Your question was:

"Artificially generated shortages don’t count? Pulling refineries off-line so as to drive up the price of refined products isn’t 'manipulation?'"

The answer was that there are no "artificially generated" shortages.

Refineries have not been pulled offline to drive up prices.

I made that point in two ways. I showed that the refinery idle rate is pretty much the same as it's been for years, and that it was actually even lower during the much worse price spike of 2008.

Your question, like so many of the things you post, was founded on something that isn't actually true in the first place.

I expected you to make the connection yourself if I simply put the information up there.

As for the rest, Obama's "investigation" is a political dog and pony show, intended solely to impress the uninformed, exactly like the previous investigations that were carried out by people hostile to the oil companies, and that turned up nothing.

I really thought I'd made that point pretty clearly, too.

There are simple answers to the questions about Yetis and water-burning carburetors, too. They would be useless. Do you understand my point there?