Drive? Heck No. Oil is at $117!

Can you believe that oil is over $117 a barrel? If you’ve been filling up your tank recently–which I am sure many of you have, you know the shock you’ve been getting at the gas pump. I put sixty dollars into my tank the other day, and my tank wasn’t even empty! Gas prices right now are ridiculous, and if you’re like me, and you’ve paid attention to the hundreds of millions of dollars paid out to oil company CEOs, and kept an eye on the billions in profit reaped by the oil companies in general, you, my friend, are angry.

Gas is at an average of $3.50 a gallon, and the excuses are coming from everywhere. I think the latest was that a Japanese tanker was attacked in the Middle East; sorry to hear it, but one tanker is contributing that much to the pain in my wallet? I don’t think so, folks. That just doesn’t sound right.

We’ve been watching oil creep to $100, and now that that’s long gone, $100 a barrel sounds like a good deal. Diesel is up around $4.20 a gallon, which affects the real road warriors and, thus, what we pay for the goods we buy that are being transported by those road warriors. We’re getting banged around all over the place, and it’s baffling for most of us. With the new attacks happening on oil tankers being used to explain, at least partially, why crude is skyrocketing, it does occur to me that once again terrorism, or at least some form of it, is affecting me and you here at home. No, I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist at all, but for goodness sake, can we have another reason given to us for why we’re suffering these prices? I’m pretty exhausted listening to all of the men with guns news as to why we’re doing so poorly now. How about just tell us, the American public, Look, we want to be rich, we’re going to gouge you for, say, the next 12 months, but then we’re not gouge you at the pumps for the three years that follow. I think, at this point, I’d rather hear that excuse give. I’m tired of the warrior mentality. It’s exhausting.