Holding to type, the editors of Baton Rouge’s declining local newspaper declined to assign a byline to their weakest and most insipid column. Rather than be held accountable individually for yesterday’s propaganda piece attempting to make stupid readers feel virtuous for getting screwed at the gas pump, the column was filed under “Our Views.”

“Our Views” means neither Lanny Keller, nor Mark Ballard, nor Will Sutton, nor Stephanie Grace were willing to declare themselves responsible for this…

Obviously, the discussion cannot be opened without first noting that our sacrifices are as nothing to those of the people of Ukraine. The Western commitment to all aid short of directly joining the war requires boycotts of Russian oil and gas, among other vital steps.

President Joe Biden ordered an end to imports of Russian oil, part of the effort against the evil aggression in Europe. That matters, although sanctions are an imperfect response to the rain of shells and missiles on Ukrainian cities and towns.

On the U.S. home front, though, the rise in gasoline prices is a problem. For one thing, it erases wage gains from a growing economy, which is a serious political issue at home. And “at home” means around kitchen tables.

And this…

The good news is that both consumers and American businesses understand what is ultimately at stake here.

Polling analyst Ron Faucheux cited a nationwide poll from Quinnipiac University that showed three-to-one support for banning Russian oil even if it leads to higher gas prices.

The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association’s Mike Moncla also spoke up for the Russian oil ban. “Fighting against Russian aggression shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” he said. “This is something that we can all come together on.”

We agree.

It’s an exceptionally stupid, and quite deceptive, column. It vomits up the false narrative of the Biden administration that imposing higher fuel prices on the American people is somehow a necessary evil in order to stand with the Ukrainians.

Which is utter and complete bullshit.

Let’s start with Moncla, because the Advocate’s scribblers didn’t use his whole statement. This is what LOGA actually put out yesterday…

“Today’s ban on Russian energy imports is an important step in applying pressure on Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

It’s clear that the Biden Administration hasn’t had domestic energy’s best interest in mind thus far.

Let’s not forget – the price of oil had doubled and the price of a gallon of gas had tripled before Russia invaded Ukraine’s sovereign borders.

That being said, today’s action is a positive step that Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress made possible.

Fighting against Russian aggression shouldn’t be a partisan issue. This is something that we can all come together on.”

Emphasis mine.

It isn’t Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which has pushed gas prices into the stratosphere. It’s the Biden administration’s war on domestic oil production. He shut down construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which when it was finished would have pushed more than 800,000 barrels of oil a day into American refineries (most of which is already coming, of course, but through more expensive means like rail cars and trucks; a continuous flow through an oil pipeline means cheap and reliable feedstock for those refineries which is largely unaffected by events across the globe). He shut down oil leases on federal lands and offshore waterbottoms. And he unleashed a plague of regulatory attacks on domestic oil production, while his leftist allies went on the attack against the energy sector through their fascistic “ESG” movement, the effect of which was that woke banks and equity funds refuse to finance oil and gas exploration and production projects, starving the industry of capital.

All of which has made the domestic oil industry so skittish that even with oil bouncing around $130 per barrel on the way up, they’re not interested in more drilling. They’ve been burned before, and so their attitude is that the higher price of oil gives them an opportunity to reward shareholders, pay off debt and stock up their bank accounts. Until an entire policy shift happens, none of them will stick their necks out and invest in big new plays.

And these dynamics, as Moncla notes, existed long before Putin invaded Ukraine. In fact, it would be far more accurate to say that the invasion of Ukraine was caused by the artificially inflated oil prices than the reverse. The Russian dictator saw his coffers fill up all last year, to the point that he believed he had the cash reserves sufficient to sustain an invasion of his neighbor and the leverage over the West that would enable him to prevail.

Hopefully Putin gets proven wrong, but that’s not the point. Rather than preen about the virtue in paying sky-high prices at the pump, as the Advocate’s dutiful morons insist, Americans ought to be red hot at the self-destructive incompetent leadership which puts us in a position to “sacrifice” at the gas station to begin with.

Domestic oil production fell off by a million and a half barrels a day during Biden’s first year in office. The Russian supply being cut off is 650,000 barrels a day. That Biden and his flunkies have outright lied about this figure is something an Advocate column on this subject should have at least touched on, but of course we didn’t get that yesterday, did we?

This is all very simple. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said something today that even the Advocate’s editors ought to be able to grasp, though obviously they don’t grasp it.

Now more than ever before, must we fully open up #DomesticEnergy production – especially in the Gulf of Mexico. https://t.co/hclaJnxGNY #BidenGasCrisis #lagov pic.twitter.com/ZmtD3wWrUI

— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) March 9, 2022

This might well be the worst newspaper in America. There is a lot of competition for that honor, but the Advocate is bound and determined to grasp that brass ring and they prove the case every time one of these asinine “Our Views” pieces emerges from the swamp off Siegen Lane.