joining us is the american petroleum institute's president and cio, jack girard. morning. >> you're welcome. >> let's get right to it. who is to blame? >> well, gas prices are a function of the cost of crude oil. of course the crude oil price has been moving up since about july, and so at the end of the day, there's a lot of factors that contribute to that, and what determines the cost of crude oil, not the least of which is the ongoing unrest in the middle east and a number of other economic factors, including worldwide demand, what the production is here in the united states, et cetera, so there's lots of blame, if you will, to pass in a lot of different places but it comes back to market fundamentals, and market expectations. >> and can you explain then, i don't know if you can, what happened yesterday with the price? we saw that big drop. >> i was reading some of that this morning and some suggested it was a technical glitch, a fat finger as i guess they called it on the street. i'm not sure we know yet what happened. it will be interesting to find out. i know

president unveiled plans to curb those subsidies the industry, the oil industry's top lobbyist, jack girardcalled it discriminatory. what? and now, the republicans have taken it one step further they've made the claim the outrageous claim that they're fighting a war on coal. a war on coal. the industry has gotten an estimated $17 billion in coal subsidies in the past six years and they think the obama administration is waging a war on coal. and yet the very last bill that the house passed this session was actually called the stop the war on coal act which rolls back environmental regulations on the coal industry. now, massachusetts democratic representative edward marquee had this priceless response. >> when the republicans say there is a war on coal, well, in a market sense yes, there is a war. and the same sense that when we started using macs and pcs, it was a war on typewriters. in the same sense that the horseless carriage was a war on horses. and the same sense that refrigerators were a war on salted meats. >> jennifer: i just love that! so well, congress is perfectly happy to pick wi