You think gas is expensive now? Wait until it's 55 cents a gallon!

Time to round up the usual suspects.

Let's go ahead and settle some accounts.

We'll drag 'em in for a little come to Jesus-ing.

Last week, the United States Senate Finance Committee summoned the grand poo bahs of Big Oil, the American chairmen of Exxon-Mobile, Chevron, B.P., Conoco Phillips and Shell for a public flogging. Brooks Brothers brushed awkwardly against Armani as the five Caucasian millionaires sat abreast, facing down a legion of angry senators (who coincidentally, also happen to be millionaires).

No Mary Poppins. No spoonful of sugar. Straight medicine.

Predictably, the topic of conversation was the skyrocketing price of crude oil. The execs mostly sat quietly as the politicians took turns in the art of rhetorical query. I decided to pay close attention, to peel through the layers of rhetoric and truly grasp the core of the communication. After combing through pages of the Congressional manuscript, I've boiled it down to two key questions:

1) Sir, what the hell is wrong with you?

and 2) Seriously, sir, what the hell is wrong with you?

The rest was like listening to a teenager receiving a lecture for missing curfew...including the same amount of listening by the tongue lashee.

The oil suits presented a united front. When informed by Charles Schumer, D-New York that Congress must decide between reducing tax breaks for Big Oil and cutting funding for Medicare/Medicaid, one executive asserted that any tax increase to his company would only cause oil prices to climb further and be passed along to the consumer.

He claimed that, even though these corporations have recognized record profits recently, they reap only six cents profit to each dollar.

Let's see. What's six cents times three hundred twenty seven gazillion?

I'm not really sure what the point of this entire exercise is, anyway. These modern day robber barons have been around since early day robber barons, and in between there were medium day robber barons.

Even so, up until the early 1970s, Americans enjoyed the benefits of cheap fuel and massive automobiles. When my family traveled to New York and back twice in our 1965 Chevrolet Bel-Air station wagon, we three kids caromed comfortably and unsafely around the car's spacious back end. Gas was only about thirty-one cents a gallon, so my parents could have easily afforded to purchase another kid along the way if one of us flew out of the car or was forgotten at a Carl's Jr.

But around 1973, a group of Arab oil producers known as OPEC, decided they were a bit chapped about American and Western European support for Israel, who had been cleaning the clocks of a few oil-rich Arab nations.

I wasn't in the room for the unanimous vote, but the statements probably resembled, "Righteous. Let's do this bitch."

And stick it to us they did. OPEC created an oil embargo, thereby drastically diminishing oil exports to the West. Basically, they employed the "If you're here to see the movie, a box of Raisonettes will cost you seven dollars" approach.

Shortages ensued and prices shot up from thirty-five to fifty-five cents a gallon between 1973 and 1974. I still remember my dad grabbing an extra maple bar as he got up early to join the gas queue every Saturday morning.

I love maple bars.

Anyway, gas theft became common in my neighborhood. A mouthful of siphoned petrol became a paltry price to pay for a few free gallons from someone's topped off Gran Torino with simulated wood grain paneling. People grew angry, really angry.

Imagine someone from the 1970s looking angry, like Burt Reynolds.

And America responded. If it weren't for the greed of a few Middle Eastern aristocrats, we would never have been blessed with such fuel efficient innovations as:

The Chevrolet Vega

The AMC Gremlin

and The Ford Pinto

The Pinto had some small issues with its gas tank exploding due to a flimsy reinforcing structure between the back panel and gas tank.

Who ever said driving a car is risk free?

Our auto industry wouldn't be the Clydesdale of the American economy if it weren't for those three subcompact workhorses, bolstering the ever-expanding middle class of our great nation, seeing us through times both difficult and prosperous.

God bless our insatiable thirst for fossil fuel.

It's great to be a white guy.

I have no idea why, but every year I watch the Academy Awards.

And every year, I turn off the TV, mildly entertained, yet wondering how I again could have spent three hours watching Hollywood's aristocracy fawning over each other. They marvel at one another's important contributions to American culture; their orations are often worthy of Emmies for best Oscar performance.

This year, my disdain for the show's planners dialed up to an eleven, but not until the closing moments. Fifth graders from Staten Island's PS-22 chorus brought down the house with a fantastic rendition of "Over the Rainbow." That part was really cool.

But just as the song reached its finale, the kids scooted to the front of the stage and squatted down as a curtain rose behind them, revealing all the evening's Oscar champions. The contrast was profound, as the predominantly brown-skinned, T-shirt clad eleven-year-olds knelt reverently while the overwhelmingly Caucasian award winners, bedecked in millions of dollars worth of evening wear and jewelry, towered above the tots.

I'm sure the event's organizers juxtaposed these disparate groups to show that yes, dreams can come true. But at that moment, one glaring fact dominated my thoughts: those kids from Staten Island, especially the non-white variety, are faced with a far higher rainbow to vault than the cronies and fat cats behind them did.

Maybe I'm a little sensitive to our disadvantaged youth since learning about what our Republican-controlled House of Representatives has been up to of late. On February 18, led by Representative Chris Smith, R-New Jersey (that's him, above), the House passed a measure to end Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood.

That's three-hundred and thirty million dollars a year.

You may have heard conflicting information from your favorite right wing pundit, but make no mistake. Planned Parenthood has been prohibited from using federal monies for abortion for over thirty years. Nope, these funds are used for ninety percent of what PP does: preventive, primary care, which helps prevent unintended pregnancies through contraception, reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infections through testing and treatment, and screen for cervical and other cancers. How despicable, indeed.

Over 1.2 million youths and adults participate in Planned Parenthood educational programs every year.

One in five American women has chosen Planned Parenthood for health care at least once in her life, which piqued my curiosity. I wondered how many women serve in the United States House of Representatives, and the answer is:

Out of a total 433 members, sixty-seven, or fifteen percent, are women.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Clearly, a savings of  $335 million from the coffers of Planned Parenthood won't amount to a ding in the budget bucket. Then why? Why do these men care so much?

That's the point. They don't.

Done Deal: How to Master the Art of Negotiation.

Why so much bickering? Why so much vitriol, so much downright meanish, cruelish nastiness?

These could be considered rhetorical questions, but really, a simple answer exists as to why our Congress can't seem to find common ground...on anything.

They've lost the ability to negotiate.

We occasionally read that they have come to some sort of agreement on some sort of issue, but consensus is rarely reached based upon give and take; it's based on give and give.

For example, last year an historical health care bill squeaked through a Democratically controlled Senate and House and was signed into law by our President. Cool, no?

No. What actually transpired in a Congressional super majority was the pledging of favors and earmarks to buy crucial votes...from other Democrats! The G.O.P sector didn't even need to show up, since not a single Republican crossed the aisle to vote in the affirmative. The Democratic Party, on the heels of a sweeping electoral mandate, failed in their ability to negotiate, even among each other.

Pathetic, indeed.

Had the right wingers in Congress actually stepped to the bargaining table, the following demands would surely have been honked out by one orange-skinned, gravelly voiced congressman from Ohio:

"We, the Republican caucus, in representing the interests of the American people, agree to allow health insurance for thirty million uninsured Americans, including ten million children. In return, we humbly request tax-exempt status for pharmaceutical corporations, a Saturday morning cartoon featuring Joe Camel and we'd like President Obama to wear an Exxon t-shirt on his next state of the union address and tearfully deny global warming... Oh, and we'd also ask for a brand new war somewhere."

As I stated earlier, this isn't negotiation, it's insanity. Why can't these people learn lessons from other areas of their lives where negotiation is commonplace and quite effective. Here are some cases where the art of negotiation prospers:

Husband/wife negotiation—"I promise I won't laugh when you try to grow facial hair if you promise not to grow facial hair." Done deal.

Workplace negotiation—"Let's just agree to disagree on this. You think I'm an egotistical prima donna and I think you're a knuckle-dragging mouth breather. You think I'm profoundly incompetent, while I believe you are grossly unsanitary. Now, we're are we going for lunch?" Done deal.

Parent/child negotiation (slightly more cumbersome)—
Father, addressing his daughters, aged ten and fifteen: "You guys, please make your lunches for tomorrow before Glee comes on. "

Fifteen-year-old daughter: "Okay." Done deal.

Ten-year-old daughter: "Really? So I have to make my lunch and take a shower before Glee comes on?"

Father: "Yes."

Ten-year-old daughter: "How about if I make my sandwich and take a shower before Glee comes on,  and then tomorrow morning, I'll add the fruit leather, goldfish and juice box?"

Father: "That's more for you to do in the morning then, and it might make us late."

Ten-year-old daughter: "Dad, technically, you should make my sandwich because you used the butts of the bread last time and we had an agreement about not using bread butts."

Father: "Fine. Add the other stuff in the morning." Done deal.

See? It's not that hard. Maybe these people are just spending a little too much time at cocktail parties with  lobbyists, and not enough with their bargain-driving offspring.

Let's hope these politicians can work together...but I'm not optimistic.

Tiger Woods and Dr. Seuss: such unlikely bedfellows

Today, I thought I'd just sit back and look around a bit. Here are few things I've noticed going on around us as we head into March:

-While the United States Congress works feverishly(?) to push through some historical healthcare legislation, a representative from North Carolina, Congressman Patrick McHenry, has decided to go rogue. He's campaigning to replace the likeness on the fifty-dollar bill from Ulysses S. Grant to, you guessed it, Ronald Reagan. Really? Isn't that like a little like floating in the middle of the ocean in a lifeboat, spotting a ship on the horizon, and deciding it's a good time to wax your eyebrows?

-Allergy season has returned with a vengeance. Lately, my mornings have consisted of waking up, prying open my sticky, cakey eyelids, sneezing twelve or thirteen times (in other words, having a sneezure), and popping a generic Claritin. This is the time of year when at least one friend says to me, "Is that an inhaler in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me (in a freakish, L-shaped way)?"

-Baseball season enters the radar. I love baseball, and now, with steroid testing in full swing, the formerly iron-muscled players seem just a bit smaller and softer. In fact, MLB, rather than being the abbreviation for Major League Baseball, could now stand for "Men with Large Boobs."

-Tiger Woods has finally been discharged (not sure that's an appropriate word to use) from a rehabilitation facility for sex addiction. I've often wondered, how do you treat something like that? Is it Pavlovian, where electrodes are involved? Well, all I can say is, if his wife decides to take this guy back, she's a bigger person than I would be. If I were her, I'd already be known as "Cougar Woods."

-March 2 marked the birthday of one of my idols—Dr. Seuss. How many children and parents alike are indebted to this man for his life lessons, his illustrations and his poetry. He taught us morals and principles, though never in a preachy way, and always with the utmost creativity and humor. In fact:

I have read him in the rain.
And I have read him on a train.
And in a car.
And on a boat.
And when my kid forgot her coat.
And at the park, oh my, oh my.
And when my daughter had pink eye.
We've read his books so much, you see.
I feel I owe a user fee.

Happy March, all you Whos in Whoville.