In 2008, Barack Obama seemed OK with high gas prices

Keith Koffler reminds that in 2008 Obama didn’t mind having higher prices at the pump, as long as the sticker shock to consumers wasn’t too sudden.

The White House is currently insisting Obama is doing what he can to keep the lid on gasoline prices, while blaming uncontrollable market forces for the increases.

But in a June 10, 2008 interview on CNBC with John Harwood, Obama clearly indicates that his problem with the high prices prevailing then was not that they are high, but that they ramped up too quickly.  He talks about ways to mitigate the impact of high prices instead of ways to reduce them and suggests that the increase could be beneficial, saying, "we can come out of this stronger."

From the interview:

HARWOOD: As difficult as this is for consumers right now, is, in fact, high gas prices what we need to let the market work, a line incentive so that we do shift to alternative means of energy?

Sen. OBAMA: Well, I think that we have been slow to move in a better direction when it comes to energy usage. And the president, frankly, hasn’t had an energy policy. And as a consequence, we’ve been consuming energy as if it’s infinite. We now know that our demand is badly outstripping supply with China and India growing as rapidly as they are. So…

HARWOOD: So could these high prices help us?

Sen. OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now.

Obama’s comments are consistent with a 2008 statement by Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, who overtly called for an increase in gasoline prices in order to incentivize the use of alternative fuels.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Chu said. Prices in Europe at the time ranged from about $8 to $9 per gallon.

As recently as March 2011, Chu suggested rising gas prices were an inevitable fact of life saying, ”the price of gasoline over the long haul should be expected to go up just because of supply and demand issues.”

Read #2, then watch Obama lie with a straight face

Obama doesn't want high prices "in an election year," but watch them skyrocket should he win.
  
And again, Chu confirms that Obama's "overall goal" is to reduce dependency on oil.

These ideologues are intent on imposing an agenda that will destroy the country.
 

Barack Obama's oil lies are rooted in his contempt for the United States of America

Rush Limbaugh says and one other thing, ladies and gentlemen, replacing oil is not going to make energy cheaper. Oil is the cheapest form of energy, for what it provides, that we have. That's what the market does. The market provides the cheapest and the most efficient of everything. Or it won't survive. Eventually it'll go kaput. It's called competition. Oil does not have any competition right now, not any serious competition.

So Obama's in North Carolina, yeah, we're gonna have alternative energy, gonna bring down energy costs. Nope, they're gonna skyrocket. President Obama wants higher energy costs. Barack Obama wants higher gasoline prices. When it hit four dollars a gallon years ago Barack Hussein Obama said he was only unhappy about how fast the price got to four dollars. He was not unhappy that it did get to four dollars. His Nobel prize-winning energy secretary, a guy named

Steven Chu, said that they have no interest in lowering gas prices; they just want to get us off of oil. Not possible. That's what the free market does, folks, it gives you the cheapest and most efficient of everything. If there were something better than oil it would have been found, it would have been invented. If it were cost sensible, if it was affordable, if it made sense to produce it. It doesn't. Oil is it. It's the beauty of free markets.

Free markets tell you what work. So whatever he comes up with as his alternative, A, there isn't one, and, B, it's simply a way to raise taxes and raise prices and raise costs. You say, "Why would he want to do that?" Well, to accept the answer to that you have to -- (interruption) Yes, I am saying algae is not better than oil. That's right, President Obama proposed algae as a substitute for oil a couple of weeks ago. Algae. Pond scum, for those of you in Rio Linda. Why would he want higher prices? Why does he want higher taxes? Well, you have to understand what he thinks of America to answer that and to believe the answer.

Basically Barack Obama's a Democrat who wants this government getting bigger and bigger and bigger so it can control more and more and more, and the less money you have to spend, the easier you are to control. The less money you have to spend on discretionary items, the more dependent you will be on him and his party. And that's the ultimate objective. They want to take your ambition away from you. They want to take your dreams away from you. They want to tell you your dreams are unrealistic. They want you to believe it's outrageous that you think you should be able to accomplish that, whatever it is, or have that, whatever it is.

We need to live like the rest of the world. We need to find out what the rest of the world has had to go through 'cause of us, because to Barack Obama, folks, the United States is the problem in the world, not the solution. And in that he agrees with people like Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, the old Soviet leadership, Fidel Castro. The United States is the problem. He genuinely believes that.

Continue reading here . . .
 

Gas prices sink Obama’s ratings on economy

Dan Balz and Jon Cohen is reporting that disapproval of President Obama’s handling of the economy is heading higher -- alongside gasoline prices -- as a record number of Americans now give the president “strongly” negative reviews on the 2012 presidential campaign’s most important issue, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Increasingly pessimistic views of Obama’s performance on the economy -- and on the federal budget deficit -- come despite a steadily brightening employment picture and other signs of economic improvement, and they highlight the political sensitivity of rising gas prices.

The potential political con­sequences are clear, with the rising public disapproval reversing some of the gains the president had made in hypothetical general-election matchups against possible Republican rivals for the White House. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) now both run about evenly with Obama. The findings come just five weeks after Obama appeared to be getting a boost from the improving economy.

Continue reading here . . .

Within walking distance of the White House

The shocking photo the Obama Administration doesn't want you to see!
 

Seaweed in your gas tank

Charles Krauthammer says Obama’s energy policies prefer fantasy to reality.

Yes, of course, presidents have no direct control over gas prices. But the American people know something about this president and his disdain for oil. The “fuel of the past,” he contemptuously calls it. To the American worker who doesn’t commute by government motorcade and is getting fleeced every week at the pump, oil seems very much a fuel of the present — and of the foreseeable future.
 
Barack Obama incessantly claims energy open-mindedness, insisting that his policy is “all of the above.” Except, of course, for drilling

off the Mid-Atlantic coast (as Virginia, for example, wants)

off the Florida Gulf Coast (instead, the Castro brothers will drill near there)

in the broader Gulf of Mexico (where drilling in 2012 is expected to drop 30 percent below pre-moratorium forecasts)

on federal lands in the Rockies (where leases are down 70 percent since Obama took office)

But the event that drove home the extent of Obama’s antipathy to nearby, abundant, available oil was his veto of the Keystone pipeline. It gave the game away, because the case for Keystone is so obvious and overwhelming. Vetoing it gratuitously prolongs our dependence on outside powers, kills thousands of shovel-ready jobs, forfeits a major strategic resource to China, damages relations with our closest ally, and sends billions of oil dollars to Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, and already obscenely wealthy sheiks.

Obama boasts that on his watch, production is up and imports down. True, but truly deceptive. These increases have occurred in spite of his restrictive policies. They are the result of Clinton- and Bush-era permitting. This has been accompanied by a gold rush of natural-gas production resulting from new fracking technology that has nothing at all to do with Obama.

“The American people aren’t stupid,” said Obama on February 23, mocking “Drill, baby, drill.” The “only solution,” he averred in yet another major energy speech last week, is that “we start using less, that lowers the demand, prices come down.” Yet five paragraphs later he claimed that regardless of “how much oil we produce at home . . . that’s not going to set the price of gas worldwide.”

So: Decreasing U.S. demand will lower oil prices, but increasing U.S. supply will not? This is ridiculous. Either both do or neither does. Does Obama read his own speeches?

Obama says of drilling: “That’s not a plan.” Of course it’s a plan. We import nearly half of our oil, thereby exporting enormous amounts of U.S. wealth. Almost 60 percent of our trade deficit — $332 billion out of $560 billion — is shipped overseas to buy crude.

Drill here and you stanch the hemorrhage. You keep those dollars within the U.S. economy, repatriating not just wealth but jobs, and denying them to foreign unfriendlies. Drilling is the single most important thing we can do to spur growth at home while strengthening our hand abroad.

Instead, Obama offers what he fancies to be the fuels of the future. You would think that he’d be a tad more modest today about his powers of divination after the Solyndra bankruptcy, the collapse of government-subsidized Ener1 (past makers of the batteries of the future), and GM’s suspension of production — for lack of demand — of another federally dictated confection, the flammable Chevy Volt.

Deterred? Hardly. Our undaunted seer of the energy future has come up with his own miracle fuel: algae. Yes, green slime, upon which Steven Chu’s Energy Department will be sprinkling yet another $14 million of taxpayer money.

This is the very same Dr. Chu who famously said in 2008 that he wanted U.S. gas prices to rise to European levels ($8–$10 a gallon) — and who Tuesday, eight months before Election Day, publicly recanted before Congress, Galileo-style.

Who do they think they’re fooling? An oil crisis looms, prices are spiking — and our president is extolling algae. After Solyndra, Keystone, and promises of seaweed in their gas tanks, Americans sense a president so ideologically antipathetic to fossil fuels — which we possess in staggering abundance — that he is utterly unserious about the real world of oil in which the rest of us live.

High gasoline prices are a major political problem for Obama. They are not just a pain at the pump, however. They are a constant reminder of three years of a rigid, fatuous, fantasy-driven energy policy that has rendered us scandalously dependent and excessively vulnerable.

The optics of Obama's failures

Christopher Chantrill says people are starting to worry that Barack Obama might be wobbling on his visionary "all of the above" program to bring on the green energy millennium, what with $5.00 gas in the Northeast states.
 
But don't worry.  Even though the administration will be changing its "optics" on energy by featuring Obama reading his TelePrompTer in front of oil wells, he is still on course, according to an Obama official.
 
In the coming days and weeks, the official said, Obama will continue a constant drumbeat where he touts his strategy -- including his push for green energy -- while  responding to false attacks on issues about his record on domestic energy production.
 
But on the "optics" side of things:
 
"They probably need to be a little clearer in showing that [Obama] does support domestic production," said David Meadvin, a Democratic strategist.
 
There is nothing quite like standing in front of an oil well to show how much you support domestic oil production, especially in the week after you have called for increasing taxes on Big Oil.
 
But wait!  It turns out that the reason why gas is hitting $5.00 per gallon in the Northeast but only $4.00 elsewhere is because a number of "critical refineries" on the east coast are losing money and shutting down.  If that is so, the president and his people are shifting to the wrong "optics."  They should have him making speeches in front of spanking new refineries.  Only, of course, the U.S. hasn't built a new refinery in 30 years.  Because of liberals.
 
Here's a thought experiment.  Suppose that Obama Corporation were a hot stock that you had bought back in the summer of 2008, and you just read that Obama Corporation had conducted a road show touting its global "all of the above" strategy and emphasized its faith in its American employees in their domestic factories, but that market-watchers were worried about the "optics."  What would you think?  You would think it was time to sell.  You would say to yourself that those Obama Corporation execs were no slouches, but they certainly weren't in the same league as the late Steve Jobs.
 
When people start talking about "optics," you know that they know they are just marking time, making a brave show while they prepare for a strategic retreat.  It couldn't come too soon.
 
The truth is: we needed the Obama administration.  In the best of all possible worlds, it wouldn't have been necessary to have an Obama era at all.  But we don't live in the best of all possible worlds, and the chief reason why is because liberals won't listen to reason and won't listen to science.  The only way to persuade them that their fantasies stink is when their fantasy is a smoking hole in the ground.
 
Of course, green energy isn't a smoking hole in the ground -- not yet.  But the smart money is moving its assets away from the ominous cracks in the ground.  And now Obama is touting algae as an energy source.
 
There is a simple reason why algae, wind, solar, batteries, and all the rest of the green agenda are never going to be the energy solution of the future.  The reason was developed by Peter Huber and Mark Mills in The Bottomless Well.  It's all about energy concentration.
 
People started using coal because its energy is more concentrated than wood.  We use oil in transportation because oil is more concentrated than coal.  And a "gram of U-235 is worth about 4 tons of coal."  You can see the problem with "thin, low-energy-density fuels, however cheap" like wind and solar.  People don't want thin and low.  The "market has paid steep premiums for fuels that pack more energy into weight and space."
 
But liberals don't like concentrated energy like nuclear, oil, and coal.  They like thin, diffuse energy from wind, solar, and biomass.  Why is that?
 
You could say that liberal green energy is a liberal war on science, but to assert that, as Rush Limbaugh might say, would be to lower ourselves to their level.  Perhaps it's more of a war on human freedom.  Liberals are a lot like other humans.  They like freedom, but they don't like freedom for people they don't like.
 
For America, the real hope of the Obama years is that in four years we may score a trifecta of three major liberal fantasies utterly discredited for decades to come: universal health insurance, green energy, and Keynesian inflationism.  One is the liberal war on health freedom, one is the liberal war on energy freedom, and one the war on ordinary financial freedom.
 
Imagine those three victories in the cause of freedom.  It would be a great inheritance to leave to our grandchildren.  We'll let our liberal friends handle the "optics" on that.

First good idea from obama...Increase margin requirements on Oil Future trading...The only problem with his plan is the $52M price tag.   Increasing margin requirements should cost NOTHING !!!! Which obama donor will reap the $52 million for something that should cost ZERO?!?!?!?

Obama to pitch $52M plan to regulate oil markets

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/17/obama-to-pitch-52m-plan-to-regulate-oil-markets/#ixzz1sJL78RBF