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IT'S COME TO THIS: "PRAYER AT THE PUMP" GROUP FORMED

One might think that this cartoon from this week's NEW YORKER magazine (be sure to click to enlarge), which uses an old punchline from the 1920's which originally had to do with yachts to make a point about our country's situation today, "says it all".

While it's a typically NEW YORKER-ish snobby-yet-witty take on "what must be going on in the suburbs," keeping the magazine's urbane and sophisticated readers (or those who pretend to read it while waiting at their doctor's office) informed on the perils of not living in a metropolis, we've come across a French Press Agency (AFP) article which ran on the Web worldwide today, May 5th. And, as the saying goes, "If it weren't so sad, it'd make you laugh".

What was it Senator Obama said about "people holding onto their beliefs" when times get bad? (Okay, maybe he didn't say it that well). The following piece is a typically dumb but predictable American response to a problem over which we all actually do have some control, at least if people bother to vote when they're not praying and "home-schooling" their kids on the evils of science and evolution, and not drilling for oil in Alaska and off our country's west coast. (Photo --- As much as I like Obama, I think Senator Clinton is out ahead of him with her call for a "tax vacation" for gasoline-buyers, but only as long as the oil companies use some of their record profits to make-up the shortfall, and she makes solid proposals for long-term relief at the pump ... Which Obama has not yet done).

I found this piece on Oil Watchdog; click on this line to visit there, a site dedicated to providing information to the public about the worldwide oil industry.

FYI, the French Press Agency (AFP), which carried this piece, was the only "western" press agency which kept a bureau in Hanoi throughout the entire Vietnam War (both the ones against the French and the US, both of which they won for various reasons not important here and now. However, President Lyndon Baines Johnson's own Secretary of Defense, Robert Strange McNamara, and that is his real middle name, has written that the potential for large amounts of oil in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam's east coast was one of the reasons US troops were kept there for so long --- Sound familiar?). For AFP's so-called "intransigence" and "support to the enemy," most all American media, print and electronic, still do not carry their reports; today, thanks to the Internet, we all have access to it. But as a 13-year old volunteer at WBAI radio, the Pacifica Radio station in NYC, I learned that WBAI was the only radio or TV station in the country which then subscribed to the AFP; the station's News Director, Paul Fisher, understood French, the language used on AFP's teletype machine ... This was in 1967. No computers yet.

And just by the way (or, "not for nothing" as my Italian friends in Rhode Island say), oil hit $120 a barrel today, "another record day," just seven weeks before Memorial Day weekend and the Indy 500, the two portents of the traditional "start of America's summer driving season". (Photo --- NY TIMES photo of a gas pump in Gorda, located on California's Central Coast, taken over a month ago; prices ranged from $5.19 to $5.39 a gallon).

Anyway, without any more fanfare nor my interruptions, here is the piece, entitled: "Tired of Paying Through the Nose, Americans Try Praying at the Pump," written by Karin Zeitvogel and distributed worldwide by AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE.

At a Shell gas station in Washington, Rocky Twyman and an unusual group of activists were mad as hell about soaring fuel prices.

"Last week, this station was 3.51 dollars. Now it's practically 3.60. So it's gone up nine cents in one week," Twyman said as he pumped five dollars' worth of gas into his thirsty American car.

"Someone's making a lot of money and it's really, really wrong," added Twyman, who founded the Prayer  at the Pump movement last week to seek help from a higher power to bring down fuel prices, because the powers in Washington haven't. (Photo --- Recent pump prices at a Shell gas station near Palm Springs, CA; the range is from $3.85 to $4.05).

The half-dozen activists -- Twyman, a former Miss Washington DC, the owner of a small construction company and two volunteers at a local soup kitchen -- joined hands, bowed their heads and intoned a heartfelt prayer. "Lord, come down in a mighty way and strengthen us so that we can bring down these high gas prices," Twyman said to a chorus of "amens."

"Prayer is the answer to every problem in life... We call on God to intervene in the lives of the selfish, greedy people who are keeping these prices high," Twyman said on the gas station forecourt in a neighborhood of Washington that, like many of its residents, has seen better days.

"Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world," he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in a modified version of the spiritual, "We Shall Overcome".

"We'll have lower gas prices, we'll have lower gas prices..." they sang.

At the weekend, Twyman had led a group of around 200 people in prayer at pumps in San Francisco, where gas is touching the four-dollars-a-gallon mark.

On Thursday, US lawmakers and experts at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill painted a grim picture of how Americans are being hammered by record fuel costs and the steepest food price spikes in 17 years.

To read the entire "Prayer at the Pump" story, simply click anywhere on this line.

Also, the LOS ANGELES TIMES ran a somewhat frightening piece today on Chinese businesses finding "bargains" in the US ... Click on this line to read that piece. Doesn't seem "connected" to the "Prayer at the Pump" story at first, but in reality ... at some level, aren't they all?

Finally, click on this line for some rather surprising statements made by members of the Rockefeller family, America's "First Family of Oil (and Money)".

$5 GAS --- IT'S HERE, GET USED TO IT, VOTE APPROPRIATELY

It's official: Gasoline is selling at $5-a-gallon on a daily basis, within the continental USA, smack dab in the middle of California's most-scenic road, in a town called Gorda, along gorgeous Highway 1, about 150 miles north of Los Angeles. There have been reports, on-again and off-again, about $5-a-gallon gas being sold in America, but until now, those reports have come mostly from Alaska or Hawaii, and they had almost always been short-lived affairs (see the posting on this site, below, about $5-a-gallon gas on the Hawaiian Island of Maui). (Photo - Recent gas prices, as reported by the Los Angeles Times).

It's probably safest for you readers, especially those with weak hearts, if we kind of "build up" to the story about the $5-a-gallon fuel, so we'll start-off with this report from the LOS ANGELES TIMES:

"California gas prices hit a record high today (3-17-08) but that milestone probably won't last very long. The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded hit $3.511, eclipsing the previous high of $3.499 reported last May, according to the Daily Fuel Gauge Report. Today's average is more than 58 cents higher than what motorists were paying a year ago. Southern California pump prices remained either slightly below or matched their all-time peaks." (end of LA TIMES blog posting).

Now the bad news, and, interestingly enough, it's from the NEW YORK TIMES' Jesse McKinley, reporting on the highest-priced gas in the country, which is, no surprise, found in California. Seems their brother reporters working for the Los Angeles paper with the same "last name" missed this one (but they'll probably remedy this soon ... Like, right after they read today's NEW YORK TIMES ... Happens almost every day, one way or another). We've truncated the story a bit for brevity, and also added a word or phrase or two to help readers not familiar with California's Central Coast (which is a shame, because it's so beautiful and offers so much):

"The reason for consumer agitation is that a station in Gorda, in Big Sur on the Central Coast of California, is serving up what may be the costliest gas in the land. On Tuesday morning, as crude oil flirted with $110-a-barrel and petrol prices set records nationwide, a gallon of regular at the Amerigo station was going for $5.20. Premium was fetching an eye-popping $5.40-a-gallon, though that included a free copy of a local newspaper (which was free, anyway).

GAS HITS $4 AND OVER IN CALIFORNIA, HAWAII

About a year ago, we at this Website predicted $4 a gallon gasoline within a year. Unfortunately, we were right. But where else was the price of gasoline going to go? DOWN? With this country's two top executives having been either owners of, employees of or chief executives of oil companies and those in related fields, what else would anyone expect to have happened? The Bush family's history in the oil business, not only in the US, but in Saudi Arabia and most other Middle Eastern countries, has been written-about and reported on extensively --- And W still got elected and then re-elected, if you believe the US Supreme Court. Our current pres' father, George Herbert Walker Bush, joined that small club of one-term presidents only when he was either so arrogant or just plain stupid enough to open his mouth about "Read my lips: No new taxes!" That Bush, dad, had also been head of the CIA ... Are we just out of our minds in this country, electing and re-electing these dangerous dolts?

Dick Cheney played it more straightforward, you have to give him credit for that. He has been so obviously entangled in the huge monies flowing between government, the "private" market and outright, unapologetic warfare, that he was almost daring Americans to vote for him. Cheney, having worked for various neo-con leaders in the shadowy hallways of our federal government, became a Congressman from Wyoming, a super-right-wing backwater state if ever there was one, and "somehow" became the chief executive of Halliburton. That outfit makes a lot of its money from the business of finding oil, drilling for it and operating oil fields. They also have developed a nice "side business" taking care of feeding and supplying our military forces all over the world. Of course they do so without having to engage in any of the usual pettiness which goes with these things, like actually "bidding" for contracts; and why should they? Their fix was in years ago, bought-and-paid-for. The company gave Cheney a $30-million "thanking you in advance" paycheck when he left the company in order to take the lesser-paying and lower-prestige job of American vice president.

Do you seriously think someone as clearly stupid as George Bush ever wanted to be anything other than Commissioner of Baseball, yet somehow got side-tracked into his scripted job? The more sensible people of the world are scared to death that these two will blow it all up before next January, when, says our Constitution, they get run out of office ... But only if there isn't some emergency or rumor of emergency which forces the inauguration of the new president to be "moved back". Think it can't happen? We all thought Katrina and the destruction of a great American city could never happen because of a hurricane. It did. Most of us have probably forgotten about that already.

Now, to the gas prices we're all dealing with: