Bump Off!

Why were people so appalled by President Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman exchanging a fist bump?

Did they think, given COVID, an elbow bump might have been better?

President Biden's only mistake in dealing with Saudi Arabia is that he vowed surging the 2020 presidential campaign to make the country a pariah state for the murder of reporter Jamal Khasshoggi in 2018,  As it turns out, ,Saudi Arabia is a country we need to be on good terms with to provide a counterweight against Iran.  We also need it to help stabilize the Middle East by working with, and hopefully, establishing diplomatic ties with Israel.  Biden made it clear that he raised the Khasshoggi issue directly with the crown prince.

Oh yeah, the oil.  Well, maybe Biden wouldn't have had to ask the crown prince to increase oil production t bring down gas prices at gone if we didn't rely on oil so much.  The U.S. has lower gas prices than most countries already, thanks in no small part to subsidies that keep gasoline cheap here, while European countries let gasoline be sold at market value to discourage large motor vehicles and also encourage walkable towns and public transit - two things many Americans happily do without despite the fact that our addiction to oil is causing the very same climate change that is baking France like an overdone croissant while causing British railways to buckle and sparking wildfires all along the Mediterranean seaboard.

How do you like that cheap gas now?

Either we stand up for our values and hold Mohammed bin Salman accountable or Khasshoggi's murder or we can have cheap gas for our  - no, your - Ford F-150s.  It's your choice, America, but I think you've already made it. 😠

Biden's Fossil-Fuel Fumble

So how did the last debate go?  Joe Biden presented himself well by showing empathy and knowledge regarding COVID-19, racial justice, and immigration.  Trump was more restrained and civil, meaning that he lied through his teeth quietly.

Biden did leave one wrinkle, though.  He opened himself up to an issue that Trump can use against him in the few remaining days in the presidential campaign.  And it's not his son Hunter.  Biden reiterated his opposition to ending hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and gas from the ground (though he opposes allowing it on federal land) but insisted the he wants to see it phased out while making a transition to cleaner energy.

"Oh, transition," Trump said, with a tone suggesting sarcasm.  "That's a big statement."

And it could be a big f---in' deal, to cop a phrase Biden once used.  Trump went on to say that Biden's stand on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," would be dangerous for the economy.

"Because basically what he’s saying is he’s going to destroy the oil industry," Trump continued.  "Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania? Oklahoma? Ohio?" 

Here Biden let himself open to charges - charges that will continue to the end of the campaign - that his energy policy will cost oil workers and gas workers their jobs in those states, especially Pennsylvania, which is a must-win state for Biden.  Bear in mind that Pennsylvania is the the state where the American oil industry began in 1859, when Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well in the United States.  Fossil-fuel development is a hydraulically fractured keystone in the Keystone State.  And if Trump succeeds in getting enough oil workers and gas workers to doubt that Biden's policy is good for them - even though Biden would help them get new and better-paying jobs - that means that just enough voters in Pennsylvania could tip the state to Trump and possibly give him the Presidency again.

Biden not only supports a careful transition to cleaner energy, he supports ending tax subsidies for the oil companies.  Which would make gasoline more expensive.  Which would mean we'd have to buy smaller cars - like this Volkswagen Polo, which is currently unavailable in America.

Not surprisingly, I wouldn't have a problem with that.  But most Americans, who consider cheap gasoline a birthright, would.  Expensive gasoline means that people would have to give up their SUVs.  You can imagine a conservative columnist saying, "First our guns, now our sort utility vehicles!"  (Actually, I don't have to imagine it - Cal Thomas wrote that back in 1998.) And don't forget pickup trucks.  The Ford F-150 is America's bestselling motor vehicle, and Chris Matthews, back when he was covering the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign before he was forced into early retirement, said that no Democratic presidential candidate should dare make anyone think he or she would come for their F-150s. Electric vehicles?  Please.  The sort of swing voters Biden and Trump are competing for dismiss electric cars as wimpish, namby-pamby appliance cars for self-righteous, latte-sipping, foreign-film-loving white-collar bourgeois liberals.   

Some folks think Trump's hardline pro-fracking stance may not help him much out of concern for the environment, as this Daily Beast column suggests.  Maybe.  But when you remember that the election results in Pennsylvania, like other swing states such as Michigan, Florida and possibly some other state that doesn't require a front license plate for your Jeep Grand Cherokee, could be decided by a couple thousand or even a couple hundred votes, Trump doesn't have to reach every voter to win.  Just a very small bunch of them.