline, at $125.   And it costs you $90.

Hey man, its just greed.   Just a little of the ol' green eyed monster.  He rears his head every now and then.   The oil comapnies did it for 5 years, the refineries got to do it this summer.   Why?  We had a hurricane.  A couple.  Some that brushed the platforms in the gulf, but mostly Ike who got a running start and plowed into Galveston.  Dumping as much as 8-10" of rain.  What does all this have to do with the Republicans shooting themselves in the foot?   I'm getting to it.   Just be patient :)

For weeks leading up to Ike, oil companies had been slimming production output at the refineries, citing problems with those unsinkable oil platforms of theirs in the gulf.  You know, the ones that didn't have any major spills* during Katrina.  They had problems with the pipelines and the platforms in the gulf, so they decided they needed to scale back production.   When you cut your customers off from the product that they buy, you are able to charge more for your product.  Less of it on the market, so the price goes up.  Gas was going up for a week before the Hurricane hit.  When Ike came, it shut down the refineries totally.  For the country, this isn't that big a deal.  For the already-in-a-recession South East US, who was already having a hard time getting along as it is, now they have no gasoline, this was the knockout punch.

Let me clarify the bolded statement.  Since gasoline has been going up in late 2002/2003, the south has been deteriorating more and more.  When gasoline hit $4 a gallon, we were on the tipping point of a depression.  Companies are withdrawing business operations daily.  The regions largest automobile dealer, Bill Heard, closed all of its operations and close to 10,000 people are now without jobs.  Manufacturing jobs that have resided here because of the already-cheap wages are now outsourcing because thats the only way they can keep their company above water.  The economy has been bad.  Those of you in other parts of the country should consider yourself lucky.

When Ike came and shut down refinery capacity all together, you might as well have started sawing off the states, Bugs Bunny style in an attempt to get us away from the rest of the country.   The refineries in Galveston supply the entire SE with its fuel.  The Entire South East.   No gasoline.   No gas.  People already have to go to work wondering whether they have a job, now they have to go to work wondering whether they have a job, and wondering where the hell they can find gas to fill up their car, which is now $6 dollars a gallon when they can find it.

Our economy is done.  We are finished.  If we see a turn-around in 5 years I would be surprised.  The only sort of relief Florida will see at all is when the housing market bottoms out.  People love bargins, and people love Florida.  We're safe in that sense, but the rest of the region is done.  All because of some greed.   The ol' green eyed monster.   Those in power knowingly let Oil get artificially inflated in price, making everyone in the know a metric assload of money.   Then they made money shorting it.  Then the REFINERIES made their money through a natural disaster.  Now the gas stations are making money by continuing to hold the price up.  Oil is $91.48 right now.  You know how much gas was at that level?  Around $2.70.  Cheapest I can find here is $3.39, which I payed yesterday.  $0.70 increase in price per gallon?  Are you freaking kidding me?   What's the justification?  Its not taxes, the taxes haven't changed.   Its not the ethanol, thats supposed to make it cheaper, remember?  Once again, it boils back down to the most basic of words associated with these oil companies: greed.   Ol' Greeny.

So, your saying by now (If you stuck around this long), "What does all this have to do with the Republicans shooting themselves in the feet?"   Simple.   We in my beloved region do not forget so easily those who screwed us.  Of course there will be those who turn both blind eyes to the facts and continue to support these crooks.  Thats fine.  I'm not one to tell you how to vote.   How ever, these "Joe Sixpacks" that Sarah Palin keeps talking about are sitting in their living room, with a Single 24oz can because they can't afford a 6 pack anymore, saying "What in the hell do you have in common with me?"  Greed has caused these people to mortgage their own futures.  They love money so much that they would alienate the people that put them in office, to screw them some more and make a little bit more on their backs.  There are plenty of people in the region who might've gone along with the conservative movement because they bought the bullshit, hook line and sinker.  Those people are also smart enough to realize that they've just been bullshitted, and they're not going to allow that anymore.  Barack is going to be elected president in November, and after 4 years he's going to win in the biggest landslide re-election that my generation will see.  This election is already close because mainly, of the southeast.  We're ignorant.  God bless us, but we're kinda stupid.  When they see that Obama isn't a secret terrorist muslim trying to become president to enslave the whites as payback for slavery... they're going to vote him in ASA Fuckin' P because they can see a return to the Democratic Party of FDR.  The South East was a stronghold of the Democrats for years.  The Jim Crowe era did a number on us, but I think we're just about ready to check back into the game for the Democrats.

Florida's going to go for Obama.  I have a sneaking suspicion Georgia will too.  You watch though...  Republicans will be shooting themselves in the foot for letting gas get to $6 bucks a gallon in this region.   We're gonna remember that for a long time to come, fuckers. 

By the way, that took forever and 9 days.  I started writing this at 9:19 am and its 9:59 now... so I appreciate you sticking around and reading it.  If not and you bailed out, totally understand.   Revising it I was even wanting to shoot me.

*Major spills is defined as losing more than 250,000 barrels of oil, many many many platforms lost 80-125,000 barrels of oil during Katrina