What Senator Clinton is saying, combined with the very real possibility that she could become president would scare me if it wasn't for the fact that we all know she's just blowing political smoke.

Does anyone, even the people she's trying to convince think this is a good idea?

I think it is at best symbolic, and at worst a pander, but in the end unlikely to every actually pass a Clinton Whitehouse.

Production drop off is frieghtening, but the eventual bubble burst of this speculative oil boom will be far more disturbing.

Imagine if we get 1.50 gasoline again? So much for those priuses.

But then again, the more SUV's sold the faster we will run out of oil, and the faster we'll have to adjust our lifestyles and livelyhoods.

who knows, we may finally have full employment as professional bicycle generator oporator becomes a great way to earn a buck without a great deal of education.

And then we can fear the day when the bicyclaists union goes on strike.

Demand for gasoline has fallen, but the price of the commodity continues to rise due to speculative trading by the cow boy investors who have been screwing up economies with get rich quick schemes since the well since someone figured out that the price of goods periodically fluctuate.

Because demand is falling, refiners have been in a pickle lately. They buy the oil at a price, but when they try to sell it for a profit the demand isn't there.

Refiners margins are the lowest they been in years right now, and that puts a differnt twist on this whole discussion.

The FTC can look for "price gouging" (oh and exactly what will the cost of these watch dogs be? more than the windfall boon they collect I assume, especially since that's supposed to fix our roads) but will it find it if refiners can honestly show their low margins of late, and argue that now that there is room to (with the lowering of taxes) they can actually operate as a healthy business again by raising the price of gas?

You know, if the populist fantasy of "Big Oil" where a dozen fat capitalist sit in an ivory lined board room and set the prices for gasoline, this would all be much easier. Instead you have a complex system of coroporations and independent producers, refiners, and speculators all with a hand in how the gas gets from Canada (where much of our foreign oil comes from) to Detroit.

The thrust of this idea is based entirely on a fantasy of villians and innocents, and it's not only wrong, it is the biggest Fairy Tale in this entire campaign.

I'm really starting to get very zen on this whole thing.

The whirring, the buzzing, the clicking of talking heads and the like, it's all just starting to become a gentle hum in the background, significant, but utterly meaningless in the grand scheme.

One of two qualified candidates will be nominated, I will vote for that person, and the rest of the country will make their decision as well.

The democratic candidate may lose for any number of reasons, and so might the republican.

It is all meaningless until the moment passes.

Tomorrow, at 9:00 PM or so, reports will be filed, predictions made, and the outcome will be what it is.

Nothing bad will happen to the Democratic party or the country in this process that they do not cause them selves. If the party fractures it is because it was broke long before this election. If the American people call for four more years of the same, that too is their will, and was so likely before Iowa, or at least since the surge.

It is still very likely that the Democrat will win, regardless of his or her name, but if they do not it is not the end, only a new begining.

Those of us who have cast our votes already have been heard, and now it is others turn to do so as well, and after them, the next and the next until November.

After November George W. Bush will still be our President until January, and regardless of the outcome we will all be hopefull that whomever occupies the White House next will be a better, wiser, and more capable leader.

That my choice or your choice, or anothers is the eventual winner matters little. We will all be hoping, and some of us will be praying, that the next person will be above all else wise in their decisions.

That is all we can ask for, and all I hope for at this time.