It's Too Oily

So Osama bin Laden is dead. Navy SEALS did him in, although the lanky terrorist son of a millionaire went down firing. Not what you'd call a great loss, and still our fighting forces had the dignity to follow the traditional Muslim rituals of washing the body and wrapping it in a white sheet before burying it at sea off the bow of the USS Carl Vinson.  

This wraps up the most intense manhunt in our nation's history and opens up a slot on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, where bin Laden has resided since shortly after that awful day in 2001.  He's probably going to be replaced by a bank robber from Oregon named Rob Banks, or a guy who steals airplanes in flight, named Hi Jackson.

George Bush and his henchman, Mr Cheney, could not accomplish this and it's to President Obama's great credit that under his direction, bin Laden was taken care of in the best way possible.  Of course, people are now quick to holler that Obama's success in this venture was just piggybacking on the groundwork laid by Bush's staff, which, if you will stop to think about it, DID NOT CAPTURE BIN LADEN so this jelly is full of sour grapes.

It gave the nation cause to celebrate, and as soon as that tumult quiets down some, maybe we can stop and look around and figure out what's next.

Retaliation seems a given, but you have to wonder where...and how.  We have learned a lot since 2001, and we have to hope that our intelligence will enable us to head off a return punch from the horrible terrorists over in the Mideast. 

Meanwhile, oil prices went down and so did the stock market.  But if you were losing sleep over how well our good neighbors down at Exxon are doing, well, rest easy: (from Bloomberg News)

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest company by market value, posted its largest profit in almost three years as soaring gasoline prices fueled discontent among consumers and policymakers. 

With U.S. motorists paying the most for gasoline since prices reached a record $4.11 a gallon in the summer of 2008, Exxon said that its first-quarter net income jumped 69 percent to $10.7 billion. The Irving, Texas-based company is sitting on a cash pile of $13.2 billion, even after distributing more than $7 billion to shareholders in buybacks and dividends. 

Net income in Jan-Feb-Mar '11 = $10,700,000,000.  Minus the cost of the calendars they gave away, and the juice glasses with every fillup, and the road maps...wait.  What?  They don't give anything away any more?  And they took in 10.7 BILLION semolians?  An oil company did that?

Well, who cares?  The other night it was time to buy some pretty plants to decorate the front porch where Peggy and I will sit on a summer evening, listening to:

• crickets chirping
• carloads of angry teenagers with low-riding cars with speakers the size of tanning beds
• the guy down the street and his wife bickering 
• and the ballgame.  

All the while swatting 'skeeters.  And we needed little plastic pans to catch the runoff water from the planters.

 Two plastic pans, the size of dinner plates, at Home Depot, $3.49 each.  They're made of a petroleum derivative. 

It's a gas!