Wednesday Chronicle: Gas Pain Blame Game

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Chronicle · April 27, 2011 The Foundation "It is very imprudent to deprive America of any of her privileges. If her commerce and friendship are of any importance to you, they are to be had on no other terms than leaving her in the full enjoyment of her rights." --Benjamin Franklin Editor's Note We are experiencing extreme weather today in east Tennessee and are doing our best to stay up and running, but there may be disruptions in our publishing cycle, including possibly no essay from Mark Alexander tomorrow. Stay tuned and please keep us and our neighbors in your prayers as we clean up from the storms -- some of which are yet to come. Editorial Exegesis "Pump prices keep climbing, so what do those mainly responsible for the run-up do? Try to pin it on someone else, of course. In his radio address last Saturday, President Obama bragged that his attorney general had just two days earlier 'launched a task force with just one job: rooting out cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, including any illegal activity by traders and speculators. We're going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain.' Last month, the president promised that his administration was 'taking various measures to deal with oil prices, and (is) watching out for price-gouging.' This is the sort of rhetoric that beleaguered consumers, aching from soaring fuel prices, are vulnerable to. Obama is giving them a straw man on which they can vent their frustrations. But their focus should be on the presidential candidate who said while campaigning in 2008 that under his environmentalist regime, 'electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.' On the day Obama took office, gasoline was $1.83 a gallon. On Tuesday, according to the American Automobile Association's Daily Fuel Gauge Report, the national average was $3.87. While electricity prices haven't yet necessarily skyrocketed, gasoline prices sure have. Obama could have prevented this. But he's done nothing to push crude supplies up and thereby bring gasoline prices down. In fact, it appears that his goal is to reduce domestic supply. ... Despite its denials, the administration has also increased gasoline prices through its promotion of a weak dollar. Because oil is traded in U.S. dollars, those who sell it on the open market demand more dollars for the same amount of crude because those dollars are worth less. This administration includes an energy secretary who has pined for European -- meaning $8-a-gallon -- gas prices. But the White House would rather the public remain ignorant of its role in driving prices higher. So it cynically kicks off probes of investors and oil industry executives that will turn up absolutely nothing." --Investor's Business Daily Upright "The [Paul] Ryan budget has been criticized as heartless and cruel. But its purpose is to address the rising U.S. debt problem without tanking the U.S. economy, and to do so before a truly heartless and cruel credit downgrade of the sort S&P gave Japan in January. Mr. Obama's response was simply to mock the GOP proposal. The ratings agencies are hardly the last word on U.S. economic health. But the S&P outlook is a warning to the White House that financial markets have noticed that this President seems to have decided that his path to re-election lies in demonizing his opponents rather than seeing to the nation's fiscal well-being." --Wall Street Journal "President Barack Obama, one of the most insane spenders in Washington, has a 12-year plan. After hearing the president's plan, Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. Sovereign debt outlook to 'negative.' ... At the world's first 'Presidential Facebook town hall meeting' [last] Wednesday, even Obama had a hard time taking his 'plan' seriously. Sometimes he referred to it as a 12-year plan, sometimes 10 years, sometimes saving four trillion, sometimes saving two trillion. So will the Obama plan save four trillion over 12 years or two trillion over 10?" --columnist Mark Steyn "Already [Obama's] campaign's messaging is all about recapturing the feeling of insurgency from the first time around. Finish the mission. Complete the work. Remember the feeling. That's why he's running his re-election campaign out of Chicago, as if people won't notice he's the incumbent. Obama has never run on a record. He's always run almost literally on a hope and a prayer. Now he must defend what he has done -- and what he has failed to do. If that makes him cranky, that's just too bad." --columnist Jonah Goldberg "Two college professors just released a study of national protests between 2007 and 2009. What did they find? … 'After January 2007, the attendance at antiwar rallies [measured in] roughly the tens of thousands, or thousands, through the end of 2008. … After the election of Barack Obama as president, the order of magnitude of antiwar protests dropped [...] Organizers were hard pressed to stage a rally with participation in the thousands, or even in the hundreds. For example, we counted exactly 107 participants at a Chicago rally on October 7, 2009.' Amazing. Especially because the war in Afghanistan ramped up after Obama was elected. American fatalities shot up in 2009 and 2010. The protesters have remained silent over Libya." --columnist John Stossel Insight "As the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance." --President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) "A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule." --author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982) The Demo-gogues The beater clingers: "[F]irst of all, $4-a-gallon gas really hurts a lot of people around this country. It's not because they're wasteful, but if you're driving 50 miles to work and that's the only job you can find, and you can't afford some hybrid so you're stuck with the old beater that you're driving around that gets eight miles a gallon, these gas prices are killing you right now." --Barack Obama feigning sympathy for the little guy Witch hunt: "I asked my attorney general to look into any cases of price gouging so he can make sure nobody's being taken advantage of at the pump. Today I'm gonna go a step further. The attorney general's putting together a team whose job it is to root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, and that includes the role of traders and speculators. We're gonna make sure that nobody's taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gain." --Barack Obama Class warfare: "I believe that we can't ask everybody to sacrifice and then tell the wealthiest among us, well, you can just relax and go count your money, and don't worry about it. We're not going to ask anything of you." --Barack Obama Government spending made America great? "I will not reduce our deficit by sacrificing the things that have always made America great. The things that have made Americans prosper. I won't sacrifice our investments in education. I will not sacrifice those. I won't sacrifice our investments in science and basic research. I won't sacrifice the safety of our highways or our airports. I won't sacrifice our investment in clean energy at a time when our dependence on foreign oil is causing Americans so much pain at the pump. I will not sacrifice America's future. That I will not do." --Barack Obama Dezinformatsia The BIG lie: "With Congress on recess, town hall events across the country are again lighting up with anger and frustration, but this time it is about the official Republican Party budget plan. The Paul Ryan budget plan, which drastically cuts taxes for the richest Americans back to what they were in the 1930s. It drastically cuts taxes for corporations. It gives billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies, those poor, orphaned, hard-luck oil companies. And it also, incidentally, ends Medicare, it repeals Medicare. It turns Medicare instead into a coupon system and it makes senior citizens buy private health insurance." --MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Poll driven policy: "Now to those climbing gas prices. They are taking a toll on so many of you and any anger you feel about it is likely to rise this week when oil companies report what are expected to be record profits. ... [T]hese gas prices are also knocking down President Obama's poll numbers, which is why he's out there nearly every day addressing this problem." --ABCs George Stephanopoulos (It's nice to have a president who advocates "change" based on poll numbers.) Class warfare: "Well I think [Barack Obama has] got a full plate. But I think he's gotta be held accountable for a number of different standards. I think he's wrong on these wars. I think he's given too much time, too much attention to the rich and the lucky, not enough attention to the poor. Not enough focus on jobs. Again, there's a lot on his plate and I'm empathetic toward that. But ultimately are you gonna side with the weak or are you gonna side with the strong? And we gotta focus more attention on the weak in this country and less on the strong." --PBS commentator Tavis Smiley Newspulper Headlines: Questions Nobody Is Asking: "Earth Day Instead of Easter?" --DailyCaller.com Breaking News From Genesis 7:4: "A Lot More Rain on the Way" --Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL) You Call That Fair and Balanced?: "5 People Attacked by Rabid Fox in Nashua, NH" --WHDH-TV website (Boston) Must've Been a No Passing Zone: "Truck Carrying Laxatives Causes Backup on Interstate" --WAFF-TV website (Huntsville, AL) So Make Sure Your Surgeon Is Still Drunk: "Hungover Surgeons Make More Mistakes, Study Finds" --FoxNews.com Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking: "Why You Should Love $5 Gas" --Money.msn.com Bottom Story of the Day: "Americans Don't Care About Royal Wedding" --Commentary website (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto) Village Idiots Blame Republicans for Obama's poll numbers: "People are a little disappointed in the president because he hasn't been able to change the way Washington works at all. Indeed, Congress is even more poorly regarded. Everybody wanted a bigger deal than was done on the last budget go-around. And so in an odd way the fact that the Republicans and Congress are so poorly regarded, that the whole system is so poorly regarded, drags everybody down, including the president." --Huffington Post's Howard Fineman Spin: "You know, the president went to church yesterday. It was well covered. I'm not sure if we put out a statement or not." --White House Press Secretary Jay Carney attempting to spin away the fact that Obama has never once followed the presidential custom of issuing an official Easter proclamation, though he sure didn't miss Earth Day Belly laugh of the week: "Our policy has been and will always be, as long as I will be in office, that a strong dollar is in the interest of the country. We will never embrace a strategy to weaken the dollar." --Treasury Secretary Tim "Turbo Tax" Geithner He feels your pain: "We've gotten away from being a people-centered society [and become] a money-centered society." --Bill Clinton Short Cuts "So, if Obama's numbers are gas-tanking, the political/policy czars in the White House need to find someone to blame, and fast. The President has announced the formation of yet another task force, this one in the Department of Justice to look for fraud and illegal manipulation of gasoline prices." --political analyst Rich Galen "Just how dire is the crisis over the $14,294,000,000,000 debt ceiling, which America will hit on about May 16? So dire that President Obama spent much of last week traipsing across the West collecting campaign cash (and hit the golf course for Round No. 65 on Saturday). So dire that Congress headed off on a two-week vacation (and Sen. Harry Reid jetted off to China on a 10-day junket with nine colleagues, costing taxpayers millions)." --former White House correspondent Joseph Curl "Barack Obama's motorcade snarled traffic in Los Angeles Thursday. Churches on the president's route had to cancel Holy Week services to accommodate his entrance to Los Angeles. It was the most self-important procession since O.J. rode into Brentwood on a Bronco." --comedian Argus Hamilton "Prominent people are coming forward to attest to President Obama's American citizenship. The Governor of Hawaii just said he first met Obama just days after he was born. He knew it was Obama, because he kept pointing to his diaper and calling for change." --comedian Conan O'Brien "Every time a kid found an egg [at the White House Easter Egg Roll], Michelle Obama would make them trade it in for a low cholesterol Egg Beater. They had about 6,000 eggs, and you know who decorated them? Ex-cons. It's nice to see the White House reaching out to former members of Congress." --comedian Jay Leno Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! The Patriot Post Editorial Team Click Here Patriot Drinkware   Let friends, family and co-workers know where you stand with this collection of beverage ware, printed with great slogans & patriotic designs!     (To submit reader comments click here.)   Patriot News Review Geithner: Debt-ceiling Debate Is 'Ridiculous' Blago Trial May Be Reshuffled Because of a Jurors Scheduling Interference With an Oprah Show Taping Firefighters Union to Halt Contributions to Democrats Budget Shortfall? Just Tax More: California Considering a 'Soda Tax' Gasoline Futures Highest Since 2008 Judge's Partner Cited in California Proposition 8 Case More News The Right Opinion Walter E. 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