Gas Prices Rise on Evidence of Personality Disorder

I've been having a hard time getting my head into politico-economic subjects lately, I think for two reasons: a) You can tell what the various pundits and pols and players are going to say about any person, place, or thing before they say it, and b) more importantly for me, large events in my personal life have assumed primacy over the predictable and depressing devolutions, devaluations, and slow dissolves of public events.

However, I couldn't help but notice today that when a warmongering Israeli deputy prime minister rattles his cage and throws a shitfit in Tel Aviv, the price of oil goes up all over the world, with the end result that Californians will pay more for gas.

Oil market traders grew jittery after news reports quoted Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz as saying that Iran's nuclear program was nearing a "major breakthrough" and that his country must be "prepared for every option."

Crude jumped more than four bucks immediately after Mofaz belched his warnings in the general direction of the Iranians, but settled back down to an increase of a little over a buck by the end of the trading day.

This is insane. It's insane for starters that we're still using oil, and truly weird that we permit even a miniscule fragment of our economic well-being to fall under the influence of an overseas sociopath. It's almost as crazy as allowing the quality of our lives to be controlled by a bunch of fundamentalist anachronisms, such as the Saudi Royal family.