Yesterday, I noticed a complaint on social media about gas prices. It was posted by Republican Idaho gubernatorial candidate, Janice McGeachin. At this writing, according to Wikipedia, McGeachin is currently Idaho’s 43rd lieutenant governor. And based on the gas receipt she posted, and her snarky jab at Joe Biden, she thinks Biden is to blame for higher fuel prices.
Now… don’t get me wrong. It sucks to have to pay a lot for gas. Over here in Europe, we’re well acquainted with high gas prices. Here, you pay by the liter, and it’s a lot more expensive than what you pay in the United States. That’s why Americans who live in Europe under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) are entitled to buy gas on military installations and/or use coupons at participating Esso stations, where they get a substantial break on fuel prices.
I remember in the late 90s and early 00s, just before 9/11, gas hovered at around 99 cents to $1.10 a gallon. It was a blessing for me, since I was in grad school and had little money, but had to do client home visits in my car. You’re damned right I’m glad gas didn’t cost then what it costs now, even in the US.
But– can we really blame Joe Biden for higher gas prices? According to multiple sources, the answer to that question is “no”. There are a number of reasons why the price of gas has gone up. One major reason is that the demand has increased as people leave lockdown and go back to commuting or leisure traveling. Another major reason is because there’s less fuel available because people weren’t working. It’s the same reason why, when you go to McDonald’s, you may be facing a skeleton crew and things take longer. People are expecting things to be like they were pre-pandemic. But things aren’t like that, and probably won’t be like that for a good, long while, if ever again. Seriously, though… gas has gone up because the demand is up, and there’s less to go around. That’s got nothing to do with Biden. In fact, isn’t reopening the economy what Republicans wanted?
Aside from that, gas prices aren’t something presidents can easily control. According to the CNN link I posted in the previous paragraph, “the price of gas is determined by four major factors: taxes, the cost of marketing and distribution, refining, and the cost of crude oil. Biden’s enacted policies have not currently had a significant effect on any of these four factors.” It surprises and saddens me that as a lieutenant governor, particularly one who would like to be governor, Janice McGeachin doesn’t understand how this works. I suspect that if she does win the governor’s race in Idaho, she may be in for similar treatment, though. People will blame her for shit she can’t control, either.
Which brings me to the title of this post. Some woman, in response to the lieutenant governor’s post, wrote “Joe Biden sucks, and y’all know it!”
I was feeling cheeky, so I wrote “But Trump swallows.”
The lady wrote back something along the lines of, “Ooh, what a creative response!”
To which I wrote, “I could say the same thing about your comment. Besides, Donald Trump DOES swallow. Especially Big Macs and Whoppers!”
If you think about it, we ALL swallow, don’t we? Unless we have a feeding tube or something. That’s a function of healthy living. Does Biden literally suck? Maybe… although he probably doesn’t suck as much as he did as a baby. But that’s true for most of us, too.
Does the commenter mean Biden “sucks dick”, which is what “sucks” used to mean? I don’t know. But I’ve seen no evidence that Biden likes to suck dick. I HAVE, however, seen plenty of evidence that Trump is a lover of sexual conquests and exotic sexual acts. He probably HAS swallowed, in the nastiest meaning of that saying. But then, he’s in good company with other people who have hung around with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein… Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and plenty of other rich and famous men. There’s no telling what kind of shenanigans went on back when Jeffrey Epstein threw his wild parties on his notorious, infamous, “private island”, teeming with teenaged girls brought to him by Ghislaine Maxwell and company.
But even if he doesn’t “swallow” in the sexual sense, he definitely DOES like fast food. And he clearly does swallow that, based on his “figure”. So what I wrote wasn’t a lie. Saying that Joe Biden “sucks”, is probably more of a lie by most counts.
Joe Biden has been in office for about six months. I’m feeling somewhat better about a lot of things than I did a year ago– at least for right now. A year ago, I woke up every day feeling dread about what new craziness would be in the press regarding Trump. Now, I worry less about Trump and his embarrassing bullshit, but I do worry that someone else is being groomed to “MAGA”.
I get that a lot of people think Trump’s “awesome” and his polices are “great for America”, as one Trump loving friend (who incidentally lives in Thailand) enthusiastically told me this morning. I wonder what my friend is doing in Thailand. I think he married a Thai woman, and he probably gets to enjoy a decent standard of living there… if Trump was so “great”, though, wouldn’t he have wanted to move back to the States during Trump’s tenure? Wouldn’t he have wanted to live in the USA, basking in all of Trump’s MAGA splendor? And yet, he didn’t. He’s been in Thailand for awhile.
I, of course, live in Germany and managed to miss ALL of Trump’s presidency. I haven’t set foot on US soil since November 2014. I have a feeling that when I do go back, it’ll be a shock. And that will be true, even if Biden doesn’t get pushed out in 2024. Lord help us all.
In any case, allow me to state on record that, so far, I don’t think Joe Biden sucks. I do, however, know for a fact that Trump swallows. But maybe someday we’ll get lucky and he’ll fail his swallow test. Perhaps that will keep him out of our hair so we can make sure no one worse picks up where Trump has left off. I think Joe Biden is a decent man, and I’m glad to see someone decent in the White House. Trump is not a good person who cares about other people. That, in an of itself, makes him unsuitable to run anything involving other people, let alone a country.
I added my two-cents’ worth on McGeachin’s post….
Cool!
My comment was succinct. I just focused on the “law of supply and demand” aspect and said something to the effect that Republicans either don’t know basic economic principles, or that they DO know and just point fingers at Democrats for political reasons.
I could have made an acerbic comment about how Nixon and Ford (GOP Presidents) were in office when the Arabs embargoed shipments of oil to the U.S. in 1973 and 1974 because we supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, but such subtleties are lost on modern-day “conservatives.”
Yeah…. And I am actually sure McGeachin knows how this shit works. But the voters don’t.
It’s an old tactic, really. But many Americans are willfully ignorant about how the world works. (Of course, ignorance is a world-wide thing, and I’ve seen politicians exploit this everywhere.)
“gas has gone up because the demand is up, and there’s less to go around. That’s got nothing to do with Biden”. Well, he is revoking permits for pipelines that would increase supply which would then even out supply/demand and lower prices. So yes, Biden is playing a role in the increasing gas prices.
Biden and the Democrats also insist on more taxation of fossil fuels to both fund “green” initiatives and act as punitive measures against those who consume fossil fuels (just like they’ve done for tobacco).
Biden is terrible, Trump had his issues, end of the day we need less power for Federal Government to inflict as much influence as it does on our day-to-day.
Trump “had his issues”? Are you kidding me? The man is a sex offender. He openly admits to being a sex offender. He should be in prison. Would you want a female you care about to be within striking range of a man who brags about molesting women?
He is also quite proud of ripping people off, to include taxpayers. How much did taxpayers pay for staffers to stay in Trump properties so he could play golf and hang out with his rich asshole buddies at Mar-a-Lago?
I get not liking liberal politics, but why Trump? Do you realize that man would not piss on you if you were on fire? He would not deign to speak to you. He DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. He disdains rank and file Americans, which makes him utterly unsuitable to be the president. I thank GOD he lost, and hope he won’t be back to torture us more with his bullshit dictator wannabe tactics and embarrassing behaviors around other, more sensible, world leaders.
But if gas prices are the only thing you’re concerned about, along with higher taxes (to pay for much needed improved infrastructure and other things), I doubt there’s much I can say to sway you. Good luck with your world view.
Your post started about gas prices, so I tried to stay on that topic. I’m not sure how you equate my saying Trump had issues into thinking I am a Trump defender – I dislike the big government policies of both Trump and Biden and do not think either are good people. Congratulations on conflating everything into an anti-Trump rant though.
How am I supposed to take it when someone says, “Trump has his issues.”? To me, as a woman, they are more than just “issues”. His policies directly threaten me and all of the other American women who don’t happen to subscribe to his cult.
I started with gas prices because that was where I saw the comment that “Joe Biden sucks”. It was on a rant from a governor wannabe complaining about the price of gas. Personally, I think we have much bigger problems than gas prices. Americans have gotten away with cheap gas prices for years. Try living in Europe.
I make no secret that I despise Donald Trump. This is my space, so I’ll conflate all I want. You certainly don’t have to agree, but if you’re looking for a debate, you might want to go elsewhere.
Yes, Trump is a terrible person. Biden and the Democrats are not the answer to this problem though is all I’m saying. https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-allegations-women-2020-campaign-2019-6?op=1
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ca4bb26e4b0ed0d780f75da
But they are much better than Trump. Trump has set the bar very low, as far as I’m concerned. I used to vote Republican as a general rule. I don’t think I will again, thanks to Trump and the horrible people he’s emboldened like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, and the ever vile Mitch McConnell, whose wife I once met in the 90s, before I cared about politics.
Biden isn’t perfect. No one is. He wasn’t the person I wanted to see take on Trump. But I would still take Biden over Trump any day, simply because he isn’t a malignant narcissist.
Trump was a fucking disaster. In my lifetime, I never thought I’d see a President as bad or worse than James Buchanan (the one-term President who did nothing while the South seceded from the Union because the region had a collective temper tantrum over Abraham Lincoln’s election in November of 1860). I thought George W. Bush was bad; he actually looks like a “very stable genius” compared to the boorish, dishonest, adulterous con-man that the right fawns over as if he were the Second Coming of Christ.
Spare me the hand-wringing over fossil fuels and how the “poor oil companies” suffer so much from “unfair taxation” and federal regulation. You sound like a shill for the American Petroleum Institute.
I understand that we need oil and natural gas for the time being until new modes of powering ground and air vehicles can be developed. And I know that fossil fuels will be needed for a few more decades to generate electricity until we can come up with better, safer ways to harness nuclear power. But you make it sound as though things would be fine and dandy if we just leave the oil industry alone and let it do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and wherever it wants, and consequences be damned.
You really need a better education on how government works instead of regurgitating the same tired cliches of “Big Government Bad, no Government good” that conservative think-tanks funded by uber-wealthy billionaires like Robert Mercer and Peter Thiel have fed you since the 1970s.
Volvo told us in 2019 that they will soon be making electric vehicles exclusively…
Volvo has visionary leadership.
Well, they are now owned by the Chinese…. Maybe they are visionaries, or maybe they want money. But I do think electric is the way of the future for cars.
It is possible to make money and save the planet by building electric cars.
Also, I had no idea Volvo was owned by Chinese investors.
I didn’t either, until we took the factory tour.
The OP said Biden had nothing to do with the increasing gas prices, I simply said he canceled permits for pipelines which lowered supply and in turn raises prices if demand stays constant or increases. YOU have decided to blow that up into me somehow being a Trump evangelist and anti-government. You do realize Trump’s spending while in office grew the government sizeably so I can’t possibly be both.
After reading your comments, I can’t say I take anything you say seriously.
Bye.
Dude…. You seem to have missed that this rant was actually NOT just about gas prices. It was about people blaming Biden alone for high gas prices and other things.
I get that you like Trump, and that’s fine. Just keep that shit to your own page. No one who takes pride in grabbing women by the pussy is welcome here. And if you can’t see why that’s unwelcome, you aren’t welcome here, either.
There’s no reasoning with a guy whose Gravatar is Smokey the Bear saying, “Only You Can Prevent Communism.” That says all we need to know about him.
I will say this again, although I have no hope you will believe me. Trump is a terrible human who has done reprehensible things, we agree on that. I didn’t miss the point, I just only cared to address the one where we disagreed, on the point Trump is a walking humanitarian crisis we can agree if you will allow it.
Alright, we agree that Trump is a walking humanitarian crisis.
You go Jenny! We must start implementing alternative energy sources. The fact is fossil fuels are NOT infinite. We have to do a better job of taking care of the earth. All the signs are apparent. Anyway as you quoted me, when you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. Trump and his brand of Republicans are infested with fleas eating away at the flesh of democracy. Have an awesome day!!
Yeah…. I think we need to give up our love affair with gas.