Below The Beltway

President Bush is back in Saudi Arabia meeting with our “friend” King Abdullah:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — With the price of oil hitting record highs, President Bush will use a private visit to King Abdullah’s ranch here Friday to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudi government to increase oil production so that American […]

The real price gougers work at your local post office.
H/T: Club For Growth

Last week, when presented with the reality that not a single economist thought the gas tax holiday scheme was a good idea, Hillary Clinton said she didn’t listen to what economists had to say.
Apparently, Carla Fiorna, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and prominent McCain surrogate, doesn’t care about economic reality either:
STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you defend that […]

Today’s Washington Post reports on the increasing use of outsourcing in the legal profession:
GURGAON, India — When Aashish Sharma graduated from law school two years ago, his father had visions of seeing him argue in an Indian court and eventually become an honorable judge.
Instead, Sharma, 25, now sits all day in front of a computer […]

Kevin Drum really, really doesn’t like those retail loyalty programs:
LOYALTY CARDS….I really loathe retail loyalty card programs. Really really really. Just wanted to get that off my chest.
Coyote Blog links to Drum’s screed, and then to this post from back in 2005:
I HATE most new loyalty programs at stores. When loyalty programs really […]

Everyone’s complaining about the high price of gasoline, but in the end there really isn’t much that any President can do about it:
[W]hat can the White House, Congress or competing presidential candidates do to reduce gas prices in the near term? The short answer, alas, is not much.
No industrialized economy is as reliant on oil, […]

As much as Congress and the President might wish it weren’t so, the American people weren’t fooled by the phony economic stimulus package:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Eight in 10 Americans believe that the government’s $110 billion effort to help consumers will not boost the economy, according to a poll released Friday.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll […]

That’s what everyone is wondering about oil prices, which just keep going up:
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Oil prices hit a new record high above $125 Friday as a weaker U.S. dollar drove investments into commodities.
U.S. crude for June delivery rose as high as $125.12 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange […]

Apparently, the House Republican leadership has signed on to the phony gas tax holiday idea:
[T]he gas-tax relief idea just won’t die. On Thursday, House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he’s supporting a bill by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., to suspend the gasoline tax this summer.
“The common sense plan unveiled today by Rep. Ryan helps […]

Did her concentration on the gas tax holiday scheme help Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, or hurt her ?
Chris Cillizza looks at the numbers from Indiana:
While the exit polling didn’t directly touch on the gas tax issue, several loosely related questions seemed to indicate that Clinton did herself little good with her position. Among the two-thirds […]