Bill Maher in the middle of last year's crisis in the Gulf of Mexico wrongly stated on national television that Brazil had gotten off of oil 30 years ago.
With great irony, President Obama announced Saturday that he wants America to become a major buyer of - wait for it! - Brazilian oil drilled offshore:
Mr Obama spoke of the US's desire to secure more of its oil from Brazil in future after talks with his counterpart, President Dilma Rousseff, in Brasilia at the start of a two-day visit to Latin America's biggest country. "I have told her that the United States wants to be a major customer, which can be a win-win for both our countries," he said.
Brazil possesses some of the world's biggest offshore oil reserves in the pre-salt area off its south-east coast.
"Brazil possesses some of the world's biggest offshore oil reserves."
Got that, Bill?
Yet, that's not the only media irony involving this announcement.
When Obama suspended drilling in the Gulf as a result of the BP spill, oil-hating media cheered like they had won the Super Bowl. The President has since proposed offshore drilling limits that Republicans are fighting against.
If offshore drilling is such an awful thing for the environment, shouldn't it be awful everywhere?
With this in mind, it's going to be very interesting to see how Obama's Brazilian proposal gets covered, particularly given recent right-wing calls for more American domestic drilling.
With oil firmly over $100 a barrel, and gasoline quickly heading to $4 a gallon, citizens are waiting for a coherent energy policy from Washington that addresses this issue. This became crucial after last week's news that inflation grew more in February than in any single month since 1974.
Now add in continued strife in the Middle East as well as Saturday's military action in Libya, and oil prices aren't coming down any time soon.
Lest we forget the renewed No Nukes calls predictably coming from the Left and their media minions in response to the nuclear crisis in Japan.
And a final piece to the puzzle: there appears to be another oil spill in the Gulf. The Times-Picayune reported Saturday:
The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles north of the site of last April's Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.
A helicopter crew and pollution investigators have been dispatched to Main Pass Block 41 in response to two calls to the National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills, said Paul Barnard, an operations controller for Coast Guard Sector New Orleans.
The first caller, around 11 a.m., described a sheen of about a half-mile long and a half-mile wide, he said.
About two hours later, another caller reported a much larger sheen -- about 100 miles long -- originating in the same area and spreading west to Cocodrie on Terrebonne Bay, Barnard said.
This leaves Obama in the precarious position of having to formulate an energy policy on multiple fronts as our nation stuggles to stay afloat in an economy that could easily slip back into recession if the right decisions aren't made.
As this is all happening less than ten months before the first presidential primaries and caucuses, one has to wonder how his fans in the press are going to report energy moves by Obama that could be economically sound but not "environmentally" so.
Again, consider this announcement out of Brazil. Although increasing oil imports from that region reduces our dependence on Middle East crude, it most certainly won't fly well with environmentalists opposed to all offshore drilling.
More importantly, how does the White House stick to proposed limits in our own waters as we purchase oil from Brazil's?
Assuming that happens, how do the Obama-loving media rationalize that hypocrisy to prevent voters from seeing through it?
In the end, this announcement out of Brazil has created a lot of work not just for the administration but also so-called journalists that desperately want Obama to get reelected.
Sure is going to be fun watching this tap dance.
(H/T Weasel Zippers)
