It wasn’t all that long ago that the Biden administration was actively lobbying Senate Dems against supporting Senator Ted Cruz’s bill to sanction Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Now it’s back in action fighting against any effort to block Russian oil even as Biden claims that he’s doing everything to stop Putin.
Banning Russian cats from the International Cat Federation? Done. Banning disabled athletes from the paralympics? We’re on it. Russian oil, give us more.
Is there anyone who still hasn’t seen through this farce yet?
Biden administration officials pressured some Democratic senators not to support bipartisan legislation by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would ban oil and gas imports from Russia, Senate Democratic aides told Axios.
The White House on Friday signaled it is open to reducing the import of Russian oil — without saying exactly how.
By the numbers: Oil from Russia accounted for roughly 3% of U.S. crude imports in 2021.
It’s mostly imported in Hawaii and the coasts, where refiners don’t have access to the pipelines connecting the big domestic oil fields in places like the southwest’s Permian Basin.
Do any of those refiners donate to Biden? Not that it really matters.
The bottom line is that this is theater. There’s lots of virtue signaling, lots of blue and white flags being waved, but behind that, as the Russians say, is a Potemkin village.
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