The AP has a story out that basically portrays oil execs as cowering under the thundering bloviations coming from the Senate yesterday:

“Where is the corporate conscience?” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked the top executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies.

It’s all about economics, came the reply. Supply and demand. The company leaders tried to shift attention from motorists’ anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline to a debate over new areas for drilling.

But senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing weren’t having any of that. They wanted to press the executives about public anguish over paying $60 or more to fill up a car’s gas tank.

“People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told the executives. He said there’s a “disconnect” between legitimate supply issues and the oil and gasoline prices motorists are seeing.

The executives, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the hearing room, said they understood people were hurting, but they tried to blunt the emotion with economic analysis.

Profits have been huge “in absolute terms,” conceded J. Stephen Simon, executive vice president of Exxon Mobil Corp., but they “must be viewed in the context of the massive scale of our industry.” And high earnings “in the current up cycle” are needed for investments in the long term, including when profits will be down.

“‘Current up cycle,’ that’s a nice term when people can’t afford to go to work” because gasoline is costing so much, replied Leahy with sarcasm.

“The fundamental laws of supply and demand are at work,” said John Hofmeister, chairman of Shell Oil Co., acknowledging it is something the oil industry has been saying for some time and that the explanation may sound “repetitive and uninteresting.”

Hofmeister was joined by executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., BP America Inc. and ConocoPhilips Co. Together the five companies earned $36 billion during the first three months of this year.

As the executives sought to explain their profits and why prices are so high, the global oil markets were moving into new, uncharted highs, touching $133 a barrel for the first time. The national average price of a gallon of gasoline hit $3.80, with $4 showing up in more places. Crude prices increased even more in late electronic trading Wednesday hitting $134 for the first time.

What writer Josef Hebert conveniently failed to add to the reporting was this reply by John Hofmeister, CEO of Shell Oil:

HOFMEISTER: In the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people. It is not a free market. According to the Department of the Interior, 62% of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92% of all federal lands. The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay, or restrict natural gas projects. The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it. Congress could have chose to lift some or all of the current restrictions on exploration and production of oil and gas. Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development.

That, my dear readers, is the problem in a nutshell. Big Government is in the midst of bloviating, beating their chests and pointing their bony fingers of indignation at “Big Oil,” when all the while the cause of and answer to the problem is waiting to be answered the next time they look in the mirror. And “Big Media” who is in cahoots with “Big Government” lacks the cajones to report that fact.

Surprise? I think not.

Read this story on Obama’s tendencies to blame the help for all his woes. Here’s but a snippet:

In a March 2008 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times to answer questions about Tony Rezko, Obama was asked about the fact that Obama had told the newspaper in November 2006 that he had never been asked to do anything to advance Rezko’s business interests. But the Sun-Times had subsequently learned about a October 28, 1998 letter Obama wrote to city and state housing officials on behalf of a housing project for seniors that Rezko was working on.

The letter, Obama said, “was essentially a form letter of the sort that I did all time. And that I wasn’t, by the way, aware of.”

A reporter asked: You weren’t aware that he was associated with the project?

Responded Obama: “I wasn’t even aware that we wrote the letter. The answer that I gave at the time was accurate as far as I knew…This was one of many form letters, or letters of recommendation we would send out constantly for all sorts of projects. And my understanding is that our letter was just one of many. And I wasn’t a decision maker in any of this process.”

The Sun-Times also pointed out that in November 2006 Obama estimated that Rezko had raised somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000 for him during his political career.

But since that answer, Obama has given back almost $160,000 in Rezko-related contributions.

“The original estimate was based on, I asked my staff to find what monies they attributed to Rezko, and this was the figure given to me,” Obama said.

Blaming others for your own misfortunes, gaffes and mis-steps will only get you so far. For the better part of a year, Barack Obama was held above criticism by the larger media, and was thought to be the democratic “pure as the wind-driven snow” golden child. But the more the truth about the “real Obama” comes out, the more the electorate will realize that the “golden child” they thought they were getting was in reality nothing but costume jewelry.

The list of what we can no longer criticize about Barack Hussein– (oops) — Obama continues. Even if it’s the truth. Now it just so happens that whatever his wife says is beyond reproach:

Earlier, Obama told critics in an interview aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to “lay off my wife.”

The Illinois senator was responding to an online ad run by the Tennessee GOP that, during a four-minute video, replays six times Michelle Obama’s comment that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” Michelle Obama has clarified her remark, saying she meant she is proud of the public’s engagement in this year’s political process. Obama called the ad “just low class.”

Obama said that if he wins the nomination, Republicans “can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record. But, he added, “if they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful, because I find unacceptable the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family.”

This would be fair enough if Michelle Obama didn’t insert herself and her words as part and parcel of her husband’s campaign. But in that very same interview, Michele Obama did just that:

In the joint interview, Michelle Obama said, “We’re trusting that the American voters are ready to talk about the issues.” She also denied speculation that she has ruled out a place by Clinton on her husband’s ticket.

“There’s no way that I would say ‘absolutely not’ to one of the most successful and powerful and groundbreaking women on this planet,” Michelle Obama said. Empathizing with her as someone who raised “a phenomenal daughter” while in politics, she said, “I think the world of Hillary Clinton,” and added, “I know how hard, just in the little bit of exposure I’ve had to this, what she’s had to deal with and what she’s accomplished.”

Word to Michelle Obama: If you can’t take the political heat, then get the hell in the kitchen and bake some cookies.

Time Magazine cheapens the sacrifices made by WWII vets:

Comparing what amounts to tilting at windmills (literally) to the threat once posed by imperial Japan and Nazi Germany shows a blatant level of ignorance.

But mind you, this is the same magazine that took the jihadists’ word that there was a “massacre” at Haditha, and ran with it.

Then again, could anyone expect any more from the bunch of self-centered liberal ingrates that make up the editorial board at Time?

That’s the message given to parents by California lawmakers, who are pushing a bill to outlaw spanking in California:

“AB 2943 would label good, loving parents — who occasionally use a little paddle, a ruler, a little stick, or a brush to correct their youngster’s misbehavior — as official “child abusers” in the eyes of the law,” said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.

The bill is a repeat of legislation introduced last year by Democratic Assemblywoman Sally Lieber. “The vast majority of child abuse victims and fatalities are young children,” Lieber said when she first introduced her Child Abuse And Infant/Toddler Protection Bill. “Too often the abuse begins as some form of ‘discipline.’ Existing law is clearly not doing enough to protect the youngest, smallest, most vulnerable members of our society.”

In that, Ms. Lieber may actually have a point.

One of the most liberal RINOs out there is getting a taste of his own medicine:

Silver Introduces “Courtesy” Pricing Bill, Wants a Millionaire Tax

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver introduced a congestion pricing bill yesterday, but was quoted as saying “we have a long way to go” before it clears his chamber.

The Times reports that Silver, introducing the plan “as a courtesy to the new governor,” agreed not to “block” it “in exchange for some version of the new tax on anyone making more than $1 million.” But some Republican lawmakers who might otherwise support congestion pricing are opposed to the “millionaire tax” (as is Mayor Bloomberg).

Heh. Live by liberalism, die by liberalism, I say.

Details at The Ice Palace.