Who's to blame for this Oil Spike!

It is interesting to watch as the press seemingly does not want anything to do with the current oil price spike.  As oil and gasoline prices have risen dramatically over the past couple weeks, the silence has been deafening with regards to the press and its lack of criticism of President Obama and his administration.  A few years back, however the liberal media could not get to their computers fast enough to blame the Bush administration for the oil spike.  Liberal writers like Thomas Friedman lobbed massive amounts of criticism toward the Bush Administration for its "failed" energy policy.  Was some of this criticism warranted?  Possibly.  But if one is going to criticize President Bush, for his policies, one would have to also criticize pretty much every President's that preceded him going back several generations.

But there has been no criticism from the mainstream press about President Obama's equally short sited and horribly flawed energy policy (if there is in fact any energy policy) since he has been in office.  In fact President Obama's foreign, economic, and energy policies can easily be blamed for the spike in oil and gas prices.

The fact is that our country is years away from a viable alternative solution to oil, that is both somewhat cheap and efficient.  When the last spike happened, it became clear that the US is extremely vulnerable to such a spike.  The answers then were clear.  Intellegent thinking people said the US should 1) explore and develop its own sources of oil and energy, that are all over the US (places like ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico) and 2) use tax breaks and incentives to spur research and development into alternative sources of energy.

Bush tried in his last few months to open up oil exploration, but as soon as Obama became president he stopped that stuff cold.  Furthermore, when the spill happened in the gulf last summer, Obama used that excuse to place a six month moratorium on oil drilling.  Many of those off shore rigs have now been moved to other parts of the world and are being used there.  So even though the moratorium has been lifted, drilling is not going on.  There are also massive amounts of oil under a tiny portion of ANWR and the northern US that have yet to be tapped.  Some estimates put these reserves at as much as what is underneath the Middle East.  Obama refuses to allow more exploration and drilling, and has told everyone to not worry about the rising oil prices.  Its easy for him to say, as he lives in the White House with his secret service detail, fleet of limousines, helicopters and Air Force One, but people like me that are struggling to make ends meet in a teetering economy, are worried that any of what little extra we have, will soon go toward putting gasoline in our cars.

Remember, Mr. President, the last time such a spike happened, the party in power lost both houses in congress and the White House.  Good luck on that "Don't worry" strategy.