(Responsible Disclaimer: Some of you will read this and feel a strong desire, perhaps for the first time ever, to call PETA's hotline. Go ahead. It won't help.)
Anyone who filled up their gas tank this week knows one thing: The experts are full of beans. Earlier this year, we were told in no uncertain terms that the price of gasoline would never again go below three dollars a gallon, proper tire inflation be damned.
Well, it did, and AAA believes it will sink below two dollars a gallon this weekend as many Western states switch to the cheaper "winter blend." Funny, over the past few years, the experts have been wrong about a lot of things. But don't let that embolden your heart.
Just because we're getting a timely break at the pump doesn't mean that the commodities market is stable - anything but. They could easily roll out the barrel again where oil futures are concerned. For our part, we weathered this last bout of fossil-inflation quite well. It must be in our blood.
In the mid-1830s, Americans almost universally burned whale oil in their lamps. As the whale population declined (and as more people wanted to light their homes) the price of whale oil increased by roughly 540 percent. Then kerosene was introduced, and we were on our way to here.
What has worked in the past can work again, if not for our lamps, then at least for heating oil. Commercial whaling, in concept, could be viewed as a new form of renewable alternative energy. In practice, though, the more likely result would be the summary extinction of whales worldwide as Wall Street went Ahab on us all.
Given that, the next logical source of combustible blubber is the elephant, and not as in Hannibal crossing the Alps. I mean the logo on all the fear-and-smear mailers that jammed your mailbox last month. That's right. Republicans need to put their money where they put all that junk food.
Think of how many raw kilowatt hours are waisted on the likes of a Rush Limbaugh or a Dennis Hastert. Karl Rove would once more have some form of value. Tell me Bill O'Reilly doesn't need his chin sucked (perhaps, as a rare humanitarian exception, they could give it to Mitch McConnell).
Conservative fat cats serving hefty prison sentences could donate, as well, in exchange for a slight reduction in penalty; call it "lard time". I'm thinking Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, guys like that. It wouldn't right all of the wrongs, but it would help them, and it would help society.
No doubt, there are some heavy Democrats out there, too. All should be encouraged - with yet another tax incentive if need be - to waddle on down to the nearest VA hospital for some bipartisan liposuction in the name of energy independence.
Come on, Butterworth, it's either this or you start buying American cars. Weigh in as part of the solution. If you could all just tighten up your belts a little bit, the other 95 percent of us wouldn't have to.
pH 11.13.o8
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