Under the EPA’s new mileage-rating system, the window labels of 2008 cars and light trucks will drop between 10 and 20 percent for city driving and 5 and 15 percent for highway. For hybrids, watch out: The estimated city mileage will plummet 20 to 30 percent.

Sticker Shock – Popular Science
Apparently the testing regime is being amended to include “cold-weather conditions; higher speeds and more rapid acceleration; and the use of air-conditioning”, all of which disadvantage the hybrids.
K-Street strikes again…

Posted by: PeeDee | Apr 26 2006 23:00 utc | 3

whoops…I see below that Bernhard has already captured the relevant quotes.

Posted by: galloping cat | Apr 27 2006 2:53 utc | 5

Just like Reagan’s 1980’s crack pipeline, (that began the collapse of the American Dream), ol’ George Bush is the pimp for the Big Oil Cartel, buying oil in US$’s, underproducing gasoline for US demand. When Saddam dumped too much ‘crack’ crude on the market in 1990, and again in 2000, George’s Cartel rounded up his militia. $15 a barrel?! Not on my watch! Off they rode to make the “hit”, no different than the Kali Cartel.
There is plenty of oil in the world, plenty of gas, (so much so that they’ve been burning it off at the wellhead), and plenty of gasoline, except in the US, where, instead of making investment in reliable, competitive, been around for twenty years low-sulfur fuel process, Big Oil chose to bid up the price of sweet crude and reward investors with the profits. And … they were right! Kill off Saddam, get rid of cheap crude, don’t build refinery processing capacity, and you can get any price for gasoline you want.
Then Bush pushes that profit margin even higher by offering tax rebates to businesses that buy heavy pickups and SUV gas guzzlers! In effect, WE are subsidizing overconsumption, and paying out directly to international passive investors.
New Motto on Bernanke’s NotGeld US$100 bills:
E Pluribus Six Kinds of Stupid
You couldn’t dream a grand con up like this in China, and they’re a martial economy! The only difference is Americans are fool-me-twice’er’s, preferring to bid up the price of everything, and watch the value of their $’s tank, rather than solve the simple oil equation. Fire Bush!
Why do we let Bush run his illegal war, and nobody calls him on it, nobody says, this is treason and a war crime. AIPIC are abetting a war crime, and every media pundit who says Iran is next is a war criminal also. Fire Bush’s ass!
Why do we let Cheney run his illegal con, no-bid contracts to his own company that he still gets a salary from and still holds stock options in! The US embassy in Iraq, that should have cost $300M, and bid at $600M, is already at $1,200M and it’s only 1/3 complete. Fire Cheney’s ass! He made $160,000 today on his HAL stock alone!
He made $8,800,000 last year, after writeoffs!
Why do we let Rumsfeld run his illegal spy ring? He doesn’t have the right to run the CIA as his private spy network. He doesn’t have the right to put listening stations in every telephone exchange in the US. It’s treason, and it’s an aid and abetment to a war crime. Fire his ass!
Fire Condi Rice’s ass! Everything Iran is doing, Israel has already done! She has no legal basis to make the claims she’s making. None! What she is doing conflating Iran and ignoring Israel is aiding and abetting a war crime. Fire her ass!

Posted by: Periwinkle White | Apr 27 2006 4:45 utc | 7

re gas – Peri is referring to huge amounts of nat gas burned off in Alaska and Africa because there is no means to transport. The amounts are staggering. sorry no time for a link. However, it is not easy to transport.
The “plenty of oil” statement I’m not so sure about. I think oil shale will be a boondoggle. Tar sands will not be as big a boondoggle, but only Canada and Venezuela have those, unfortunately for U.S.

Posted by: correlator | Apr 27 2006 16:53 utc | 9

wapo: Going a Short Way to Make a Point

“Since George Bush and Dick Cheney took over as president and vice president, gas prices have doubled!” charged Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), standing at an Exxon station on Capitol Hill where regular unleaded hit $3.10. “They are too cozy with the oil industry.”
She then hopped in a waiting Chrysler LHS (18 mpg) — even though her Senate office was only a block away.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) used a Hyundai Elantra to take the one-block journey to and from the gas-station news conference. He posed in front of the fuel prices and gave them a thumbs-down. “Get tough on big oil!” he demanded of the Bush administration.
By comparison, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) was a model of conservation. She told a staffer idling in a Jetta to leave without her, then ducked into a sushi restaurant for lunch before making the journey back to work.
At about the same time, House Republicans were meeting in the Capitol for their weekly caucus (Topic A: gas). The House driveway was jammed with cars, many idling, including eight Chevrolet Suburbans (14 mpg).
America may be addicted to oil, as President Bush puts it. But America is in the denial phase of this addiction — as evidenced by the behavior of its lawmakers. They have proposed all kinds of solutions to high gas prices: taxes on oil companies, domestic oil drilling and releasing petroleum reserves. But they ignore the obvious: that Americans drive too much in too-big cars.

sure, pick on the legislators by all means, but funny how milbank failed to mention the 14-vehicle motorcade that the guy playing the role of the president travels around in to make speechs acknowledging that the u.s. has an addiction to oil & he’s looking for ways to do something about it.

Posted by: b real | Apr 27 2006 18:28 utc | 11

There is plenty of oil in the world, plenty of gas, (so much so that they’ve been burning it off at the wellhead), and plenty of gasoline, except in the US, where, instead of making investment in reliable, competitive, been around for twenty years low-sulfur fuel process, Big Oil chose to bid up the price of sweet crude and reward investors with the profits. And … they were right! Kill off Saddam, get rid of cheap crude, don’t build refinery processing capacity, and you can get any price for gasoline you want.
No!
Look at it this way. High gas prices in the States are murdering Bush + Cheney etc. They would do anything to get them down, and have tried hard, are set on going so far as to implement Frenchy type moves – hinting at evil globalcorp, price gouging, investigation is needed…pandering of course but powerless they are. Meeting with Saudi…No soap.
They don’t need those ‘profits’ and as far as I can see they don’t particulrarly benefit directly, though that might warrant some footnotes.
Economist like to talk about demand outstripping supply. Silly economics 101 nonsense, as by definition, demand cannot ever be greater than supply. (There is no rational way to calculate it.) All that means is that parties will compete for scarce resources, they will pay and pay through the nose for what they want.
So prices rise. That is the free market.
Iraq oil – doing terrible bad. Iran oil – doing bad and possibly shut off in the future. Venezuela – making threats. Nigeria – a hopeless mess. Putin – putting the grips on things and getting his revenge on the US. Saudi – compliant but making noises, since 3 years now, about how they do their best yet cannot do more, better. Iran – sees an opportunity.
In early 2003, barrel of oil was (always rough) 20 dollaris, now in 2006, 70 or more dollaris.
All this is very alarming, and the guys in suits on the phones gesticulate, hope to go home at the end of the year with a bonus, flowers for their wives.
How much of the rise in price is due to US blundering, and others encouraging it (strategic moves: .. just one way to stop the US from nuking the rest of the world..) and real scarcity due to peak oil?
It hardly matters any longer, and is not really possible to sort it all out. The US, for example, is ‘wasting’ its oil on the military which uses a huge amount, aiming to occupy a country that should potentially furnish more black gold… huh…
Gamblers know about that….
Peak oil is a geological fact. Tar sands, wind farms, hybrid cars, none of it will make a whit of difference.
Bush (Clinton, Kissinger, Bresinski (sp), Gates, Soros, Allbright, Chirac, Putin, Iran pres.) all know it.
End game times.

Posted by: Noisette | Apr 27 2006 19:49 utc | 13

I haven’t been in a car, not once for any reason, in 13 years.
super wow

Posted by: annie | Apr 27 2006 21:54 utc | 15

@sloth an afterthought: doncha love “organic” produce flown 1500 miles from the S Hemi? might as well be marinated in jet kerosene. and how about “eco tourism” — if you use a plane to get there, wtf does the “eco” mean?
what is it about “game over, reset,” that we don’t understand?

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 27 2006 22:02 utc | 17

I haven’t been in a car, not once for any reason, in 13 years.
I would guess there are probably a couple billion people in the world that can make that statement.

Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 27 2006 22:27 utc | 19

Wow! I myself have not been in a car in say, oh, I don’t know, about 13 seconds. (<---not proud just truthful). I blame the system. No really, the urban system. I can't for the life of me figure out why amtrac is not fully funded and extended to meet so many local, semi-local and long distance needs. Only in a sane xMerica right? When I was in Thailand in 2000 they had just opened their metro and light rail electric tram system. It was a beautiful thing, with the exception that the majority of Thai's could not afford to ride it. Irony, no? At that time they had also opened and passed a referendum of a “None of the above vote“ which meant, –to my summation– that if the parties lost to a ‘none of the above vote’ then the whole process stated afresh.
Imagine to my chagrin at watching the 2000 elections from afar in a place that had just implimented a ‘none of the above vote’.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 27 2006 23:33 utc | 21

Uncle, Nevada tried to implement a none of the above option, but since that might result in actual citizens being able to elect someone who represents their interests, it was ruled “unconstitutional”!
Moving right along,
Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh said on Wednesday that the establishment of Oil Stock Exchange is in its final stage and the bourse will be launched in Iran in the next week.link

Posted by: jj | Apr 28 2006 0:49 utc | 23

@Uncle $cam:

I’ve been thinking about the idea of a U.S. tax on non-voters for a while. Given the American tendency to put the pocketbook before everything else — see the way gas prices have made the war unpopular? — this is probably the only way to definitely raise voter turnout. Despite the obvious benefit, this approach has some serious problems, at least in the U.S.:

— In order to pass such a law, lawmakers would either have to be more concerned with good representation than with reelection or would have to be convinced that a system with high turnout would still allow them to get reelected.

— In order to avoid changing such a scheme into a tax on the disenfranchised, a serious effort would have to be made to enforce the 15th amendment, or possibly it would have to be made possible to vote at ANY polling place (which would either require a vastly slower vote count than ever before, in order to avoid counting it when one person votes several times in different locations, or a huge injection of technology — and who is trustworthy to create said technology?)

— Is there any way to raise the odds that people who would vote only to avoid a tax would do so in a rational, informed manner?

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Apr 28 2006 3:40 utc | 25

Vicarious [addiction]
Eye on the the TV
‘Cause tragedy thrills me
Whatever flavor it happens to be, like…
“Killed by the husband”
“Drowned by the ocean”
“Shot by his own son”
“She used a poison
in his tea…kissed him goodbye”
THAT’S my kind of story
It’s no fun ’til someone dies
Don’t look at me like
I am a monster
Frown out your one face
But with the other
Stare like a junkie
Into the TV
Stare like a zombie
While the mother holds her child
Watches him die
Hands to the sky crying,
“Why, oh why?”
Cause I need to watch things die… from a distance
Vicariously I live while the whole world dies
YOU ALL NEED IT TOO, DON’T LIE
Why can’t we just admit it?
Why can’t we just admit it?
We won’t give pause until the blood is flowing
Neither the brave nor bold
WILL WRITE US the story’s told
We won’t give pause until the blood is flowing
I need to watch things die… from a good safe distance
Vicariously I live while the whole world dies
You all feel the same, so…
Why can’t we just admit it?
Blood like rain falling down
DRUM ON GRAVE AND GROUND
Part vampire
Part warrior
Carnivore and Voyuer
Stare at the TRANSMITTAL
Sing to the death rattle
La, la, la, la, la, la-la-lie (x4)
Credulous at best
Your desire to believe in
Angels in the hearts of men
But pull your head on out
YOUR HEAD PLEASE, and give a listen
Shouldn’t have to say it all again
The universe is hostile, so impersonal
Devour to survive… so it is, so it’s always been
We all feed on tragedy
It’s like blood to a vampire
Vicariously I live while the whole world dies
Much better you than I
Tool- 10,000 Days Album

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 28 2006 4:13 utc | 27

Obligatory voting? Like for Saddam?
Anyway, in the ‘most hands – on’ democracy in the world, the people can’t vote on the important stuff – dollar conversion rate, international accords about criminality or immigration, organisation of University studies, the forbidding of nuclear arms, the right to close borders, to allow prostituiton, etc. etc.
Who believes in this stuff today?
Cowboys, leprechauns and pretty ladies on TV saying Vote for ME?
Only the fooled and proud – Americans, Frenchmen, and the Swiss… (Examples only.)

Posted by: Noisette | Apr 28 2006 19:19 utc | 29