Biden, gas prices, and more MAGA ignorance
The Republicans and stupid MAGA supporters love to blame Biden for the war in Ukraine and rising gas prices but their blame has no basis in reality.
In its first year, the Biden administration approved 34 percent more of oil drilling permits than the Trump administration did in its first year, according to federal data compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
“Oil and gas companies do not want to drill more,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James. “They are under pressure from the financial community to pay more dividends, to do more share buybacks instead of the proverbial ‘drill baby drill,’ which is the way they would have done things 10 years ago. Corporate strategy has fundamentally changed.”
Then there is the nonsense about the Keystone pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline, which would have expanded an existing system transporting oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, has been a political and environmental battleground since its conception in 2008.
“The pipeline shutdown has absolutely nothing to do with gas prices,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy. “Prices are higher because production has lagged behind, not because there isn’t enough pipeline capacity — there is.”
Even if Mr. Biden had greenlighted the project and TransCanada, now known as TC Energy, had won its court battles, it is unlikely that the pipeline would have been operational today given that the company estimated in March 2020 that it would have entered into service in 2023. And “even if it were completed overnight, there’s no capacity for oil to be put into this pipeline,” Mr. De Haan said, pointing to supply chain issues and labor shortages that continue to affect American and Canadian oil and gas producers.
On top of all these MAGA supporters have the chutzpah to suggest that if Trump were still President there wouldn’t be a war in Ukraine. Putin wanted to undermine the NATO alliance, and Trump undermined the NATO alliance. Putin wanted to weaken the E.U., and Trump made little effort to express his disdain for the E.U. Putin wanted to help authoritarians, and Trump cozied up to authoritarians. Putin wanted to hurt Ukraine, and Trump launched an extortion scheme that threatened to hurt Ukraine. Putin wanted to weaken the U.S. political system, and Trump was unnervingly aggressive in trying to weaken the U.S. political system.
All of which is to say, why would Putin rock the boat when Trump was already steering it in the Kremlin’s preferred direction?
The ignorance of Trump supporters is beyond comprehension for most intelligent people. The sooner the Justice Department gets off its ass and indicts Trump the better we’ll be but God save us from MAGA people.
