WHAT A FARCE – AT 9:48 P.M. ET:  One of the great lines you hear from Hollywood schemers is, "My hands are tied."  You know, sorry about the situation, but I can't do anything about it.  It's almost never true. 

Now President Obama gives us the political version of that.  High gasoline prices?  Oh, that's really too bad, but my hands are tied:

Obama cautioned that it's going to be tough to transition from America's oil-dependent economy and acknowledged there's little he can do to lower gasoline prices over the short term.

"I'm just going to be honest with you. There's not much we can do next week or two weeks from now," the president told workers at a wind turbine plant outside Philadelphia.

It's a theme Obama's struck before as he tries to show voters he's attuned to a top economic concern with gas prices pushing toward $4 a gallon.

Obama said he wants to move toward "a future where America is less dependent on foreign oil, more reliant on clean energy produced by workers like you." That will happen by reducing oil imports, tapping domestic energy sources and shifting the nation to renewable and less polluting sources of energy, such as wind, the president says. He has set a goal of reducing oil imports by one-third by 2025.

But the president said it won't happen overnight and if any politician says it's easy, "they're not telling the truth."

"Gas prices? They're going to still fluctuate until we can start making these broader changes, and that's going to take a couple of years to have serious effect," Obama said.

COMMENT:  Well, let's see.  Obama can start a crash program to increase domestic production of petroleum, including offshore drilling, but that might offend the enviro-nuts who are part of his base.  Of course the enviro-nuts don't understand that people are part of the environment, and people plunged into poverty don't give us a healthy world.

The fact is that there are people around Obama who like high gasoline prices because it will discourage people from driving, something of a sin in their little paradise.

We have enough domestic oil to take care of our needs, as we gradually transition to newer fuels.  But that oil hasn't been tapped, largely because of government policy.  So an entire generation must be financially strained because of the left's political and economic theories. 

But the president's hands are tied.

April 6, 2011