Gas Man

The Obama re-election campaign seems to be in a spaghetti-at-the-wall phase as they await a clear winner to emerge in the Republican primaries, at which point the campaign will be able tailor its attacks in a more directed way.  Each day seems to bring from the White House another proposal or proclamation in the apparent hope it will shore up Obama's faltering popularity, and then the next day it's off to another one, with the effectiveness of each day's work no doubt being closely watched and noted by White House strategists.

Well, as Obama and White House make their plans for the coming campaign, let me bestow my little gift to them.  I generally find slogans to be silly, but every presidential campaign does seem to need its own little phrase that can be bathed in red, white and blue and sent out to do whatever it is a slogan can do. So far the Obama 2012 campaign hasn't had much success with this. WTF (Winning The Future) was instantly ridiculous and sent packing with a nice bit of help from Sarah Palin, and as far as I know the campaign hasn't as yet let loose another one.  So here's my suggestion for a new slogan:  Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

Last week we had Obama taking a pre-emptive strike against what could turn into a huge political problem for him, namely, rapidly rising gas prices with no good prospect that they will go down anytime soon.  Could much of the rise in price possibly be due to Democrats and the environmental left systematically hampering the ability of oil companies to drill for oil within the United States over the past 20 years, thereby decreasing the domestic and world supply of oil, and making the country more vulnerable to shocks in the oil market?  And could the fact that this policy has been accelerated under Obama make him responsible for a large part of this?

The answer from Obama is of course not, it's the fault of Republican obstructionists who have done everything in their power to prevent the coming of Future World, where the cars run on algae gas and everything else is wind or solar powered, and never again will anyone have to drill, drill, drill for oil or dig in the ground for coal.  The notion that it is probably a bad idea to cripple the nation's economy by massively increasing the price of energy as a way to hasten the development of yet unproven technology is apparently alien to the Obama mindset.  His insistence that opening up the oil fields for exploration and drilling won't bring the price of gas down also shows him to be clueless about the nature of markets, especially the highly speculative oil market.

In almost every area of his presidency, Obama seems to live in a bubble world where all glory is his, and nothing is his fault.  The economy is improving! More people are going to work!  America is back and the world respects us again!  Yeah, right.  In the city where I live businesses are still failing at a depressing rate, way too many people don't have as much money as they used to, the streets are in more disrepair than ever, and there's two more houses on my block that have gone empty in the past month or so.  As far as the international scene goes, Obama might as well make his motto: Making the world safe for sharia!