Only a cockeyed optimist

Got a letter from Gov. Palin the other day (actually, Umm Czarina got the letter, but 'tis the season for sharing and all that). And guess what? Whenever Sarah and her friends can get their message past the liberal mainstream media filter, they find that people agree with their confident optimism!

We Republicans reject the Democrats' fearful and pessimistic mentality.

Alas, the bit about rejecting the fearful and pessimistic doesn't seem to have gotten through to the Ministry of Information. Fox, you'll notice, has found black-and-white pictures of the Two Scariest People in the World to illustrate today's story on OPEC's production meeting. But there's actually good news tonight, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea:

Take that, OPEC.

The international oil cartel agreed Friday to cut daily production by 1.5 million barrels in a move to drive up prices on the international market — and, at the gas pump.

But, crude oil futures went in the other direction, falling 5 percent Friday in London trading on speculation that demand will continue to fall.

Yeah, take that, Ahmadinejad! And you too, Chavez! We optimistic Americans scorn you! So much that Fox will put you on the front page but never bother to mention you in the text!

Now, if the theme is starting to sound familiar, it should. At lower right is the treatment from the Fox front on Tuesday afternoon: same guys, though slightly more formally dressed, and a dire warning by way of an OPEC precede:

Just as Americans are finally beginning to reap the benefits of plunging gasoline prices — including more money in their pockets — OPEC is getting ready to squeeze them once again by cutting oil production and driving up prices to refineries.

The 13-nation global oil cartel — which includes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela — will hold an emergency meeting in Vienna Friday to discuss the steep and rapid decline in oil prices.

Well, at least on Tuesday they were mentioned, kind of, in passing, once. (Not that you wouldn't have recognized these guys; after all, you might have just seen them in a Really Scary Ad on a small screen near you.) But evidently they weren't as important as this character:

"The era of cheap oil is finished," Iran's Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari boasted on Tuesday.

When asked what price Iran would want for its oil, Nozari declared, "The more the better."

A guy so quotable, or so hard to track down for an update, that he was back on Friday:

Hardline OPEC members Iran and Venezuela had been pushing members to slice production by 2 million barrels a day, with Iran's oil minister declaring, "The era of cheap oil is finished." When asked before Friday's meeting what price Iran would want for its oil, Gholam Hossein Nozari boasted, "The more the better."

If we're going to cut and paste, do you think we could cut and paste his given name too?

Vultures, vultures everywhere. Good thing Fox is keeping an eye out for us, eh?