White House officials are bracing for oil prices to surge past the $150-a-barrel mark as the Iran war stretches into its second month and the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, according to a new report.

In recent weeks, the average cost of a barrel of crude has hovered around $100, a figure that the Trump administration now sees as the new “baseline,” though a potential spike to $200 hasn’t been ruled out, a source familiar with the matter told Politico.

As a result, officials have entered “all hands on deck” mode, urgently evaluating options to tame soaring oil prices — which pushed gas above $4 a gallon this week and risks inflating costs across the broader economy.

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[–] 134 points 7 months ago (16 children)

I really want to see Iran say they'll reopen it only after trump is personally handed over to stand trial for his war crimes...

It will never work, but it'll fracture his support and more importantly he'll be ome convinced it's gonna happen and start turning on his own cronies even if they're loyal.

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  • [–] 75 points 7 months ago (14 children)
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (13 children)

    Except it's going to devastate a lot of people financially who don't deserve it. So ireally don't find it funny.

    But if gas hits that high it will devastate rural areas and the people who voted for this

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  • [–] 36 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    30% of the American public voted for these grifting idiots, not just the president, but his enablers too. This slightly disproportionately affects rural areas. We should be getting off of gas and investing in green energy anyway.

    I choose to laugh. It's better than what the people of Iran got out of it.

    Man, I wonder if a better president would have come up with some kind of treaty to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

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  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    How many times has iran been attacked for being two weeks away from nuclear weapons in the past 50 years?

    What are the chances these are all true?

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    in last 40 years, there were 2000 weeks. 1998/2000 or 99.9% of weeks this statement was proven false.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    It was not. Iran's military wanted to stay close so that if the religious fatwa the ayatollah pronounced against acquiring nuclear weapons, they're have one quickly.

    Yes, Trump murdered the one man responsible for preventing Iran from having nuclear weapons, and control went to his son who just saw every direct member of his family murdered in front of him.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (5 children)

    US&A has nuclear weapons and is obviously a threat to world right now.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (4 children)

    While that's true, it doesn't really contribute to the conversation or the problem at hand.

    Are you implying that because the US has nuclear weapons that you'd like Iran to have them too? Because that's the only way I can relate this back.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Remember those weapons over which US&A started the war in Iraq? They’ve probably existed as much as theirs in Iran. I don’t believe I’ve seen Iran attack anyone before it was attacked. US&A on the other hand…

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    I think you missed the point, which is that I think the way to handle this was Obama's treaty before Trump dismantled it because it was an Obama accomplishment.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago

    And while you’re talking about the point which is internal to US Politics you’re missing international one: not the first time that US&A started a war under false pretence, and now you’re pretty much on the same level as your friends: Israel and Russia.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago*

    Who is it going to financially devastate? Most Americans have no investments, no savings, and no retirement. 10,000% inflation is almost as hard to deal with as 50% for people living paycheck to paycheck already. For the investors/ruling class, a free falling dollar does a lot more damage.

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  • [–] 80 points 7 months ago (17 children)

    It honestly makes me sick that this appears to be the line for most Americans. Fuck this country.

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  • [–] 57 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    To be fair, once fuel prices go up the cost of EVERYTHING also goes up. So no it's not just about pain at the pump, it's pain at the grocery check out. Pain when the oil truck comes to deliver your liquid heat. Pain when you buy anything plastic, anything grown with fertilizers. People don't realize petroleum is in almost everything! And if it doesn't use a petroleum product in manufacturing, it certainly does in shipping.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Prices for the kinds of fuel ocean going ships burn have increased 25%-35% depending on the port.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    Yep and the same cart of groceries I spent 100 bucks on last year is about 200 now :( Trump was right. So much winning we'll get sick of it. Trouble is only the billionaires are winning, at our expense. I'm not having fun anymore.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Youre right, but also if we weren’t using up as much for fuel as we do there would be much more left for other applications

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    No kidding. I think our world leaders have forgotten that there is only so much oil in the ground, once it's all burnt up that's it poof it's gone. Makes it even more insane that their bombing oil fields and refineries. If u want a small example of how our billionaire rulers have boned us look at the racket from synthetic rope getting hemp banned. The tldr is DuPont made synthetic rope, but hemp which is sustainable and strong got outlawed due in part to them lobbying. We have a government that exists only to stuff rich peoples pockets from what it seems. There's more examples than can be listed of private corporations creating rules to make themselves the winners at the expense of the people and the planet, and it's been going on for over a hundred years and just getting exponentially worse. There's a reason wealth just keeps consolidating.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Ive never heard liquid heat before, interesting. We call it heating oil where I'm from (southern new england).

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  • [–] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The only thing that keeps most people complacent is they can manage to scrape by with their meager salary buying crappy goods. Take that away and Americans might get more revolutionary.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    When people are struggling to get by and exhausted from the news, they end up focusing on themselves. The reality is most Americans don't have the energy, time, or resources to focus on something that's disconnected from their lives - including attrocities on the other side of the planet.

    But gas prices hit HARD. When you're spending 20-30% of your income on gas and the price of that gas doubles, it's a problem even before it makes everything else skyrocket in price.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago*

    That excuse is honestly not acceptable. Americans have had ample time and opportunity to consider the impact of their voting decisions. This is their choice. Collectively, the country has failed.

    Too ignorant, selfish, or stupid.

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  • [–] 59 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    The best part is that even if everything in the Strait were to return to normal tomorrow, the oil price shock is just barely beginning to filter through the system, so there's absolutely nothing Trump can do to stop what he caused.

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  • [–] 30 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Oh yeah. Global logistics with slow-boat tankers are scheduled multiple months in advance to keep the machine flowing. With every single route now completely thrown awry, there's no going back for at least a year.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago*

    And then there is the whole inflation feeding through into Fertilizers (mainly from higher Natural Gas prices rather than Oil prices), in turn feeding through into Food prices, all of which carries even long delays to fully emerge in consumer prices because of the time food takes to grow (more so if you think cattle since fertilizer prices indirectly push costs up through the increase in feed prices, so there's even more delay there than for something like corn).

    Just the first month of war has baked in many months of rising Inflation.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    "there's absolutely nothing Trump can do to stop what he caused."

    Assuming he won't just abandon it and make it someone else's problem, like he does with literally everything else he touches.

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  • [–] 57 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    Oh hey, maybe if they didn't dismantle all the green energy and EV initiatives then the impacts would be mitigated a little bit...

    Funny how that works...

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  • [–] 28 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Literally couldn't be doing anything different to help Russia more.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    That's gotta be the point, isn't it? It's not really a secret that trump's a russian stooge...

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I think about this. Functionally he’s a puppet of Putin, but I don’t think that it’s an “active” stooging. Trump wants to BE a dictator and Putin is very intelligent, so he’s able to ply Trump to his will. Trump probably cares more about the pee-tapes than it’d actually affect him.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    Automakers have billions of dollars in brand new EV manufacturing equipment and lines sitting around doing nothing since the new administration changed all the regulations and incentives.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    they're also putting some new programs on hold, so at least they're not all outright cancelled yet

    but oh boy have a lot been cancelled. we built a huge cell that was shipped to the customer and scrapped the next year. the customer actually ended up taking apart the tools we built and shipping us back a bunch of the components to build them another cell for a different project. that was neat.

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  • [–] 94 points 7 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 24 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

    https://www.amazon.com/100pcs-Trump-Stickers-Donald-Merchandise/dp/B0DVSW4WD8

    100pcs Trump I Did that Stickers Gas Pump Stickers Decal, Anti Trump Stickers, Fuck Donald Trump Mega Merchandise

    5K+ bought in past month

    https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Did-That-Stickers-2-5inch/dp/B0DWN53KXY

    Trump I Did that Stickers, 2.5inch I Did that Trump Sticker 100PCS

    10K+ bought in past month

    So if each of those sticker packs has 100 stickers, and people have bought over fifteen thousand packs in the past month alone on those two Amazon items (and there are more) alone, that's over 1.5 million gas pumps that you'd need if you were going to use just those sticker packs.

    https://www.fuelexpress.net/blog/general-information/how-many-gas-stations-are-in-the-us/

    As of recent estimates, there are about 160,000 gas stations across the United States.

    Like, people are going to have to be putting them on in layers or something. I don't think that there are enough gasoline pumps.

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  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    You can put them on other things too, like gas station toilets and portapotties

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago

    I don't think that there are enough gasoline pumps.

    Remember, you have to put one on both sides of the pump in many places. And then you've got places like Buc-ee's with 120 pumps.

    So I think you're actually underestimating by a lot!

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  • [–] 46 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    If only in the decades since the oil embargo of the early 1970s we kept investing in alternative energy sources we could have been in a much better place energy wise.

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  • [–] 25 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof. Reagan took them down. Pretty succinct summary of the past 40 years.

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  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    before anyone says "those solar panels didn't work very well" THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING POINT. they represented a commitment to invest in the technology. the presidency is the bully pulpit. a person can change a lot about the direction of the country there without making meaningful change in the moment. Grant and Carter are probably the two presidents who tried the hardest to do something positive with that power

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Exactly.

    Grant and Carter are probably the two presidents who tried the hardest to do something positive with that power

    I would say both Roosevelts did too. Admittedly, my Grant knowledge isn't super deep, what was it that he did that you think puts him in that group?

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  • [–] 44 points 7 months ago (13 children)

    The Sociopathic Oligarchs see the Dow as the leading indicator of the economy, and never notice gas prices.

    But to the average American, the price of GAS is the leading economic indicator, and that number psychologically symbolizes the health of the economy in their minds. That number is displayed on every corner in the country, and every American passes it many times a day, driving it into their skulls.

    This is NOT good for MAGA, and a reckoning is coming. MAGA is feral, and when they feel cornered, wounded, and scared, they will strike out ferociously. It's going to get uglier before it gets better.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The fact that gasoline has giant signs telling you how much it costs is very symbolic of America as a Petro state. Because of that one thing alone it's the only products where every American can tell you exactly how much it costs, and specifically how much it costs in their area more so than nationwide. Because of credit cards most people couldn't tell you the price of other Essentials off the top of their head like a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread but gasoline? It's $5.50 at the station down the road

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I paid $2.74 on the day the bombing started. It went up to $4.29 yesterday.

    Most working Americans couldn't tell you where the Dow is today, but every Sociopathic Oligarch knows it by the hour. But EVERY American knows the price of gas, and they're super pissed about it.

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  • [+] -48 points 7 months ago* (8 children)
  • [–] 31 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    They tend to have a blind devotion to Donald Trump. By that I mean they change their opinions to match his actions. Every republican I know cared about the Epstein files, but now that Trump has expressed annoyance whenever they are brought they no longer care if they are released and even act annoyed if you bring it up. They viewed Joe Biden as evil and that he was the main cause for high gas prices, but now that gas prices are going up under Trump they understand the president doesn’t cause the prices to go up. The cost of healthcare, childcare, grocery’s, and housing were all things they cared about when Biden was president, but now that prices are going up and not down they no longer care. It’s not necessarily a personality, while I do feel a lot of them do share similar traits. What you are looking for is a person that is able to think however Donald Trump wants them to. That’s what makes a MAGA. It’s someone who will never criticize Trump they will just change their opinions. They only care about what Trump wants them to at the time.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Good post. Too bad you wasted it on a guy who doesn't know what a MAGA is. I suspect he won't understand even after reading it.

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    [–] 37 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    FUCK EVERYONE BUY TOILET PAPER

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  • [–] 25 points 7 months ago

    Trump officials bracing for nightmare scenario of renewable energy and end of global hegemony.

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