If we had to have a Democrat in the highest office in the land named Joe, why couldn’t it have been Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who at least thinks about putting the interests of America first? There are a bunch of things that I wouldn’t agree with him on, but he’s light years ahead of Joe Biden.
Manchin was on “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd on Sunday.
First, Manchin said he wouldn’t take things off the table, like the no-fly zone. Now, that doesn’t mean that he was advocating for it. But we saw with Joe Biden, when he took things off the table – such as troops – Vladimir Putin knew he had nothing to worry about, and that likely added into his calculus that he could invade without the only real consequences he was concerned about. Manchin did not advocate the use of a no fly zone but said that we must provide Ukraine with all necessary defenses. Given that we talked them out of their nuclear weapons and a lot of conventional weapons to enter into a security agreement in 1994, that’s something we can do that keeps our word without escalating the conflict.
Manchin then addressed the question as to why we continue to buy Russian oil.
Chuck Todd made the great point that the U.S. isn’t leading on the issue, that on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Administration would be in favor of cutting buying Russian oil if the “entire alliance does it, too.” Why would you not lead on that and/or just do it ourselves? Todd asked Congress if they were willing to do it unilaterally.
Manchin stated that we must lead in this area, with Russia cutting its oil production and America increasing theirs.
“I would say this, the people in my state of West Virginia, believe it’s basically foolish for us to keep buying products and giving profit and giving money to Putin to be able to use against the Ukrainian people.
That’s exactly what he’s doing. So why wouldn’t we lead? Why wouldn’t we show the resolve we have? I understand there’s more dependency in the world. But you know, here’s the problem, we have the ability to ratchet up and be able to backfill. The energy is there, the resources are available. Technology is our advantage. We’re a million barrels short a day right now that we could just ramp up like that. Certain things are possible. And we don’t have to put any more pain on the American people who are already suffering with inflation now.”
Manchin said that there’s a lot we can do.
“Our energy that we produce in America is better and cleaner than any place else in the world. Everything we fill with is better than the ones they make. The gas from L&G that we can send over, expanding the ports, we’ve got basically requests for permits that are still standing and we haven’t given. That is something we must do. We’ve got pipelines – I’ve got a Mountain Valley pipeline in the state of West Virginia. It takes two – it will take two BCF, two billion cubic feet a day into the marketplace immediately. And you know what –it’s 95% done. I can’t get it done. That’s the kind of thing that we need to be pushing to get done to have in the bank to secure our own supply.
Joe Biden is even considering all of these things? Biden is not thinking of increasing our independence and energy production. The big claim he made about addressing American energy problems, and that already has resulted to crushing gas prices was to announce that he would be releasing 30,000,000 barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This would amount to about one-and-a half days of U.S. consumption. This is a laughable answer and would not solve the problem in the long term. He is stealing our savings, but that’s okay.
Biden seems open to extending an invitation to Axis countries to help them enrich themselves. They’re about to re-enter a disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, which by all accounts is worse than the first one, and they’re refusing to rule out they might get oil from them. Then they’re also reaching out to Venezuela, another supremely bad move.
But Biden is just so entrenched in the leftist agenda to destroy American energy, he can’t even consider what Manchin is suggesting or any other ideas that make sense and help American energy independence.
Manchin also dismissed any discussions of the re-upping of any Build Back better version. Manchin said that wasn’t going anywhere with the skyrocketing, that Joe Biden needed to “get your financial house in order.” Amen.
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