The Biden administration recently approved a major oil project for the Alaskan Arctic that would include hundreds of oil wells and release 300 million tons of carbon over the next 30 years.
Funny, that doesn’t sound like the Joe Biden who was campaigning for president a while back.
The Willow Project was pushed by ConocoPhillips and was originally approved by the Trump administration, which was later blocked in court.
Biden campaigned on protecting the Arctic but seems to be keeping an eye on his political future more than his environmental legacy. Some Democratic advisers are *sigh* once again advocating a move to the middle before the next election.
You know, become more like Republicans so they can keep Republicans out of office.
Meanwhile, carbon levels will increase and ConocoPhillips will attempt to refrigerate the melting permafrost (really!) so their equipment won’t get stuck as they extract more oil.
Does it get more absurd than mechanically chilling permafrost so you can drive your trucks on it to drill for more oil?
Watch 'Joe Biden's Opposite Doctrine', Mark Fiore's animated video, here.
Why is Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin -- chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, through which all judicial nominees must pass before getting a full Senate vote -- letting Republican senators blow off qualified federal judges proposed by President Biden?
Most recently, Mississippi GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked via “blue slip” Democratic judicial nominee Scott Colom, just like last year when Wisconsin’s Republican Senator Ron Johnson blue-slip-vetoed Judge William Pocan, the brother of Congressman Mark Pocan, apparently because he’s gay.
Now Republican Senators Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran brag that they’re contemplating vetoing Biden’s nomination of Jabari Wamble for Federal District Court Judge in Kansas because -- presumably -- he’s Black.
I’d like to be able to tell you why Durbin is going along with this BS from the Senator’s own perspective, but nobody answers the phone at his five offices I called (on April 10. DC - 202.224.2152, Chicago - 312.353.4952, Springfield - 217.492.4062, Carbondale - 618.351.1122, and Rock Island - 309.786.5173)
The Senator’s unavailability notwithstanding, what’s going on here is the result of an arcane bit of Senate tradition referred to as “blue slips.”
Read more at Thom Hartmann's Substack.
A common objection to single-payer health care in the US is that it would lead to health care being rationed. And I wonder: in what parallel universe do they live where the US isn’t already rationing health care?
Americans who can’t afford health care get pushed to the back of the line -- or entirely out of the line. That’s rationing.
