Recently, I've been visiting Daily Kos on a regular basis, just to see what all the hype is about. My conclusion after just a few weeks? Wow, these folks are nuts. I mean certifiably looney. Just about every post is a hard slam against some Republican official (at least one in three is against President Bush), and the rest are slamming Joe Lieberman, persona non grata in the Democratic party these days. I honestly don't care who wins the Connecticut Democratic Primary, but I kind of hope Lieberman pulls it out just to see what these folks do in the subsequent days. And then ultimately, will they support Lieberman in the general election, or endorse the Republican? It will be interesting times in Kosland, that's for sure.

Oh, and every post gets 200+ commenters, all of whom agree with the poster. There is no semblance of debate or discussion, just a lot of "well put, Bob!" and "Here, here!" I can only assume that those with differing opinions (like myself) stay away because it's just not worth screaming into that much wind.

Anyway, here's the latest example of the craziness I've found over there:

Alaska oil production will be severely curtailed as BP investigates pipeline problems.

In the world of Big Oil, this is cause for celebration. While supplies shouldn't be affected (the outage is 2.6 percent of American daily consumption and reserves are high), it'll give oil companies another excuse to jack up prices and continue on its record gouging of American consumers.

Kos is apparently unaware (or assumes that we are unaware) that the oil companies don't set the price of oil, the commodity markets do. In fact, he goes on to quote an article that calls the U.S. market well-supplied, but in "very high anxiety." He translates "high anxiety" to "high opportunity" for ... what else?

Oil giant Exxon Mobil has posted the second-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly-traded US firm.

Helped by high oil prices, the company earned $10.4bn (£5.6bn) in the second quarter of 2006 - a 36% increase on the same period of 2005.

Exxon, which is the world's biggest oil company, said its quarterly revenues rose by 12% to $99bn.

Of course, this data is from July 27th, two full weeks before the news of the Alaska pipeline problem. If anything, he's proven that rising oil company profits are not related to shutdowns in domestic pipelines, but his juxtaposition seems to indicate the exact opposite.

Sorry, Kos. I ain't biting...