And the award for most wide-eyed, spittle-flinging, batshit insane headline goes to...

..."Big Oil Strikes Back at Petrotyrants", by Investor's Business Daily!  Let's give them a big round of applause, everyone!

But can the article possibly live up to the headline?  Let's take a look:

Last year, the power-mad petrotyrant [Hugo Chavez] declared Exxon and Venezuela's other foreign investors "robbers" and vowed to conquer them like Simon Bolivar taking the Andes. He hurled leftist nationalistic rhetoric against these private companies whose only "crime" was to invest in and bring jobs to Venezuela. ...

Seeing themselves as powerless and eager to limit their losses, some of the companies caved. But not Exxon. It took a hit on its balance sheet, and decided something bigger was at stake. With operations all over the world and every other tinhorn dictator watching its moves, it knew a precedent could be set and refused to appease.

In so doing, it put all petrotyrants on notice that their power extends only as far as their borders and no more.

[Cue music: "Glory, Glory Hallelujah..."]

Yes, once you let those tinhorn dictators start pushing you around with those, uhh...tin horns of theirs, you just end up all...err...pockmarked and...tinny.  And I think we all know that can't lead anywhere good.  So thank you, Big Oil, for having the courage to be the plucky David to Chavez's bellowing Goliath.

(More sober analysis from IBD—the business outlet that tries its best to make the Wall Street Journal look liberal—here.)

UPDATE: That "hit on its balance sheet" is really going to bruise poor beleaguered underdog Exxon, which was just in the news for having "the largest quarterly and annual profits  ever reported by a U.S. company."  And of course IBD failed to explain how winning a $12 billion judgment against Venezuela shows that Exxon was putting principle before profit (because "something bigger was at stake," after all).  Maybe they've got really, really expensive lawyers.

As for "every other tinhorn dictator watching its moves," here's a story that tells you who's actually paying the closest attention to this case.

Comments

[Dan Coyle]

What the fuck? Big Oil and Petrotyrants sound like the same thing anyway! Yeesh!

[John Caruso]

When you put it that way, Big Oil and the Petrotyrants sounds like a great band name.