Drill, Baby, Drill

Progressive-Democrats really do not want our nation to be energy independent or to be able to support our friends and allies—and acquaintances around the world—with energy exports for the foreseeable future. For motives known only to themselves, they want to kill our energy capability until their dream of “green” energy comes to fruition, in that future distant beyond the foreseeable.

Senate Democrats are threatening to punish US oil companies with a windfall-profits tax if they increase production.

This also illustrates Progressive-Democrats’ utter disinterest in the way economics and economies work (I’m reluctant to say these Know Betters are ignorant of those ways).

The Senators plan would require companies that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day (or did so in 2019) to pay a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current and average price between 2015 and 2019 (about $57 a barrel).

Since increasing supply relative to demand brings down price, one counter to this Progressive-Democrat war on our energy economy is to drill, baby, drill.

Another counter becomes available this fall—we need to fire Progressive-Democrats from our State and Federal governments so that energy producers can drill, baby, drill.

Stepping Up

Former Presidential Advisor Kellyanne Conway thinks President Joe Biden (D) needs to stop blaming us Americans for our nation’s problems and instead to step up and actually work on our problems, actually acknowledge who we are.

You cannot have an American president that has an America-last policy and blames Americans and America for what’s going wrong. He needs to step up and reflect the best of who we are.

But that’s hard to do for a President who openly thinks 15% of us are just no good. It’s hard to do for the head of a party that pushes its own racist identity politics while insisting, through Party’s enthusiasm for CRT, that we as a nation are fundamentally racist.

The Judge’s Ruling is Correct

Michael Sussmann, the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer (among other roles) moved in court to strike portions of Special Council John Durham’s indictment of him, including in particular, the indictment’s “Factual Background” section. Sussman claimed that the section had “prejudicial” information and “false allegations” and so would taint the jury pool from which his jurors would be drawn. DC District Judge Christopher Cooper waved the BS flag at Sussman’s move.

I’m not going to strike anything from the record. Whatever effect the filing has had has already passed.

That’s correct. More important, though, are these factors. One is that, of course the indictment contains “prejudicial” information: grand juries are, by design, one-sided affairs intended solely to determine whether there’s enough material to warrant a formal charge and a trial. That’s why the evidence presented to a grand jury is sealed until trial; only the fact of the indictment and the nature of the government’s case can be made public before that trial—and never made public at all if, with or without indictment, the government decides not to proceed to trial.

The other factor, regarding the “false allegations” claim, is a so what one. The accuracy of the allegations, along with the accuracy and believability of any facts or other evidence underlying the allegations, are for juries to determine at trial, not for judges to deny jury access to via prosecutorial presentation.

Cheering

Russia has invaded Ukraine and is deliberately butchering women and children, bombing hospitals, schools, residential neighborhoods, even shooting at nuclear reactors in civilian power plants, and a Progressive-Democrat pollster for President Joe Biden (D) is cheering them on. Lake Research Partners’ Celinda Lake:

The good news is we now have a very specific reason for rising gas prices and a specific villain[.]

This Progressive-Democrat is happy to sit in the coliseum cheering for the mayhem below—because that’s good for the Progressive-Democratic Party. She’s not the least bit interested in the butchery beyond the fact of its existence and its perceived Party benefits.

Disingenuous and Insulting

Congress is putting together a bill, the Social Media NUDGE Act, that Congressmen pretend is to combat “misinformation” in our social media.  Misinformation, mind you—mistakes. Not disinformation, deliberate lies.

The legislation applies to commercial enterprises specializing in user-generated content with more than 20 million monthly active users for most of a 12-month period. They must devise plans for “content-agnostic interventions” and submit them to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for approval.
…
While [the bill] never refers to misinformation or false information, it also never defines the “harmful content” it seeks to prevent….

Notice, too, that false equivalence. All misinformation is false information. Not all false information, though, is misinformation. Much of false information is disinformation—wrong information put out deliberately to mislead, or to hide truth.

This bill is disingenuous because it assumes “misinformation” must be blocked and Government/Big Tech are to be the ones to define “misinformation.” That’ll be whatever is politically inconvenient to those in power. And those in power will leave their disinformation alone.

This bill is insulting because it assumes us average Americans are too grindingly stupid to understand what is misinformation, what is disinformation, what is uncomfortable information, or the distinctions among the three. We must, instead, be “advised” by our Betters.