GAS PRICES HEAD ONLY ONE WAY – AT 10:44 P.M. ET:  Gasoline prices continue their upward climb.  The Business and Media Institute has, in our view, an accurate assessment of what is happening, and the Obama effect on it: 

The average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline hit $3.86 on April 25, more than $1-a-gallon higher than a year earlier and less than 25 cents away from the record high price of gasoline set in July 2008.

In fact, per gallon prices are more than $2 higher than when Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009. Yet the president has been nearly exempt from criticism on the issue of rising prices, despite a six-month drilling moratorium and more regulatory hurdles for industry.

The Business & Media Institute found that out of the 280 oil price stories the network evening shows have aired since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, only 1 percent (3 stories) mentioned Obama's drilling ban or other anti-oil actions in connection with gasoline prices.

Instead of asking whether Obama's anti-oil policies could be increasing the cost of gas, the networks blamed other factors such as Mideast turmoil or the "money game" played by speculators. Certainly, the turmoil in Libya, Egypt and surrounding nations has increased worries about oil production and can influence the price. But the networks also should have looked for explanations much closer to home, like Obama's many regulatory actions taken against the oil industry.

COMMENT:  It is true that a lifting of some of the regulations is unlikely to have an immediate effect on oil prices.  But a change in this administration's energy policy would provide hope and incentive.  Sadly, the Obamans are under the Svangali-like influence of extreme environmentalists and Al Gorist promoters of "alternative" energy sources that do not exist, and are unlikely to exist on a practical level for years and years. 

Gasoline prices in some parts of the country have hit five dollars.  With the coming of cold weather again, home heating oil prices will stun Americans. 

No one is in love with oil companies.  They aren't very lovable.  But for a century or more they've provided this country with relatively cheap, reliable sources of energy.  Obama will blame the oil companies for the current crisis, the the mainstream media won't challenge him to any great degree.  But I suspect the public is on to this ploy.  The oil-price crisis has got to impact Obama, just as it impacted Carter in the late 70s.  In the meantime, we feel the pain, and no one feels it for us.

April 25, 2011