OBAMA & GAS PRICES.

The southern part of the Keystone XL pipeline will begin, to deal with the oil crisis, and also to handle the oil glut in Cushing "where oil from the Midwest hits a bottleneck as it is transported to the Gulf of Mexico." (CNN, 03/21/12).

Though, the idea may to sit well with environmentalists that have protested the construction of the pipeline in its entirety, from Canada to the Gulf Coast; yet, due to Iran cutting back on its oil production to penalize particularly the West, the high of crude oil and subsequent gas jacked up prices will continue.

The punitive sanctions by the United States and other members of the United Nations, which are designed to stop Iran from carrying out its nuclear program, are crippling that country's economy.

The reversal is also true that with Iran reducing oil production and creating uncertainty in the Arabian Gulf region, many nations will feel the pressure with high oil prices, and so relent on getting Iran to come out clean of the charges being leveled against it by the rest of the world. They, world countries, will have their own economies disturbed, and thus creating a stalemate, whether the world will continue with sanctions on Iran or not.

For example, the high price of gas in the U.S. has a bad effect on all kinds of businesses, large and small; and with the slow rate of its economic recovery, that is not something to be taken for granted by the Obama administration.

The Republican opposition is pushing for oil prices to rise, and then assign blame of that to President Barack Obama, and so ravage his reelection bid.

It is a fact that as gas prices keep going up, consumers will turn against the government in power, Democrat or Republican, for its bad policies and the mishandling of the economy in general.

This time around, it is the turn of the Republican Party to initiate the political "dog fight" that comes about in an election year, to discredit the other party; and now, the Democratic Party is the one to find itself at the end of the stick.

To say that the big oil companies are manipulating the situation in the background will be an understatement, as they will only prefer to have the public (to) become dissatisfied with Obama, as they seem to be on the side of the opposition. The political contributions by the executives in the oil industry make that quite clear.

With the price of gas going up, the only beneficiaries are the oil producing companies, and the real losers will be those, who have to fill up the gas tank of their vehicles to take their children to school and/or go to and from work. Small businesses his will be running high expenditures too, based on the rising cost of oil.

Obama has to find a way to alleviate their burden, so that he may not lose their support, which he needs to carry him to victory in the 2012 presidential election; and also to bolster his efforts to grow the economy that his adversaries are so critical of.

He has been able to turn it (economy) around, but there are those, who will do anything in their power to undermine the hard work that he has been engaged in to make that turn around a permanent experience for the country.

Why? Because it will prove him right to have used stern measures to achieve his goal of getting the economy on the right track after a Republican administration. It will help his reelection bid.

Americans have to see the whole political atmosphere in that light, that he has diligently got the economy to revive, and that his policies will produce good results in the long run.