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Gasoline flowing from pump nozzle
Republicans are attacking President Biden for having the political courage to ban the import of Russian oil and gas to stop putting our money in Vladimir Putin’s pockets to finance his human slaughter and destruction in Ukraine.
Never mind Biden’s continuing escalation of the economic war against Russia by world democracies was overwhelmingly welcomed by Americans regardless of political party. Seventy-nine percent said they supported the ban in a Wall Street Journal poll even if it led to higher gas prices.
Republicans briefly joined with congressional Democrats in a bipartisan call for Biden to ban Russian gas imports until he did. Then they reverted to form blaming Biden for rising gas prices instead of Putin. Announcing the ban, Biden noted U.S. gas prices already had gone up 75 cents a gallon since Russia began massing troops on Ukraine’s border before the invasion and would only get worse. He called it “Putin’s price hike.”
Putin’s Prices
“These aren’t Putin prices,” railed Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy. “They’re President Biden’s prices. Gas prices started rising the day President Biden took office when he canceled the Keystone Pipeline and halted new drilling on federal lands.” Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee tweeted: “Russia isn’t ‘responsible.’ Biden’s shutdown of American energy is.”
Republicans are demonstrably wrong about which American president crashed U.S. oil production. Oil production fell off a cliff when President Trump’s failure to protect Americans from the pandemic shut down the economy. It slowly came back as highway and air travel resumed. PolitiFact reported Biden’s oil production in 2021 was on par with Trump’s in 2020 and exceeded every other year he was president.
The claims Biden destroyed energy production by halting drilling and pipelines also are provable lies. Biden approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling in 2021 compared to 2,658 in Trump’s first year. Oil companies have another 9,000 approved drilling permits they haven’t used, choosing to return higher profits to shareholders instead of drilling for more oil. Also, someone should tell Republicans pipelines carry oil, they don’t produce it.
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Positive Outcomes
The most positive outcome for the entire world, literally, from Putin’s horrific war would be if it finally begins speeding all of us toward the transition to clean, renewable energy.
Republican politicians don’t appear to be worried about nightly television coverage of Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine building even more American support for Biden’s leadership of world democracies at this frightening moment in our history that could easily escalate into a world war. They probably should be.
It’s a reminder of how important it is for the U.S. to have competent, intelligent leadership during dangerous times. Right on cue, former President Trump got a big laugh by babbling insanely to Republican donors with his hilarious joke about painting Chinese flags on the sides of American planes to “bomb the shit out of Russia” so the U.S. can sit back and enjoy a nuclear war between Russia and China.
Republican Wingnuts
It was only slightly more deranged than congressional Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar (on video) addressing a white supremacy rally where the crowd gave Russia’s president a big round of applause, chanting “Putin! Putin! Putin!”
Republicans believe American hostility toward Putin will fade as their party continues to blame Biden instead of Putin for higher gas prices. That’s the steady drumbeat on Fox News from Tucker Carlson and other Fox hosts who consider Putin just another violent Trump supporter annoyed by the “political correctness” of American democracy.
Republicans are convinced their hottest political issue against Democrats in the midterms will still be rising inflation under Biden and gas prices in big numbers along every highway will be the biggest advertisements for that. They expect the anger and hatred for their fellow Americans who are Democrats pumped up under their former president will, pardon the expression, trump any moral objections Americans with short attention spans will have about the horrific atrocities being committed by a villainous communist adversary against human beings living in a foreign country they couldn’t find on a map.
I think they’re wrong. Most Americans really do think they’re better than that. And living with the very real threat of Russian aggression sparking World War III is different from living under any other recent American war.
Since the draft was abolished after Vietnam—which I wholeheartedly endorsed after our tragic involvement in that war—it’s been far too easy for America to go to war with an all-volunteer military. That’s because most of us were never touched by it. President George W. Bush asked us to support two wars by going shopping.
A war threatening the entire free world has to upend some of the divisions in American politics. We still have no idea how that war will end, but it could be quite a while before any of us can look away.
