It Was a Very Good Year

Well, at least not everyone's hurting. Sure, your milk prices, your gas prices, your food, electricity and health care prices are doing their best to break your back, and your neighbors' right along with it, but at least some people are doing well in this downward spiral. Guess who?

Profits at oil companies this quarter continued to reflect oil prices that almost doubled in the second quarter from the year earlier.

Exxon Mobil on Thursday reported that second-quarter profit rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion, the highest-ever profit by an American company. Exxon broke its own record.

Exxon broke its own record. How ducky for them. Doesn't that make you feel better?

I know John McCain's happy about it:

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his position on the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month - three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban - compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May...

...Charting the political donations of oil executives may be the best way to evaluate the industry's level of interest in a presidential candidate, said Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, an industry adviser. Unlike other businesses, oil and gas companies do not have a large labor force that can provide a candidate an army of volunteers. And oil and gas concerns are geographically confined, largely in states that are not viewed as central to a presidential election strategy.

I guess it's clear: those who are concerned about the well-being of the ridiculously profitable oil companies, who are not - as noted above - even large employers of American workers, should definitely support a McCain candidacy.

For the rest of us who are hurting in this economy, and who also understand that there's just no way to drill our way out of our long-term energy problems (though to do so would surely further stuff the pockets of the oil industry while doing little to nothing with regard to addressing our immediate crisis), luckily there's another choice.