By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com
President Biden a few days ago blamed high gas prices on everyone but himself, and he has done this repeatedly over the last few months
His latest attack was on those who own gas stations and another blast blaming it on Putin and the war in Ukraine.
After Biden said these things, Jeff Bezos, a liberal who founded Amazon and now owns The Washington Post, said: “Ouch, inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market economics.”
The misdirection going on now is the Democrats effort to talk always about Ukraine, abortion, or the great exaggeration of the Jan. 6th events at the U. S. Capitol.
The White House and Democrat leaders in Congress know they have to get everyone’s mind off of high gas prices, inflation, crime, the human flood at the border, the economy, the Afghanistan withdrawal and on and on.
As to the war on Ukraine, my sympathies, like almost everyone were with the Ukrainians. And I really believe Putin would never have gone there if Trump had been re-elected because he had made it clear he would not add Ukraine to NATO.
Also, Putin knew he could not overrun a strong man like Trump, a man very much like himself.
The Democrats used Covid to help them politically, as Jane Fonda admitted. Now they are doing the same with the war in Ukraine.
Before this war started, the Ukraine government was rated as one of the most corrupt in the world. Yet, the President and the Congress voted to send so much money so fast, it will be scandalous how much of it will be wasted.
We first sent $14 billion and then all the Democrats and over half the Republicans voted to send $40 billion more.
I was very pleased that our two senators and four of the nine House members from Tennessee all voted against the $40 billion.
Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, a senior fellow at the Defense Priorities Institute, said on television that there is almost no chance Ukraine will win this war in the end unless the U.S. and other NATO countries go all-in in a full-scale war with Russia.
In a report he wrote Davis said, “If Russia defeats Ukraine in the Battle of Donbas, Kiev will face a difficult choice: 1) to dig in and continue fighting, even though much of its most effective fighting force will have been captured or killed, and risk losing even more territory, or 2) negotiate with Russia to trade territory lost since 2014 for peace to stanch further losses of Ukrainian lives and land.”
Thus, most of this $54 billion will be money down the drain except for the profits going to big defense contractors.
Our sanctions have hurt Putin very little because he has just increased his sales of oil to China and India, and other countries to the tune of almost $100 billion over the past year.
Democrats have shown time and again all over this country that they have no qualms about, and in fact seem to enjoy, spending money we don’t have.
Thus, every Democrat-run city and state is deeply in debt, and Congress has increased our national debt to over $30 trillion.
The president very falsely says he is for 10 new oil leases off the Gulf Coast and Alaska, while his Secretary of the Interior says they may approve 10, 5, or 0. Trump had advocated 47 new leases.
Meanwhile, environmentalists have kept us from building any new refineries since the late 70s, and the administration puts so many restrictions and requirements on oil permits to make them economically unfeasible.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm is still laughing about high gas prices.
And the administration keeps pushing for electrical vehicles when our electric grid is already at, near, or above capacity because everyone is using too many computers, iPads, and other electric-powered devices.