Everyone knows that the global warming/climate change true believers in the Biden Administration hate fossil fuels and want to eliminate its use. One of Joe’s first acts was to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline while inexplicably opening up the Russian Nord Stream 2. The other blow struck against devil oil was to shut down drilling on federal land, off shore and in Alaska. The final kick in the ass to oil companies has been to pressure banks to refuse to lend money to oil companies for drilling and exploration and cancelling leases for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
The result was to take the US from being a net exporter of oil to an importer, especially from Russia. It also more than doubled the cost of a barrel of oil to $93. Everyone feels this when they pull up to the pump to fill up or when they pay their monthly heating bill. Indirectly it is felt in the increase in cost of everything as fuel costs increase costs for shipments and delivery. Inflation is now running at 7.5% and certainly headed higher.
Sale of Russian oil and gas accounts for 60% of its exports and 30% of its GDP. Much of Europe relies heavily on it as does the East Coast of the US. It’s not as if the US has any shortage of natural gas. The nearby Marcellus shale deposit covers much of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. New York State will not allow fracking so it is not produced there and, global warming true believers and their well-financed lawyers have prevented any pipelines from being built to deliver it. They need it, but can’t get it, so they buy it from the Russians.
There appears little doubt that Putin will invade Ukraine and Biden has threatened to shut down the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. This will certainly cause oil prices to jump up even higher. If Russia retaliated by stopping shipments of gas to the US, the east coast of the US would be in deep shit. The issue is not that we do not have enough natural gas, it’s that there are not sufficient pipelines to deliver it!
Biden’s team has put the US in this box and his global warming fanatics will not permit him to get out of it. I suspect gasoline prices at the pump will be at least $7.00/gallon by the time mid-term elections roll around and Biden’s approval rating will be near 30%. Let’s just hope we don’t find ourselves in another war over oil, especially when we are sitting on oceans of it.
Category Archives: Democrats
Oil Wars
Filed under Democrats, Drilling, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Oil
Mandates
Politicians and health bureaucrats love mandates. The “health emergency” grants them the power to boss us around. Whether it makes any sense or does any good is beside the point. They were beginning to loosen up because the people are fed up and getting a little feisty. But, here comes the new variant, Omicron. Whoopie! Time to slap on the mandates again. Did they work the first time? Not really. But, they don’t seem to have a clue what else to do and they are afraid that they will be blamed if lots of people die and they did nothing.
The driving principal of the Biden White House has been to reverse or undo anything that Trump did, even if it made perfect sense and had benefits to Americans. This is evident in everything they do from the border wall to the Keystone pipeline to taxes. Everything. That is almost certainly why they ignore therapeutics for COVID. Trump gave Joe three vaccines but he was also wisely looking for therapeutics and often widely mocked for it in the media. The Biden Administration has completely ignored therapeutics. Their only game plan is pushing vaccines, masks and mandates.
Trump was also the first president to goad the FDA to grant compassionate use for seriously ill patients. He also kicked their asses to grant emergency use authorizations for the vaccines. However, the Biden boys are letting the FDA return to their extra cautious approach and are letting some promising COVID drugs languish in regulatory purgatory while people are dying.
One of the most promising is Pfizer’s Paxlovid an antiviral that has shown 89% effectiveness in preventing hospitalizations and death. Another promising drug is Molnupiravir, also an antiviral. It, too, awaits approval.
There are a number of drugs that have been approved or are under emergency use authorization. Astra Zeneca’s Evusheld is a prophylaxis against COVID and has a 70% effectiveness in preventing hospitalizations and deaths. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida (who the left both fears and hates) long ago set up clinics all over the state to administer this and other drugs like Regeneron and monocolonal anti-bodies to any and all. That’s why they have avoided the lockdowns, closed business and schools and still avoided massive deaths.
Other treatment for the virus include: Dexamethasone for serious infections with people on ventilators; rendevsir; convalescent plasma and invermectin. They seem to be a herd of deer caught in the headlights as Omicron sweeps the nation. They are totally unprepared for the massive amount of testing now in demand and are struggling to catch up.
Biden may get lucky and Omicron may not be as serious as worried bureaucrats anticipate. Although Omicron infections now dominate at over 70% of all infections and has been found in nearly every state, there has been only one death in the US. It was a 50 year old male who was unvaccinated and had underlying heath issues. The vast majority of infections appear to be extremely mild and time will tell us if this is the end of COVID. That’s what happened with the Spanish flu. It mutated into a mild strain and faded away. Let’s pray that is what’s happening. Then Biden can boast how he cured COVID. Sure.
Editor’s note: This is a couple weeks out of date due to personal family matters, but it’s good, so it’s worth publishing. K.
Filed under Democrats, Politics, Uncategorized
Such A Deal
It is unsettling that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman congresswoman from New York, would come up with the “Green New Deal”. Although, considering some of the other idiotic pronouncements coming out of her mouth, it is not surprising. What is surprising is that all the declared Presidential candidates for the Democrat nomination so far (Gillibrand, Harris, Booker and Pete Bittingieg….. who?) plus Dear Bernie, who has not yet announced, have embraced this idiotic and destructive plan. (I had to look up who Mr. Bittingieg is and discovered he is the mayor of South Bend, IN, a position that makes him more than qualified to run the US.
Rex Murphy, a commentator for the National Post in his brilliant 2/12/19 piece has dubbed AOC (I’m not going to write out that name again) “the Thomas Jefferson of the infantile progressive left.” She has taken over this lofty role despite being in Congress only 38 days. Quite an achievement but certifies the Democrats wholesale stampede to the far left.
As I pointed out in my 12/20/16 post “Doubling Down on a Losing Hand”, when the Democrats lose a presidential election their reflex is to lurch hard left. A 12/19/16 WSJ piece by Dan Henninger pointed out that after Humphries lost to Nixon they went hard left and ran McGovern who got a whopping 17 electoral votes in the next election. In Reagan’s second election in ’84 the Dems reverted to form and nominated Mondale who managed 13 electoral votes. So here we go again. Every one of the Democrats who have entered the race so far are borderline socialists. Maybe it’s because of the success of Bernie Sanders in the contest with Hillary. It’s hard to believe all these supposedly educated politicians don’t understand the ramifications of this absurd Green New Deal.
On the other hand perhaps it’s because they anticipate that the kids coming out of high school and college these days have been so indoctrinated in the blather of global warming and have no understanding of how the economy actually works. Yeah, I know, it’s called Climate Change now because it polls better but it is still based on the same idea…the planet is getting warmer. Global warming is a harder sell when we are in the middle of a historic cold wave, especially this late in the season.
The charismatic Ms. AOC has laid out the specifics of her Green Wet Dream, er, New Deal because she in her vast wisdom knows exactly how much time we have before the planet burns up. Twelve years. Her prescription to save the planet is for the US that produces 20% of the world’s C02 to go to zero C02 by 2030. This would require elimination of all internal combustion engines….. cars, trucks, tractors, bulldozers, etc. Airplane travel has to be eliminated as much as possible. (Congressional junkets, and attendance at climate change conferences excepted, of course.) Eliminating all fossil fuel would require the closure of all coal and natural gas electrical generating plants. Heating all buildings and homes and powering all vehicles with electricity would require a lot of wind- and solar power-generated electricity. Good luck with that fantasy.
Of course, this massive transformation of society would put countless millions of Americans out of work. Not to worry, AOC’s Green New Deal guarantees everyone a living wage, plus free medical care and free education, plus a guaranteed retirement. This total destruction of the American economy will be gleefully cheered by China until they realize that their biggest market just disappeared.
The Climate Change/ Global Warming movement has never been about the planet getting warmer because there is nothing we can do about it even if it is happening. The movement is an excuse to slide the country into socialism, to give the bureaucrats more control over the everyday lives of the citizens.
My real concern is not about the ignorant ranting of AOC but the fact that so many of her Democrat colleagues are endorsing this suicidal plan. I have come to the conclusion that a test should be required before a person can run for office comprised of four sections: Economics, science, history and government. My first question on the science section would be, “describe photosynthesis and why it is important”. If they can’t answer that one they would be disqualified immediately because that would mean they have no clue of the carbon cycle and how important C02 is to the survival of all living organisms.
Filed under Democrats, Economy, Environmentalism, Politics