Pumping for Joy

The price of a barrel of Oil fell by $0.38 (That's 38 cents, my friends...) and the headlines are proclaiming a colossal sell-off leading to the imminent "Bursting of the Energy Bubble". If I wouere you, I'd get the hell out of the way as the bursting bubble might cause e a massivetsunami in the economy, and many could be hurt, or even killed. Oil is, as of Friday, the 18th day of July, 2008, a mere 128 dollars a Barrel of black goo, pplus small change. Forget $147 a barrel last week: that was just a bad dream caused by eating salmonella laced tomatoes.
At the supermarket today, I saw people lining up to buy food for the first time in two weeks with the money they will save as gasoline prices at the pump fell by a penny. American capitalism works, folks. I even heard a woman tell her young son that now he can have Pop-Tarts again! Oh, Joy of Joys.
I for one, am going to take my family out to a restaurant tonight and we are going to splurge on toothpicks from their front counter, in celebration of the Bush Energy Policy, and Dick Cheney's willingness to give up his next million dollars in Energy profits. This is what the founding Fathers had in mind.
May be the Dalai Lama got to the Nymex Commodity sharks; may be they read up on Mahatma Gandhi, or the Sermon on the Mount. But whatever it was, something gave them Religion. It is even possible that they may vote for Barack Obama.
Lines are forming at the corner gas station and drivers are fist-fighting each other in arush to take advantage of that penny-drop in gasoline prices. When, when dear people, did that last happen? Ask your grandparents: they may remember the last penny-drop.
I feel so sorry for thge Saudis and ther Kuwaities and all those others who have been making big plans for aSummer of orgies. They will now have to tighten the belts around their kaftans ( do they have belts?) and lay-off a few camel-drivers.
Though the days and nights of 'cheap" (affordable) oil and gasoline may be gone, gone,gone, it is heartening to know that when you multiply that penny-drop by gallons per person by six-point-three-billion ( the World's population), you can see that in one single historic moment in time, all the hungry can now be fed, the sick cured and the homeless multitudes sheltered.
Oh, thanks, NYMEX Traders; thanks, George Bush, Dick Cheney and all the unknown, unheralded Angels of Mercy in White Desert Robes who have brought this about.
I don't know about you, but I am going to start my car and run it, idling, for a whole minute justb to hear again the sound of Prosperity.
Happy pumping,. y'all.

Oil Slick Dick

When vice-president Dick Cheney met in secret to determine "Energy Policy" with what are believed to have been a group of energy (read: Oil and Gas) company excutives, and flatly refused to let the American people know who was present there and what was discussed and decided, I smelt a very big rat, bigger than any denizen of the subways under New York City. Efforts by the press to obtain that information were horn-swaggled by Cheney's claim that it was not anybody's business what advise he got from whoever it was he had met with. The rat I smelled actually was an oil soaked critter. VP Cheney, and his boss, the president, are both from the Oil industry. That in itself is not a disqualification for holding a high office: but we did run the risk that most of their "energy" policies would be directed toward looking after their base of support in that industry. It is tempting, so many years later, to believe that a decision was made at that meeting to arrive approximately at where we are now in regard to oil prices by principally manipulating the production of crude (with OPEC co-operation) and letting speculators do the rest. Yes, there are complex and diverse factors that determine the price of a commodity as vastly produced and distributed globally as oil is. Yet, there have always been these same factors present over many, many years; yet it took an oil-based administration in Washington for that complexity and lack of transparency to propel oil prices into an upward spiral that has been not only unprecedented, but entirely opaque in regard to an acceptable rationale. The pundits who serve the industry and innumerable Administration appointies keep pointing to India and China and their fast-growing economies as the major reason for the run up in oilmprices. "It's Supply and Demand," they keep reminding us. Frankly, even if every one of the one billion Indians and a number exceeding that of Cinese had Oil for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of the year, it would still represent a fraction of what it ewould take to so completely disrupt the oil market. A minuscule percentage of Indians own and drive cars, and even with the economic boomthey have experienced, their economy is a fraction as large as ours. yes, there is increased demand: then why is there no increased supply? Are the Saudis and the Kuwaities running dry? Far from it. The Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia is on record as having said that there is enough oil being pumped to meet present demand without any strain on the system: in other words, look elsewhere for reasons why we have this spike in oil prices.

As time runs out for the Bush Administration, the president is now in the act of delivering the punch-line, the coup de grace: START DRILLING!

An executive order signed by the first president George (H.W.) Bush, as well as a law passed by Congress shut down the process of issuing any more leases for off-shore drilling and exploration, mostly in response to serious environmental concerns that created opposition to off-shore exploration in coastal States on both the West and East Coasts. Now, with the price of oil at destructively high levels, the president is demanding that new leases be immediately made available to the Oil companies, who will then drill like crazy to rescue the American consumer.

This, Mr.President, amounts to a con-job. For all your patriotic bluster, furrowed brow and hand-wringing, you knew that a day would come, as a consequence of the very reason you chose to run for office and selected this particular man to be your vice-president , when the nation would fall on bended knee and plead for more drilling to save the economy. In effect, the nation could be held hostage to the Corporate bottom lines of your Petro-buddies. Sorry, Sir, but the Gig is Up. Your latest fiat lifting the restriction on off-shore drilling by executive order is a well-timed act of deception. You wish to appear in the role of Knight in Shining Armor: you look and act more like Don Quixote than any of King Arthur's valiant men. The timing is perfect, but you failed to fool anybody.
If you are so driven to rescue this nation from the Oil Price Dragon, how about a very simple kick-in-the corporate pants of Big Oil to get drilling on the leases they already hold! Or, may I venture to think, that that would not achieve your main purpose: and that is once and for all to destroy the power of the environmental movement that you have already hurt every other way you can. Until the off-shore sanctum can be breached and the pristine ANWAR fields are leased out, you will ot be able to report to your real constituents, the Oil Companies, that, for the second time in your presidency, you can claim: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
I personally don't think you will get away with it, even at twice your present Approval rating.

Some day, this is how it will be. Dial 9-1-1

"You have reached the AERRS Automated Emergency Report and Response System. (To Continue in English, Press 1" for Spanish, press 2; for Arabic, Korean, Vietnamese, tagalog or Dutch, press "3"; For Japanese, call Japan.
"1"
"If the emrgency is one of the following, press the assigned number on your touch-tone phone. If you do not have a touch-tone phone, call again when you get one. If you accept these terms of service, press ."1"
"1"
"For flood, press "1""For Earthquake, between magnitude 3,5 and 4,5, press "2" ;Magnitude 4.5 and 6.0, press "3"; Magnitude 6.0 and 7.8, press "4"; for a seismic event in excess of 7.8, press "5"; If you do not know the magnitude of the event, press the "#" sign. We will connect you to the National Earthquake Center in Boulder, Colorado for a fee of $5.95 charged to your phone.."For Accidental injury, press "6""For Robbery, burglary, indecent exposure, or shots fired , press "7""For all other emergencies, Call 1-866-247-8000, Extn 10126 between the hours of 7:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. Atlantic Time.
"7"
"You have selected an emergency that rates low on our RPS: Response Priority Scale. If you wish to consider further choices to select from, press "#". Otherwise hang up and make room for the next yo-yo. Good bye."
Hang up.
Yes, it was a case of "shots fired". They were fired at the caller.May be that was part of the Advanced Choices list. But they hung up.

The Advanced Choice List:
"Were the shots accurately aimed?" Rate them on a scale of 1 to 10
"Did the shots miss?" For Yes, press "1" ; Not sure, press "2"
"What was the make and model of the gun used? " For AK-47, press "1"; for Uzi, press "2"; for U.S.Army issue RPG, press "3"
"If you were hit, were you hit on a part of your body?" For Head, press "1"; for Thorax, press "2"; for Abdomen, press "3'; for limbs, press the wound with a pressure pad and go to the nearest Urgent Care Center."
"Are you able to breathe, swallow, spit, swear, run, jump hurdles or knit a sock?

Modern Technology is wonderful.Who neds human beings?