I wonder how the Republican leaders and their media mouthpieces will manage to blame President Obama for the wildfires in Arizona? For blame him they probably will.  They’ve found a way to blame him for just about everything else.

Their latest absurd claim is that the Obama administration deliberately enacted policies designed to raise the price of gasoline.

Why? Because, they say, it will encourage the development and use of alternative “green” fuels.

Now if I were president, that claim would make sense. I would try to keep gasoline around $5 a gallon to keep people off the roads. Or encourage them to use bicycles or shank’s pony.  It would be a lot healthier for all concerned.

I can’t see why people are still getting up in the morning and driving to some office building 20 miles away to sit at a computer and do exactly what they would be doing if they had stayed home. Those office buildings are dinosaurs. Work-at-home policies would eliminate maintenance and cleaning costs – and promote more productivity. Those folks with their coffee cups who stand in your doorway and waste your time would have to contact you by email (which you could deal with at your convenience).

I played golf with a guy named Bob yesterday. He did his day’s work on his cell phone between shots.  A lot of people could do that if they weren’t required to show up at the office.

Obama is not the president I would be.  He is much more friendly to Big Oil. His administration has granted a lot more drilling permits than I would (click here to see what I mean).

And he goes on and on about developing “green energy,” but where’s the funding to back up the talk?

But whatever he is, he is certainly not to blame for the high prices at the pump.

The reasons for $4-a-gallon gas are numerous and complicated. They include price fixing, of course, and cartels and stock market speculation. But the big underlying cause is global development – especially in China.

Here’s how Andrew Leonard puts it in an article in Salon today:

Bottom line: World oil consumption hit an all-time record high of 87.4 million barrels a day in 2010, driven by a surge in demand from emerging nations, but primarily led by China. China has now overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest energy consumer, with demand for all kinds of energy growing 11.2 percent in 2010. In 2010, Chinese oil consumption grew by 860,000 barrels a day. Since 2000, China’s oil consumption has grown an incredible 90 percent.

Supply, globally, is not keeping up with demand growth. And barring a major global economic meltdown, that dynamic is not going to change. The rest of the world is going to continue to consume more oil, and finding and developing new sources of oil is going to continue to get more expensive. And Obama can’t do a damn thing about it, except to put in place policies that encourage U.S. consumers to consume as little oil as possible.

Click here to read Leonard’s article.

So, the real people responsible for pain at the pump in America are the bigwigs who thought up (and profit from) globalism.  And they are the ones who provide a big chunk of the Republicans’ funding.

But that doesn’t faze the party’s propagandists. To them it’s Obama’s fault.

Everything is Obama’s fault.