IS JOE BIDEN UP PUTIN'S ASS LIKE HE IS CHINA'S RED ASS?
Biden: Pipelines for Putin, just not for America
Joe Biden's been "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades," as Bob Gates wrote in his memoir, so here we go again.
This time, he sanctioned the wrong country, giving Vladimir Putin a pass on his energy pipeline to Europe, while sanctioning America's pipeline from Canada. Only bad guys get sanctions, see, so guess who Biden's bad guy is.
According to Axios:
The Biden administration will waive sanctions on the corporate entity and CEO overseeing the construction of Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline into Germany, according to two sources briefed on the decision.
Why it matters: The decision indicates the Biden administration is not willing to compromise its relationship with Germany over this pipeline, and it underscores the difficulties President Biden faces in matching actions to rhetoric on a tougher approach to Russia.
Driving the news: The State Department will imminently send its mandatory 90-day report to Congress listing entities involved in Nord Stream 2 that deserve sanctions. Sources familiar with the drafting of the report tell Axios the State Department plans to call for sanctions against a handful of Russian ships.
As Axios noted:
This planned move seems at odds with Secretary of State Antony Blinken's statement, made during his confirmation hearing: "I am determined to do whatever we can to prevent that completion" of Nord Stream 2.
Number one, I doubt it was planned, given the New York Times' reporting on senile Joe's foggy decision-making style, with its long ditherings punctuated by flashes of furious impulse.
More to the point, it's inchoate as foreign policy goes.
Axios believes that the idea is to keep our ally Germany, a country that squelched its own nuclear power industry with the idea of "going green," and then found itself in Putin's palm for its bona fide energy needs, happy.
Biden's call is also going to make Putin happy, snickering to himself that Biden is powerless to stop his plan to get Germany on Russia's string for energy. Axios notes that Putin has a history of cutting off energy to countries that don't play ball with it on other issues, as has done on numerous occasions to Ukraine. What Putin did to Ukraine with its energy shutoffs, it will now be empowered to do to Germany, too.
And by empowering Russia as an energy petro-tyrant with America's critical ally in Germany, it certainly brings up questions as to what Putin, through his still-world class intelligence agencies, might have on Biden, given the grotesque dribs and drabs of corruption involving foreigners just in his son Hunter's abandoned laptop. Hunter's laptop could be the tip of an iceberg based on all the evidence out there of House Biden corruption.
It's certainly been noticed in Congress.
A week after Russian hackers shut down a U.S. pipeline, President Biden lifted sanctions on a Russian pipeline.
— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) May 18, 2021
What does Vladimir Putin have on President Biden??
Here's a third thing: it certainly makes Iran happy, too, given that Biden's favor to Putin signals that he's getting Russia on his good side in order to lay the groundwork for restarting the hideous Iran deal. That empowers both Iran and Russia (historic allies) at the expense of America, Israel, and the decent Arab states in the region.
Geopolitics aside, it's not gone unnoticed that as Biden waves through Russia's pipeline project with Germany, he's squelched America's pipeline project with Canada, which, like the Nord Stream project, has been years in the planning and making. Some 10,000 jobs are expected to be lost with this one, with Joe telling the workers to go get work capping wells, installing Chinese-made solar panels made with slave labor, or learning to code.
This comes at a time when Biden's greenie nonsense against America is causing it to lose its pre-eminence as an energy exporter, and making America, too, like Germany, now dependent on foreign petro-tyrants for its energy needs, all in the name of going green. As Biden shuts down America's pipelines from its good ally Canada (which has zero history of cutting off energy to its neighbors over foreign policy disputes), it gives the green light to Putin to go ahead.
This comes at a bad time. A critical U.S. pipeline was subject to a ransomware attack by dark-web thieves, possibly Russian gangsters, who got away with it. They were last heard from planning more attacks.
The U.S., meanwhile, has lost its potential leverage over neighbors as an energy-exporter, should it want to do that, by Biden's war on energy-producers, shutting down not just the Keystone XL pipeline with Canada, but drilling on federal lands. The Axios piece talks of Biden retaining "leverage" with Germany by retaining the threat of sanctions, as if he were some great strategic thinker, but this is bee ess in light of Biden's self-disarmament of America's own energy leverage in his pipeline shutdowns. What a master strategic thinker!
Call it an America-last, Putin-first foreign policy. The Russians must be laughing. Bob Gates, despite what he's said recently, must be nodding ruefully, too. Pipeline for thee, but not for me — what a winner this clown in the White House has come up with.
Biden's Decision to Waive Sanctions on Putin’s Russia-to-Germany Pipeline Slammed as ‘Unacceptable’
(CNSNews.com) – The Biden administration’s decision to waive sanctions against the main players in the controversial Russia-Germany gas pipeline project has been welcomed by Germany and Russia, but critics in Washington are appalled.
“Biden has vastly strengthened Putin’s hands at the expense of the rest of the Free World,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of two Republicans who authored sanctions legislation in 2019 that helped freeze work on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline through most of last year.
“This is a huge win for Putin and a blow to the security of our Eastern European allies,” commented Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), while House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) called the move “wholly unacceptable” and “irresponsible.”
Calling on President Biden to lift the waivers immediately, McCaul reiterated concerns that Nord Stream 2 will “threaten Ukraine’s security, deepen Europe’s dangerous energy dependence on the Kremlin and further enrich the corrupt Putin regime.”
Those same concerns have been stated, repeatedly, by the Biden administration, with officials calling the pipeline a “bad idea,” and a “Russian malign influence project.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken did so again on Wednesday, in a statement confirming the department’s statutorily required periodic report to Congress.
“We will continue to oppose the completion of this project, which would weaken European energy security and that of Ukraine and Eastern flank NATO and E.U. countries,” he said. “Our opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is unwavering.”
The $11 billion Nord Stream 2 project aims to pipe natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, doubling the annual supply from the existing Nord Stream pipeline, which began operating in late 2011.
Critics in the U.S. and European Union worry it will heighten European dependence on Russia for energy supplies, boosting Moscow’s economic and political leverage. The Kremlin has a track record of using its energy resources as a political lever in bilateral disputes.
Ukraine, whose government is deeply at odds with Russia, fears the new pipeline may jeopardize billions of dollars Kyiv now earns in transit fees for Russian gas piped westward across Ukrainian territory.
Germany and other supporters say the project is a purely commercial one that will benefit Europeans.
That message has not resonated across the E.U., however. The European Parliament has now voted three times in opposition to Nord Stream 2, most recently last January.
Despite the Biden administration’s stated opposition to Nord Stream 2, and even as the administration claims to be “committing to using all available diplomatic tools to make sure” the pipeline isn’t completed – in the words of State Department deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter on Wednesday – it has chosen to waive sanctions on the parties at the core of President Vladimir Putin’s pet project.
While sanctions will go ahead against four ships and several other entities involved in the construction, Blinken said he had “determined that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application of sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG, its CEO Matthias Warnig, and Nord Stream 2 AG’s corporate officers.”
Nord Stream 2 AG, the company leading the project, is a consortium led by the Russian state-owned Gazprom.
Warnig is a controversial figure, whose shadowy past includes a career in the former East Germany’s notorious Stasi intelligence agency and a longstanding relationship with Putin, himself a former KGB officer.
(Warnig’s official bio on the company website says he “had several functions in the German Democratic Republic’s government from 1981 to 1990, including roles in the foreign trade ministry and the Cabinet.” It is silent on the years prior to 1981. He reportedly began working for the Stasi in 1974.)
Blinken provided no reason in his statement for the “national interest” justification for waiving sanctions against the company responsible for the pipeline and its CEO. But Germany is a close U.S. ally, and the Biden administration has touted its focus on strong transatlantic ties, even as it voices opposition to Nord Stream 2.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters on Wednesday Berlin saw the waiver decision as “constructive,” saying that it took into consideration “the extraordinarily good relations that have been established with the Biden administration.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, speaking before Blinken’s statement was issued, said Moscow was awaiting official confirmation, but viewed reports anticipating the decision in a positive light.
Blinken’s announcement was issued hours before he was scheduled to hold his first meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on the sidelines of an Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Iceland.
‘If Donald Trump did this …’
Former President Trump’s vocal opposition to Nord Stream 2 caused a chill with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Coupled with his criticism over Germany’s defense spending, it played a key role in Trump’s decision to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Germany – a move reversed under Biden.
“Germany pays Russia billions of dollars a year for Energy, and we are supposed to protect Germany from Russia,” he tweeted last summer. “What’s that all about?”
U.S. opposition went beyond rhetoric on Twitter. Under legislation Trump signed into law at the end of 2019 – authored by Cruz and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and inserted into a defense policy bill – construction of the pipeline came to an abrupt halt under threat of sanctions.
Work only resumed last December – after the U.S. presidential election – and is now reportedly 95 percent complete.
Biden and the Democrats repeatedly characterized Trump as pro-Russia and pro-Putin (and charged that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election – an allegation which special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was unable to substantiate.)
“If Donald Trump did this, Nancy Pelosi would be launching a third impeachment effort today,” Gary Bauer, president of the conservative think tank American Values, commented on Wednesday in response to the sanctions waiver reports.
Cruz: Four Months into It, Biden Is ‘Crawling in Bed’ with Putin, Russia
Wednesday on FNC’s “Hannity,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) questioned the Biden administration’s double standard that applies to energy policy.
Cruz not only took issue with the administration’s handling of the Colonial Pipeline hack but signing off on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting Germany and Russia while opposing the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Partial transcript as follows:
CRUZ: Sadly, I can’t shed a lot of light on it. It’s absolutely crazy what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are doing.
On day one in office, Joe Biden shut down the Keystone pipeline. He destroyed 11,000 jobs, high-paying jobs, including 8,000 union jobs.
Then Biden sat by and allowed Russian hackers to hack the Colonial Pipelines, producing gas lines up and down the Eastern Seaboard. He did nothing to defend it. He sat by while they paid a ransom to hackers.
And now, his reward to Russia for Russian hackers shutting down a major infrastructure pipeline in the Eastern Seaboard, is today he signed a waiver basically greenlighting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a pipeline from Russia to Germany.
Congress has twice passed bipartisan sanctions to stop this pipeline. I authored those sanctions. We stopped it. For a year, it was shut down. It was a piece of metal at the bottom of the ocean. Putin began rebuilding the pipeline right after Biden was elected. Today, he issued a waiver.
And basically what Joe Biden has decided is pipelines in America, bad. Jobs in America, bad. Pipelines in Russia, good. Jobs in Russia, good.
And this is exactly backward. It is asinine. And four months into it, Joe Biden is crawling in bed with Putin and Russia and the enemies of America. It doesn’t make any sense.
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