I have said before that if the current generation of Americans had been around in 1940, we would all be goose-stepping and speaking German today. The “Greatest Generation” today’s Americans decidedly are not. I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of whiners (e.g, anti-vaxxer trucker convoys. Seriously?) There has never been a more selfish, narcissistic, and nihilistic time in American history. “Sacrificing for the greater good” is an antiquated concept for today’s Americans. God forbid they have to suffer any inconvenience in their life, like higher gas prices during a damn war.
My parents families had ration coupons for everything, including gas and groceries during World War II. When they used up their ration coupons for the month, they went without, sacrificing for the war effort. So suck it up, buttercup. This is your war.
In case you realize it or not, we are living in the very early days of World War III. If you think Vladimir Putin does not have designs beyond Ukraine, you are either hopelessly naive or delusional. We are already at war.
Putin is already saying that NATO allies supplying armaments to Ukraine makes them co-combatants. Today, NATO partner Poland says it’s ready to deploy all their MiG-29 fighter jets to US air base in Germany:
Poland said on Tuesday that it was ready to deploy — immediately and free of charge — all their MiG-29 fighter jets to the US Air Force’s Ramstein Air Base in Germany and place them at the disposal of Washington to provide them to Ukraine, according to a statement from the Polish foreign ministry.
“At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes,” it added.
The Polish government in the statement urged “other NATO Allies — owners of MIG-29 jets — to act in the same vein.”
A top State Department official said Tuesday that Poland did not consult with the United States prior to issuing its statement about readiness to transfer jets to the US in Germany.
We can give these jets a new paint job with Ukrainian Air Force insignia, but the whole world will know where they came from. And this is after the thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons already sent to Ukraine. The Ukraine ‘rat line’: How the U.S. and British are funneling weapons to kill Russians.
Putin is also asserting that sanctions on Russia are an “act of war.” (An embargo is economic sanctions, not an act of war. A “blockade,” on the other hand, is an act of war. This is why President Kennedy was so careful to use the term “quarantine” rather than embargo, during the Cuban missile crisis).
The latest ratcheting up of economic sanctions on Russia is an embargo of Russian oil by the United States. NBC News reports:
The Biden administration hit Moscow with an economic body blow by banning imports of Russian oil as Washington and Europe continued to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies with crippling sanctions.
“We’re banning all imports of Russian oil and gas and energy,” Biden said from the White House. “That means Russian oil will no longer be acceptable at U.S. ports and the American people will deal another powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.”
And this is where Putin’s “fifth column” of “fellow travelers” in the U.S., the Party of Trump aka the Party of Putin comes in. Catherine Rampell explains Republicans are laying a trap for Biden on Russian energy sanctions:
Republicans are setting a trap for President Biden. They’re demanding he take actions that will raise gasoline prices — with obvious plans to attack him politically after gas prices rise.
U.S. lawmakers say, we must cut Russia off from global energy markets. Why would Putin capitulate, after all, unless we block the life blood of Russia’s economy? Both Democrats and Republicans have insisted that we stop our (relatively small) energy imports from Russia, which might pressure our European allies (who depend much more heavily on Russian oil and natural gas) to do the same.
Oil prices have already spiked in anticipation of some sort of embargo.
And what of previous concerns that disrupting global energy markets might harm Western consumers?
U.S. politicians could make the case that higher energy prices are a cost of defending freedom and democracy, upholding international law, resisting armed aggression. We’re not sending American sons and daughters into this war, they could say; instead, Americans’ sacrifice could be economic. We’ll pay more for gasoline — and perhaps other things, too — to help shoulder the burden of fighting Putin.
But that’s not the argument most U.S. politicians are emphasizing. Instead, they suggest there’s a free lunch to be had.
In recent days, Republicans (and some Democrats) have argued that the United States can apply sanctions to Russia’s energy sector while enduring virtually no economic pain at home, and without turning to unsavory alternative sources such as Venezuela. U.S. energy producers alone, they claim, can immediately ramp up supply to offset the shortfall. Big, Bad Government just needs to get out of industry’s way.
This is a fantasy — one born either of confusion about how energy markets work or a cynical desire to set up Biden.
For starters, it usually takes 10 to 12 months for a change in oil prices to lead to an actual change in oil production in the United States, according to John Kemp, senior market analyst at Thomson Reuters. That’s because there are many time-consuming steps involved, regardless of the regulatory environment: contracting a new rig, moving the rig onto the drilling site, recruiting workers and so on.
Already, U.S. oil producers have responded to the recent run-up in oil prices by taking steps to increase production. In January, there were 502 rigs drilling in this country for crude, according to energy research firm Wood Mackenzie. Today, there are 540. Unfortunately, any additional barrels that become available from these added rigs are months away.
The chief executive of the biggest U.S. shale oil operator recently told the Financial Times that domestic industry would be unable to replace lost crude supplies from Russia this year. In addition to all the usual factors, pandemic-related supply-chain constraints are slowing down development. Plus, investors burned in recent boom-bust cycles are pressuring shale operators to be more conservative about expansion this time around.
Republicans are ignoring all this [Facts do not matter]. They’ve started arguing — with relatively little pushback — that if we can’t immediately replace lost Russian supply, it’ll be because of Biden’s supposed war on fossil fuels.
Republicans [cynically] point to Biden’s decision to “shut down” the Keystone XL pipeline — but it was only 8 percent built when Biden revoked a U.S.-side permit for construction last year. Even if construction had continued, additional supply via this pipeline would still be years away.
“There’s no evidence that the regulatory environment is what has held the U.S. oil and gas sector back, and by extension, no indication that making the regulatory environment more permissive would generate additional production in the near term,” says Kemp.
It’s not clear what exactly Republicans think Biden could do to accelerate U.S. energy production in the short term, other than perhaps give a big pep talk.
Abruptly cutting Russia off from global energy markets would be painful for more than just the Russians. It could lead to a recession. It may nonetheless be the right thing to do — but we should all be clear-eyed about likely consequences.
And if Republicans truly believe our patriotic duty is to orchestrate a Western embargo of Russian energy, they should commit, today, to not politically exploiting the economic pain such sanctions will inevitably cause American consumers.
Riiight. Just tune in to comrades Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson on the fascist propaganda Fox News to see how well this works out.
RT America ceases productions and lays off most of its staff:
The news would mean an effective end to RT America. The network, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main mouthpieces in the US, was dropped earlier this week by DirecTV, dealing a major financial blow to it. The satellite carrier was one of the two major television providers in the US to carry the network.
Roku, a company that sells hardware which allows users to stream content through the internet, also said that it had banished RT America from its platform.”
The same fate should befall Rupert Murdoch’s fascist propagada media empire.
The GQP trap over gas prices may backfire on them. A shift in Americans’ willingness to pay more for Russia sanctions:
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released Friday found that 83 percent of Americans support the economic sanctions placed on Russia by the U.S. and its European allies, 16 percentage points higher than support in the earlier Post-ABC poll. Support for sanctions was similarly high in post-invasion polls by CNN (83 percent supported sanctions) and CBS News/YouGov (76 percent).
In all of these polls, clear majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents supported sanctions.
The NPR/PBS/Marist poll included a follow-up question asking whether people who supported sanctions “support or oppose the economic sanctions placed on Russia if it results in higher energy prices in the United States.”
That survey found 69 percent of U.S. adults supporting sanctions even if they result in higher energy prices, significantly higher than 51 percent in the Post-ABC poll last week. The two polls used nearly identical language in this follow-up question, giving confidence that this reflects a real shift in opinion.
Willingness to incur higher energy costs crosses party lines, with 80 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents and 58 percent of Republicans saying they support sanctions even if they cause higher prices.
Jennifer Rubin adds, Even in war, the GOP’s search for ways to undermine Biden never ends:
Republicans’ undiminished backing of former president Donald Trump (Russia’s most effective propagandist) — and their acquittal of him for extorting the current international hero, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, by withholding military aid — must weigh heavily on them. Desperate not only to show they really are tough on Russian leader Vladimir Putin, but also that President Biden is weak, they somewhat comically keep complaining that Biden is not doing “enough” to aid Ukraine.
When the first tranche of sanctions against Russia came out, Republicans insisted this was insufficient — only to have both the European Union and the Biden administration layer on, day after day, the most crippling sanctions against a country of this size in history. Then the cry went up to knock Russia off SWIFT, the international bank-messaging system. Biden did one better, cutting off Russia’s central bank. (Certain banks were removed from SWIFT, but the silly obsession of the SWIFT chorus is illustrated by the plethora of workarounds available to Russia, including “bilateral systems using phones, faxes or messaging apps with an overseas partner,” as Reuters explained.)
Despite Republicans’ whining, the tightly coordinated E.U. and U.S. sanctions are bringing Russia’s economy to its knees. The ruble hits a new low practically every day, having lost as of Monday more than 80 percent of its value against the dollar. As the Financial Times reported, “Moscow’s equity markets are suspended, trading in many Russian companies listed abroad is halted, and bonds are almost impossible to trade.” Things are so awful, Russians are now pouring out of the country, and oligarchs are grumbling. (“Russians are fleeing the country as sanctions lead to closed borders, food rationing and the actual threat of a banking system collapse within days,” Forbes reports.)
Then, the Republicans — who just days ago were decrying rising fuel prices — decided that cutting off Russian oil imports would be the telltale sign we really were getting tough on Russia. Yet as former auto industry czar Steven Rattner explains: “That would be a noble — but utterly meaningless — gesture. In 2020, only 0.4% of our crude oil came from Russia (and our imports of oil constituted just 1% of Russia’s oil exports).”
At least for now, the European Union cannot align with the United States on a Russian oil import ban. There simply isn’t excess capacity to make up for the amount of oil and natural gas that Europe imports from Russia. (Sure enough, Germany has already said this is not happening.) However, sure, if a bipartisan group in Congress wants a ban on energy imports from Russia, the administration might go along — even knowing these same Republicans will skewer Biden for any additional increase in fuel prices.
Republicans also insist we are not doing enough to arm Ukraine. Really? While we are still figuring out how to get fighter planes into Ukrainian hands, “In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other major cities,” the New York Times reports. U.S. teams are also helping “to interfere with Russia’s digital attacks and communications.”
And the extent and speed of intelligence sharing is jaw-dropping. “In Washington and Germany,” the Times reports, “intelligence officials race to merge satellite photographs with electronic intercepts of Russian military units, strip them of hints of how they were gathered, and beam them to Ukrainian military units within an hour or two.”
Might it be that Biden is doing everything humanly possible short of starting World War III to help Ukraine, and Republicans have no real basis for complaint? Well, a few Republicans have given up complaining — or have at least reverted to another silly talking point that he should have done it sooner. (The war started on Feb. 24, less than two weeks ago.)
Most Republicans, certainly the right-wing pundits in their media bubble, find it impossible even in times of war to put aside any perceived partisan advantage. In a war critical for the defense of democracy, they’ll keep on searching for something to criticize. So don’t expect the disingenuous whining to stop.
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Eric Boehlert at Press Run takes on the complicit corporate media in “Gas price coverage gives Big Oil a pass”, https://pressrun.media/p/hysterical-gas-price-coverage-gives?s=r
The media’s gas price theater reached new heights of drama this week. Eagerly reporting from outlier gas stations that charge far above the national average, journalists remain obsessed with pinning the global pump trend on President Joe Biden.
At Monday’s White House press briefing, CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe actually recited quotes from motorists he interviewed at a local gas station. Then he asked press secretary Jen Psaki, “What is the President’s message to Americans who are going to the gas station today and seeing prices so high?”
The pump coverage in recent months has been especially intense because the media under Biden has gone all in on the larger issue of inflation. It’s constantly portrayed as a crushing force on the U.S. economy, even though the economy continues to expand and add jobs at a record pace.
The last time gas in the U.S. climbed above $4 per-gallon was in 2008. But we know news coverage then wasn’t as incessant and breathless as it is today because at the time President George W. Bush had no idea prices were heading towards $4 a gallon — that’s how little coverage there was.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has disrupted the global energy markets and once again set gas prices higher, the coverage has become truly ceaseless. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here. And that’s all just from one day.) “Gas” has already been mentioned 500 times this week on cable news, according to TVeyes. A huge majority of Americans say they’re fine paying more for gas because the U.S. now refuses to buy oil from Russia. Yet most of the news coverage suggests consumers are furious about the price increases.
Worse, today’s reporting consistently lacks crucial context that lets giant oil companies off the hook. Instead of shining a spotlight on their behavior and the central role they play in increased prices by refusing to drill for more crude, the press whitewashes Big Oil from the story, and keeps its focus on the White House. In doing so, they miss a big story.
“Rather than increase production or reinvest to meet the energy demand increase caused by the world reemerging from COVID-19 lockdowns, oil and gas companies are taking advantage of bloated prices, fleecing American families along the way,” noted Accountable US, progressive advocacy group that recently produced a report on Big Oil.
Gas and oil companies, currently banking record profits, are usually portrayed by the media in the day-to-day gas price coverage as disinterested players who have nothing to gain from higher prices because, according to the narrative, Big Oil is simply passing along the marketplace increases to consumers. That’s just not the case.
Oil companies have said again and again that their sky-high earnings in recent quarters are because of “higher commodity prices.” Big Oil doesn’t function as a mere middle man, collecting the same fees regardless of what motorists are paying at the pump. They love higher gas prices.
That’s what BP CEO Nernard Looney told investors late last year: “This has been another good quarter for bp – our businesses are generating strong underlying earnings and cash flow while maintaining their focus on
safe and reliable operations. Rising commodity prices certainly helped.”
And from W&T Offshore’s CEO: “It is encouraging to see commodity prices at these levels.”
Meanwhile, instead of drilling for more oil to ease shortages as demand and prices surge, energy companies are using billions in profits to reward shareholders by buying back their stock. “Investors are now demanding greater returns so oil companies are forgoing crude expansion and instead returning cash to shareholders while vowing to keep spending in check,” Bloomberg explained last year.
[The investor class aka the “predator class” is always the actual source of the problem.]
Virtually none of that context is included in today’s breathless gas price updates. Or the fact that Trump in 2020 urged a global reduction in oil drilling in order to boost U.S. firms during the pandemic when motorist demand for gas was low. That look-the-other-way approach fits the media’s larger trend of whitewashing the role of corporate America in the ongoing inflation story. Big business has most often been portrayed as merely passing along increased costs to consumers, with almost no consideration given to the idea that lots of companies have been cashing in during the pandemic.
The media blackout is especially odd considering CEO’s have boasted on their earnings calls about how they’ve pushed through multiple prices increases while simultaneously posting huge profits.
“Companies benefiting from the dynamics have told investors to expect solid sales and profitability in 2022 even as rising costs tied to supply-chain woes show no signs of letting up,” the Wall Street Journal reported in November. “P&G, maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers, last week announced a third round of price increases, which will go into effect over the next few months, and told investors to expect profitability to accelerate as the year progresses.”
It’s misguided for the press to treat gas prices as a political story. It’s actually one about corporate greed [and investor greed.]
NY Times Fact Check, “Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/us/politics/fact-check-republicans-biden-gas.html
While Republican lawmakers supported the ban on imports of Russian oil, gas and coal, they asserted that the pain at the pump long preceded the war in Ukraine. Gas price hikes, they said, were the result of Mr. Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, the temporary halt on new drilling leases on public lands and the surrendering of “energy independence” — all incorrect assertions.
Here’s a fact check of their claims.
[Blah, blah, blah utter stupidity]
These claims are misleading. The primary reason for rising gas prices over the past year is the coronavirus pandemic and its disruptions to global supply and demand.
“Covid changed the game, not President Biden,” said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices. “U.S. oil production fell in the last eight months of President Trump’s tenure. Is that his fault? No.”
“The pandemic brought us to our knees,” Mr. De Haan added.
In the early months of 2020, when the virus took hold, demand for oil dried up and prices plummeted, with the benchmark price for crude oil in the United States falling to negative $37.63 that April. In response, producers in the United States and around the world began decreasing output.
As pandemic restrictions loosened worldwide and economies recovered, demand outpaced supply. That was “mostly attributable” to the decision by OPEC Plus, an alliance of oil-producing countries that controls about half the world’s supply, to limit increases in production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Domestic production also remains below prepandemic levels, as capital spending declined and investors remained reluctant to provide financing to the oil industry.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only compounded the issues.
“When you throw a war on top of this, this is possibly the worst escalation you can have of this,” said Abhiram Rajendran, the head of oil market research at Energy Intelligence, an energy information company. “You’re literally pouring gasoline on general inflationary pressure.”
These factors are largely out of Mr. Biden’s control, experts agreed.
[Mr.] Rajendran said, “Presidents have very little impact on short-term supply.”
“The key relationship to watch is between companies and investors,” he said.
It is true that the Biden administration is in talks with Venezuela and Iran over their oil supplies. But the administration is also urging American companies to ramp up production — to the dismay of climate change activists and contrary to Republican lawmakers’ suggestions that the White House is intent on handcuffing domestic producers.
Speaking before the National Petroleum Council in December, Jennifer M. Granholm, the energy secretary, told oil companies to “please take advantage of the leases that you have, hire workers, get your rig count up.”
The notion that the United States gained “energy independence” under Mr. Trump, and reversed course under Mr. Biden, is also misleading.
Even before Mr. Trump took office, the United States had been projected to become a net energy exporter in the 2020s “because favorable geology and technological developments result in the production of oil and natural gas at lower costs,” according to the Energy Information Administration.
The country became a net exporter of petroleum in 2020, the first time since at least 1949. That remained the case in 2021. It became a net exporter of natural gas in 2018 and remains so today, with exports reaching record levels in 2021.
The term “energy independence” can also suggest that the United States did not rely at all on imports. That, too, is untrue. In 2020, the United States still imported 7.9 million barrels of crude oil and other petroleum products a day.
Moreover, the specific policies cited by Republican lawmakers as evidence of Mr. Biden’s supposed “war on American energy” have had little impact on rising gas prices.
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 Obama administration denied the company behind it, TransCanada, a construction permit in 2015. The Trump administration approved the permit in 2017, but the project stalled in the face of litigation. By the time Mr. Biden rescinded its permit on his first day in office, just 8 percent of it had been built.
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.
Absent the Keystone XL pipeline, crude oil imports from Canada have nonetheless increased by 70 percent since 2008, transported by other pipelines and rail. The Trump administration itself told PolitiFact in 2017 that the pipeline’s impact on prices at the pump “would be minimal.”
The claims about oil and gas leases are even more incorrect.
Though Mr. Biden temporarily halted new drilling leases on federal lands in January 2021, a federal judge blocked that move last June. In its first year, the Biden administration actually approved 34 percent more of these permits than the Trump administration did in its first year, according to federal data compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
“None of these permits are relevant to production right now,” Mr. Rajendran said. “These permits are for production three, four years down the line. If they had approved 10 times as many permits, we would have the same production issues.”
Former U.S. Intelligence expert Malcolm Nance in an interview on MSNBC the other day made a great point. The West has large numbers of UAV’s (drones) many of which are equipped to carry armaments. Send Ukraine these drones with the armaments instead of these old Mig-29 jets from Poland.
In a tweet Nance writes, https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1501002302395756548?cxt=HHwWiMC9lYbp0NQpAAAA
Watch: We are having a failure of imagination. Any US company that has drones should offer them to Ukraine and the USG pay for it. Did I mention #KamikazeDrones? BUY EM!
“What the United States needs to do is stop having a failure of imagination…maybe it’s time for drones to dominate the air…all they’re asking for is a logistics pipeline…”
@MalcolmNance #thereidout
UPDATE: “Pentagon says Poland’s jet offer for Ukraine ‘not tenable’, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-poland-nato-5724ff192113703d829024dc4410664e
The Pentagon on Tuesday rejected Poland’s surprise announcement that it would give the United States its MiG-29 fighter jets for use by Ukraine, a rare display of disharmony by NATO allies seeking to boost Ukrainian fighters while avoiding getting caught up in a wider war with Russia.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Poland’s declaration that it intended to deliver the 28 jets to the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany raised the concerning prospect of warplanes departing from a U.S. and NATO base to fly into airspace contested with Russia in the Ukraine conflict.
“We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one,” Kirby said in a statement.
Russia has declared that supporting Ukraine’s air force would be tantamount to joining the war, and could spur retaliation.
[T]he U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said White House officials did not think the proposal would easily solve the logistical challenges of providing aircraft to Ukraine.
[T]he handover of Poland’s 28 Soviet-made MiG-29s would signal Western resolve to do more for Ukraine. Militarily, however, the number of planes offered would make it unlikely to be a game-changer. And MiG-29s are inferior to more sophisticated Russian aircraft and could be easy prey for Russian pilots and Russian missiles.
A senior U.S. defense official has said Ukrainians are flying relatively few of their existing aircraft, for relatively little time, as it is. The defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. assessment, said it’s possible that Ukraine does not need more planes and would benefit most from more of the weapons it uses effectively every day, including anti-aircraft Stinger and anti-tank Javelin missiles.
The official also said that Russia currently has the capacity to reach almost the entire country of Ukraine with its surface-to-air missiles, including from within Russia and from ships in the Black Sea.
Any MiG transfer is fraught with complications. Neither NATO nor the European Union wants to be seen as directly involved in such a transaction, which would sharply raise already extreme tensions with Russia.
In order to maintain the pretense that NATO and the EU are not direct participants in the Ukraine conflict, U.S. and Polish officials have been considering a variety of options. One begins with the “donation” of Poland’s MiGs to the United States, as Poland announced on Tuesday.
Under one scenario, Poland would deliver the fighter jets to the U.S. base in Germany, where they would be repainted and flown to a non-NATO, non-EU country. Ukrainian pilots would then come to fly them to Ukraine.
No country has been publicly identified as a transit point, but Kosovo, a non-aligned country that is very friendly with the United States, has been mentioned as one of several nations that might be willing to serve as a middle point.
The Washington Post reports, “Tucker Carlson goes full blame-America on Russia’s Ukraine invasion”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/08/tucker-carlson-goes-full-blame-america-russias-ukraine-invasion/
Putin’s propagandist Tucker Carlson on Monday drove home an argument that has lingered on the fringes of the conservative movement for some time — that the United States and the West invited this war with their support for admitting Ukraine into NATO, a step that Russia finds unacceptable.
To be clear, the idea that NATO expansion into countries such as Ukraine is provocative and might even be a bad idea is not a fringe position; it has long been espoused, dating to prominent, establishment foreign policy voices in the 1990s. But Carlson took things a good few conspiratorial steps further, arguing that the push for NATO was deliberately intended to provoke this war.
Carlson said it was “obvious” that “getting Ukraine to join NATO was the key to inciting war with Russia.” He noted that Vice President Harris was sent to Europe as Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s borders and that she said, “I appreciate and admire President [Volodymyr] Zelensky’s desire to join NATO.”
“‘Up yours, Vladimir Putin,’” Carlson summarized. “‘Go ahead and invade Ukraine.’ And of course Vladimir Putin did that just days later. So the invasion was no surprise to the Biden administration. They knew that would happen. That was the point of the exercise.”
Carlson then turned to his favored rhetorical trick of treating his conspiratorial supposition — that the United States wanted this war — as established fact as he pivoted to related questions: “Why in the world would the United States intentionally seek war with Russia? How could we possibly benefit from that war?”
A version of Carlson’s effort to blame the West — and by extension, President Biden — has been around for a while now, in varying versions. Conservative provocateur Candace Owens tweeted recently that “WE are at fault” for Russia’s invasion, because of NATO expansion. Other Republicans have pointed in that direction as well. Still others, such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), have not gone that far but have argued for backing off from NATO expansion to reduce tensions.
[B]ut there are a few problems with the attempt to shoehorn this valid concern into the idea that the Biden administration is to blame — or even deliberately fomented war.
One is that Putin has made it pretty clear that this isn’t just — or even necessarily primarily — about NATO. Supporters of this view often point to Putin’s Feb. 21 speech laying out his justifications, which included NATO. But in that speech, Putin labeled Ukraine an illegitimate country on land that he views as rightfully Russian territory. He echoed that in 2008 talks with President George W. Bush. Putin’s aggression in Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014 coincided with moves to bring Georgia and Ukraine into the Western fold, but there’s much more that undergirds his case for war.
The other is that supporting Ukraine’s right to pursue membership in NATO has consistently been U.S. policy. Carlson isolated Harris’s visit to the Munich Security Conference, but this has been a position across multiple administrations of both parties. However well advised that policy was, it was the long-standing policy. And to shelve it in the face of Russian aggression would be, in the truest sense, capitulation.
Even if you believe it might have averted this war, what message would it send about Russia’s ability to throw its weight around? Its massing of troops on Ukraine’s borders would have earned an immediate payoff. Even if Harris had merely declined to restate U.S. support for Ukraine’s right to pursue NATO membership, that would have been a telling omission.
[A]nd beyond that, there’s the fact that this isn’t just U.S. policy; Ukrainians now support their country’s membership in NATO by a significant margin. If anyone is big on self-determination, it would seem to be Carlson. And yet that’s curiously missing from his argument.
[In] January, former Trump and Bush administration Russia expert Fiona Hill offered a worthwhile and nuanced view on this in the run-up to Russia’s invasion in an essay for the New York Times:
Yet negotiating over NATO in the face of Russian aggression — whether explicitly or by scaling back the U.S. public commitment to the alliance’s right to determine its membership — is effectively what Carlson suggests we should have done. It’s one thing to argue this policy has been a bad one (Carlson has long been a NATO skeptic); it’s another to cast Harris’s restating of long-standing U.S. policy as some kind of novel provocation — even a deliberate one with an intended consequence.
But there must be a way to blame the Biden administration for this situation, apparently, even if it means shifting the blame away from Putin and implicitly arguing for his appeasement.
Greg Sargent writes, “Liz Cheney nails the truth about ‘the Putin wing of the GOP’”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/08/liz-cheney-trump-gop-ukraine-putin-wing/
Is there a “Putin wing of the GOP”?
Rep. Liz Cheney says so. The Wyoming Republican made the charge this weekend, in reference to a former Trump administration official who openly sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“This is the Putin wing of the GOP,” Cheney tweeted, in response to a widely shared segment in which Douglas Macgregor, a Pentagon official under Trump, insisted that Putin has been “too gentle.”
Macgregor also suggested that Putin is right to use military force to get Ukraine to drop any aspirations of joining NATO and the West. As Matt Gertz details, Macgregor has been elevated by none other than Tucker Carlson, meaning the highest-rated talk show at the hub of conservative media — Fox News — has been a friendly forum for this “Putin wing.”
Cheney has also made a similar case elsewhere: In a recent speech, she called on Republicans and others to show “no equivocation” in denouncing Putin’s effort at violent annexation of the democratically sovereign Ukraine. The GOP tent, she said, should never “be big enough” for such views.
And when Trump declared Putin a “genius” over the invasion of Ukraine, Cheney responded: “Trump’s interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States of America.”
That’s the rub. There is a widespread unwillingness among Republicans to admit to some version of that notion: that when Trump was president, his interests often did seem more aligned with Putin’s than with those of the West and democracy.
Instead, many Republicans are seeking a different sweet spot. Republicans do condemn Putin’s invasion and support a robust international response. But there’s no reckoning with Trump’s conduct as president.
Instead, the focus is all on President Biden’s alleged weakness and its supposed role in causing the Russian invasion. These Republicans seem to want to maintain a mystical connection to Trump and Trumpism while simultaneously appearing hawkish toward the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
[T]here might not be a sizable “Putin wing” in the GOP in the sense of overt alignment with the Russian dictator. But Cheney is right: The party’s leader himself makes up the GOP’s “Putin wing,” and this has done nothing to disqualify him as the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Until Republicans fully repudiate this, Cheney’s charge squarely hits home.
Huffington Post reports on the traitorous Party of Putin, “Republicans Pushed For Russian Oil Ban, But Are Already Blaming Biden For High Gas Prices”, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-gas-prices-russia_n_6227c27be4b047f85a41a0d4
With Republicans joining Democrats in urging President Joe Biden to ban oil imports from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, his announcement Tuesday to do just that means Biden can at least expect Republicans to stop attacking him about high gas prices ― right?
He probably shouldn’t hold his breath.
Even before Biden’s announcement from the White House that he was banning all Russian petroleum products from the United States, the GOP’s de facto leader, [Putin’s Puppet] former President Donald Trump, had put out a statement in all capitals: “BREAKING NEWS: HIGHEST GAS PRICES IN HISTORY! DO YOU MISS ME YET?”
And no sooner had the White House released the language of the executive order than did Ronna Romney McDaniel, who chairs the Republican National Committee, put the blame for higher prices directly on Biden.
“Families know Biden’s agenda is to blame for the pain at the pump, and no series of lies will change the reality of his failures,” McDaniel said in a statement, which expressed no support for Biden’s action and contained no references to Ukraine or Russia’s dictator, President Vladimir Putin.
And Trump’s servile ass-kissing former Vice President, Mike Pence, who lies with the same ease as his former boss, joined in with nonsense about the Keystone Pipeline, a favorite hobby horse at Fox News. “Pence-backed ad falsely blames Biden for hike in purchases of Russian oil”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/09/pence-backed-ad-falsely-blames-biden-hike-purchases-russian-oil/
The Pence organization claims it will spend $10 million targeting 16 congressional Democrats with this ad. The ad ends by urging viewers to contact the lawmaker to “support America’s security instead of Russia’s terror.” Images of explosions and the sound of a woman’s cry close the ad.
Given that Biden on Tuesday announced a halt to imports of Russian oil and gas, the ad already feels rather stale. Moreover, the ad displays little understanding of the energy markets and makes an unwarranted suggestion that Biden is responsible for increased purchases of Russian oil. Energy analysts say other factors — which predate the Biden administration — are responsible.
The Facts
Within hours of taking office, Biden canceled the planned construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The move was designed to be a signal that the Biden administration was taking a tougher stand on fossil fuels and shifting toward cleaner energy.
We’ve written many fact checks on this project over the years, both about inflated claims about the number of jobs that would be created and false assertions that the oil moving through it would bypass the United States. If built, the crude oil would have traveled to the Gulf Coast, where it would have been refined into products such as motor gasoline and diesel fuel, with one estimate that 70 percent of the refined product would be consumed in the United States.
But here’s the rub — despite President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic backing, the pipeline still had not been built because of court fights and other challenges. So even if Biden had not canceled it, there is little chance it would have been built by now. The move was more symbolic than anything else. (Moreover, in the past 10 years, the production of oil from tar sands has doubled, by more than what the Keystone XL would have carried, and it is ferried by railroad and other pipelines.)
The ad only mentions Biden’s cancellation of the pipeline, not his other energy policies. In a news release accompanying the ad, Pence issued a statement that also referenced “restoring oil and natural gas leases.”
Biden did announce a halt to any new federal oil and gas leases shortly after taking office. But The Washington Post reported that in his first year, Biden outpaced Trump in issuing drilling permits on public lands — in part because a federal judge last June struck down Biden’s executive order. So the administration resumed leasing, to the dismay of environmentalists.
Then the ad shifts to the claim that Biden “dramatically increased Americans’ dependence on Russian oil.” We take a reasonable-person test when assessing such ads and think most viewers would link the Keystone cancellation to the higher purchases of Russian oil. After all, both statements are made in the same sentence.
First, some context: In 2020, the Russia represented 1.3 percent of total U.S. crude oil imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Canada is the biggest supplier, accounting for 61 percent. The preliminary numbers for 2021 indicate the Russian share increased to 3.3 percent of crude oil imports; Canada remained at 61 percent. That’s hardly what one would call “dependence” on Russian oil, as the ad claims.
Even if one decided the claims are linked, however, analysts say the increase in Russian oil purchases stems from factors that predate the Biden administration. In particular, analysts point to Trump’s decision in 2019 to impose sanctions on Venezuelan oil and on international emissions rules for shipping that took effect in 2020.
“The overdependence on Russian oil grew after sanctions on Venezuela,” said Robert McNally, founder and president of the Rapidan Energy Group, who was responsible for international energy policy while on the National Security Council staff of President George W. Bush. He said U.S. refiners, which had been Venezuela’s top customer, had optimized for Venezuelan crude and shifted to Russian oil products, such as low-quality fuel oil known as mazut, because the Venezuelan crude could be easily replaced without overhauling for a cleaner type of crude.
Jason Bordoff, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs who served on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council staff, pointed to another factor: “Russian imports rose partly because new rules on emissions from the shipping sector at the start of 2020 reduced the demand for Russian heavy oil, and U.S. refiners took advantage of the discounted prices Russian firms offered.” The new emissions rules were imposed by the International Maritime Organization, because maritime shipping had traditionally relied on cheaper, lower-quality high-sulfur fuel oil.
The Pinocchio Test
This is a powerful ad with an emotional punch, and regular readers know we hold such ads to a high standard for factual accuracy. The ad sneakily tries to make two distinct statements — Biden canceled the Keystone pipeline and Russian imports of oil reached a high under Biden — but does so in a way that virtually all viewers are going to think the two are connected. After all, it decries the pipeline cancellation as a “horrific decision” as images of bomb explosions and frightened Ukrainians fill the screen, along with text claiming Biden is “paying” Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
But the Keystone pipeline still would not be completed by now even if Biden had permitted it to go forward. And Russian oil imports — still a relatively small part of U.S. energy purchases — have jumped because of factors unrelated to Biden administration actions. So the juxtaposition is so highly misleading that we deem this ad to be a whopper.
Four Pinocchios