Monday, October 15, 2012

Obama: Energy Prices "Will Necessarily Skyrocket." Mission Accomplished

Look at the headline for this Fox News piece: "Country's gas pains give Romney fuel for making domestic energy key issue."  Look at the tile URL (which is harder to change than the headline), "romney-making-gas-prices-domestic-energy-top-campaign-issues."  Note the inherent spin, here.

See, it's not that gas prices and domestic energy are top issues all on their own.  No, just like the Benghazi attack, they're only issues because of Mitt Romney.  Why, if Mitt Romney and conservatives would just shut up, no one would notice that the first murder of an Ambassador since Jimmy Carter happened on Obama's watch, and they wouldn't notice that gas prices have doubled on his watch, either.

Now, this is calling the American People completely idiot, admitting a great bias against reporting news that would be bad for the president, or both.

When Barack Obama took office in January 2009, the US average gas price was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.80/gal.  It was actually less than that, but I'm rounding because it's easier, and I'm rounding up because it shows just how much of a SCOAMT Obama is.  According to the AAA today (10/15/2012) the national average for Regular Unleaded Gasoline is $3.787/gal.  That's more than double our (rounded up) number from Jan 2009.

But, somehow, it is only "a political issue," because Mitt Romney is making it one.

So, on the one hand, the Media is saying that you're too stupid to realize it's costing you twice as much today to fill up your car (if you even can) than it did 4 years ago.  They're saying that you are paying too much attention to Survivor: Philippines or Honey Boo Boo to notice that, if your vehicle is sufficiently large, you can't fill up your tank if you pay-at-the-pump, because the preauthorization the station runs on your credit card only goes up to $100.00 ($150.00 in some cases), and your tank holds more than that.  They believe you're paying too much attention to the Football season and the Baseball Post-Season to notice that you're having to travel less, and your own bottom line is getting cut just from going to work every day.

On the other, they're admitting that the only reason they have any hope for the first is that they don't want to report about it.  They're saying that they would be silent, if it weren't for Mitt Romney.  They're saying if Mitt Romney would just shut up, you could be made to believe that this is normal; that it is the "best we can do."  They're saying that, if they didn't have to report on Mitt Romney's campaign, you could be made to believe that it is somehow not Barack Obama's fault that gas prices have more than doubled in 4 years.

This is the same media that blamed every vagary of the energy market on George Bush for 4 years.  When gas prices hit about $3.00/gal under Bush we were told how terrible that was, but now with gas prices hovering just south of $4.00/gal under Obama they're strangely silent.

The fact is we can do better.  Ever since the Gulf Oil "spill" (not the best term, but it's what people call it) from the Deepwater Horizon rig, there has been a defacto moratorium against offshore drilling.  Barack Obama prevented the Keystone XL project from going through, which not only would have lowered gas prices, but would have provided thousands of well paying jobs.  The simple fact is that Barack Obama owns more responsibility for gas prices today than George Bush ever did for gas prices under his administration.  George Bush just tried to get out of the way, Barack Obama has taken an active hand in disrupting the market.

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