U.S. Chamber Front Group Holds “Whine And Blame” Facebook Party – Nobody Shows Up

American Free Enterprise, a front group of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, held a complaint session on Facebook on Tuesday afternoon to let Americans vent about “who is to blame” for rising gas prices. Unfortunately for the group, few people attended their virtual party.

The pity party was an attempt to get Americans riled up at President Obama for allegedly being an enemy of the oil industry – a claim that conservatives have falsely been throwing around since he took office. But the lack of enthusiasm was evident by the low participation.

Here is the comment thread from the “discussion," which I captured yesterday. Names and pictures have been covered:

For an organization that has over 200,000 “likes” on Facebook, the fact that they were only able to garner 42 likes on this post, along with a mere 11 comments (including 2 repeat commenters) speaks volumes. Half of the comments were not anti-Obama.

As you can see from the screenshots above, some of the commenters were clearly in the Chamber’s court when it comes to blaming the administration, including the wild accusation that President Obama is an illegal immigrant, some faith in humanity has been restored with the comments pointing out that the Chamber is filled with misinformation and that the President has no control over gas prices.

Recently, I pointed out how the price of oil is set by the market. Market manipulations such as oil speculation and price gouging can cause the price to increase, but President Obama has been overly friendly to the oil industry, allowing them to drill almost everywhere they’ve wanted to.

An enemy of the oil industry he is not, but that hardly has any effect on the prices we’re paying at the pump.