War, tax cuts, rising oil prices, high unemployment...it's like Viagra for Republicans

Paying a little bit more at the pump?

Prices of gasoline at the pump and crude oil from which it's made both spiked Tuesday, showing that petroleum traders remain jittery about war with Iraq, and prompting motorist club AAA to allege price gouging.

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''This looks uncomfortably close to price gouging,'' AAA spokesman Geoff Sundstrom says. ''The fundamentals do not justify U.S. drivers paying the highest gasoline price on record for the month of February.''

''To say that's price gouging is wrong,'' counters John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, the oil companies' trade group. ''Crude oil is up 24 cents a gallon since November and gasoline prices have gone up roughly 24 cents since November. It's the market at work.''

Felmy then started giggling uncontrollably as thirty-weight drool seeped from the corners of his lying-sack-of-shit mouth. Meanwhile, at his super-secret undisclosed location, Dick Cheney achieved a rare erection this morning causing him to call Lynne in from the front yard where she had been dry-humping a cast-iron lawn jockey and baring her teeth at the paperboy as he attempted to deliver their personalized copy of the Washington Times.