There are times when the normal rules of civilized social intercourse are too restrictive, when I am no longer able to maintain my habitual well mannered persona. My apologies to those who might find my language a little strong, my judgments a little harsh, but I’m afraid that I found the drivel below to be simply too much for this mild mannered soul to bear without making a few comments and corrections.
I comfort myself with the idea that I have not ceased to be a gentleman by doing so. The only valid definition of one of those is someone who never unknowingly insults another and I am perfectly well aware of what I’m doing here.

From Salon:
The truth about soaring gas prices
How the Bush White House remains a veritable full-service fueling station for Big Oil.
By Arianna Huffington

That would be Arianna Stassinopoulos as was, the Arianna Stassinopoulos-Huffington as she became upon marriage to an oil heir, the maiden name being dropped not when she ceased to be one, but when even her ego realized that it was too much name for insufficient talent. This is the same AS who was once described as the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus. The one whose early journalistic years in London were better known for the mature gentlemen of means who squired her around town than the quality or quantity of her copy, the very same one who realized that reputations last and so had to move to the US to find a rich man dumb enough to marry her. It might even be the same one who when married to that same oil heir ran him for a Senate seat for the Republican Party: at the time she was considered the right wing equivalent of Hillary, the hand inside the sock puppet. Given what we later learned about Mr. Huffington’s sexual proclivities when he divorced her and came out of the closet that’s not a particularly enjoyable thought.
So, having set the scene, let’s see what she actually has to say eh?

May 27, 2004 | Drivers, start your engines — and empty your wallets! As we gear up for the biggest driving weekend of the year, vacationers all across America are coming face to face with the highest average gas prices in history — up 42 cents a gallon since 2001 — and a bad case of “pump panic,” a new malady in which your heart rate instantly matches the price of full-service high-test. Where I live, there are lots of folks palpitating at 325 beats a minute.

Highest gas prices in history? Really? Ever heard of inflation dearie? Nominal prices and real prices? Shouldn’t you, the very picture of the modern woman, actually know about such things? You do realize that as measured by the general price level gas is cheap, cheaper than it was a hundred years ago?
And what’s this about people with 325 a minute heart beats eh? Now I realize you made your money on your back, the difference between gold-digging and whoring being the number of customers, but aren’t you as a nationally syndicated columnist supposed to have a slightly firmer grasp of the facts than that? That heart beats at that rate are fatal?
Well, I guess we can let you off that one, just the little woman exaggerating for effect just like those cries of ”But I’ve got nothing to wear!” followed by the sobs that precede a shopping trip. Oh, and if you don’t like the comparison then you can start doing what adults do which is base your arguments on the truth not teenage fantasies.

At the same time car owners are having to consider taking out a second mortgage in order to fill up their tanks, oil companies are raking in record profits. ConocoPhillips, for example, the United States’ largest oil refiner, recently reported its largest first quarter profits ever. And Exxon Mobil just posted its highest first quarter refining earnings in 13 years.

Yes dear, those oil companies that actually drill for and then pump oil out of the ground do indeed make larger profits when the price goes up. Just as they shrink when they fall. Tell me, in your years of marriage to an oil baron did you not notice that the jewelry for birthdays got larger or smaller according to the oil price?

Coincidentally, these companies and their oil and gas industry brethren have a highly profitable habit of greasing the receptive palms of their friend George Bush — doling out over $3.5 million to his 2000 and 2004 presidential runs.

So let’s see. An entire industry, the largest industry in the country, makes over two election cycles smaller donations than one man, George Soros, has made to John Kerry just this year. In fact, half the amount Soros has announced that he is spending to unseat Bush. So, by your logic, Waffles is between two and four times as much in the Hungarian born financier’s pocket as Bush is in Big Oil’s. Also, my little moussaka, did you not yourself just run for Governor of California? Did you not receive campaign contributions? Just what was it that you promised those who gave? Somehow the offering of a mature libido isn’t, I think, what would get the Hollywood liberal crowd out for you, so just what was it, if, as you seem to be saying, election funds get you favors later?

Today’s Daypass sponsored by GE

I’m obviously going to have to raise my prices to these people if they have enough money to sponsor this trash.

So for American consumers, payback is a bitch. And over two bucks a gallon at the gas pump.

Compare that with 1979, $ 2.59 a gallon in inflation adjusted dollars. Or, indeed, with John Kerry’s desire to raise the Federal Gasoline tax.

Indeed, since taking office, the Bush administration has turned the White House into a veritable full-service fueling station for Big Oil. And we’re the ones being forced to pick up the tab.
How has Bush responded to Big Oil’s call to “fill ‘er up”? Let me count the ways:
1.5: the meager miles per gallon Bush has proposed increasing fuel efficiency standards for light trucks and SUVs, which are allowed to average 7 miles per gallon less than regular cars.

Yes indeedy, the Pres is evil because he only raised the standards by 5 %. What he knows and you seem to have missed, my little olive pit, is that the existence of SUV’s is entirely to do with those very CAFE standards you so support. The only reason that SUV’s are built on a truck chassis is because that is the only way that the customer is able to get what they want. No CAFE, no SUV’s.
It might also be worthwhile to note that if you actually wanted to raise the fuel efficiency of the fleet you would relax some of the technologies by which pollution reduction is mandated. More on that later.

33: the number of oil refinery mergers the Bush administration has allowed, while refusing to block a single oily takeover. Who needs all that messy free market competition, anyway?

Indeed, who does need all that messy free market stuff. Like the fact that we do not have, any more, a national gas market, it is a series of state and region wide near monopolies. Not because Big Oil has been buying it all up but because the EPA and other such agencies have been mandating different blends for different areas and different times of year. Go look over at Lynne Kiesling’s place, www.knowledgeproblem.com for a good discussion of just how the anti pollution brigade have raised gas prices by reducing the efficiency of that free market.

41: the number of top-level Bush administration officials with ties to the oil industry, including Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Evans, Gale Norton and Condoleezza Rice ˜ the only national security adviser in history to have an oil tanker named after her.

Oooh, Oooh, evil! No mention two lawyers in the White House corrupted the law enforcement agencies. But that’s a cheap shot of course.

100,000: the amount, in dollars, that buyers of extra large — and extra gas-guzzling — SUVs are able to write off in taxes thanks to a scandalous loophole the president signed into law.

This is different from donations to 527’s being tax deductible in what way?

23 billion: the number of dollars in tax incentives, tax credits and tax deductions earmarked for the president’s energy industry chums in the Bush-backed energy bill passed by the House and awaiting a vote in the Senate.

Gosh, what a fun fact. The President backs an energy bill. I mean, you might almost think that he was taking Ms. Huffy seriously! Leave aside the idea that it is the House that makes up the bill, the President has no powers to initiate legislation. Just what would be the effect of having tax incentives, tax credits and tax deductions for oil companies? You know, I think it might rather be that this would make looking for, drilling for, refining and selling oil cheaper than if they paid more tax. And you know what the effect of that will be don’t you? Yup, cheaper gas at the pump. Ain’t that what you want Miss Acropolis?

Infinite (or does it only seem so?): the number of times the president has resurrected the idea that drilling in Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would make us less dependent on foreign oil — even though such drilling would, at best, produce enough oil to meet only six months of America’s energy needs. And it would take 10 years to do even that.

Lessee now, 6 months of the US’s energy needs. That would be all of the electricity from coal, gas, hydro, solar, wind and nuclear (we barely use oil for electricity), all of the coal and so on used for steel smelting, in fact, all of the energy used in the entire country. So 17 % of that is for lighting, none of which is provided by oil. So the relevance of oil to provision of energy for lighting is what, none? So we’re really talking about what impact oil has on 83 % of energy aren’t we. Ah, no, we don’t use oil to make steel, we don’t use it to make electricity, we don’t use it to make cement…..in fact, we really only use it for transport and plastics. So why don’t we compare the amount of oil we would get from the ANWR with the amount of oil we use eh? Compare apples with apples? What was that you said? Won’t make your point strong enough? Ah, so what do we call this then, lying for effect? Or just emphasis? Or could it be, possibly, partisan political posturing?

Next page | The Bush administration’s utter contempt for conservation
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Add to all this the administration’s downright contemptuous and contemptible attitude toward conservation — the only surefire way to reduce the need for more oil — and it becomes unmistakably clear that when it comes to Bush’s energy policy, special-interest money has once again trumped the public interest.

You know this really gets me. Oil price goes up, consumption will go down. Ask any economist, anyone who has managed to get past page three of an Econ 101 textbook. You want people to use less get them to pay more. So first the Pres is castigated for high gas prices then he’s shouted at in some mid menopausal manner for ensuring that consumption goes down yet somehow he’s not doing anything for conservation. You know I think the best thing our little Attic Scribe could do is go away for a few years and come back when the hormones have settled down.

It should be the first lesson in Political Chemistry 101: Oil money and good government don’t mix. Not in Saudi Arabia, and not in the United States.

Indeed. That’s why we should get the Kennedy’s out of heating oil in Rhode Island. Just think how difficult it will be to clean up the bird’s corpse next time one of them wants to go for a ride.

Of course, our nation’s untreated addiction to oil is costing us more than just at the gas pump — it’s putting our very security at risk by leaving us beholden to the whims of any number of oil-rich and terrorist-friendly nations.

Yes ma’am, like the guy who pays your alimony.

Today’s Daypass sponsored by GE

I really am going to have to talk to this one of my customers.

This continued dependence on foreign oil is why Prince Bandar was more in the loop about plans to invade Iraq than our own secretary of state, why the administration’s much touted passion for human rights doesn’t extend to oil-rich — and brutal — Kazakhstan, why we’re spending close to $100 million in taxpayer money to arm and train troops to defend an Occidental Petroleum pipeline in Colombia, and, at least partly, why young Americans continue to arrive home from Iraq (secretly, of course) in body bags.

You can’t have it both ways dearest. Either the Pres tries to do something about securing oil supplies for this country to keep gas cheap or he doesn’t and gas gets more expensive. One or the other, not both.

It’s time for Washington to dole out some tough love to the energy and auto industry lobbies and help set them on the path of reform, starting with increasing fuel efficiency standards for all cars, light trucks and SUVs — the single biggest step we can take to conserve energy. Raising standards from the current 27.5 miles per gallon to 36 mpg would save us roughly 2 million barrels a day — about the same amount we currently import from the Persian Gulf.

There is an even easier answer to that. Presently the pollution reduction technology in use in cars is mandated. It is entirely possible to build a car engine with a much higher mpg which beats the emissions requirements. Honda did it a number of years ago with a lean burn engine. You can see them all over Europe right now. They’re not really sold in the US because, well, why because? Because economic illiterates like yourself insist that even if they can meet the emissions standards they must still have the same technology on them as those engines which cannot, making them too expensive. If you really want to raise the mpg of the US car fleet, simply state that any car which meets the emissions standards can be on the road, and do not mandate any form or type of technology that they must use to do so. But that would be a free market wouldn’t it?

Washington must also push Detroit to radically increase its production of hybrid cars and SUVs, and lead the way in teaming with corporate America to rapidly accelerate investment in energy efficiency, hydrogen-based technology, and renewable sources of energy like solar and wind. A great model for this is the new Apollo Project, a $300 billion program proposed by unions and environmental groups to create 3 million new jobs while helping America achieve energy independence over the next 10 years.

Oh happy days. We’re going to go out and spend $1 million dollars for every job created. You know what, that’s more than 50 % of Americans earn in an entire lifetime. No, that just doesn’t sound very good to me. Not that a vastly wealthy woman would know that of course.

And, oh yeah, there’s one more number:
2: the date in November when we must make sure to vote Bush out of office and replace him with someone whose judgment hasn’t been polluted by all that oil money spilling into his campaign coffers and then leaking into our energy policy.

Yeah, maybe Waffles can make all the cars run on ketchup. No, sorry, it’s more expensive per gallon than gas isn’t it.

Don’t let the skyrocketing numbers at the gas pump fool you: America isn’t confronting a shortage of fuel; it’s confronting a shortage of leadership.

Um, yeah. A price goes up because supply is limited in the short term and demand is rising worldwide. And this has nothing to do with a shortage of gas. Sheesh. Perhaps a shortage of rational thought on the part of the commentator might be more appropriate.

salon.com

And I thought the American media was unbiased ?

About the writer
Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist, the co-host of the National Public Radio program “Left, Right, and Center,” and the author of 10 books. Her latest, “Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America,” will be published in April by Miramax Books.

Two little thoughts occur to me. The article was published on May 27 th. The book will be published in April. Is the idiotarian world so confused that they have forgotten the manner in which the months of the year proceed?
The second is my favourite joke concerning the author, if, that is, it wasn’t composed by the intern (rather than my unfavourite joke which is the above bile that she vented onto the pages of Salon) :
Soon after Mr. Huffington announced that he was leaving on the grounds that he was gay, one wit announced that that explained the marriage in the first place. He was partial to a little Greek.