Hello from sunny and cold Lake Tahoe, where I watched a gas station on the California side of the city raise its price for regular gas by 30 cents per gallon to $5.49 on Sunday.
Let’s just start with gas prices, since I know that will be on everyone’s mind today. Here’s the latest chart from AAA’s gas price tracker:
That national average price for regular of $4.065 is up by 46 cents in just the past week, and you should expect prices to rise by that much again in the coming 7 days. Gas prices always lag oil prices by a few days, and the average oil price is up 10% since last Thursday. You do the math.
By the way, the average gas price in California this morning is $5.343, higher than the national average by $1.28. If you wonder why that is the case, take a look at this chart:
That’s $1.26 per gallon attributable to energy-related policies, all but 18 cents of which (the federal gas tax) were implemented by California’s lunatic state government over the last 20 years or so. There is no mystery here.
On Fox News last Friday, Jesse Waters summed up the Biden energy policy accurately and succinctly:
Yep, that about sums it up all right.
Writing at Townhall.com, Katie Pavlich provides more detail around the lengths the administration is going to avoid calling on the domestic U.S. industry to produce more oil here at home today.
Here’s an excerpt from that story:
Over the weekend a number of State Department diplomats were deployed to Venezuela in hopes of pulling off sanctions on the Maduro regime in order for the U.S. to tap back into the country's oil supply.
"Senior U.S. officials are traveling to Venezuela on Saturday to meet with the government of President Nicolás Maduro, according to people familiar with the matter, as the Biden administration steps up efforts to separate Russia from its remaining international allies amid a widening standoff over Ukraine," the New York Times reports. "The trip is the highest-level visit by Washington officials to Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, in years. The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Mr. Maduro and closed its embassy in Caracas in 2019, after accusing the authoritarian leader of electoral fraud. The Trump administration then tried to topple Mr. Maduro’s government by sanctioning Venezuelan oil exports and the country’s senior officials, and by recognizing the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as Venezuela’s lawful president."
Last week Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said importing oil from Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terror, was being considered.
And now after months of begging OPEC to pump more oil, the Biden administration is planning a potential trip to the kingdom to make the plea in person.
[End]
You just can’t make this stuff up, folks. You can’t.
And the thing is, even Saudi Arabia doesn’t have enough spare capacity to rebalance global oil markets. So gas prices will only keep rising from here. How high they will ultimately go is anyone’s guess, but I would not be surprised if we in the U.S. pay a national average of $7.00 per gallon in the near future.
Oh, hey, remember this?
Isn’t it amazing how Trump just keeps being right, even a year and 2 months later?
And energy prices aren’t the only thing skyrocketing right now. Check out what’s happening with wheat:
Here’s an excerpt from that article by Steve Cortes:
A Midwestern farmer explains the economics of the situation. Ben Riensche farms 16,000 acres in Iowa and warns Americans: “You think they squawk about having gas go from three to four dollars a gallon? Wait until the grocery bill is $1,000 a month.”
There are two main causes for this massive input price appreciation. The first is the overall explosion in inflation caused by the misbegotten policies of the Biden administration, including his eco-radical war on energy, a critical component of fertilizer production.
But the second, new issue is Russia. The US has declared an unprecedent economic war against Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine. While the offense against Ukraine’s sovereignty is inexcusable, Washington’s insistence on hugely escalating the economic war with Russia incites enormous risks, including for our food.
Cutting off Russia equates to havoc for farming, right into planting season. Bloomberg’s fertilizer analyst Alexis Maxwell describes Russia’s importance: “No other nation has the same breadth of readily exportable fertilizer supply.”
[End]
Yikes. Thanks, Democrats. All you “81 million” Biden voters, who might - might - total 70 million in real numbers. You did this to us. You voted for all of this, and you cannot say you weren’t warned. Trump warned you about every bit of it. So did I. So did lots of other people.
If you weren’t paying attention or you’re just too damn dumb to be able to discern fact from Democrat fantasy, that’s your problem. The thing is, though, that your problem is now harming all of the rest of us.
That is all.
🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬