Higher Gas Prices: Because You Can Afford to Pay a Little Bit More

Just a quick update on our newly designated Fund Raising Thursday:

Big Guy scored big in his game of H-O-R-S-E with NBA stars yesterday. Vince Carter hosted a $30,000 per head fundraiser, raising over $1 million for our WTF campaign. That’s pretty easy when all your friends are NBA jumpers who are proud to be members of the one percent who can afford to pay a little bit more.

I’m not really sure why BO needs to raise more money, since the WTF winner has already been announced -- and it’s still Big Guy!

How can you lose with this kind of luvin’?

His official reason for being in Florida however was to give a big important Presidential address at the University of Miami on our Energy Policy.

Our new energy policy

Butt don’t blame Big Guy.

Gas prices in Miami yesterday

And by the way, you can add Investor’s Business Daily to the growing list of media outlets we can no longer trust. They’ve clearly gone beyond “going rogue” and have slid all the way over to treason. They actually called Big Guy a liar for things he said in his big, important campaign speech on energy!

Here’s IBD’s treasonous summary of the speech:

Obama's main message to struggling motorists was: It's not my fault, so stop whining.

Butt they didn’t stop there; they went on to delineate what they call BO’s “Five biggest whoppers”

Big Guy at Five Guys ordering up five whoppers

"We're focused on production."

Fact: While production is up under Obama, this has nothing to do with his policies, but is the result of permits and private industry efforts that began long before Obama occupied the White House.

Obama has chosen almost always to limit production. He canceled leases on federal lands in Utah, suspended them in Montana, delayed them in Colorado and Utah, and canceled lease sales off the Virginia coast.

Butt to give Big Guy a fair shake: he didn’t say he was focused on increasing production.

"The U.S. consumes more than a fifth of the world's oil. But we only have 2% of the world's oil reserves."

Fact: Obama constantly refers to this statistic to buttress his claim that "we can't drill our way to lower gas prices." The argument goes that since the U.S. supply is limited, it won't ever make a difference to world prices.

It's bogus. New exploration and drilling technologies have uncovered vast amounts of recoverable oil.

In fact, the U.S. has a mind-boggling 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to "fuel the present needs in the U.S. for around 250 years," according to the Institute for Energy Research. The problem is the government has put most of this supply off limits.

So, it sounds like the correct way to state this is “Butt you are only allowed to drill on 2% of the world’s oil reserves.”

"Because of the investments we've made, the use of clean, renewable energy in this country has nearly doubled."

Fact: Production of renewable energy — biomass, wind, solar and the like — climbed just 12% between 2008 and 2011, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

Not only that butt it looks like Big Guy’s team just isn’t very good at picking winners in the green energy government sweepstakes.

A big wind knocked it over

"We need to double-down on a clean energy industry that's never been more promising."

Fact: Renewable energy simply won't play an important role in the country's energy picture anytime soon, accounting for just 13% of U.S. energy production by 2035, according to the EIA.

Not to mention most of them are, uh, not exactly economically viable (see above).

"There are no short-term silver bullets when it comes to gas prices."

Fact: Obama could drive down oil prices right now simply by announcing a more aggressive effort to boost domestic supplies. When President Bush lifted a moratorium in 2008, oil prices immediately fell $9 a barrel.

Butt as Jay-Jay told us last week, it’s the GOP who are responsible for killing things like the Keystone XL Pipeline, not Big Guy.

So I’d recommend the entire IBD staff should sign up for our early spring reeducation camp. Better hurry though – space is limited and filling up quickly ahead of our fall WTF campaign coverage.

Butt, again I digress. Back to Fundraising Thursdays, this time with Lady M in Cincinnati where she spoke before an audience at the Westin Hotel who had paid anywhere from $250 to $10,000 for the event. I don’t want to get off-topic again, butt does that really strike you as fair? Some people got to enjoy Lady M for just $250 while others were charged $10,000? Or maybe we just collected the $10,000 from some who could afford to pay a little bit more in order to subsidize the others who couldn’t? I don’t know, butt I’ll check into how this works and get back to you.

Happy to be here

Mrs. Obama was the keynote speaker at a reception at the Westin Hotel in Downtown Cincinnati.  Donors paid anywhere between $250 and $10,000 for a ticket and exclusive access to the First Lady, who delivered a vigorous defense of her husband’s administration, saying President Obama’s work “is not done.”

“That’s right, I’ve got 5, er, 7 more years! We can do it – yes we can!”

“If any family in this country is struggling, we can not be satisfied with our own families’ good fortune," said the First Lady.

Our Martha’s Vineyard entourage: butt we’re still not satisfied

 

Mrs. Obama spoke for nearly half an hour to the people in the ballroom. Before that, she appeared at a private reception with big donors where attendees had an opportunity to have their picture taken with the First Lady.

Not sure what the going price for a photo with Lady M in Cinci was, butt the price of the upcoming Boston photo shoot is probably a good indication.

Mr. Obama, dressed in a sleeveless black dress, was introduced by Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory, who called her “a woman of poise, a woman of elegance, a woman of grace, and, I would say, a woman of intelligence.”

 

Poised, elegant, intelligent: what more do you people want? Enthusiasm?

After her speech Lady M visited the Underground Railroad Freedom Center, where she seemed overwhelmed.

Or maybe just cold

“Who do we want to be?,’’ Mrs. Obama asked. “Will we be a country where success is limited to a few at the top? This country is strongest when we are all better off.”

Can we define “success?”  Because I’m not certain there’s agreement on what “success” means. Big Guy’s NBA buddies would probably define it as making gazillions of dollars to blow on, well, whatever.

Others think it’s having enough cash left after paying the bills to eat out at one of those restaurants that serve fatty, salty food and sugary beverages.

World famous Cincinnati Skyline chili dogs and two-way chili.

So maybe what we have here is a failure to communicate.

“Will we let everything we worked for just slip away?’’ asked Lady M of her Cincinnati paying audience.

Certainly not without a fight.