Comments

1

Stupid president Biden. Banning Russian oil won't change Putin's mind. Just compounds the gas price misery.

3

Stupid Raindrop. Russian oil is paying for Putin's folly. The gas price misery is caused almost entirely by corporate profiteering and stock buybacks, and has little to do with Russian oil in the first place.

6

@1, it may not change Putin’s mind, but it will visit more misery on the Russian economy which will change the minds of yet more Russians.

7

@1 kind of why we shouldn't have put all our eggs in one basket. People smarter than both of us have been warning us for years.

Oh well. Americans, despite their beliefs to the contrary, do not have a right to not be inconvenienced.

I'm sure it sucks if you have to drive a lot. Would you rather your vehicle and house and family be subjected to non-stop shelling by a foreign aggressor?

9

@1 it's the right move even if it is just for optics. The real pressure is going to come on Biden to ramp up US production that he shut down when he took office. Will be interesting to see how he responds to that.

10

A good International Women's Day to all.

Pleased to see President Biden announce the ban on Russian energy imports today, however symbolic the move may be. And pleased to see him doing it under bipartisan pressure. The challenge now isn't so much America achieving energy independence--we're already a net exporter of oil, if I understand correctly--it's how we can help Europe achieve some degree of energy independence from Russia.

As long as Putin is in power, we're going to need to keep up the economic pressure, and we're going to need to unite behind an all-of-the-above approach: both fossil fuels (minus coal) and renewables. The one more imminent threat than climate change is a totalitarian regime with nukes that's on the march.

For anyone looking for ways to help Ukraine, NY Magazine had a good writeup:
https://www.thecut.com/2022/03/russia-invades-ukraine-how-to-help-the-people-of-ukraine.html

Also recommend using Charity Navigator as a reference.

11

like perpetual motions
Perpetual stairs
Ain’t.

lock ‘em up
& let ‘em walk right up
cast ‘em in concrete if ya gotta

speaking of climate-
destroying commodities:
socially engineered by Big Oil’s
Fossil Fools we’ve put Ourselves in-
to the damn corner. getting tf Out is Key

but lookit what we did
when we Geared Up for
WW2 – quit making cars
& started making WMDs

we turned it around Once
surely we can do it Again

here’s the Chas:

kneel before the Almighty.
Pump be thy name.
Amen.

12

When I think of the courage of Volodymyr Zelensky, I think of the fact that he's going to need a heavy security detail for the rest of his life, or the rest of Vladimir Putin's life. As long as one nation has a hit out on another nation's head of state, there can be no normal relations with the one nation (Russia) until its own head of state is gone. Of course, the same goes for the nuclear saber-rattling.

Also want to share a troubling news item about the effects of even mild COVID on the brain:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/long-covid-even-mild-covid-linked-damage-brain-months-infection-rcna18959

I hear Dr. Rochelle Walensky saying it's time for people to take off their masks. Fine by me. It's a free country. I'm going to keep wearing mine for a while. Not a big deal. Hey, it's a free country.

13

After all that has been done, banning the Russian oil is just for optics. Not worth the price in my opinion. The US only imports a little, but nevertheless the collateral damage (incl. corporate profiteering) will take advantage of it. In addition, I thought it was going to be a unilateral decision along with NATO - which sparked my annoyance with the president.

14

@13. Did Tucker and the freedom caucus take away your Ukrainian flag so soon?

15

@13 Gotta disagree here, Raindrop. Choke off all Putin's cash. Starve the Russian economy.

16

@15: Point well taken.
@14: I haven't seen one in yours.

17

@16
It's not just the oil - as apparently Germany was a primary importer of Russian oil and Russia will now sell it to China- but hundreds of private businesses are leaving Russia, with no incentive to return in the future.

18

@16. It's in there if you look closely enough, sort of like Magic Eye. But I don't need to virtue signal when it's obvious that we have always been at war with Eurasia. But the sooner we divest from fossil fuels and pipelines, the better. If we can get out of this without nuclear war, there may yet be a future we can survive as an extant species. Supply and demand; if you don't like it you might have to take the bus, ride a bike, or buy a cheap electric car. We might have to reconstruct our infrastructure to support a new energy economy out of necessity!

But think of the poor! And food costs! All this convenience they can no longer afford that might affect me too!

19

You can always tell when internet posters ingest most their “news” from ‘ol Memaw’s Facebook memes.

The “Just compounds the gas price misery.” is one such falsehood generated directly from troll farms in Moscow suburbs.

Russian oil represents barely three percent of US crude oil imports and one percent of the total crude oil processed in US refineries. Therefore most of it doesn’t even get turned into gasoline.

It has very little impact on US gas prices.

20

@1, 13: We import roughly jack shit from Rusher. It might not have a big impact on the price of a barrel. It was going to skyrocket anyway, and Putin has been planning on that to offset the sanctions.

Biden and our allies are releasing from the Strategic Reserves to mitigate the impact.

21

“(Oil) Production that he (Biden) shun down
”

Another news item ripped from the Meme Press.

Biden did not “shut down” any US oil production.

This is from yet another fake meme misrepresenting an executive order issued by Biden on Jan. 27, 2021. The order paused any NEW federal oil and gas lease sales on government-owned land and waterways, "pending completion of a comprehensive review and reconsideration of Federal oil and gas permitting and leasing practices."

Not CURRENT PRODUCTION.

And regardless a federal judge struck down the order that June, saying only Congress has the authority to pause oil and gas leasing.

So. The US has maintained exactly the same rate of production, at least in terms relationship to demand, that it did under Trump.

Source:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/feb/28/facebook-posts/no-us-did-not-end-its-domestic-oil-production-it-d/

22

Oh. And to further illustrate the disinformation that is casually bandied here about and taken for gospel is the fact Biden already increased domestic oil production. Which is what got him hot water with leftists. Damned if does. Damned if he doesn’t.

“U.S. production was almost 11.6 million barrels a day in December, up from a low of 9.7 mbd in February of 2021, but below the nearly 13 million barrels recorded in the runup to the pandemic, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.”

“ The number of American oil rigs has increased steadily since July 2020, when the country reached a low of 172. The 519 rigs recorded last week was up from 480 rigs the first week of the year. By comparison, the United States had more than 800 rigs in the field in 2019.”

The rise in prices is heedless profit taking and the production slowed driven by the pandemic slump. Biden has nothing to do with it.

Source:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/just-how-much-oil-can-the-u-s-pump/

23

Really, isn't it kinda about time that renters (and everyone else) "exited the pandemic economy"?

Anyone who wants a vaccine get one. or Three. Once you are boosted, you are at almost no risk (yes, i know there are a small minority of people who are immunocompromised or can't be vaccinated, but that does not justify treating the economy as though we're still in a crisis).

The schools are open, so your child care issues are back to normal.

Every business in the universe seems to be hiring and wages are up. I'm seeing very little excuse for maintaining a policy of free rent.

25

McDonald’s temporarily closes
all of its locations in Russia.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/08/business/stocks-economy-inflation-ukraine?type=styln-live- updates&label=economy%20updates&index=0#mcdonalds-russia

26

@25
Whoa McDonalds
steppin' Up:

McDonald’s said it would continue to pay salaries for McDonald’s employees in Russia, as it has for its employees in Ukraine.
--By Julie Creswell

27

@24, my point is really simple. it's this: seattle is not dying in the terms established and promoted by the seattle is dying crowd. businesses are not fleeing in droves. the economy is not collapsing like there's no tomorrow. and so on.

28

More proof that Mayor Harrel hates pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users.

Want to kick Putin in the (expletive)?

Quadruple transit funding and build bike lanes.

29

@27 is correct.

30

@27 Critical thinking is hard.

34

@32. Learned helplessness. You hate to see it

35

Hooray, FINALLY, for the release of Lolita, in cruel captivity for 56 years too long---almost my entire lifetime. Another one of many good reasons to boycott Florida altogether. And shame on everyone involved in the mass captures of Southern resident orcas in Penn Cove in 1970.

@14 Garb Garblar: Elmer's running a little slow today because his glue supply dried up.

@15: Holy shitsky, Swifty! We actually agree on something? Alert Ted Koppel and Paul Krugman!

@19 RogerTheShrubber: 7% of all crude oil processed at Marathon's Tesoro Oil Refinery in Anacortes is imported from Russia. It has been the PNW's biggest Russian importer. "Washington's five Puget Sound refineries in 2021 imported $700 million of Russian crude oil, just under 5% of their annual processing capacity."
Ban Marathon Tesoro and all Russian business. Fuck Putin.

[Source: How much oil do Pacific Northwest refineries get from Russia? updated article, March 8, 2022, Hal Bernton, Seattle Times staff reporter]

36

Not moving slow, I changed my avatar. You incessant grizzled old bat.

37

@36: Down, Elmer, down. Go take a nap you MAGA-confused ultra maroon.

38

Major YIKES about the collapse of that I-5 sign bridge near Lakewood!
As if I need any additional reasons not to subject my VW to the insurmountable
insanity of I-5 traffic. Holy fucking shit.


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