It read: “When Bush took office, gas was $1.49 a gallon.”

O-kay. Now, I’m not a big fan of President Bush, and the sentence as stated may be factually accurate, but there’s an unstated but obvious conclusion that the person displaying the sticker wants you to draw.

Let’s look at the unstated argument:

(Stated) Premise 1: When Bush took office, gas was $1.49 a gallon.
(Unstated) Premise 2: Gas is now over $4 a gallon.
(Unstated) Conclusion: It is Bush’s fault that gas is over $4 a gallon.

Or, alternately, Unstated Conclusion: If Bush had not taken office, gas would not be over $4 a gallon now.

Like I said, I’m not a fan of President Bush on…well, really quite a wide variety of issues. In fact, I think the only things he and I agree on are life issues, and some specific points about the “War on Terror”.  And those are important, I’ll grant you.

But no matter how much I disagree with him, and don’t especially care for him or his policies, I think that’s a ridiculously unfair critique. Gee – do you think anything ELSE could have contributed to higher gas prices? Like, say, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina smashing up the refineries, OPEC wanting to increase their profits and/or stick it to the West, broken pipelines from outdated infrastructure, increased demand for petroleum products, crazy speculators…

Now, I will be the first to say that some of President Bush’s policies probably haven’t helped matters. In fairness, the same can be said of some of the Democratic Congress’ policies, like not drilling in ANWR.

There are too many variables here to blame it all on Bush. Give the flagellating a rest. Your arms have got to be tired by now.

My other item of interest to report: telemarketers and cold solicitations are getting ever more creative. A few months ago I received a mail solicitation that I opened out of confusion and curiosity, because they had printed my name and address in such a convincing color and font that I really thought it was handwritten. It wasn’t.

Well, today I received another “new one”. Another handwritten or handwritten-looking envelope, which I opened out of curiosity. Guess what was inside?

One of those pink “Important Message” slips that receptionists use to take a message in an office. My name, the date, a first name and number of the person to call, “Please Call” checked, and “Great News!” in the message area. And I’m 99% sure this is handwritten, not printed.

I’m half tempted to call, just to see what they’re trying to sell me; but I think I’ll just leave it alone. Creativity aside, whatever they’re selling, I don’t want them to get the idea that this is an effective way to get my business.