1 Happy St

This guy's protest doesn't make much sense to me. He drove onto the lawn of a convention center, hopped out of his car, doused the car with gasoline and lit it on fire. By the time the fire was put out, his car was no more. His reason? He's tired of rising gas prices and could no longer afford to drive the car. Okay I guess it's a statement, even if it is a dumb one.

But pay attention to the last line of the article: As in many countries, gasoline prices have risen steadily in Germany; a liter of regular gasoline now costs about euro1.55, or $9.40 per gallon.

That just pisses me off. I hate when these news organizations try to translate the cost of gasoline for foreign countries but convert the exchange rate first. That completely skews it. 1 gallon of gas is equal to about 3.785 liters. So doing the math, that's $5.87/gallon. But what these news organizations do is they account for the exchange rate first. And because the euro dominates the dollar in terms of worth, the $5.87 figure jumps up to $9.40. It's a load of crap though because a guy in Germany isn't using an American dollar to buy his gas. He's using euros. That he earned at his job THAT PAYS EUROS!!!!!

I'm trying to think of an equivalent here....okay I got it [I think]. It would be like me complaining that I paid $250,000 for my house when my friend from [a poor state] bought a similar house for $40,000. Of course I wouldn't mention that the best jobs in the state where my friend lives only pays a fraction of the salary that my state does.

Hogwash.

So remember this tactic the next time you see a story that says Americans still have it good with gas prices.

[NOTE: This entire post was just an excuse to use the word "hogwash"]