TUESDAY UPDATE: At some point on Monday, Buck deleted the ridiculous Tweet below. Today, he re-upped the same inaccurate accusation…just with different words:
The White House is planning to treat illegal immigrants convicted of crimes like assault and drug offensives better than they do our own Keystone Pipeline workers. https://t.co/BDBzW1d7Fp
Buck was at his worst today on Twitter, combining multiple subjects into one stupefying and disgusting narrative. He is apparently still angry at President Biden for cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline and a few thousand jobs that did not yet exist but would have only been temporary anyway. Buck is also unhappy about a change in priorities for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that have been rejiggered into inaccurate right-wing talking points. And that’s how he ended up vomiting up this crap on social media:
Where to begin? First off, casually tossing around the word “rape” as an exclamation point for more clicks is disgusting and diminishes the very real issues of many different forms of sexual assault which he and the rest of the Republican Party would do well to take seriously.
Second, if you take Buck’s message at face value, his argument seems to be that…Keystone Pipeline workers are being deported to Canada? Nevermind that most of the actual jobs that were associated with the Keystone Pipeline were held byCanadians.
Maybe Rep. Ken Buck could think more and Tweet less.
Finally, the entire premise of Buck’s missive is factually wrong. As The Washington Post and other news outlets explained, the White House is absolutely NOT directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stop deporting immigrants convicted of assault and rape, which is probably why the cited Tweet from Katie Pavlich was deleted altogether. From The Washington Post:
While ICE’s new operational plans are not yet final, interim instructions sent to senior officials point to a major shift in enforcement. Agents will no longer seek to deport immigrants for crimes such as driving under the influence and assault, and will focus instead on national security threats, recent border crossers and people completing prison and jail terms for aggravated felony convictions…
…ICE officials say anyone unlawfully in the United States will still be subject to arrest, including people who committed crimes and were released before the memo was issued. Crimes such as sex offenses remain a top priority, they said.
“The commission of an aggravated felony is the most conclusive proof of a public safety threat,” ICE spokeswoman Jenny Burke said in a statement. “ICE retains its unlimited discretion to evaluate any conduct in defining a public safety threat.”
Not only is the Biden administration NOT restricting deportations for violent criminals, but acting ICE Director Tae Johnson recently confirmed to staff that agents should “prioritize” cases including “murder, rape, child abuse and major drug offenses.” In other words, THE EXACT OPPOSITE of the claim that Buck is repeating.
Buck’s ability to make a completely illogical argument while spreading misinformation would almost be impressive if we weren’t talking about an actual Member of Congress. Somehow, a man who has substantially lowered the bar on his own behavior since first getting elected to Congress in 2014 can still manage to find a way to dip ever lower.
This is nonsense on many fronts, most of all because the price is oil is fundamentally set on global markets. As the Congressional Research Service pointed out in late January, when there’s trouble in places like the Straits of Hormuz, the price of oil goes up for everyone and Keystone will make no difference, since the oil market is “globally integrated’; it’s not like Exxon offers a home-country discount to American motorists.
But in the case of the Keystone pipeline, it turns out there’s a special twist. At the moment, there’s an oversupply of tarsands crude in the Midwest, which has depressed gas prices there. If the pipeline gets built so that crude can easily be sent overseas, that excess will immediately disappear and gas prices for 15 states across the middle of the country will suddenly rise. Says who? Says the companies trying to build the thing. Transcanada Pipeline’s rationale for investors, and their testimony to Canadian officials, included precisely this point: removing the “oversupply’ and the resulting “price discount” would raise their returns by $2 to $4 billion a year.
We don't need the Keystone (we never did). We create enough agriculture waste annually to produce enough advanced biofuels to meet 1/3 of our domestic demand – it all boils down to national priorities and policy. Why wouldn't this dumb cluck advocate that our energy demands be met from our rural landscape, not Canadian tar sands? Or better yet, tilt that pipeline vertically? Maybe a 21st-century Strategic Biofuels Reserve?
From the quote you can, none of this is about meeting ‘our’ energy needs. This pipeline is about getting the stuff to ports so we can ship it abroad. Its the same right-wing logic as cutting down old growth forests to ship the wood overseas. Nothing matters except the dollars in a rich person’s bank account.
Reflecting on this growing body of social research, the climate writer Emily Atkin asked in a recent edition of her Heated newsletter: “Do you ever wonder what the planet might look like if men didn’t control the world?”
“I’m not talking about all cisgender men, or the entirety of the male gender,” she wrote. “Really, I’m just talking about people who believe that because they have penises, they are required to act in a traditionally, almost performatively masculine way—like ‘being strong’ and ‘never showing weakness’ and ‘not ordering sauvignon blanc.’”
“We don’t need the Keystone [XL] (we never did). “
Not true. We needed it to fuck Nicolás Maduro. Now, we don’t because Venezuelan oil production is in the crapper and will not recover for at least a decade.
February 08, 2021 12:58 pm
9 Comments
So, when did Bucknutz stop believing in “buyer’s remorse” and start believing in rapists, anyway?
Here’s a little hint: . . .
. . . it starts with, brown skin.
What an embarrassment to those of us with interests in his footprint.
It's been argued that completion of the KXL would increase the price of gasoline:
Keystone XL Would Raise Gas Prices, Not Lower Them
We don't need the Keystone (we never did). We create enough agriculture waste annually to produce enough advanced biofuels to meet 1/3 of our domestic demand – it all boils down to national priorities and policy. Why wouldn't this dumb cluck advocate that our energy demands be met from our rural landscape, not Canadian tar sands? Or better yet, tilt that pipeline vertically? Maybe a 21st-century Strategic Biofuels Reserve?
From the quote you can, none of this is about meeting ‘our’ energy needs. This pipeline is about getting the stuff to ports so we can ship it abroad. Its the same right-wing logic as cutting down old growth forests to ship the wood overseas. Nothing matters except the dollars in a rich person’s bank account.
They all have a bad case of Petro-Masculinity:
The Fossil Fuel Debate’s Most Bizarre Byproduct: “Petro-Masculinity”
Not true. We needed it to fuck Nicolás Maduro.
Now, we don’t because Venezuelan oil production is in the crapper and will not recover for at least a decade.
My money is on NEVER. The Oily Boyz are on a long slide to irrelevance. Blackrock has no confidence in their future.
I’ll stand by my statement 😬
If there was some way to ban lying in a political campaign, then the Republicans would have absolutely nothing left.
We need to update the old joke. How do you know when a Republican is lying? When they are moving their thumbs over their phone.