With Olympic coverage coming out of London we’ve all had to keep our eyes out for spoiler alerts before the events actually air. Keeping in the spirit of that, we here at The Ed Show want to bring you our own version of a spoiler alert.
The background: a major fire broke out at a Chevron refinery in California on Monday, which forced the plant to shut down production. Now this is one of the largest refineries in the country—it produces about 150,000 barrels of gasoline a day, or 16 percent of the region’s daily gasoline consumption.
The fire, which took over a day to get under control, has limited the region’s already-low inventory and experts are projecting that it could raise gas prices in the state by as much as 50 cents a gallon.
We’re all familiar with the “gas wars” raging over on Fox News. There’s been a lull since gas prices went down due to a lack of demand. Well, Fox now has the (literal) fire to re-ignite the war. We thought we’d give you a preview of the coming storm so you don’t actually have to wait for it all to unfold.
If you don’t want to hear the results of the inevitable, fabricated, faux-outrage driven, entirely nonsensical, President Obama-blaming, seige on the American people’s wallet, latest edition of the Gas Price War--- you should not click on. Consider yourself warned.
Here’s how we think it will play out: first, they get an expert on gas prices. Stuart Varney, we’re looking at you! Not actually an expert on gas prices? No problem! They’ll be throwing you softballs.
Now, Stuart (or whichever “expert” they can grab off the street) will tell us that, while he can’t confirm anything, there are DEFINITELY “rumors” floating around that regulations put in place by the Obama administration are to blame. “These poor, selfless, already over-regulated refineries, just couldn’t handle the newest regulations.”
Basically, somehow, the “undue burden” of regulations created the conditions that caused the fire. Exactly how that “cause and effect” came to be, they won’t explain—but! they’ll tease that the answers will be revealed in some upcoming segment that never actually airs.
Next: spiffy graphics and leading questions. Political analysts will discuss all of this under headlines like “Did over-regulation cause the fire?” “Will the gas price spike help Obama win in November?” “How will Obama use California gas prices to his advantage?” And we’re sure a ton of others that we, here at The Ed Show, can’t come up with because we happen to live in the world of reality.
Those political analysts will speculate— about secret meetings between President Obama and his czars (you know the czars) about how to sabotage the gas and oil industry. And while they’ll have no way to actually confirm the content of those meetings they can assume it was someone who hates America and gas and oil and apple pie and maybe even their own mom.
Whoever it was, they secretly plotted to have a major refinery catch fire because OBVIOUSLY (by the way, does sarcasm translate through blog posts?) this is the way to win California in November (which a Democrat hasn’t lost in 24 years) and this is simply another atrocity in the dirty campaign Obama is running to divide America.
Last, but not least: Fox will find a way to spin this into yet another casualty of the Obama administration’s refusal to allow oil and gas companies to DRILL BABY DRILL. Never mind the pesky fact that drilling and production is at an all-time high. Never mind the fact that even if you opened up the entire country to drilling and exploration and gave it all to these poor oil companies free of charge, we still only have 2 percent of the world’s (known) oil.
Never mind that even if we sucked all the oil out of the ground tomorrow and made the oil companies (that benefit from our tax dollars through subsidies that Republicans INSIST they must have, despite the fact that no industry has ever been as profitable IN THE HISTORY OF EVER) even richer than they already are, that they would just put it on the world market and screw the American people anyway. Never mind all that.
So, there you have it. Realistically, we probably didn’t have to even put up a spoiler alert. We’re looking at the same playbook of all previous Fox News Gas Wars. Fox News will always find a new non-existent controversy to direct their pearl-clutching, faux outrage at.
We’ll never get the answers to those burning questions that they raise-- the ones that caused their viewers to lose sleep at night because they’re so angry at America’s first black president for causing this mess for the poor, hungry-feeding, homeless-sheltering, sick-comforting, oil and gas companies who take such good care of us Americans.
P.S. Don’t forget that it was somehow the gays, athiests, secular-humanists, Christmas-haters, liberals, progressives, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, socialism, dictatorial presidency, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who are responsible. How, you ask? We don’t know, but they are all available to fit into the grand conspiracy somehow.
P.P.S. Bill Clinton!!!!