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OPINION

Oil, Hollywood and Hypocrisy...With Bonus Former Small Town Appeal!

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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We’re Gonna Tap That Thing!

The White House is concerned with gas prices. I’ll give you a second to think up your understatement joke, but while you do that realize President Obama doesn’t really care about gas prices insofar so your ability to afford them goes, otherwise we’d be drilling for the giant untold amounts of oil we have in this country. No, he cares that high prices might cause some people not to vote for him next year. So he’s decided to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

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How do I know President Obama doesn’t care about gas prices? He’s said as much. In 2008, while running for office he said he didn’t really have a problem with high gas prices, he just wished they’d gone up more “gradually” than they had. He wants the economy to be able to absorb the hit. Awfully nice of him, don’t you think? Unfortunately for him, a funny thing happened on the way to Utopia. All the government spending in the world (well, not quite all, but it sure seems damn close) couldn’t put the economy back together again, so high gas prices hurt people in their wallets. And people vote first and foremost based on their wallets.

After months of complaining and demonizing “speculators” and “big oil” companies, and not much else, someone in the White House realized that wasn’t working. After all, if “speculators” were able to raise the price of oil at will they’d be called something else, wouldn’t they? So we get this - 30 million barrels to be released from the reserve created to help the country in times of national emergency. It would seem sagging poll numbers now qualifies as a “national emergency.” I would say we should rename the “Strategic Petroleum Reserve” the “Desperate Political Distraction Reserve,” but the cost of printing new letterhead would just be a waste.

By the way, 30 million barrels is what the country uses in about 2 days. But Obama is doing something, and in a tough election fight, being seen doing something, even though it’s really nothing, is better than nothing. So to speak.

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This release will dribble down prices at the pump over the next month and, with the help of the media and left-wing groups once again hyping Mr. Obama as someone who knows what he’s doing, they hope it will pump up his poll numbers. That will come in handy in the debt ceiling negotiations...and it only cost us a little bit of our security.

Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us...If We Were Pampered, Tax Dodging Hypocrites

Leftists Hollywood actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire have been outed...as hypocrites. Well known for their advocacy for big government candidates and causes, these guys, along with other filthy rich Hollywood producers, etc., love to play poker. And when you’re making $10-$20 million for 3 months work, you ain’t playing for change in the couch cushions.

Their secret high-stakes pokers games aren’t secret anymore. A lawsuit has shed some light on the games, and the stakes. Maguire himself has been alleged to have pocketed more than $300,000 from the games, you can only wonder how much the other guys, how have more to bet, have won.

This would be a non-story, or at least not of interest and just a blip, were the names involved not also involved in advocating for policies and politicians that seek to raise taxes on all of us. See, you don’t get a W-2 forms for pokers winnings won in 5 star Beverly Hills hotels and people’s mansions.

I don’t begrudge anyone the money they earn, I want to earn more myself. But I do begrudge hypocrisy. Stories like this just illustrate how so many rich liberals will advocate for their will to be forced on others, be it higher taxes while hiding income or hiring accountants to crawl up the colon of the tax code looking for every possible loophole, telling others to use less while flying private jets, etc., while not living that way now. While we all have to pay whatever our taxes are, the US Treasury does take checks over and above that. No one writes those checks, but there’s undoubtedly some lonely, bored bureaucrat just waiting for the day members of the privileged activist class to not only put their money where their mouth is, but to put a stamp on it as well. I’m guessing that guy is going to be bored and lonely for a long time,

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Also-Ran Stories

It’s Hard Out There For A...19th Century Pimp. It’s safe to make Amish jokes on the Internet for reasons that don’t need explanation, but sometimes they write themselves. In Indiana, a 21 year old Amish man was arrested when he pulled up in his horse-drawn buggy for a date with a 12 year old girl. Seems William Yoder had exchanged 600 text messages with the girl and sent her lewd videos and pictures. (Seems the Amish get the “unlimited” plan.) Of all the problems you might expect the Amish to face, manual labor-intensive farming techniques, sharing the road with cars, having ice cream dabbed on their noses like Harrison Ford in Witness, “sexting” isn’t one of them. Well, wasn’t. Yoder faces serious charges, and should, but there is no truth to the rumor that’s he’s considering a run for Congress.

Current Tackles the BIG issues. Keith Olbermann returned to television this week with the exact same schtick he had before - anger, hate and lies. But to expect anything different from Keith is a foolish as expecting the sun to rise in the west, it just ain’t gonna happen. Media Matters, the unofficial stenographer of Fox News and, at least for the moment, tax exempt flying monkey army of Democrat Party, touted Olbermann’s return by pointing out how Keith beat Fox Business Channel in the ratings. I’m not going to link to them because I don’t want to give them the traffic, but in the 25-54 demographic. They, and Olbermann, seem pleased with beating a business network with their excessively-hyped first show (a show they even advertised here on Townhall, oddly enough). But to brag about this opening night victory is like telling your friends about the time you beat Stephen Hawking up in a bar fight. It’s comparing apples to...guys in wheelchairs. No one watches business networks. I guess if you’re Current TV you’ve got to take victories where you can find them, but acting like this is a victory is like getting your “Participant Ribbon” framed and matted because you think just showing up is some sort of accomplishment. There’s “setting the bar low” and then there’s setting the bar so low you have to dig to get under it. Considering the fact that their lead-in for Thursday was a documentary called “World’s Toilet Crisis,” setting the bar low might be the way to go. Or it could be a subconscious reference to Countdown’s content. If you made it up, no one would believe you.

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And In The End...

You’ve heard of “small town American” before, but not like this. The town of Tenney, Minnesota is a teeny, tiny town. Well, was. In a landslide vote, Tenney decided to dissolve itself and be absorbed into the neighboring township of Campbell. Fully two-thirds of the town’s voters thought it was time to Tenney called it a day. Two-thirds of the town’s voters consists of the Mayor and the City Clerk. That’s right, the population of Tenney, according to the 2010 census, was 5. The “no” vote came from the clerk’s sister. Never fear, fans of small government, the Minnesota town of Funkley still exists and ties the former Tenney with 5 residents. If you haven’t already booked your vacation, I’m sure Funkley would love to have you, and they have something Tenney didn’t have - a bar...owned by the mayor. Tell ‘em I said hello.

Finally, for those of you waiting to hear from a not-very-good-singer on the issue of health care in this country, your wait is over! Katy Perry, famous for such songs as...I can’t even think of one because the ones I’ve heard I’ve immediately tried to forget out of fear that remembering something so pointless and horrible might cause brain damage, told Rolling Stone this: “Anyway, not to get all politically divulging and introspective, but the fact that America doesn’t have free health care drives me f*cking absolutely crazy, and is so wrong.” Why do I get the feeling they edited out an “ ‘n stuff” or two from that quote? Anyway, I expect the multi-millionaire Perry, and her multi-millionaire husband, actor Russell Brand, will continue to lament the plight of the common man from the solitude of their mansion, content in the lack of knowledge about what the word “free” actually means.

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