Summertime and the living ain’t easy. Jobless rates are jumping and the gas price is high. The oil companies are rich and Angelina Jolie is good looking. So hush jobless Americans. Don’t you cry. One of these mornings you’re going to rise up foreclosed. Then you’ll pack your SUV and you’ll drive to the dump. But until that morning, nothing but reality can harm you. With big oil and Angelina standing by.
    With due apologies to George Gershwin, welcome to America’s Summer of Discontent. You already know the parade of fun: recession, stock market tanking, house prices falling, layoffs as far as the eye can see. America needs a friend or at least a more reliable pusher of oil. And who is America’s best friend/pusher in the world? Why none other than King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who is going to kick up oil production a bit to ease our withdrawal symptoms. With friends like King Abdullah, who needs herpes? What a pal we have in King Abdullah.
    The King has been spending time reading the collected works of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia told
60 Minutes that people who were still stressed over the theft of the 2000 presidential election by the Supreme Court should just "get over it." The King was quoted recently regarding the high price of oil telling consumers just to "get used to it." Quote the King, "Consumer countries have to adapt to the prices and mechanisms of the market. We have nothing to do with the current sharp increase in crude prices." He’s like the little character in Family Circus called "Not Me." Whenever Jeffy would break a lamp or a cookie jar he denied it and blamed Not Me as the culprit. King Abdullah’s Not Me reasoning makes me feel much better about paying more than four bucks a gallon for gas.{mosimage}
    Welcome to the wonderful world of Faith-Based Economics. No one is responsible for anything. To quote the great Donald Rumsfeld, "Stuff happens." Big oil producing countries have nothing to do with the price of oil. Big oil companies have nothing to do with the price of oil. Not Me raised the oil prices. But being proud, red-blooded Americans, we need to blame someone for the current mess. We ain’t buying King Abdullah’s Not Me. We are not going to go gentle into that good night of little bitty sissy fuel efficient cars and mass transportation. No Sirree! If the logical beneficiaries of the record breaking oil profits are not responsible for high prices we need to blame someone else. Don’t blame it on the bossa nova — blame it on mutant dark matter.
    A 2008 study from the International Astrological Society ruled out the previous theory that duct tape was the force that kept the universe intact. The new study reports regular dark matter has been holding the universe together since the Big Bang. Unfortunately, dark matter has an evil twin called mutant dark matter which causes more trouble than seven years of the Bush administration. Earth recently passed through a giant cloud of mutant dark matter which was on parole from a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Mutant dark matter has caused the recent financial upheavals we are all enjoying.
    Mutant dark matter has had multiple pernicious effects on our fair planet. The delicate balance of stuff which orders our planet has been turned into Bizarro World. Bizarro World, discovered in Superman comics, is a place where everything is the opposite of the Earth. Bizarro Superman is dumb, whereas real Superman is smart. Up is down, hello means goodbye. You get the picture. Earth is now Bizarro Earth due to its exposure to the mutant dark matter. Examples of Bizarro Earth are everywhere: drowning polar bears at the North Pole; colossal green algae blooms messing up aquatic events at the Chinese Olympics; former Evil Axian North Koreans getting food from the U.S.A., while South Koreans riot about our mad cows; Wall Street accounting firms who can’t count; 600 Starbucks closing; and the automotive industry sales racing to the bottom of the oil barrel.
    What are we as Americans to do about mutant dark matter exposure? Take the advice of the Homeland Security Administration — buy duct tape and sheets of plastic. Make a safe room in your house while you still own it. Watch
Entertainment Tonight. Eat Cheetos. The best is yet to come.