Joe Biden Stops Buying Only Thing Russia's Selling
How long until the gas station is closed?
The late John McCain once famously said Russia was merely a "gas station masquerading as a country." What happens when people decide not to fill 'er up no more?
President Joe Biden announced this morning that America would be banning all imports of oil and natural gas from Russia. So according to our back-of-the-napkin math, if there was one thing Russia made that was worth buying, and we stopped buying that ... carry the two ...
You may watch his announcement here:
“This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin, but there will be costs as well here in the United States,” Biden said in remarks from the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “I said I would level with the American people from the beginning.”
While gas prices will rise, Biden said he pledged he would do “everything I can to minimize Putin’s price hike here at home.” He emphasized that the move has bipartisan support in the United States.
"Putin's price hike." We like that. The Washington Post has a good roundup of all the things the Biden administration is doing and exploring, to try to protect America and indeed the entire globe from rapidly rising oil prices, while acknowledging that sometimes we have to do hard shit, and this is one of those times.
Quite frankly, it seems like pretty much everyone was behind this, and that Congress was going to bipartisanly force Biden to do it anyway if he didn't do it on his own. Congress is right this minute drawing up legislation suspending normal trade relations with Russia and banning energy imports.
“It’s a smart thing for the United States not to be sending $40-50 million a day to fund the war machine in Moscow,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said.
Kind of hard to argue with that.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked for this in that Zoom call this weekend that Marco Rubio jizzposted all over the internet. So before, where Biden may have been reticent, now, he is "fuck it" and kicking Russian oil out of America like it is a basket of fresh-mown malarkey.
Biden noted that this is happening right as we are just destroying the Russian economy with our sanctions, saying they have "caused the Russian economy to frankly crater." For how badly those sanctions are hurting, and how they're about to start hurting even worse, read Noah Smith. The short version, according to a Russian economist Smith quotes, is that the Russian economy is "double fucked, because most Russians don't know what's coming." It's about to hit their defense industry, big time.
What's just about the only thing helping Russia out, according to Smith? "High oil prices," he says, because that's just about the only thing they sell that people need.
So even though America only gets about three percent of its oil from Russia, this is a big fuckin' deal. Europe gets a lot more from Russia — about a quarter of its supply — and Biden acknowledged that Europe will have a harder time banning Russian oil. Germany, as usual, is being a bit of a pube about it. But! Europe did announce today that it was going to cut Russian oil imports by a whole two-thirds this year. That seems like a lot!
On February 24, the night Rachel Maddow came back from her hiatus because of how Putin's tanks were invading Ukraine, she gave a really good overview of just how much Russia sucks as an economy. She referred to it as "sclerotic" and "backwards," noting that it's "economically worse off than the Maldives and Palau," GDP-wise. She specifically noted that while Russia has a ton of oil, it has nothing more than a "totally non-competitive, un-modernized, technologically backward oil and gas industry to show for it." (This is a lot of what her book Blowout is about.)
She continued:
MADDOW: But that's really all they have in terms of an economy. I mean, literally their entire economic output is oil and gas. And even so, their oil and gas sector is so lame that whenever they want to do something more complicated than sticking a straw into the ground in Siberia, they have to find some western oil company to come in and build the technology for them to do it. The one thing they have, they barely even have.
So we are guessing it's also kind of a big fuckin' deal that Shell announced today that it's very sorry for all the times in the past it's bought Russian oil (including last week), and has "agreed to phase out all involvement with the country’s oil and gas industry, which accounts for about a 10th of global oil supply." This, after Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil already pulled out of their business ventures in Russia.
“As an immediate first step, the company will stop all spot purchases of Russian crude oil,” the London-based company said in a statement. “It will also shut its service stations, aviation fuels and lubricants operations in Russia.”
Yeah, that seems like a big deal.
Here's that Rachel segment:
[Politico / Washington Post / ibid.]
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Hey Look! Joe Manchin's Holding A Football!
Good grief!
When Sen. Joe Manchin says “Here’s the thing. I’ve always been open to talking to people okay? But they just don’t want to hear,” you may want to just run away screaming instead of reading the rest of the Politico article in which the gentleman from West Virginia outlines his ideas for an alternative to Build Back Better that he'd be willing to help pass. Or at least have your running shoes already on and snugly tied while you listen.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Joe Biden called for passage of at least some of the planks in Build Back Better, the sweeping package of climate and social spending programs that Manchin single-handedly killed off last fall, after nearly a year of forcing the ambitious plan to be whittled down from $3.5 trillion over 10 years to $1.7 trillion, to meet various demands from Manchin and from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona). Shaping legislation to please Joe Manchin didn't work out so great last year, but Manchin insisted that was because the narrowed bill wasn't actually what he'd made clear he wanted anyway.
But with midterms coming, Democrats really are looking for additional legislative wins to run on. That's in addition to last year's big American Rescue Plan that revitalized the pandemic economy and kept millions of Americans whole, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which is building bridges and highways and, yes, creating jobs. So, as Politico points out, Democrats are listening, cautiously, to what Manchin says he would definitely support in a reconciliation package that could be passed by Democrats alone in the Senate, since some guy insists the filibuster must absolutely be preserved.
So what does Manchin say he wants?
As he laid out in his interview with Politico, it's more of an outline than a full package. One minimum requirement for him is that any package of tax increases and spending would have to be "permanently funded." That was the sticking point Manchin suddenly discovered last year to sink Build Back Better: To fit the budget totals Manchin demanded, the bill was rewritten to only fund some programs for a few years, instead of the full 10 that Manchin decided was the eternal touchstone of good government.
So to fund whatever goes into the Manchin package, the plan would
need to start with prescription drug savings and tax reform. He envisions whatever revenue they can wring out of that as split evenly between reducing the federal deficit and inflation, on the one hand, and enacting new climate and social programs, on the other — “to the point where it’s sustainable.”
“If you do that, the revenue producing [measures] would be taxes and drugs. The spending is going to be climate,” Manchin said.
“And the social issues, we basically have to deal with those” with any money that’s left, he added.
And if you're wondering exactly where the details are, there aren't any. That's the outline of what Manchin says he can live with. He insists that that's always where he's been, and that the rest of the party knows it, but "They just basically think that I’m going to change."
Still, it would be something, and hooray for Manchin saying he wants to invest in climate, and ... um.
Oh yeah, there actually is one more thing, it turns out. About those measures to help the climate? Manchin, who we will remind you owns a coal company, wants to be sure they don't help the climate too much:
Manchin, who also chairs the Senate Energy Committee, said that the climate portion of any theoretical bill will look different now that Russia is invading Ukraine. He’s calling for the U.S. to ban oil imports from Russia and ramp up domestic energy production, including fossil fuels. He would support big clean energy investments in a potential deal, he said, but wants domestic oil, gas and coal production to still be a big part of the mix.
SHEER COINCIDENCE! By Sheer Coincidence, Joe Manchin Made Half A Million Dollars Last Year Off Of Coal
So sure, let's invest in clean energy, but to get that, we absolutely have to negate any progress on climate by also investing in the fossil fuels that have caused the climate emergency. (And yes, that's a long-running theme with Manchin, too.)
Manchin says that including both clean and dirty energy in a climate plan is simply an "all of the above" approach to energy. Cool! Perhaps we should talk about trying an "all of the above" approach to treating a COVID patient: Give them antiviral pills, infusions of the one remaining monoclonal antibody treatment that works on Omicron, and regular injections of brand new coronavirus variants.
Manchin dismissed the notion that you can't slow greenhouse emissions through expanded production of fossil fuels, scoffing, “They say ‘Manchin doesn’t care … he’s killing the environment.’ I’m not killing anything.” Look he denies there's anything crazy about his approach, and if you make him mad, he'll wish you into the oilfield.
Beyond that flaming chunk of carbon-spewing illogic, Politico also addresses another potential roadblock to the half-formed package: Manchin's partner in No, Kyrsten Sinema. As you'll recall, she took her own axe to Build Back Better last year, insisting there could be no actual reversals of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which forced the downsized Build Back Better bill to rely for funding instead on surtaxes and a new corporate minimum tax. Asked about Manchin's new idea, Sinema's office said that to pay for what Manchin wants, all that's needed is the revenue mechanism already in the truncated version of Build Back Better.
“Any new, narrow proposal — including deficit reduction — already has enough tax reform options to pay for it. These reforms are supported by the White House, target tax avoidance, and ensure corporations pay taxes, while not increasing costs on small businesses or everyday Americans already hurting from inflation,” said Hannah Hurley, a spokesperson for Sinema.
So that sounds like a "no" on prescription drug price reforms?
Not surprisingly, Manchin's idea didn't win a lot of praise from progressives Politico spoke to. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said, of the idea that new revenues should go to deficit reduction instead of to social programs, "I don’t care what he wants. We’re talking about what the American people want. He doesn’t like it, he can vote against it, that’s his business." Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) said she hoped Manchin might still come around, despite his insistence that everyone else needs to come around to his way of thinking.
Others said, fine, let's see what we can pass and just bloody pass it:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) put it this way: “There’s so much that we all agree on, that we ought to be able to get a deal.” And Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), the deputy chair of the Progressive Caucus, said she’s “open” to Manchin’s energy proposal provided “it’s paired with a real meaningful commitment, and actual movement.”
Our personal favorite reaction came from moderate Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), who could only come up with
"I was hoping you would were going to, like, ask me to expound about Ukraine.”
“I’ve got a lot of respect for him. And hope springs eternal,” Warner said.
Manchin wouldn't say directly whether he's discussed his ransom demands proposals with Biden, but said there's been "informal back-and-forth" and that "Different White House people reach out, and we talk from time to time."
And if this latest idea goes nowhere, Manchin can certainly insist that whatever objections he pulls out of his ass were actually clear to everyone else from the beginning.
[Politico]
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Joe Biden Has Plans For Rural EV Charging, Probably Because UN Agenda 21 We Bet
The rural jurors are still out.
As part of its plan to destroy America with clean energy that will create jobs, clean the air, and fight global warming — basically a vision of hell — the Biden administration this week rolled out a handy guide to help rural communities join in on the planned nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations. To that end, the federal Department of Transportation has released a "toolkit" of information and resources aimed at connecting "community members, towns, businesses, planning agencies, and others with partners needed for these projects."
The toolkit is one part of the effort to build up what will eventually be 500,000 EV charging stations, as funded by $7.5 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed last fall. That'll be split into two chunks: $4.75 billion to the states, and another $2.5 billion for a competitive grant program. The goal of this here toolkit is to help rural communities figure out how to tap into some of that funding, as well as how to partner with other sources to get EV charging off the ground.
In a press release, the DOT said the toolkit contains
best practices for planning EV charging networks and tips to navigate federal funding and financing to help make these projects a reality. DOT will also be holding workshops with rural communities to utilize the toolkit most effectively.
It's a big heckin' deal, Transportation Secretary Mayor Pete Buttigieg said in the DOT statement, because
Drivers in rural areas often have the longest commutes and spend the most money on gas, which means big benefits from having access to electric cars and pickup trucks if they are affordable and easy to charge where they live and drive. The investments in the President's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for a national EV charging network are an important step toward ensuring that EVs aren’t a luxury item and that everyone in America can benefit from clean transportation.
In addition to the toolkit, the DOT will be holding workshops with rural communities to help them put the toolkit to work, starting with a webinar to present details of the toolkit on February 9 (details and signup linky in the DOT press release).
Selling Rural Consumers And Communities On EVs
We took a look at the toolkit — the full title is Charging Forward: A Toolkit for Planning and Funding Rural Electric Mobility Infrastructure — and while it's not exactly the kind of reading with which you'd curl up next to your solar-charged electric fireplace on a cold winter evening, it seems like a useful collection of information for your municipal planning types and local transportation nerds.
Wisely, we think, the document really does start out with the very basic basics, like What Are Electric Vehicles Anyway? (OK, maybe not that basic) and explaining the three speeds of charging equipment used in residential and commercial charging, with a focus on the Level 2 and Direct Current Fast Chargers (DCFC) that are used in public charging stations — the latter can charge a typical modern EV battery to about 80 percent in around 30 minutes.
There's also a nice section on "Benefits and Challenges" of rural EV charging, aimed at explaining why EVs will be good for individuals and for communities in rural areas. It's the kind of sales job that's going to be necessary to convince people to buy in to EVs, noting that while modern electric cars and light trucks have a higher purchase price than gas or diesel equivalents, the fuel and maintenance costs are far lower, and can ultimately result in a lower total cost of owning the vehicle, especially as more EV models come on the market and the per-vehicle cost gets cheaper (think of how flat-screen TVs have gone from luxury items to absurdly affordable).
EVs Aren't Just For Cities
The toolkit notes that the savings on fuel and maintenance will be a big factor in getting rural folks interested in EVs — at least once the availability of charging stations increases — because rural drivers simply drive more on average than urban drivers:
Lower fuel costs are especially beneficial in rural areas, where residents drive on average 10 more miles per day than urban residents in vehicles that are, on average, larger and less fuel efficient. Largely due to these factors, rural drivers ultimately spend 44 percent more on gasoline and motor oil than urban drivers. [Emphasis in original — Dok Zoom]
Without naming brands, which would be untoward in a government document, the toolkit also notes that major manufacturers are rolling out electric pickups like the (we'll say it) Ford F-150 Lightning that include features that should be especially interesting to rural customers, like power outlets that can be used for tools and lighting on job sites where electricity isn't connected, or the ability to actually serve as a backup power source for homes during power outages. They can even be charged from rooftop solar arrays and serve as a battery backup when the sun is down.
Also neat: the DOT includes a brief discussion of how E-bikes can become useful secondary transportation for shorter trips in small towns and adjoining rural areas, noting that businesses can install simple Level 1 chargers in secure parking lots to attract customers biking from nearby areas. Somewhere, Victoria Jackson just had a fit about the United Nations taking over rural areas.
'Our Town' Goes Electric
For rural communities, the toolkit notes that while most EV charging development has been "concentrated in cities and along major highways," rural communities that build EV charging infrastructure can benefit from getting in on the game. The toolkit even makes a selling point for small-town businesses out of what's often seen as a drawback for EV owners: Even fast chargers take a while to get an EV charged up, so
EV drivers may also be inclined to combine their refueling stops with other activities, including visits to local stores, restaurants, parks, and attractions in the vicinity.
Providing EV charging stations can thus enable rural communities to draw regional travelers driving EVs and to stay connected to the broader EV charging network, benefiting both local residents and outside visitors alike, as well as bringing in revenue for local businesses.
The guide also notes that lower emissions and cleaner air will be good for everyone, and by gosh it even mentions why reducing greenhouse gas emissions is important, although that section doesn't harp on about climate change or saving the ecosystem too much. Also too, there's a nice overview of the economic development benefits for smaller communities that get in on the coming boom in manufacturing EV components as the US moves to eventual zero emissions transportation.
The toolkit also discusses the challenges of building out rural EV infrastructure, like the initial investment costs, which may not be recouped as quickly as for EV charging stations in urban areas, because fewer people — but if you build it, the EVs will come, and the whole point of the toolkit is to get the EV infrastructure built out. The guide discusses solutions that are on the way as well, like funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for upgrading the electrical grid.
The Nuts And Volts Stuff
Now, this is the part where we're going to cheat on our homework: We only skimmed the real nitty-gritty of the toolkit, which consists of detailed discussions of "partnership opportunities" for communities, a guide to planning the actual projects, and crucially, a discussion of funding and financing EV charging projects. There's also what looks like a pretty comprehensive collection of resources planners can use for getting the jerb done, drawn from a load of federal linkies.
Why did we fall down on the job like that? Simple answer: We are a mere mommyblogger, not a local technocrat (and also we are lazy). There looks to be a lot of good stuff in here that would be of great value to your municipal planning types, and probably also for local activists, but beyond the overview sections, it gets to be somewhat heavy — albeit necessary — bureaucratic sledding.
From a non-expert perspective, though, some of the tips look pretty valuable, like the planning overview's reminders that since so much of EV infrastructure needs to be built up from nearly zero, there are no "one-size-fits-all" approaches, especially since the needs of various rural areas may differ, or that completing projects may involve doing several things at a time, not a strict step by step process.
This part of the toolkit is not necessarily for your dear wacky neighbor who serves on the town planning board part time and you know damn well she's the only one in the town who will even try; it's a bit more like those old guidebooks to how to build solar panels from scratch than it is a catalogue of off-the shelf systems you can have installed.
But that's kind of where we are with EV charging infrastructure in 2022. Down the line, it would be pretty great if the feds built up a Rural Electrification Corps that could meet with rural leaders and businesses, then just come to town and put in chargers at the Co-Op parking lot.
It's a big challenging future. God knows we need all the help possible getting there.
[US DOT press release / Rural EV Charging Toolkit / Photo: "pedrik," Creative Commons License 2.0]
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Person. Woman. Man. Camera. Trump Hannity Interview.
Wow.
Former president Donald Trump called in to Sean Hannity's Fox News Lie Jamboree Hour last night, and we suppose the real news is that we managed to watch most of it without even puking once. Yay for us. Lucky you, it's not on YouTube so we will not be embedding the video.
The Great Man was purportedly there to talk about Joe Biden's news conference Wednesday, but honestly, it was just another chance for Trump to repeat the same old lies he always does, with Hannity from time to time jumping in to try to keep Trump on some sort of train of thought. The thing about trains, though — Joe Biden loves trains, I never much cared for them because you have to go where the tracks are and the environmentalists think trains are great, I never understood what they're getting at because in Japan you have those really fast trains, but Amtrak is a mess because the government never does anything right.
Scary how after four years we can all do that.
Trump said he really truly hoped Biden would do well, because America needs to do well, but instead everything is terrible, and also Trump was glad the US is finally out of Afghanistan, although if it had been up to him, we'd have left Afghanistan better and we should have kept Bagram Air Base. Which, if you want to get technical about it, would have meant the US would still be in Afghanistan.
Hannity tried to steer back to what a gracious fellow Trump is, complimenting him on how nice it is that Trump so sincerely wants Biden to do well. But the thing is, Hannity said, Biden is just no good at accepting criticism and acting on it, and that's very frustrating. In fact, he said, Biden seems
locked into every one of these failed policies. So, you know, you know, you keep banging your head against the wall. Why would you expect a different result?
The very smart former president of the US apparently is unfamiliar with simple English idioms, so he thought Hannity had to be talking about an actual WALL, like Donald Trump's greatest achievement.
That, or he just heard the word "wall" and it triggered a Pavlovian response. We're especially fond of the long silence before Trump answers.
lmaopic.twitter.com/xf9sSjtqGa— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1642732609
TRUMP: So we would have had the wall completed in three weeks. It was largely completed. We did almost 500 miles of wall and the southern border. It was really working, it really had an impact.
He just couldn't stop talking about what a wonderful job he'd done with WALL and immigration, before Biden ruined everything, and now the US is full of immigrants and nobody respects America anymore, and did he mention Afghanistan?
OK we really need you to to strap in if you're going to stick with us here. Are you in your comfortable chair? Are you ready to follow the bouncing Trump literally wherever it goes? Because we're going to follow it. We're doing this.
OK.
Continuing with his sharp expertise on foreign policy, Trump said if he were still in office, you wouldn't have any problems in Ukraine, not that Trump ever had any misadventures involving Ukraine or anything. Also, he predicted, as soon as the Winter Olympics are over, China might just invade Taiwan, and also something something Kim Jong-un and Iran, and we could have had a deal with Iran in just one week if Trump were still president.
It's really impressive how he was "president" for four years but never got around to that stuff that would have only taken a week or three.
Hannity suggested that if Trump were boss, he'd bankrupt Russia by drilling all the oil and sending it to Europe, and he'd stop China by banning all imports of Chinese goods. That'd learn 'em. Trump explained that the real beauty of his term was that he made China pay us "hundreds of billions" in tariffs (which were actually paid by US buyers, not a cent from China). and he wouldn't let Russia ever do anything bad in Ukraine, and we would by God go to war over Ukraine maybe, and why are gas prices so high now, huh?
We pity anyone who might actually try to transcribe any of that nonsense.
Trump explained that gasoline now costs over five dollars a gallon, and in California it's over seven, which is completely true if you add two or three dollars to the actual price. You might as well, because inflation is so bad that by the time I finish typing this, gas will be three hundred dollars a gallon probably. Also, WALL.
Hannity went on to explain how Biden's economy is terrible, and Trump agreed that nobody respects us, all our allies hate us instead of respecting us, and also Afghanistan a third or fourth time, and no Americans died in Afghanistan in 18 months when he was president, and then at the airport, the bombing, and we lost 13 soldiers and "many many wounded, horribly wounded, with legs and arms horribly wounded, the way they got out, and the list, the people, that the plane left ..."
Hannity, continuing that laserlike focus on Biden's economy, then praised Trump for threatening the Taliban with being "wiped out" if they misbehaved. And then Trump said that he would have taken every single American truck and tank and gun out of Afghanistan so the Taliban wouldn't have them.
This would presumably include the military equipment the Afghan military abandoned when it surrendered to the Taliban. I guess the idea is that they never could have surrendered it if the US had seized it first. Can't see any problems with that plan. Also, he wouldn't have abandoned the American "hostages" in Afghanistan, by which we suppose he must mean the US citizens who stayed behind because they couldn't get visas for their Afghan family members to come to the US. We all know how eager Trump was to keep Americans and their noncitizen families together.
In any case, Trump eventually caught up with the question about the economy, and noted that the US economy was in great shape before Biden took office, at least as long as you ignore the final year of Trump's term, which Trump certainly did. America was pretty much a paradise when Trump was president.
"It was a joyous time because our country did so well," even with all the hoaxes Hillary perpetrated to ruin him. But then the "China virus" arrived and Trump solved that too by personally formulating the vaccines, but no mandates, because "the mandates are killing this country." And also all the judges Trump appointed, it was a beautiful time.
That made Hannity want to talk about energy, which for some reason made Trump want to talk about the crisis at the border again, and Afghanistan a fourth or fifth time.
Are you all still OK out there? Anybody need to stop and get a snack?
Somewhere in there Trump also explained that the windmills are actually ruining the atmosphere and killing the birds and they're so ugly, just big rusty noisy hulks everywhere and killing the birds, and did you know wind is the "most expensive form of energy" also? Do we need to point out that's a lie, too? Wind is in fact the least expensive source of energy today. Or so the fake wind energy media say.
Trump claims "windmills" are ruining "the atmosphere"pic.twitter.com/nFq6caAMC2— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1642733549
Other highlights of the interview included Trump lying about January 6 again (very loving people, and Nancy Pelosi didn't protect the Capitol), and some additional bragging about how he did so great on his cognitive test, no way can Joe Biden point to "camel" as well as Donald Trump did, person woman man camera TV!
Weirdly, Trump and Hannity never once got around to those text messages in which Hannity warned that Trump should never say "stolen election" again, or the others where he said Trump had to tell his supporters to get the hell out of the Capitol. That might have gotten in the way of all the pressing discussion of Afghanistan and WALL.
In conclusion we are willing to trade some of the nonstop joy we felt during the Trump years for a president who is not completely out of his fucking gourd.
[Fox News / New York / Daily Beast / Aaron Rupar on Twitter]
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