GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING:
Shot: Gas prices are in the danger zone. Biden can’t do much about it.
President Joe Biden’s 2022 is off to a dreadful start. Prices at the pump could make it even worse.
Crude oil has already zoomed back to two-month highs. Gasoline prices, which move with a lag, have stopped their muted decline. And they’re starting to creep higher again.
The energy resurgence is only going to add to the economic anxiety gripping the United States and sinking Biden’s poll numbers.
“This is a terrible situation. Gas prices are in this political danger zone,” Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told CNN.
The White House knows how deeply unpopular high gas prices are. That’s why Biden took sweeping action in November to intervene. The administration announced the largest-ever release of emergency crude reserves from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in US history.
The return of $85 oil will pile pressure on Biden to act once again — and the administration is signaling further action is on the table.
“Tools continue to remain on the table for us to address prices. This is something the administration is continuing to watch and monitor very closely,” a White House official told CNN.
Yet presidents have limited power to lower gas prices. While Biden has options, they all have drawbacks.
—CNN, yesterday, in an article where CTL-F “Keystone” brings up zero results.
Chaser: Rising gas prices aren’t as bad as you think.
—Headline, CNN, March 21, 2012.
Hangover: In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”
And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”
Flashbacks:
● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?
● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.
● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”
Exit quote: “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”
In other words, Obama administration retreads are following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden: As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.
“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.
Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned