This week’s weekly address was about the high gas prices and energy in general. President Obama says . . .

The truth is there is no silver bullet that can bring down gasoline prices right away.

And in his mind, a perfectly acceptable excuse for doing absolutely nothing to exploit our own fossil fuel resources or building more refineries or nuclear power plants like he said he was going to do last year.

And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. (Applause.) It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. (Applause.) It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.

[I]n order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we’re going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.

After four decades of doing nothing, we have forfeited the option of being an oil producer-seller and ensured our dependence on foreign countries as an oil purchaser. Something President Carter meant to fix when he created the Department of Energy. Look how well that turned out.

As usual, nothing that happens to us is Obama’s fault. The media will vouch for that. The answer from the empty suit is to investigate. Create a commission or ‘task force’ to investigate what someone else must be doing to us. He, and we, are always the victim. Taking responsibility is something that empty suits don’t do.

Let’s also consider the consequences that our huge debt and the Federal Reserve’s QE2 is having on the dollar. It is worth less, and heading south. That, all on its own, makes the cost of oil from overseas go up and is reflected at the pump.

The gougers and speculators bogeymen were investigated after Katrina. That proved nothing then and will be the same this time.

President Obama refuses to recognize that he has the power to lower gas and oil prices in four minutes if he were to say (and then actually do) that his new energy policy will include developing our own resources with the goal of making America the oil producer that it can be instead of being dependent on foreign sources for our energy survival.

But it’s cool for him to help Brazil’s oil industry. Just not our own.

In order to advance ‘alternative’ energy resources, it is his (and environmentalist’s) plan to choke this country and economy with his hands around the fossil and nuclear energy industries’ throat.  That he can’t advance both simultaneously like he said last year shows him for the empty-suit ideologue that he is.

Cutting subsidies is good as long as he also cuts the strings that were attached to them. But moving them elsewhere is not. As always, the free-market will make the investment when both science and economics dictate. The trouble is, a free-market economy to Obama is like a crucifix to a vampire.

The more distress he can cause to the economy and capitalism, the easier it becomes for him to ‘remake America’ into something that Europeans are now trying to get away from.

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