This is the super deluxe anal version of the blog round-up!
1. Why We Should Boycott the Olympics Over Tibet (by the way, I said we should boycott the Olympics over Darfur about a year ago, but no one listened)
2. This is Greg. Greg blogs at PBH. Greg …

While I will concede that the president cannot control oil prices, a president can improve the conditions that lead to higher oil…and that does not mean opening up Alaska to oil drilling my conservative friends.

The price of oil is not a result of an oil shortage–even with China and India ramping up demand there is plenty of oil.

Gasoline prices are greatly impacted by the investment in oil futures, and lack of refining capacity.

When we look at oil prices, people point at the greedy oil producers, but the spikes in oil prices we are seeing is a result of oil futures trading. Under normal circumstances, there is a a profit motive in oil futures, so we are paying for that profit, but add to that the incredible instability and anxiety in the world, is it any wonder oil futures are even higher? Not only is the Middle East a powder keg thanks to incompetent foreign policy and unneeded wars, but inept foreign policy in South America and Africa is also driving up costs.

Also, this administrations policies have intentionally driven down the value of the dollar…as the dollar falls in value, it cannot purchase as much oil as it once could.

And please, let’s not play the conservative game of “Dang liberals won’t let us make new refineries.” The truth is the oil industry has added the equivalent of one new, state-of-the-art refinery a year, each with a capacity to refine 150,000 to 300,000 barrels per day, by EXPANDING oil refineries. The oil industry has not even tried to build new refineries because it is less expensive to expand. In fact, it could expand capacity even more without every breaking ground on a new refinery but has chosen not to because the current situation suits it (hello, record profits).

I don’t know what a president can do about the last one, but he or she can do something about the first two.