Good morning, Everyone. Still cool and wet here. We keep hoping for sun and dry but nature isn't cooperating.

The news has made a great deal of President Obama's new task force to investigate the rising gas and oil prices. He made all of the expected comments condemning 'speculators' taking 'unfair' advantage of consumers. All of the news stories cite the same causes for the rapid rise: unrest in the major oil producing areas and rising demand from developing countries (especially China and India.) This CNBC story (found on Chris Martenson's Blog) brings in another probable culprit that has been totally ignored to date--the weakening dollar. I think it is interesting that some experts are predicting $6.00/gal gas before the end of the summer. Are they preparing the public for bad news? And there is this story from Zero Hedge which cannot be good news for our oil/gas prices.

Most of us were probably cynical and skeptical about the Iraq war and this story from the Independent indicates we were probably right to be so. If the concern was really weapons of mass destruction why were the US and UK governments giving away rights to Iraqi oil? This leads me to conclude that the whole operation was 'home invasion' on a massive scale.