It’s called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a reason. Were it meant to be shamelessly used to shore up one’s political fortunes just ahead of a midterm shellacking, it’d be called the Tactical Petroleum Reserve.

Heck, the way Joe Biden has been raiding this critical repository, we might better describe it as the Strategic Polling Reserve. And, come to think of it, we already have. Clearly, the administration couldn’t care less.

Yesterday, our deeply desperate commander-in-chief announced the release of another 15 million barrels of oil from the reserve. In doing so, he ostensibly hopes to counteract recent production cuts announced by the OPEC+ nations. In reality, he hopes only to give the American people the impression that he feels their pain at the pump. He doesn’t, of course, but he has just 19 days to convince the dullards among us otherwise.

Just how deep and unprecedented has Biden’s continued plunder of our strategic reserves been? Here’s a picture that tells the story:

Regardless, there was Shameless Joe yesterday, prattling on with his demagogic conspiracy theory about Big Oil and corporate greed and profiteering. Biden insists that gas prices should rise and fall in concert with oil prices, but commodities don’t work that way. As journalist Dominic Pino notes: “The price of a barrel of oil is one factor in the price of gasoline, but there are others. Transportation costs, refining costs, and taxation all matter, too.”

One intrepid reporter actually engaged in journalism yesterday when he questioned the president about his raids on the SPR. Here’s the exchange:

REPORTER 1: “What is your response to Republicans who say you are only doing this SPR release to help Democrats in the midterms?”
BIDEN: “Where have they been in the last four months? That’s my response.”
REPORTER 2: “Is it politically motivated, sir—” [crosstalk]
BIDEN: “No, it’s not.”
REPORTER 2: “—three weeks before the midterms.”
BIDEN: “Look, it makes sense because I’ve been doing this for how long now? It’s not politically motivated at all.”

Ah, so it’s not politically motivated because he’s been shamelessly doing it during the entirety of the campaign season? Got it.

The New York Times made an in-kind contribution to the party of Joe Biden yesterday with this BIG Lie of a headline: “Biden Expands Effort to Secure U.S. Energy Independence.”

The term “energy independence” should never appear in the same sentence with the name of a Democrat, unless that term is directly preceded by “eschews,” “dismisses,” “abandons,” “scoffs at,” or “sabotages.”

The Times goes on to report that Biden merely wants to “blunt the pain of rising gas prices and reduce America’s exposure to global energy markets, which have become more volatile because of provocative actions by Russia and Saudi Arabia.” And this helps Biden push his see-through narrative of “Putin’s Price Hike” and the boomerang of his big-mouthed remarks about how he’ll make Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi regime “pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are” for the murder of an anti-Saudi FOOBL (friend of Osama bin Laden) named Jamal Khashoggi.

“Please, Mr. President,” write the editorial page editors of The Wall Street Journal, “stop calling it ‘Putin’s price hike.’ Russian exports have fallen a mere 560,000 barrels a day from pre-Ukraine war levels on a global supply of 101 million.”

As for the Saudis: Were there any justice in the world, House Republicans would begin impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden as soon as Kevin McCarthy snatches away the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi on January 3. The nakedness of Biden’s attempt to solicit the kingdom’s interference in our upcoming election, and his subsequent attempt to blackmail the Saudis, are far more egregious than anything Donald Trump was ever charged with.

“No one f***s with a Biden,” the president was caught saying on a hot mic recently. Unfortunately for Biden, and for every American who pumps gas into a vehicle, the Saudis haven’t gotten the memo. Indeed, they keep telling him to pound sand.

Regardless, Biden’s war on American energy continues unabated, and those chickens are now coming home to roost. As for his nonstop raiding of our strategic reserve, he’ll have to refill it at some point soon or leave our nation vulnerable to a real emergency. And when he does replenish it, we can safely bet that it won’t be at $24 per barrel, like Donald Trump shrewdly sought to do — before being blocked by the Democrats.

Between now and November 8, whenever you fill up your tank, kindly remind those around you that elections have consequences.