NOBAMASENSE

Columnist Jack Kelly:

"Barack Hussein Obama's efforts to explain his energy policy indicate why his campaign has emphasized celebrity over issues. The liberal San Francisco Chronicle says he is offering 'more flip-flops than a Lake Tahoe souvenir stand.'

In a speech in Lansing, Michigan Monday (8/04), Mr. Obama called for release of 70 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As the AP's Tom Raum noted in his lead, this was a reversal of a position he had taken less than a month before.

"The strategic oil reserve, I think, has to be reserved for a genuine emergency," Sen. Obama said in a press availability in St. Louis July 7:

"You have a situation, let's say, where there was a major oil facility in Saudi Arabia that was destroyed as a consequence of terrorist acts, and you suddenly had huge amounts of oil taken out of the world market, we wouldn't just be seeing $4 a gallon oil. We could see a situation where entire sectors of the country had no oil to function at all. And that's what the strategic oil reserve has to be for."

Now, apparently, a drop in the opinion polls is reason enough to tap the strategic petroleum reserve."