HOW TO SOLVE THIS ATLANTA GAS SHORTAGE

First ... If you're not from Atlanta or any other area where about one out of five gas stations is open and the lines are 90 minutes and more, read this story. After you've finished with that story ... go here to read about how nearly 200 gas stations in Atlanta are being investigated for price gouging. 

OK ... now that you've finished your reading assignments, I shall tell you how to solve this problem QUICKLY.

The real problem now is panic buying.  People will run their tanks down by about one-third and then rush off to a gas station.  The supplies are coming back up, but as long as people insist on keeping every car they own filled to the top we're going to have these outages and these absurd lines. 

So, how do you stop the panic buying?  Easy.  You let the market do what the market does.  The demand for gas outstrips the supply right now, so allow gas stations respond by raising the price of gas .. raise it as much as they want.  There is some point at which people will say "To hell with this.  I'll ride with a friend, take the bus or just sit home before I'll bay this for a gallon of gas."  Once the price of a gallon starts to evoke that kind of reaction, we're on our way to normalcy.  When gas costs, say, $8.00 people aren't going to fill their tanks.  They also aren't going to rush home to get their second car and make sure it is filled up either ... and you can forget them filling those portable gas cans they have in the trunk. 

As the price drives people away from the pumps, the tanker trucks will have the opportunity to fill every underground tank at every gas station in the area.  Then, when the tanks are all full again, the gas station operators will start looking around wondering where their customers are.  One by one they'll start lowering the price of a gallon in order to attract customers back to the pumps.  As the prices fall people will come out of their garages and find that they can fill up without waiting and without the station running out.  Gradually, over a period of days, things will be back to normal.

Oh, sure.  People will yell and scream about the so-called "price gouging" on the part of the stations; but that is really nothing more than the free market responding to these shortages with the best device known to man for allocating scarce resources.  Prices. 

Politicians can do all the grandstanding they want ... and work for face time on the television decrying those evil people trying to make a profit off of a scarce resource.  That seems to suit them just fine.  But if they really want to end this nonsense they'll turn the marketplace loose and get the hell out of the way. 

OFF THE CUFF ....

Those pictures of the president sitting there in the White House with Pelosi on one side and Harry Reid on the other. Nauseating. Those two - Pelosi and Reid - aren't fit to be in the same room with George Bush.

Profits from bailout? There is no way in the world profits, if any, on a bailout will be used to pay down the national debt. By that time it will be Pelosi, Reid and Obama (unless the electorate suddenly matures) running the show in Washington. That's even more nauseating. In such a case you can bet the bank that any profits will be spent on vote-buying programs that make our government bigger. After all, Democrats believe all wealth belongs to government.

BARACK AND BRIT

A little surprise visit from Barack Obama to Special Report with Brit Hume last night. It looked like some Fox News staffers at the Mayflower Hotel in DC shanghaied Obama and put him before the cameras. So ... what did we learn about the economic crisis from Obama in this surprise appearance? Well, here's what he told us:

• We have to act.
• We shouldn't have gotten into this mess in the first place.
• People's jobs and homes are at risk if we don't deal with the problem.
• There are differences of opinion in Washington.
• We have a chance to solve this problem.

OK .. now I get it. My God! This man is brilliant! Why, he may actually BE the second coming! I mean, look .. there he is walking through the lobby of the Mayflower, and some Fox News sharpie grabs him and throws him in front of a camera. Then Brit Hume is breathing down his neck with pointed questions and he comes up with answers of uncommon clarity! Where do I donate? Quick! Someone get an Obama '08 sign in my yard! Wait! I don't have a yard! I live in a condo! OMG! I'm going to go out tomorrow and buy a yard.

I just love sarcasm.

WHAT HAS THE DEMOCRATS SO UPSET?

They're afraid that John McCain is going to be the catalyst for Republican agreement on some sort of a bailout plan. What if the final picture at the end of this day is one of Barack Obama preparing for the debate in Mississippi while John McCain burns the midnight oil trying to work out a deal on an economic bailout? That brings up the question of whether or not Democrats would sabotage an agreement in order to prevent McCain from looking like a statesman while their candidate looks like a ..... candidate. Yeah ... I know, this could easily work the other way around, but that's not the way this one is playing out. Yet.

THEY ALREADY DID IT! MAN, AM I SLOW.

For a few days I've been saying that if we'll just sit back and wait a while the political class in Washington would start adding as many of their favored constituencies to the bailout as possible. All the while I was saying this they had already acted. This legislation has now become as much of a vote-buying exercise as it is a bailout.

More details on the air today .. but do you know that while we weren't looking the Treasury Department - and that would be the Bush Administration - actually tried to add bad credit card debt and troubled student loans to the bailout? What's the deal here? Is the government going to buy every bad loan in the country?

Hey .. just a few weeks ago I had a bad loan! We loaned money to a young woman to buy a home. She defaulted. Now we own the home and will probably come up about $40,000 short on this deal by the time we sell it. Yeah .. nice kick in the tail for doing someone a favor ... but where in the hell was MY bailout?

A LANDSLIDE ELECTION??

John Zogby, as in Zogby polling, believes that this election is going to be a landslide ... for John McCain. Seriously. Zogby says that it is up to Barack Obama to convince voters to go with him, otherwise the country will likely vote for "a comfortable old shoe."

I, however, fail to have that much faith in the American voter.

Always remember ... there is only one reason not to vote for Barack Obama ... and that is if you're a racist. You do know that, don't you?

BILL CLINTON IN THE NEWS

Bill Clinton has been making the rounds lately. Two comments that I want to bring to your attention.

First, Clinton actually defended John McCain's decision to suspend his campaign until a resolution is reached on the financial crisis. Even Clinton points out that John McCain didn't do this because he is "scared," which is what a lot of fellow Democrats were saying. Clinton reminds us that it was John McCain who was asking for more debates, town hall events, and Barack Obama is the one that refused ... probably because the Obama campaign has yet to figure out a way for Obama to use a teleprompter during a town hall meeting. I still think that this is a silly campaign move. But we'll see if it pays off for him.

Bill Clinton also said that the Democrats aren't entirely blameless for our current financial situation ... Nancy Pelosi, are you listening? He said that Democrat should have highlighted the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and "tried more aggressively to regulate derivatives." He even somewhat acknowledged the "possible danger" in his administration's policy of pressing Fannie Mae, the mortgage company, to lower its credit standards for lower- and middle-income families seeking homes.

HARRY REID IS BEING SNEAKY

The staffers of South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint have uncovered something pretty outrageous. It seemed as though Democrats pretty much gave up on extending bans on offshore drilling and oil shale. That's because they found an even "better" cause ... the financial crisis. So yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that restoring the ban on offshore drilling leases "will be a top priority for discussion next year."

Well Harry Reid is finding a way for Democrats to hop on the ban-bandwagon sooner rather than later. Reid is trying to sneak an extension of the oil shale ban through Congress, while everyone is distracted with this $700 billion bailout. Reid's proposal to ban oil shale will happen one of two ways - either he'll add it as an amendment to the continuing resolution (CR) appropriations bill or include it in as a "stimulus package."

The western part of America, by the way, is estimated to have as much as 2 trillion barrel of oil thanks to oil shale. That is more than three times the amount of oil reserved held by Saudi Arabia.

ANOTHER 'OOPS' FOR BIDEN

Joe Biden says that John McCain is "dangerously wrong" on issues of national security. He also said that McCain's judgment on national security is "divorced from reality." So keeping these thoughts in mind, let's go to the campaign trail with Joe Biden. On Wednesday in Cincinnati, Ohio, Joe Biden made a speech about Iraq, stating "... the surge is over, and the political reconciliation it was supposed to produce has not materialized." Joe Biden, by the way, voted against the surge and then came up with his own plan to split Iraq into autonomous regions. The plan was widely panned by Iraqi officials.

But on the same day that Joe Biden made this speech in Cincinnati, CNN published an article about Iraq's "major step toward national reconciliation." The article talks about election guidelines being set by the Iraqi Parliament, which is "considered a major step toward national reconciliation among Iraqi Sunni Arabs, Shiites, and Kurds."

It's okay, Joe. The media won't cover any of your silly blunders anyway.

A $1 TRILLION RESOLUTION

While everyone focuses on this $700 billion bailout, your Congress is busy passing bills filled with billions of dollars of earmarks. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey forced Congress to vote on a stop-gap continuing resolution that is worth $1 trillion. And the beauty of it ... your Representatives had less than 24 hours to review the contents of this bill before voting. And, no amendments were allowed to be passed.

This is the same appropriations bill that will bailout the auto industry. It also contains $600 billion for Military, Defense and Homeland Security, as well as $23 billion in disaster relief. We'll bring you more details on specific earmarks ...

But here's the kicker. David Obey has been criticized for cramming this thing so quickly through the Congress and with little oversight. When Bloomberg News asked about whether or not the process was secretive, here was his response:

"You're damn right it has because if it's done in the public it would never get done." He wanted to "avoid his colleagues' 'pontificating' on the content of the legislation" because "that's what politicians do when this stuff is done in full view of the press." He said "we've done this the old fashioned way by brokering agreements in order to get things done and I make no apology for it."

Old fashioned? Back-room politics? Sounds like the Democrat party is really changing its ways in Washington. What happened to that infamous promise of transparency?

HATRED OF THE "FREE MARKET"

Just go on line and read some of the comments to the stories about this bailout mess. You will see many readers expressing their hatred of capitalism, the free market and those evil, nasty "greedy" businessmen out there. No wonder an anti-capitalist is about to become our next president. You do know that it is envy that is driving these people, don't you? They see people willing to work hard and become wealthy doing so. These "I hate the free market" people are, quite frankly, not willing to put that work and effort into becoming wealthy; so they react in anger toward those who will. Most of them, by the way, earn a living working for someone who practices capitalism openly. Well ... unless they work for the government or academia.

OBAMA EARMARK INVESTIGATION

A grant awarded by Barack Obama while he was in the state senate is now being investigated by the Illinois attorney general. Just throwing it out there ..

READING ASSIGNMENTS

How about a little late Friday afternoon look at the real Sarah Palin in a bathing suit? Someone dug up footage of her competing in a pageant. Go get it!

Here's the latest from Stanley Kurtz and his quest to find out the truth about Barack Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers. Not that anyway cares. Remember, if you would be inclined not to vote for Obama because he befriends terrorist bomb-throwers, then that means you're a racist.

The media is having a feeding frenzy ... Sarah Palin took questions from reporters!

Rep. Barney Frank says that his Republican colleagues wince when they hear the name "John McCain" and that he is irrelevant to the whole process of finding a solution to the financial bailout.

"Unfortunately" only US citizens can register to vote ... according to Barack Obama's voter registration website. Unfortunately?

Two liberal groups are running ads criticizing John McCain's health, showing pictures of McCain with a fresh scar after having surgery for skin cancer.

You know it's bad when even your crossword puzzles are slanted toward the left in favor of Barack Obama.

Bureaucrats in Galveston, Texas are miffed with Ron Paul because he voted against the $22.8 billion disaster recovery aid package.

This is not good news. Ireland is officially in a recession.

David Broder, the Washington Post political editor, says that there is no such thing as "media bias." Uh huh. Right. Yeah .. you got it David.

A television anchor in Maine is receiving "hate mail and nasty phone calls" because she looks a lot like Governor Sarah Palin.

The latest polls now have Barack Obama and John McCain tied with 46% each. Clearly 46% of the voters who responded to this poll are racists.

Here's an interesting look at the media's interest in the Enron scandal versus Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Russia is giving Hugo Chavez's Venezuela a $1 billion loan to buy Russian weapons.

Almost 30 government high school students in Connecticut were suspended from school for having a morning BBQ on school grounds.

An Army Reserves sergeant studying at Dallas Baptist University returned to his Jeep to find his tires slashed and a message spray painted on the hood: "Soldiers are murderers."

And now for a quick science story ... solar winds are at their lowest point in 50 years.

Just what we need ... more people walking around with tattoos on their necks.

BOORTZ BLAST NEWSLETTER
Everyone is talking about the Boortz Blast newsletter. Do you want yours? Sign up here and we'll deliver it directly to your inbox every 2 weeks. If you signed up but aren't receiving it, either your

company or your spam filter could be keeping it from you. Try using a personal email address and check your spam filter's junk folder for wayward newsletters.

COMMUNITY
If you like Neal and are looking for like minded people to hang out with online or off, check out these places:

Friend Neal on Facebook

Talkmaster Yahoo Group

Belinda Skelton, Cristina Gonzalez and Laura Nunemaker assist in the daily preparation of Nealz Nuze!