"HOPE AND CHANGE" TO BLAME FOR HUGE FUEL PRICE INCREASES; ALL MERCHANDISE AND FOOD PRODUCTS WILL ALSO "CHANGE" AND AFFECT EVERYTHING WE BUY TOO

Prices That Will Rise Along With Your Gas

You can start thinking of why the Hope and Change leader should or should not be re-elected, and I thought of the moronic agenda of not using the oil and gas resources of the USA which could actually be self sustaining in OIL energy if we tapped in and used all including the tar sands, etc...we are number one on the reserves. We have in shale, tar sands and under ground oil and offshore oil, more that Saudi Arabia. We could see $1.99 gasoline just after announcing plans to drill.

ALL ECONOMIES IN ALL COUNTRIES RUN ON FOSSIL FUEL...GET REAL WE WILL NOT BE POWERING OUR TANKS, SUV'S, AND AUTOS WHEN WE DRIVE A HUNDRED MILES TO WORK, AND AIRPLANES WITH BATTERIES WHICH REQUIRE BATTERY CONTENTS FROM COMPONENTS MINED IN CHINA AND AFGHANISTAN!!!!!

I also thought about how it seemed prior to the election of President B.O., the TV movies always seemed to show a "black" president, so we were all prepared and ready to have a great thinking and bright aggressive problem solving ( always avoided the disaster in those movies or solved world problems)black president....also the feeling was that "it was about time".

We do not expect or desire the end of cheap gas, cheap goods and low taxes....I guess nobody really asked what change he had in mind...but that will be for the 2012 election...I I could cast that early NO B.O. vote in an early voting polling station I am ready already!

I just spent $105 to fill up my tank. I watched a big truck rumble past filled with food pallets destined for Trader Joe's, and I started thinking about all the other things whose prices will go up in step with the $4.49-a-gallon gas.

Transportation costs may not have immediate effects on the prices of other goods, but as they start to build up and the trucking companies' hedges expire, everything gets more expensive.

Here are some prices that are sure to rise along with the price of gas as thousands of products contain petroleum ranging from lipstick clothing: here are some that you will feel a lot more immediately:

Air travel is, of course, number one. Expecting an unusual number of trips to conferences this summer, and watching the price of a barrel of oil tick higher and higher, I snapped up tickets as soon as I had the cash on hand rather than waiting until the almost-last-minute (my usual m.o. is to wait for fare sales).

I needn't have rushed; the last few price increase attempts by airlines haven't yet been "sticky" -- a few airlines will test the water with a $4 or $8 or $10 increase, waiting to see if other airlines on that route match the price before letting it fall back to its former level. But prices have been up between 6% and 17% all year compared to the same time in 2009, and the continued test increases say that airlines will keep pushing the fare envelope.

Fast food. Want burgers and fries? If you're a regular visitor to one of America's finest purveyors of cheap fattening food -- say, a few times a week -- you could end up spending just as much, if not more, at McDonald's and Wendy's than you do for gas. Price increases haven't been announced yet, but it's safe to say that $0.20 or $0.30 more on your favorite menu items isn't out of the question. Depending on your orders and frequency, this could add up to a few hundred dollars a year.

Bananas and potatoes and tomatoes, oh my. Rising produce prices have been a problem almost all year, and bad weather in Mexico is still depressing prices. Canadians saw an especially nasty increase in the price of fruits and vegetables in March, 3.3% sequentially; year-over-year, average nationwide prices for fresh produce were up 9.8% in March. You'll continue to see especially high prices on tropical fruits and those vegetables that are out of season in your neighborhood (think tomatoes and strawberries for most of the U.S.). Reports from farmers in Portland, Ore., have me worried that the wet weather is going to mean scary prices for fresh peas and lettuce when they start appearing in the market next month.

Stamps for postcards and packages. You know who uses a lot of gas? The people in the business of delivering letters and packages to your door -- the ones you're ordering online so you don't have to spend money for gas. Well, there's no such thing as free transportation (unless you're a bicyclist or pedestrian, I suppose), and the USPS and its private competitors are going to have to pay more for trucking packages and mail across the great U.S. of A. While regular first-class mail stamps will stay at 44 cents each, postcards will go up a penny; larger envelopes and packages will cost more per ounce, as will mail to some international destinations.

Beef and bacon. We've already seen indications that bacon prices will skyrocket this year; the raw ingredient for bacon, lean pork bellies, is up 50% so far this year. Beef prices are the impetus for Wendy's to raise prices -- they use fresh beef and can't hedge costs quite as easily at McDonald's by stocking up. Even if we don't see any other price pressures this year, the USDA predicts consumers will see 6.5% to 7.5% increase in the price of their meat.

Coffee. From Starbucks to Maxwell House, coffee prices are up as much as 56% since last year. My favorite coffee-and-pizza shop is now a pizza shop alone, thanks to rising coffee prices. The culprit is the skyrocketing price of green arabica beans, the building block of any good coffee. Unseasonable rains and frosts in Mexico and other tropical locales are the culprit; they send the harvest quantities downward and are creating such havoc in the markets that some coffee growers are hoarding beans, hoping for a huge payday to make up for the depressed yields.

Orange juice. Another victim of that unseasonable freeze in tropical areas -- this time, Florida -- Tropicana is raising prices on its orange juice. Prices are expected to go up from 4% to 8%, says Pepsi, its corporate parent. Last year, the company didn't raise prices exactly, but it did downsize its packaging. One of its popular sizes went from 64 ounces to 59 ounces. Next year, will we see 55-ouncers, I wonder? How low can you go?

Chocolate. So, we've got Middle East tensions...two years of bad weather in Florida and Mexico...rising transportation costs...and dwindling supplies of pork bellies. What else could go wrong? In the Ivory Coast, political turmoil has caused cocoa bean costs to go way up. Sugar is more expensive, too; that's what caused Hershey to raise wholesale prices for its chocolate by as much as 9.7%. I don't watch prices of this sort of chocolate closely enough to know how that's impacted Easter candy -- some chocolatiers are absorbing the costs for now, it seems -- but I think I'm going to stock up on my own favorite brand.

That is just the start...everything will cost more as you will be amazed how the world economy is driven by fossil fuels.

We got them, they are here for our use, let's use them. DRILL BABY DRILL.

PRICE OF GAS AROUND THE WORLD

Prices are quoted in US dollars per gallon for regular unleaded as of March 2011

Oslo, Norway $6.82

Hong Kong$6.25

Brussels, Belgium $6.16

London, UK $5.96

Rome, Italy $5.80
CANADA $5.36

Tokyo, Japan $5.25

Sao Paul o , Brazil $4.42

New Delhi, India $3.71

Sidney, Australia $3.42

Johannesburg , South Africa $3.39

Mexico City$2.22

Buenos Aires, Argentina $2.09
... YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS ....

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia $0.09

Kuwait $0.08

Caracas, Venezuela $0.12

Gee, if only the U.S. was an oil producing nation.....

Hey, wait a minute!!! we are,what the hell happened!!