So as the price of oil eats holes in everyone’s wallets, and I find more and more of my not-increasing-this-year bi-weekly pay poured into my car’s gas tank (no, I don’t drive an SUV and despise people who do so needlessly), BP has released its quarterly report.

I’ll spare you the need to pore through the boring details, and give you the skinny: BP made a profit of $7.27 billion dollars in the second quarter.  In more human terms: that’s in excess of $55,000 per minute.

ExxonMobil’s profit?  Even higher!  A record $10.7 billion in the second quarter.  That’s about $1,353.47 every second.

Think about that next time you’re filling your gas tank and grimacing at the cost.  Or crying at the pump, as I’ve seen many a soccermom-in-a-Hummer do lately (though I admit to taking a morbid delight in that).

Yes, yes I know, criticizing oil companies is the vogue thing to do these days, and the Big Oil head honchos will tell you that if we want gas prices to go down, we should simply use less gas.  But I also say that maybe it would be nice if the powers that be considered developing and making available alternative fuels.  E85, for instance.  I’d LOVE to drive a vehicle that runs on this stuff, but there’s not a single publicly-accessible station in my state that dispenses it.  Why?

I’ll tell you why.  E85 doesn’t make large oil conglomerates close to $1,400 a second.

Neither do electric cars. Of the 5,000 that GM has ever manufactured, they chose to crush 4,000 rather than sell them.  Nice, huh?

Sadly, Bush is right about our addiction to oil.  But what alternatives do we have?  the current state of things is akin a drug dealer telling us we need to kick our heroin habit, while they hoard all the methodone.

Not to make light of the hissyfit going on in the middle east right now between Israel and Lebanon, but damn is CNN really milking that banner headline for all it’s worth!  usually the big bold banner is reserved for humungous breaking ews, but this conflict has been going on for days now.  Hardly worth reserving all that space for sensasionalism.

Then again, maybe I should start  my own huge banner headlines:

SP PAYS $30 TO FILL HIS P.O.S. CAR’S TANK!  ZOMG!

The saying once went “Trenton Makes. The World Takes.”

Nowadays, Trenton takes. And takes, and takes, and takes. It wouldn’t be so bad if Trenton just took taxes… in fact, a 1% sales tax increase is something I can stomach. But last week, Trenton couldn’t figure out how to spend its money. And in doing so, it also took away the confidence of everyone living in the little state it governs. For a week, it took away the income of an estimated 100,000 state employees and casino workers. And I even had the unfortunate opportuinity to see it, firsthand, take away the bread and butter of local businesses who relied on those now-temporarily-unemployed state employees who used to stop by on their lunch breaks to eat, or maybe pick up a knicknack or two on the way home.

It was probably eight of the most grueling days for the people of New Jersey in memory. While they were sweating it out, some out of work and with dim hopes of getting back pay for their troubles, a bunch of greedy little children in that town called Trenton bickered and fought, in the most embarassing display of chaos exhibited in the history of politics.

The sad thing is, the people who were hurt the most were probably not at all on the minds of those greedy little children, except in that some had a misguided notion that they would not be re-elected if they didn’t stamp ther feet and throw a tantrum. If that’s what it takes to win an election, then this little state is, alas, doomed.

I hope the citizens of New Jersey see fit to throw every last one of them out of office next go-round. When the people within the same political party can’t agree, and are at each other’s throats, and are even willing to hold the futures of millions of people hostage, then the system is truly broken. And that hurts everyone.