Roger in WND: Don't drink the Kool Aid - The Roger Hedgecock Show - Talk Radio

Roger in WND: Don't drink the Kool Aid

What is with recent presidents babbling incoherently when gas prices go up?

Bush went on about switch grass as a substitute fuel. Obama offers algae. Should we laugh or cry when the president proposes pond scum as an answer to high gas prices?

At least Bush had the good sense to announce a plan to drill more domestic oil – an announcement that brought down the world price of oil and brought gas prices down to $1.84 on Obama's Inauguration Day.

As with every other delusional statement and dysfunctional action of his predecessor, Obama denounces the Bush past then makes statements and decisions way more delusional and dysfunctional.

In April 2006, with gas prices around $3 a gallon and unemployment about 5 percent, Obama and very other Democrat denounced Bush as the cause of our misery.

In February 2012, with gas prices near $4 a gallon and unemployment over 8 percent, Obama brays that Iran, rising demand in China and India and greedy speculators are to blame, not him. And don't worry anyway: The economy is in recovery, and Florida has a lot of algae.

Obama's acolytes in the Media Matters media defend Obama's blame deflection and his call for "alternatives." They contend that higher gas prices are good for us. The delusion reaches deep.

You can choose to ignore the rhetoric of a politician desperate to avoid blame for the consequences of his failed policies (in fact, I recommend it), and you can choose to ignore the equally delusional re-elect Obama media, but Obama's continued boneheadedness offends in a way that cannot be ignored.

Take the Keystone XL pipeline decision. Obama vetoes a safe source of more than 700,000 barrels of oil a day from friendly Canada, leaving the refineries in Texas dependent on 700,000 barrels of imported Venezuelan oil to make our gasoline.

After the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama shut down all oil drilling in the Gulf. This permatorium was canceled by court order (twice) as illegal. In the State of the Union speech, Obama touted his plan to increase Gulf drilling by 80 percent, hoping no one would notice drilling in the Gulf would still be 20 percent below the pre-BP spill era.

Curiously, Obama announced last week a deal allowing the Mexican government owned oil company PEMEX to drill in the Gulf at twice the depth of the BP platform (11,000 feet) 150 miles south of the Mississippi delta. No American (or other) oil company has received such permission.

No to oil from Canada through a safe pipeline, but yes to Mexico for oil from a far riskier deep-water platform?

The government of Brazil is getting aid from Obama to develop its deep-water offshore oil discoveries. The government-controlled oil company Petrobras is doing the deep-water drilling. Its biggest private investor is George Soros.

While denouncing Republicans for their "Drill, Baby Drill" mantra in one sentence, Obama's algae-to-energy speech last week also contained a boast that domestic oil and natural gas production had increased since he became president.

It has, despite Obama's best efforts to stop it. Oil production on federal lands declined by 11 percent in 2011. Obama has declared 85 percent of America's offshore seabed off limits to drilling.

Oil production on privately owned land in the Permian Basin in West Texas and eastern New Mexico is booming. Obama's EPA has threatened to shut it all down to protect a small lizard in the area whose fragile habitat or something might be affected.

Oil production on privately owned land in the Bakken formation in North Dakota is booming. The Keystone XL pipeline would have added the North Dakota oil to the Canadian oil reducing the transportation costs of the North Dakota oil, which is currently shipped to market in CO2-belching trains owned by Warren Buffet.

How does one explain these bizarre, contradictory statements and decisions? Delusional? Dysfunctional? Just politics, Chicago style? Pundits are having a devil of a time with this.

In the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger explains that Obama is playing the old video game "Sim City." Whenever a difficulty is encountered in the Sim City economy he has constructed, Obama simply conjures up a solution and proclaims the problem solved. Pond scum! That's it!

A darker analogy involves remembering the Rev. Jim Jones and the People's Temple movement of the 1970s in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jones preached a theology of change, proclaimed himself a messiah and demanded his followers give all their worldly goods to him and believe he could do no wrong.

By 1977, Jones and a thousand of his followers had fled the U.S. to live in "Jonestown" in Guyana, South America. At Jonestown, Jones required all to work 12-18 hours a day on his plantation. He enriched himself and his closest circle while impoverishing the rest of his followers.

On Nov. 18, 1978, following the assassination of Rep. Leo Ryan for trying to leave Jonestown with disillusioned members of the People's Temple, Jones shot himself and 912 of his followers (including 280 children) committed suicide by swallowing Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide, valium and other drugs.

To this day, "Don't drink the Kool-Aid" is a phrase used to warn against blind belief in an ideology or an argument without critical examination.

If you are trying to understand why gas prices are suddenly a lot higher, and you are faced with the Media Matters media supporting the delusional and dysfunctional statements and decisions on energy by Barack Obama, don't drink the Kool-Aid.