Vin Suprynowicz

I heard the president on the radio, Thursday.

In Florida to attend a $30,000-a-person fund-raiser at the home of Dallas Mavericks guard Vince Carter, President Barack Hussein Obama dropped by the University of Miami and — with comic timing as good as any stand-up comic — told the following joke about congressional Republicans:

“You can bet that since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas. I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is to drill, step two is to drill, and step three” (pause for comic effect) “is to keep on drillin’.”

Hoo-haw! What a knee-slapper!

“We’ve heard the same thing for thirty years,” the president went on. “Well, the American people aren’t stupid.”

In fact, and weirdly enough, the president then went on to reveal just how stupid he believes the American people are. Mr. Obama proceeded to claim credit for moderately enhanced oil production — despite the fact his administration has defied court orders in order to slow down or block permits for drilling in the Gulf, has blocked drilling of proven reserves in Alaska and elsewhere on vast swatches of supposedly “federal” lands for which Washington can show no bill of sale, even went so far as to recently block the Keystone XL pipeline, a job-intense project to bring Canadian tar-sands oil to American refineries which has jumped through each and every “environmental” hoop and hurdle.

(Oil production on “federal” land declined by 11 percent in fiscal year 2011, according to a study by the Institute on Energy Research, a free-market energy think tank.)

So the president is claiming credit — falsely, I suspect — for somewhat increased oil production, in the same speech in which he ridicules Republicans for favoring increased oil production? (Which, by the way, creates more jobs, a goal on which the president occasionally remembers he’s supposed to be “focused like a laser.”)

If he’s now celebrating (and taking credit for) increased oil production, why poke fun at Republicans by mocking them for wainting to “drill drill drill” — in the same speech? If he wants us to stand independent of Mideast oil, why has he dragged his feet till he was held in contempt of court for blocking drill permits in the Gulf; why block new drilling in Alaska; why has he turned down a pipeline to bring us more Canadian oil?

Barack Obama eagerly seeks the votes of a pack of economically ignorant loonies who want to see America forcibly weaned from fossil fuels in favor of less reliable energy sources will continue in the foreseeable future to cost at least four times as much, at the very moment in history when such vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas have been newly discovered ON THIS CONTINENT that we are within reach of becoming energy independent for more than a century to come, which would reduce our dependence not only on volatile and backward Middle Eastern despots, but also on oil tankers, which occasionally run aground.

This despite the fact that — even with Mr. Obama’s huge crony-capital federal subsidies — these glorified “alternative” gerbil treadmills keep going bankrupt, left and right!

I was at the supermarket the other day, and decided to pick up a couple of quarts of motor oil. I was stunned to see the stuff selling for $6.79, when I could recently buy it for $2.99.

I left those bottles on the shelf, but stopped by the auto parts place on the way home. Lo and behold, even there, quarts of name-brand motor oil are now selling for more than $6. I managed to find a few quarts of Chevron at $4.99.

It’s a reminder that a lot more than gasoline comes from oil wells, and it set me wondering who on earth would laugh at the president’s suggestion that Republicans are idiots because they actually believe the best way to lower the price of petroleum products is for government to get out of the way and allow private industry to produce more of the stuff. Increased supplies leading to lower prices? What a joke!

The best I can figure is that the president’s remarks are targeted at folks who never pay the bill for their own gasoline or heating oil. Who meets such a definition? Low-income city dwellers may not see the direct link between diesel prices and their subsidized bus fares, I suppose. Urban apartment dwellers may not directly share their landlords’ increases in heating costs if they’re protected by government mandated form of cost shifting known as “rent control.”

These sound like Mr. Obama’s former constituents in Chicago. His joke may resonate in inner-city Washington City, New York, Atlanta, and L.A., among people who can’t imagine working in an oil field or refinery or coal mine — who have never even seen one. But are such closeted economic ignoramuses and tax-eaters really now a functional majority of Americans?

I happen to like whales — at least, the few I’ve seen up close, in the wild, seemed friendly enough. So I’m not going to actually recommend, despite how adamant the greens seem to be about depriving us of the petroleum products necessary to keep our modern economy running, that we respond by switching back to whale oil.

Though I am still waiting for them to explain to me what product for lubricating my car’s engine they plan to produce with either solar panels or windmills, how precisely I can propel my car by placing a windmill on the roof, or how it’s remotely fuel efficient to buy a $46,000 “Volt” and then pay 70 cents a mile for electricity to run the thing the entire 25 miles you’re likely to get out of a 10-hour battery charge, at which point you’d better hope you’re not half way to Caliente.

It’s typical of the faddish, short-term memories of these cranks, though, that they already seem to have forgotten it’s the petroleum industry that did pretty much the “greenest” thing that any industry has ever done. A former railroad conductor named Edwin Drake poured his life savings into proving, near Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859, that it was possible to produce petroleum, which could be refined into a usable substitute for whale oil, by drilling into the ground. And that really, actually, did Save the Whales.

Anyone who wants to sink his or her life savings into windmills or solar panels is free to do so, mind you — providing they do so without government subsidies stolen from my paycheck, just like Edwin Drake.

Then the market will tell them whether or not they have chosen … wisely.