Rush Limbaugh and Conservative LIES

Do some conservatives sometimes distort the truth?  You bet.

Rush Limbuagh is making a big point today about the IRRELEVANT fact that Exxon is getting out of the RETAIL gasoline maket in the United States.   Gasoline and refining profits in the U.S. are under pressure because of the COST of crude.  SO WHAT.

The problem here is NOT whether there is competition in the GASOLLINE STATION market, or the margin earned by gasoline stations.  Exxon is a VERTICALLY INTEGRATED EMPIRE created by MERGER.  Exxon makes it major money in PRODUCING OIL.  It can CHOOSE where, in its vertiacally integrated buisnesses, PAPER profits are recorded.  It COULD sell its refineries and gasoline stations product at aritificiallly LOW prices, and thereby record the profit at the gasoline stations.  That, of course, would distort reality, because the PROFIT is really being made on the crude.  However, Exxon is still making the profit.  To suggest that it is immportant that gasoline stations can't make much money in the U.S., especially with high crude costs, is UNIMPORTANT.  The public is NOT this dumb (Rush rarely assumes they are, but is in this case he is).  It makes no difference that gas stations are having trouble making much money.  That does NOT change that some companies are making money on the price of oil, and it does NOT change that the price of gasoline and diesel has gone so high BECAUSE OF THE RISE IN THE PRICE OF OIL (along with environmental regulation).

As the heading says, this is a an obvious CONSERVATIVE LIE (the idea that high oil prices are not responsible for the rise in the price of gasoline, and the idea that Big Oil is not making money off of this rise). 

Just like I don't understand why leftists think they can sell their obvious lies, other than their access to, and control of, mainstream media output, I don't understand why some conservatives think that they can distort the situation on gasoline by isolating on only part of teh market. 

WHY not attack leftists where they are truly vulnerable, instead of putting out this ridicuous Exxon propaganda?  I don't know why conservatives get sucked into this defense of big corproations, instead of defending the PRINCIPLE of free markets.  On occason, Rush Limbaubh points this out, AND that big corporate types are often NOT conservative at all.  But he, and other conservatives, keep getting sucked into these stupid "defenses" of specific industries and corporations. 

See this blog for the CORRECT free market perspective on oil (which is NOT to say that the corporate empires created by merger, known as Big Oil, are a good thing,, but is to say that the SOLUTION is to encourage free markets and end the leftist environmental, central planning insanity).