President Bush Finds A Way To Ease High Gas Prices...

......By easing environmental regulations on the oil companies so they can be more productive.

Umm, that's one way to do it, I suppose. I prefer the Democratic (sane) plan, of course.

AP: Bush Eases Environmental Rules on Gasoline

Under election-year pressure to reduce surging gasoline prices, President Bush on Tuesday halted filling of the nation's emergency oil reserve, urged the waiver of clean air rules to ease local gas shortages and called for the repeal of $2 billion in tax breaks for profit-heavy oil companies.

Still, experts said Bush's actions wouldn't have much impact on prices at the pump. The president warned that motorists would have to dig deep into their pockets all summer long...

Bush's poll numbers only had to hit 32% to get him to take notice too.

He also ordered probes into price cheating. Expect them to be a GOP partisan farce again.


"If I didn't care about the environment, I wouldn't be standing in front of this photo of a farm."

Also, Rep. Pelosi apparently ate her Wheaties yesterday as she came out swinging on this-

"Remember one thing. If you want to be energy independent, and Democrats intend to achieve that within ten years, and if you want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and therefore improve our national security situation, you can't do it if you're a Republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies. We have two oilmen in the White House. The logical follow-up from that is $3 a gallon gasoline. There is no accident. It is a cause and effect. A cause and effect. How dare the President of the United States make a speech today in April, many, many, many months after the American people have had to undergo the cost of home heating oil? A woman told me she almost fainted when she received her home heating bill over this winter. And when so many people making the minimum wage, which hasn't been raised in eight years, which has a very low purchasing power have to go out and buy gasoline at these prices. Where have you been, Mr. President? The middle class squeeze is on, competition in our country is affected by the price of energy and of oil and all of a sudden you take a trip outside of Washington, see the fact that the public is outraged about this, come home and make a speech, let's see that matched in your budget, let's see that matched in your policy, let's see that matched in and you're separating yourselves yourself from your patron- big oil- cut yourself off from that anvil holding your party down and this country down, instead of coming to Washington and throwing your Republican colleagues under the wheels of the train, which they mightily deserve for being a rubber stamp for your obscene, corrupt policy of ripping off the American people."

You go, girl.

A number of bloggers have also weighed in on this. I'll defer to them from here...
-Bush Punishes Gas Companies By Punishing The Environment (Bob Cesca)
-George Bush: Foreign Policy from God, Energy Policy from Big Oil (Arianna Huffington)
-I'm Going to Help Out the President (Cenk Uygur)

[See also previous entry- Might As Well Face It, You're Addicted To Oil]