The Thanksgiving Absurdity: Our "Energy" Secretary is a Functional Ignoramus About Energy

"Ignoramus" is the kindest word to describe her

I kid you not, this exchange actually happened Tuesday during a presser held by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm:

Reporter: "How many barrels of oil does the U.S. consume per day?"

Energy Sec. Granholm: "I don't have that number in front of me. I'm sorry."

You don’t have to believe me, you can watch it here:

Javier Blas @JavierBlas

I can not help myself. Yes, it's a short clip; and her intervention was much longer. Yes, it's a bit of a gotcha question. But if you are the US Energy Secretary, and you just announced the release of the SPR, I think you ought to know. #OOTT

Again, this is the Secretary of “ENERGY” we’re talking about here. She’s being asked about what is, despite her most fervent wishes, the single most crucial source of energy America has today.

It’s a source of energy that powers over 98% of the automobiles in our country, despite the shelling out of hundreds of billions of dollars in electric vehicle subsidies by the federal and state governments in this century. It’s a source of energy that serves as a feedstock for a vast array of products we use in our daily lives. It’s a source of energy that employs millions of Americans in high-paying jobs and powers our economy to a far greater extent than any other source of energy.

At the very least, there are 100,000 Americans who know the answer to that simple, rudimentary question about oil usage in the United States. I’d bet the actual number is really closer to 1 million. Granholm’s own Department, through the Energy Information Administration service that it runs, is in fact the most authoritative source in the known universe for compiling and keeping the data related to knowing that number.

Granholm was holding the press conference to announce the administration’s decision to release 50 million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a vain effort to lower gas prices. Here is how the markets responded to that effort in yesterday’s trading:

Oooooof.

That’s right: The price rocketed skywards because everybody knows what a useless, meaningless gesture this was.

In fact, Granholm seemed to know that herself just a few weeks ago when she literally laughed out loud on Bloomberg TV at the notion the administration could do anything to try to lower oil prices on the global market:

This is all a game to Granholm and the Sock Puppet she works for; your lives are just a game to these people. They couldn’t care less what you have to pay for gasoline, because they do not pay for gasoline themselves. It is something that doesn’t impact them. Yesterday’s move was simply a cynical political game designed to fool you into believing they were actually trying to lower gas prices before Thanksgiving. That’s all it was.

For Granholm, here entire job is apparently something that doesn’t impact her at all. If it did, she’d know off the top of her head how much oil the United States consumes. It’s the very first thing any Energy Secretary worth a damn would make a point of knowing.

That is all.