Woo hoo! President Obama has decided to allow oil companies to produce more domestic oil. To do this he is directing his administration to extend current oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico and the waters around Alaska. Obama has also ordered that more frequent lease sales be given in the Alaska federal petroleum reserve.

According to President Obama, his recent order, "make good sense." Although he does acknowledge that it will not have an immediate impact on the price of oil. So lets celebrate the courageous and brilliant decision by President Obama. But before we start to celebrate, I have a few questions to ask.

If Obama's decision today makes sense, how come it didn't make sense 10 years ago when Senator Obama and the rest of the Democrats did everything they could to slow down and reduce domestic oil production? If it make sense know to increase domestic oil production, then how come he opposes the current Republican House bill to expand offshore oil drilling? Did President Obama's sensible decision include expanding the areas where we can drill for oil? No. His bold decision is to allow companies to drill where permission had already been given and then taken away by his administration.

So does Obama's decision help the U.S. to ramp up oil production to help bring the price down? Not likely. Even when the oil does hit the market. That is unless his administration has another oil epiphany just before his bid to get re-elected. If that happens and President Obama discovers another good sense idea to expand oil production even more, then maybe it will make a difference.

Remember the last time oil prices were high? It was close to election time and all these Democrats reluctantly agreed to expand domestic oil production. But once they were safely re-elected, they suddenly had a change of heart. They started added extra rules and regulations to the process causing delays and eventually killing most domestic oil projects except in certain Democratically approved areas.

So forgive me if I don't get too excited about President Obama's good idea. After all, it makes sense to be skeptical about a President who is great at making campaign promises and not very good at following through on them. Especially now that all of his attention and energy (pun intended) is geared toward getting him re-elected.

-- Thomas Paine 2

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