Can you believe the price of gas? The national average is over $4.00 a gallon. But what really bugs me is that the gas stations still insult us by posting the price as 3.99 9/10! I mean give us a break. When you fill up your SUV, does it really matter that you paid $3.99 9/10 instead of $4.00? For a typical 20 gallon fill up, the difference would be 2 cents. If you filled up once a week, over the course of one year you would save $1.04. Thank you Big oil companies.

But what I really don’t understand is in Southern California there are oil wells all over the place, and the off shore oil rigs are just a few miles of the coast, and ARCO has a refinery right in the middle of town yet the price of gas is higher there than in most other States. How can that be? Shouldn’t it be cheaper there as the oil is pumped and refined all within a few miles of the gas stations?

The Saudis are saying the price of gas is going up because of demand of gas in India, China and third world courtiers has gone up. So they want me to believe that the people there have more than doubled their consumption in the last 6 months?

I guess they may have a point as when the locals in Bangladesh or Hattie protest, because the cost of food has more than tripled, by rioting and looting, they set all those tires on fire with gasoline. If they would just accept that the world doesn’t really care if the starve to death, and refrain from using all the gas the price would come down for the rest of us. Thank you OPEC for setting me straight on that.

You have to love Capitalism. As where else could 3 or 4 big oil companies make more money in the last two years than any company in the history of the civilized world? Exxon PROFIT for 2007 $39.5 billon, 2006 it was $36.16 billion and so far this year it’s $40.6 billion. It’s a good thing the US Government gives them subsidies or else all that money may have gone to help American's with health care. Of course the Hospitals may have to cut back on Ambulances to help cut back on overhead, but it just wouldn’t be right for the top oil executives not to get their multi-million dollar bonuses and stock options.

I don’t want to pick on the Saudi’s and OPEC as it does in fact cost them almost $5.00 to produce a barrel of oil. So when the price hits $150.00 a barrel that will only be a 3000% profit…

But you guys in the States have it made; the price of gas here in Japan is $6.50 a gallon. Luckily for us we don’t have a car to get around. We use bicycles or the bus to get around town. The bus transportation in Japan is great. The buses run on time. Exactly on time. If the bus schedule says the bus leaves at 3:07 pm and you get there at 3:08, you are waiting for the next one. Which will be in about 15. I have actually set my watch by when the bus arrives.

I saw on CNN that George Bush’s over all approval rating is less than 29%. But when I looked on Fox News the headline said “1 out of 3 approve.” Now that’s what I call “Fair and Balanced”

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Lenny