Any five-year-old with enough sense to come in out of the rain would understand that given the vast supplies of oil available to us here at home it is just plain idiocy to keep ourselves utterly reliant on foreign sources of the stuff.

Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats don’t see it that way. They’re not allowed to. Their elitist lords and masters in the environmental movement won’t permit it, and should they defy the tree huggers they’d lose all those lovely dollars the greenies keep shoveling into their coffers and those of their candidates running for re-election to Congress.

So they fall back on the old canard that even if we started drilling here it would take years for the United States to see any results, ignoring the fact that by telling all those Arab potentates and the Marxist dictator in Venezuela that the gravy train is going to come to a grinding halt in the near future, we’re warning them that if they don’t increase supply now we’ll stop buying from them as soon as we can.

Republicans are demanding that the Democrat-controlled Congress approve drilling here at home now. The environmentalist lobby -- which hates automobiles and fossil fuels almost as much as they hate people -- owns Barack Obama and his Democratic Party, and they say “no drilling.” Barack Obama and the Democratic Party obey.

Then there’s big labor, which is running short on members whose compulsory dues they use to finance Democratic candidates. They want an end to secret balloting in certain labor elections, and Obama bends his knee and pledges to do big labor’s bidding, and to heck with workers’ rights.

Then there’s the abortion industry. When they say killing the unborn is just dandy, Obama agrees. And the big bucks from the multi-billion dollar baby-killing industry flow into his coffers.

He knows who his bosses are.