"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
- Ellen Goodman"

At least I'm not the only one this occured to.

Rich Lowry on Oil on National Review Online

Apologize for the lack of updates on this blog. Simply exhausted all the way around is my days.

Here's an excellent article about the winfall profiteering of oil companies.

http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200511040824.asp

Even in this boom, there’s nothing untoward about ExxonMobil’s profits. They are big, but it is a big company with big expenditures. What is important is the profit margin. For every dollar in sales, ExxonMobil makes 9.8 cents. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola make 13.8 cents and 21.2 cents, respectively. Google makes 24.2 cents, and Merck, Bank of America, Microsoft and Citigroup all make more than that.