It's ridiculous to bicker over the price of gasoline

Republicans and Democrats who blame each other for the high price of oil both have it wrong.

If you're depending on politicians to bring back 2002 gas prices, you're dreaming. Price controls will only create shortages. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is like robbing your mother's purse to get a few bucks to buy that last little piece of crack cocaine.

We're entering the perfect storm where China and India are crashing the cheap oil party. It's still cheap considering that we still pay at the pump half what Western Europeans pay.

Can we keep the Chinese out of the party? Not really, 'cause other than the oil we've bought all the other party supplies from them, and they pretty much loaned us the money to buy the party materials in the first place.

The pain of getting off of cheap oil might have been more tolerable had we tried to transition into a energy infrastructure with a more robust renewable energy portfolio. We should have improved fuelefficient transportation technology like hybrid plug-ins and electric vehicles.

Maybe with governmental initiatives, we could have started this under Clinton. More urgently we could have done it under Bush.

Now this is going to happen under market pressures with a lot of lost jobs going the way of the buggy whip. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20.

We're going to be at the mercy of the global market. Bicker all you want with your fellow Americans. Vote in whoever you want.

It won't make a damn difference; $6 a gallon gasoline is coming within two years, and stopping its economic destruction will be like trying to stop Katrina.

We'll soon be replacing Great Britain on the list of washed-up hegemonies, which isn't a bad thing. Joey Liu Newbury Park