Cons have been threatening to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas exploration because, of course they have. What, after all, is profitable about a refuge? To heck with that. Oil, baby. Because nothing says ‘moving forward’ like tying ourselves to yesterday’s energy source for years to come. Since it IS the among the stupidest choices humans might make, leave it to 47 to make it. And – spoiler alert – he did.

Last Friday, officials held an oil and gas lease sale. It was the third lease sale since 2021. Republicans included it in Lying Don’s “Big, Ugly Bill.” They’ve mandated at least four lease sales through 2035, each offering 400,000 acres. The first sale happened at the end of 47’s first term, in 2021. No major oil companies bid and only one smaller local operation, Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) participated.

The second offering was made during 2025, at the end of the Biden administration. No bids were made. Now this one. Again, no major oil companies participated and only two Alaska companies, HEX Energy, LLC and AIDEA participated. Only five of the 58 bids on offer received bids.

If you hate animals and people alike – like Team Evil – you think the sale was a great success. BLM Director Steve Pearce contrasted the Trump administration policies to those of the Biden administration in a statement he released: “This lease sale is another important step toward restoring American Energy Dominance and responsibly developing the vast resources Congress directed us to make available in the Coastal Plain,” Pearce said. “The previous administration did everything in its power to discourage industry from development in the Coastal Plain. The strong industry interest we saw today reflects confidence in Alaska’s resource potential and the Trump administration’s commitment to providing certainty for investment.”

All the standard tropes. Oh, “American Energy Dominance.” Sure, in yesterday’s energy source. The sun is the future whether cons like it or not. “The strong industry interest we saw” didn’t include any of the major players. How strong was it? And the regime’s “commitment to providing certainty for investment?” Could there BE a less certain investment?

See, on the other side, people don’t want the comparatively small amount of oil under ANWR to be developed over the sanctity of the refuge. There’s a LOT of pushback. Leases have changed hands, but, so far, nobody is drilling. That’s because the leases are NOT a “certain investment.”

The opposition includes the Gwich’in Steering Committee, which represents Gwich’in Athabascan tribal members in northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada. They released a statement that read, “the result of today’s lease sale speaks for itself. Yet again, no major oil and gas companies showed up to bid, because they know that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a losing proposition.” Their focus is mostly on protecting the landscape for wildlife. But there’s economic failure, too.

Another opposing organization, Taxpayers for Common Sense, pointed out the fiscal folly in their own statement. The Vice-President of the organization, Autumn Hanna, wrote: “From two previous failed lease sales that delivered less than 1% of promised revenue, taxpayers already know that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a bad deal. Today’s lease sale is yet another reminder that oil and gas development in the Refuge is high-risk, low reward with zero interest from real industry players. Americans will not see relief at the pump and, instead, face greater risks from the drilling in a sensitive region.”

There were a LOT of other voices in opposition, too, and that’s the main problem. Would YOU invest the millions of dollars necessary to develop your lease knowing every day the lease might be suspended or shut down entirely? You might. And you might lose all of that money.

This is an amazing, stunningly stupid fight, working to secure more of yesterday’s technology. But then, I’m learning, daily, that FAR too many Americans are amazingly, stunningly stupid. I mean, some people will believe anything. We need oil for all kinds of products so, sure, let’s burn it all up in our gas tanks. Why not? Oh, because it’s heating the Earth and threatening our biosphere?

What part of ‘maximizing shareholder profit’ do I not understand? The simple truth is, oil prices can be manipulated in ways solar can not and greed says, ‘keep using oil, good idea or bad.’ Greed kills, and I’d call that bad…

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Yeah, yeah, California takes a while to count their ballots. BFD. I’d rather they get it right, than get it quickly. Californians use a LOT of mail-in ballots and they get counted after the polling place ballots. It takes longer but it’s accurate. Our National Embarrassment, the Drumpfster, is just certain that means the election is “rigged.” When it comes to Donny, you can choose demented or stupid, but those are really the only choices.

He has never ONCE offered even the slightest evidence of his assertion – and he’s delusional. I wouldn’t take his word for what day of the week it is without a calendar nearby. I’m not even talking about verifiable proof, either. Just a little supporting evidence of his claim. Nope. Can’t do that. Why not? Well, because he doesn’t have any! He just wants you to believe him, like he just wants you to believe the economy is booming, despite all of the available evidence to the contrary.

He’s just angry that his preferred bootlicker, Spencer Pratt, has fallen a little behind Nithya Raman for second place in the race. That might leave Raman facing off against Karen Bass in November with Pratt outside looking in, and where Donny can’t get toadies, he sees cheating. I suspect Pratt only did as well as he did because he’s on television and people recognize him, and he might still move into second position. It takes a while to count votes in California – because we get it right…

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Think about this. Elon buys Twitter for $44 billion dollars and immediately transforms it into Brand X, a conservative hell-hole of misinformation, rendering the site nearly useless to decent people and hurting the value. But it got rid of Twitter.

Skydance paid $8 billion dollars for Paramount, the parent company of CBS, then removes their best late night host, Stephen Colbert, replacing him with hack comedians, and then goes on the attack against one of it’s flagship shows, ’60 Minutes.’ Lovely. CBS is being quickly transformed into a network nearly useless to decent people and hurting the value. But it’s getting rid of ’60 Minutes.’ Hell, it’s getting rid of CBS.

That $44 billion and the $8 billion are just pocket change to those guys. It’s like you buying a candy bar and deciding you don’t like it. You can throw it away without lamenting the loss of the couple of bucks you spent buying it. It’s just as easy for them to “throw away” billions of dollars to get rid of something THEY don’t like. But in both cases, the public has suffered.

The end result of letting people and companies pile up so much cash is their ability to corrupt society in whatever way they see fit. After the revolution, let’s go back to limiting how much people and companies can control through aggressive taxation in a specific effort to redistribute wealth. You want to make America Great Again? That includes a 92% top tax bracket. That’s what it was the LAST time America was great. The two went hand-in-hand…