What ‘Circling The Wagons’ Looks Like

Oh there I go again, picking on President Obama.  Not exactly. But the media is doing their best to hold him harmless for higher energy prices. It’s just a shame that circumstances beyond his control continue to deal him a losing hand.

On the road to a national energy policy, President Barack Obama is hitting pothole after pothole.

‘On the road to a national energy policy?’ Not only has he taken the wrong turn. He is lost. His idea of an energy policy is to not use it. And by all means, don’t get it. Keep on buying it from the Middle East, Russia, and Venezuela. There’s a plan. Make the cost of gasoline so high that it will cripple the economy. Small price to pay to push technologies that do not yet exist in any practical supply.

First, worries over coal-burning plants’ role in global warming prompted Obama . . .

Worries? What worries? By some divine providence, the media ignored candidate Obama’s thoughts on an energy policy where coal is concerned. Candidate Obama said that his Cap and Trade legislation would make it difficult, if not impossible for coal burning electrical generating plants to operate.

[I]f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

Half of the electricity in the United States comes from coal fired electric plants.

and other Democrats to look more favorably on offshore oil and gas exploration.

Right. That’s why, oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico is still on hold, against court orders to the contrary, nearly a year after the crises that he didn’t let go to waste. And seven months after the Deepwater Horizon leak was plugged. That’s a pothole?

Next came a warmer embrace of nuclear power as part of a possible broad political agreement . . . Now the crisis in Japan is throwing a shadow over nuclear energy worldwide.

Right. And a year before the current crisis in Japan, Obama cut the funding for the only approved site for the disposal of nuclear waste. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.

Making matters worse for Obama, a spike in U.S. gasoline prices is angering Americans just as his re-election campaign cranks up. Experts say gas price fluctuations have almost nothing to do with the tragedy in Japan or the Gulf oil spill. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from lumping various issues together and using them to club Obama.

There’s a really big wagon. Rising gas prices are not his fault. He’s just having a run of bad political luck. Is that what the media, and Democrats, were saying when Bush was in The White House?

In reality, Obama could cause the world market of oil and gasoline to fall overnight, simply on the announcement that he intends to make the United States an oil producer instead of an oil buyer. That would be a part of an energy policy to embrace.

Pointing out the obvious is characterized as taking ‘cheap shots.’ The media takes the Democrat points that, if you point out that stopping oil and gas exploration and development, and if you point out that relying on technologies that are not yet practically available are major factors in rising costs and reasons for instability in the market, then you’re taking a ‘cheap shot’ at President Obama.

“As long as our economy depends on foreign oil,” Obama said, “we’ll always be subject to price spikes.”

So don’t worry. Be happy.

He called for “a comprehensive energy strategy that pursues both more energy production and more energy conservation. We’re working to diversify our entire portfolio with historic investments in clean energy.”

President Obama just said last week that we are using less energy, as if that is a good sign of conserving and using less. Here’s a clue. We are using less because our economy is slowing down. You can’t have both a growing economy and less energy consumption. All the ‘historic investments in clean energy’ are fine, but not at the expense of exploiting our own fossil fuel resources.

The problem here is our President is not the leader America, and the media, had hoped he was. If he were a leader, he would be the one leading America around those potholes, or fixing them and moving forward. Not portraying him, and us, as innocent victims.

Link: Crises In Japan, Gulf Thwart US Energy Accord

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