== The Last Road Trip = By Mark Morford

[madokie]

Freakishly cheap gas? Nation broke? Just hit the road

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/12/31/notes123108.DTL&nl=fix

Something is deeply wrong. Something is bizarre and upside-down and perverse and it's not just fish pedicures or Rod Blagojevich's hair or the fact that people still care in the slightest about the sad and toothless chyme that is Britney Spears' White Trash Lite™ career.

It's gas. The price of oil. Or I should say, the stunning, creepy, impossibly low price of Satan's lubricant, Bush's blood, our own personal Jesus. Have you noticed? How could you not?

It's one of the more disturbing indicators in recent memory, easily the most ironically depressing sign of doom and downturn you get to see every single day as you careen around the city streets and look at the signs and blink a few times and go, wait wait wait, what year is it again? Are you kidding me? A buck seventy five? For premium? WTF?

It is the frightening rule du jour: the cheaper gas gets right now, the more completely screwed you know we are. At the same time, a cheap tank of gas is one of the few strokes of fiscal relief we have right now, a tiny reprieve from the brutal economic turmoil. What a thing. ...

[Possumpoint]

1. Can You Imagine

How depressed we'd be if gas and heating oil were still in the $4 - $5 range. The consumers would be forced to completely shut down their discretionary spending.

[peace13]

2. Let's us know that the robbery we have endured over the last years

was the shear and utter fleecing of Americans.