TO BE FAIR, IT’S MEANT TO: Joe Biden’s war on fossil fuels is hurting America.

When Joe Biden assumed office in 2021, the progressive press hoped, as the LA Times crowed, that he would “turn America into California again”. To the great loss of America, the West and, of course, Californians, he is living up to this credo in spectacular fashion.

California’s last two large oil producers, ExxonMobil and Chevron, this week announced a combined $5 billion in write-offs of their assets in the state.

The Golden State once boasted a giant fossil fuel industry, but climate hysteria has been the state religion for almost two decades. Not long ago, California was home to a host of top 10 energy firms — in 1970 ARCO, Getty Oil, Union Oil, Oxy and Chevron constituted the five largest industrial companies in the state. Now only Chevron, which has been reducing its headcount in northern California and is clearly shifting its emphasis to Texas, remains.

This predicament can’t be blamed on California running out of oil and gas; some estimates of the state’s oil and gas reserves are considerably larger than those of Texas. Monterey shale, located under the state’s economically struggling midsection, holds almost two-thirds of the nation’s total supply of shale oil. Tapping this source, one USC study notes, could bring as many as 500,000 new jobs to the state in a matter of years.

But such palatable returns do not mean much to the state’s powerful environmental lobby. California regulations have managed to cut production by more than half in less than 30 years. In the Golden State, this ban threatens to eliminate an industry that, according to a 2019 report from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, amounted to 152,000 direct jobs, as well as an additional 213,000 related jobs. Nearly half those jobs comprise black, Asian, or Latino workers.

California reflects the kind of mindset that has captured the Biden administration. Just two years ago the bond firm Pimco predicted that America was about to seize “energy dominance”. But White House officials are so soaked in green ideology that they have abandoned the basic logic of geopolitics, according to which energy is power.

The other possibility is that they intend the likely and foreseeable consequences of their actions.

OPEN THREAD: Be here now.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Final preparations underway for launch of first Intuitive Machines lunar lander.

YEP:

The enemy is learning. If the Houthis get enough free throws they'll eventually score a point.https://t.co/rCl0EGhtbG

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) January 31, 2024

HMM: Even More Evidence That Alzheimer’s Was Being Spread by Now-Banned Injections. “The practice of injecting children with growth hormone extracted from the brains of deceased people was abandoned long ago – with good reason.”

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Inside the meltdown at The Messenger: Out-of-touch brass, outraged staffers and pure pandemonium.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Leftists firebombed my office last Saturday night. “This photo shows what the corridor outside my office looks like. . . . I am working with the FBI to try to identify the perpetrators. As I told them, the list of potential suspects is long, as my organization is active, and unusually effective, across a broad range of issues. I will have more to say about this before long.”

SPACE: Cygnus spacecraft arrives at space station with 8,200 pounds of cargo.

MUCH LIKE AMERICANS’ SAVINGS IN THE BIDEN ERA: Moonquake Alert – The Moon Is Shrinking, Causing Landslides and Seismic Shaking.

CYCLE OF MISERY: The Business of Building Commercial Aircraft.

Predictably, the incident triggered a new round of discussion about the decline of Boeing as an aircraft manufacturer. Nearly every source points to the same instigating event: the 1997 merger with McDonnell-Douglas, which changed Boeing from an engineering-driven company focused on building the best airplanes possible to one which focused overwhelmingly on financials and stock price.

As far as I can tell, this characterization is accurate. And yet it misses a big part of the picture: the brutal structure of the commercial aircraft industry that drives companies like Boeing to create things like the 737 MAX (an update to a 50-year-old airplane) instead of creating a new model from scratch. By unpacking how the commercial aircraft industry works, we can better understand Boeing’s behavior.

Interesting analysis.

BUT IT’S FUN TO BUY GEAR: Stop being a gear-acquisition guy and learn to shoot better instead.

Good advice, though. I’ve been more diligent in my practice in recent years, and I’ve gotten better.

YOU CAN PREVENT CARJACKINGS AND AUTO THEFT: BMW Adds Manual Transmission Option for 2025 Z4 M40i.

ALSO LESS NONCOMPLIANCE, I SUPPOSE: Injected antipsychotics may be more effective against schizophrenia than pills.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Starlab signs deal with SpaceX to lift private space laboratory into orbit.

HMM: Did the ancient Greeks and Romans experience Alzheimer’s? “You might think age-related dementia has been with us all along, stretching back to the ancient world. But a new analysis of classical Greek and Roman medical texts suggests that severe memory loss—occurring at epidemic levels today—was extremely rare 2,000 to 2,500 years ago, in the time of Aristotle, Galen and Pliny the Elder.”

HMM: Study links radon to increased risk of stroke.

BOB GRABOYES: The Minds of Economists: How We Think, What We Think, What We Do, How We Act.

WHEN YOU HATE PEOPLE LONG AND LOUDLY ENOUGH, THEY REJECT YOU: Young men continue to reject college: Pew study.

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF HATRED AND BIGOTRY? Binghamton University facing federal civil rights investigation over anti-Semitism complaint.

Related: Florida student arrested, threatened to shoot and kill three Jewish students during Pro-Israel event.

JEFFREY CARTER ON THE MARKETS: Don’t Be Fooled: All Time Highs Aren’t What They Seem to Be. “Trump beats Biden in virtually every economic category that matters to the average American. It’s not even close. Even if you hate Trump, you shouldn’t stay home and enable mediocrity and failure. Voting for a third party is silly too since that never works out. Perot put Clinton over the top in 1992 and left us with Hillary.”

SOCIALISM IS BAD FOR BIRTH RATES: Canada’s fertility rate has hit its lowest level in recorded history.

WINNERS: ILLEGAL ALIENS. Taxpayers funding immigrant trips north, envelopes of cash ‘for whatever they want.’

Losers: Actual Americans. Six in 10 live ‘paycheck to paycheck,’ 24% have $0 in bank.

TRUST THE SCIENCE! IT’S PUBLISHED RESEARCH! Paper Trail: In the latest twist of the publishing arms race, firms churning out fake papers have taken to bribing journal editors. “Rather than targeting potential authors and reviewers, someone who called himself Jack Ben, of a firm whose Chinese name translates to Olive Academic, was going for journal editors—offering large sums of cash to these gatekeepers in return for accepting papers for publication. . . . So cash-rich paper mills have evidently adopted a new tactic: bribing editors and planting their own agents on editorial boards to ensure publication of their manuscripts. An investigation by Science and Retraction Watch, in partnership with Wise and other industry experts, identified several paper mills and more than 30 editors of reputable journals who appear to be involved in this type of activity. Many were guest editors of special issues, which have been flagged in the past as particularly vulnerable to abuse because they are edited separately from the regular journal. But several were regular editors or members of journal editorial boards. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.”

“AFFINITY GROUPS” ARE JUST segregation by another name. “In violation of the U.S. Constitution, affinity groupings are reintroducing segregation in K-12 classrooms.”

IT’S COME TO THIS: ‘Obviously Political’: WaPo Editorial Board Slams Biden’s Move To Halt Natural Gas Terminals.