brainrow

It’s official — I’m a cynic.

Gasoline prices around here have fallen more than a dollar from their all-time highs only a few weeks ago. But am I happy? No.

The oil companies know they’ve never had better friends in Washington than the Bush Administration and current Republican leadership in Congress. These politicians have swept aside environmental and consumer protections, have engineered massive giveaways of drilling rights on government land, and have peppered the tax code with countless loopholes and exemptions, all for the benefit of Big Oil.

The oil companies have been cashing in big time, but recently their giddy excess has become a burden to their friends in Washington. If the Democrats win control of Congress, might the good times be over?

There are countless forces affecting gas prices. That helps make it difficult to prove manipulation. But I feel a psychic prediction coming on: gas prices will stay low until election day, but will be significantly higher three weeks after election day than they were on election day.

We’ll see.

I’m cynical when I read this:

According to two conservative websites, White House political strategist Karl Rove has been promising GOP insiders that there will be an “October surprise” before the midterm elections.

followed by this leak:

French and U.S. officials discounted a report Saturday in a French newspaper indicating that Osama bin Laden had died of typhoid last month in a remote area of Pakistan.

It doesn’t help that the French newspaper is called L’Est Republicain.

Hey, maybe Pakistan’s recent truce with Taliban-allied militants is actually part of an elaborate ruse calculated to let Bush pull bin Laden out of a hat just before the November elections. Maybe the long trail of stumbles and fumbles has all been a ruse to lull bin Laden and al Zawahiri into a false sense of security. Gosh, I hope so.

Gary Hart suggests a different October surprise:

It should come as no surprise if the Bush Administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election.

Were these more normal times, this would be a stunning possibility, quickly dismissed by thoughtful people as dangerous, unprovoked, and out of keeping with our national character. But we do not live in normal times.

I am among those who believe that Karl Rove bugged his own office in a 1986 campaign and blamed it on the Democrats. There’s really almost nothing he wouldn’t do to win an election.

I hope his “October surprise” is more creative than launching a new war — that’s been done to death.

Hey — I just said “I hope“. Maybe I’m not a total cynic after all.