IT'S THE GASOLINE PRICES, STUPID

Many people think that Bush's sudden rise in the polls is due to his sudden aggressivness defending his policies and flattening all those "reporters." I don't. It's the gasoline prices, stupid. His rise is in lockstep with the soaring consumer confidence numbers, which in turn are up while inflation plunges due to gasoline prices. Here in LA gasoline prices are noticably lower, finally. Nothing under $2.80 yet but one always low price station has it at $2.81, which is more than $.50 per gallon from the high of around $3.32 or so. I filled up AGAIN yesterday because I'm back to driving everywhere and I basically have $7 extra in my pocket after every refill. My daughter who has the ultimate ten cylinder SUV with a forty gallon tank saves about $20 per fill up, as do tons of other people similarly SUV'd.

BTW: we have a new cable TV provider; Time Warner has replaced those horrible crooks at Adelphia. So none of us around here have been able to use internet access for nearly 48 hours because TW doesn't know how to maintain their servers.