So this guy wanders over to engineering to strike up a conversation with the local republicans about how gas prices suck and its all Obama's fault and how remember under Bush it was 1.90 blah blah blah...

So I thought about that a bit and pulled up this:
http://www.GasBuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?city1=USAAverage&city2=&city3=&crude=n&tme=72&units=us

and said "hey _____, come over here for a minute."
He wandered over.
" who was president there (summer of '08 4.12)?"
"and what happened there (pointing at the valley of the fall/winter 2008-2009)?"
"like the worst recession since the 30's, huh?"
"that's what Bush handed to Obama. Gas prices are driven by economic activity".

He muttered something about have aconversation with an engineer and they'll pull up a pie chart. "Yeah, don't let the data get in the way of your opinions", I said.

I didn't bring up the part about deregulated commodity speculation, it was over his pay grade.