This man is simply delighted you’re paying $4.40/gallon at the pump.

Eschewing any flowery window dressing to distract us, Thomas Friedman of the NYT can barely contain his glee over what we are currently paying at the pump, so much so that he believes that regardless of what happens to the price of oil in the future, the state should act in way of taxes to keep a permanent “price floor” of $4/gallon.

You see, its all about tough love. When the price of oil is relatively cheap, we act in an amoral fashion and buy gas-guzzling SUVs but when the price of oil shoots up, we behave in a much more ethical and moral fashion and purchase Priuses (just like Friedman!). But since that wacky free market can’t be trusted to keep us in lock-step with Friedman’s world-vision goodness, we’ll simply employ the government to keep us in a perpetual state of automaton-like righteousness.

Its baffling to us that Friedman appears to be completely oblivious to the pervasive negative effect on the economy that high fuel prices have. Its as if Friedman thinks his Prius is going to transport vegetables to market and cattle to the slaughterhouse. Or that the law of gravity will be repealed to allow water we use to drink and clean to flow up and over mountain ranges absent pumping stations. Friedman also believes Santa’s elves will chop down trees by hand and that his sled which is underemployed 364 days of the year will transport the resulting lumber to construction sites for homes we require because we are still needlessly breeding and thus crushing the planet under the weight of our humanity.

The fact that Obama and many in Congress share this naked condescension towards their constituents only bolsters our contention that despite all the “activity” on the Hill regarding our current energy crisis there is a palpable air of unseriousness in all their scratching, clutching, caterwauling and rutting.

UPDATE #1: Big Oil is making such obscene profits from selling gas that Exxon is selling off the 2,200 retails gas stations it owns here in the states. All that jack was piling up in stacks at Exxon headquarters and was becoming a fire hazard... they simply couldn't spend it fast enough on their executives pensions so the only sensible thing to do was to kill that golden goose. Safety first!

Obscene...?

Big Oil – Big Government update:

… and introducing Shell Oil’s new CEO… Maxine Waters.

Firmly reasserting itself atop the dung heap of shameless pandering and completely insane ideas, the House jumped into the fray with some suggestions of their own. Head Madam Maxine Waters (D-CA) felt that if privately owned and operated Big Oil could not bring down the price of oil perhaps government could.

Link: sevenload.com

If video fails to launch go here. If that fails, here is the gist: Ol’ SMaxine wants to sociali………………………………… wants the government to take over oil production.

You know, it’s a sad, sad day in American politics when a Leftist like Waters is unable to even articulate the term “nationalize” in its proper context. It makes one wonder just what the hell is going on with our public education system where the language and terminology of socialist policy is not being properly taught.

Update #1: Mongo reminded us in the comments of something we saw but forgot to point out. At the end of Waters' finger-wagging, check out the expression on the gentleman and especially that of the lady to Waters' right. She has this sort of endeared expression that is reserved for batty old aunts... as in, "poor old aunt Maxine... she really has been dealing well with her dementia but sometimes, well sometimes she just kind of loses it and says the wackiest things, bless her little heart."

H/T: Hot Air

Big Oil in the Parliament of Whores

The Senate, unwilling to let the House continue their unprecedented run of unhinged, irrational and childish behavior unaccompanied, hauled before them the leaders of Big Oil and strapped them to the whipping post for a public flogging on Capitol Hill, yesterday.

In a regrettable affront to 3rd graders everywhere, we imagine the leaders of Big Oil trying to explain global market dynamics as it relates to oil, would be like talking to a roomful of schoolchildren who haven’t yet been put down for their nap.

Typical of the exchanges between the petrol evil-doers and Congress:

Big Oil…

Lee R. Raymond, Exxon's chairman and chief executive, said that the industry's profits, measured as a share of its revenue, were no greater than those in other industries. We are in line with the average of all U.S. industry," Mr. Raymond said. "Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge. How are these earnings used? We invest to run our global operations, to develop future supply, to advance energy-producing and -saving technologies, and to meet our obligations to millions of our shareholders."

And the Senate…

“None of us knows much about pricing…” Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota.

Of course, this harangue-op will do absolutely nothing to lower the price of oil nor will it do anything to bring more of the world’s currently most economically feasible energy commodity to market. It won’t… we promise.

Full story here.


Some of the planet's perturbed, scaring children and crinkling noses at the hearings yesterday.