This brutish technique for extracting natural gas from deep within the Earth, led by such profiteering giants as Exxon Mobil and Halliburton, has rapidly swept across America. Indeed, it has run right over local residents who’ve had their air and water polluted, their families sickened, and their own economic futures imperiled.

President Obama, reversing his own honorable precedent for his first inaugural, has chosen this time to have corporations pay for his big hoo-rah.

Dick’s always been stormy. In 2002, he had an unpleasant split with his fellow legislative hucksters, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, so he spun through Congress’ revolving door right into the K-Street lobbying hustle.

Once again, there’s a tempest brewing in the national tea pot. We’re talking secession! Well, some of us are.

At last, our embarrassment is over! We Texans have long endured the shame of having our goober of a governor, Rick Perry, declaimed as the goofiest public official in the land. But now, we can point to another state’s embarrassment, for a newly elected senator has ascended atop America’s pedestal of political goofiness.

The sky is falling! The end times are upon us! It’s all over for America! And it’s all because of you — you, the execrable voters.

But here’s a revelation that really ruffles their feathers: They appear to have been gathering their riches not with bold competition, but with old-fashioned collusion.

Thanks to the industrializers of American agriculture, we finally know why the chicken crossed the road: To run away from the factory farm!

For a reality check on the moral superiority of the rich, however, take a peek at who’s now trying to do some of the most egregious mooching ever from the economically devastated people of Spain.

As I trekked to my gate at the Orange County Airport in California not long ago, I stopped briefly at a newsstand to pick up a copy of The New York Times.