We have established that Obama’s war on coal assumed a massive, crash program of 100 new nuclear reactors — for optics purposes, keeping the cost of killing coal down, on paper — without which power the lights will necessarily go out. You cannot rule out half of our electricity supply and pretend otherwise.

Now that that binge is an even more obvious fiction, his defenders charge forth to say he does too support nuclear.

And they point to this recent statement. “Nuclear energy is an important part of our own energy future.”

Which does not say he will promote any new reactors, of course. Just that he knows he can’t shut down the existing fleet, additions to which have been stalled since 1978. Meanwhile he plans to add no coal, and shut down the existing coal fleet. Electricity, after all, comes from those holes in the wall.

Obama also said to Iowa voters in October 2008 that he was “not a proponent” of nukes, and it is unlikely that anything has changed his core position.

And in response to which rhetoric I also note that on Friday he said this: “First, we need to continue to boost domestic production of oil and gas.”

Ah. Yes. Of course we must. Please point to his record of trying to boost production again?

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In a visit to Washington, D.C., yesterday, a group of about fifty energy industry workers and representatives from the Gulf of Mexico area told lawmakers, reporters and bloggers that if the Obama administration and Congress are serious about creating and saving jobs, they will lift the moratorium on energy exploration in the Gulf.

The workers were joined by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and former Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.), outspoken opponents of both the moratorium and tax changes proposed by Democrats that opponents charge would hammer the energy industry.

Thomas Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, a group focused on maintaining energy industry jobs in the Gulf area said in a statement, “In an economy like this, the President and Congress should be looking for ways to strengthen U.S. businesses, not weaken them.”

Several of those who traveled to the Hill for meetings with members of Congress say they are suffering financially in the wake of the moratorium’s imposition, and that layoffs and business closures will be unavoidable should it remain in effect.

“My job matters,” said Thomas Clements, co-owner of Oilfield CNC Machining in Broussard, Louisiana. “So I’ve come to Washington to find somebody to hear me, to see my hopelessness, my no-man’s-land that I’m in because of these proposed tax changes to the energy industry and the moratorium.”  Clements elaborated, saying that he had planned to hire more workers this year, but the six-month moratorium on drilling has halted those plans.  All orders for new metal parts used in drilling have been canceled and no new orders are anticipated, said the small businessman, who questioned how his business could survive for the full six months of the moratorium during a lunch attended by Washington, D.C.-based reporters and bloggers.

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In this week’s edition of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, we’re talking about how financial regulations will rob you of your free checking accounts, how the government is discouraging investment, and why Obama’s response to the BP spill is such a monumental failure. We’re brought to you as always by Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Domenech: Our Impotent President
Andrew Malcolm: Why Senators Don’t Make Good Presidents
WSJ: The End of Free Checking
Cella: Tocqueville on the BP Spill
Breitbart: Jindal Fumes as Fed Red Tape Halts Cleanup
Domenech and Cianfrocca: A Presidency on the Brink

Since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up on April 20, President Obama has been rightly and roundly criticized for his lethargic, passionless, and ineffective response to the crisis.  We’re now into the 7th week of this catastrophe, and the president still looks weirdly disengaged: not only that he either doesn’t know what he’s doing or isn’t that interested in the crisis.  It’s that he looks like he doesn’t belong in the job.  He looks like a little boy stomping around the house wearing his father’s suit and shoes.

Stung by the attacks on his competence, character, and emotionlessness, Obama contrived some “passion” the other day.  In an interview with the “Today” show, he said, “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar.  We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

Oh no!  Anything but a Bama ass-kickin’!  The terror of that prospect I’m sure has BP shaking in its boots. (By the way, running college seminars is ALL the Bama knows how to do, so he probably should be doing that.  Maybe some college senior somewhere has a Descartes-inspired idea on how to plug the damn hole.)

Rule #1 in politics:  Do not try to be something that you’re not.When President George H. W. Bush was running behind Bill Clinton in 1992, he went into a grocery store and pretended to love beef jerky.  You know: to demonstrate that he was just a regular guy.  The problem was: he wasn’t just a regular guy.  He was Andover and Yale and the Eastern establishment.  His father had been a U.S. Senator.  Bush didn’t even know what beef jerky was, for crying out loud.  He lost the election.

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