Having shut down huge swathes of U.S. energy production and watching energy prices rise ahead of elections, Joe Biden is getting a little desperate as re-election time approaches.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has already been emptied. Iran has been handed its money. Arab oil producers have been insulted and alienated and aren't producing any extra oil.

What left to get oil prices down then but lifting sanctions on Venezuela's oil?

Anything but open the U.S. to more drilling.

Which is exactly what Joe Biden has done:

Get a load, from the Washington Post:

The Biden administration on Wednesday eased oil, gas and gold sanctions against Venezuela a day after the government of President Nicolás Maduro and the U.S.-backed opposition agreed to terms for a competitive presidential election next year.

The Treasury Department issued a general license authorizing U.S. companies to engage in long-barred transactions primarily in the state-controlled energy sector. It said the license is to be valid for six months, to be renewed only if the authoritarian socialist government “meets its commitments” for elections and “with respect to those who are wrongfully detained.”

The agreement signed by the government and opposition politicians Tuesday, following years of on-again, off-again negotiations, could be a breakthrough in the South American nation’s stifling political stalemate. The Biden administration promised to consider suspending some sanctions in exchange for progress.

He's easing sanctions on one of the most revolting human-rights violating regimes in the world, a regime so blatantly undemocratic it cheated in everyone's faces during the 2019 elections. Other sanctions were placed on this country based on its drug-dealing and money-laundering activities, which includes shipping illegals into the U.S. with the drugs. 

Dozens of countries, including the U.S., cut ties to the Maduro dictatorship and recognized the legislatively enacted acting president, Juan Guaido, to the presidency. Joe Biden came along and pretty well "forgot" that the U.S. did that and went back to recognizing the Maduro regime.

Now we are to believe that Maduro, who has cheated in every election he's ever been elected in, along with the Chavista regime, which has cheated ever since the country's 2004 recall referendum, will clean up its act and run free and fair elections, based on its deal, which the U.S. claims is Venezuelan-on-Venezuelan alone, with one part of the opposition called Unity.

How many times have we been around this block before? It must have been dozens. Fact is, Maduro is never going to leave the presidential palace other than in a coffin with his handpicked successor firmly in the saddle. He took his dictator lessons from the Cuban Castro regime and the lesson stuck.

This 'conditionality on lifting sanctions for in exchange for an end to electoral cheating, and from an electoral cheat himself in the White House, has 'bogus' written all over it.

Here's the creepy part: Venezuela's authentic opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, an honest, straight-shooting presidential contender who would probably win a fair election there, and who has opposed Chavismo since the days of George W. Bush and whose field of expertise before she went into politics, was ascertaining whether elections were free and fair, was ... not included in this scam oil-for-elections deal.

Here is her tweet about it:

To my Venezuelan fellow citizens and the international community: pic.twitter.com/xrCOZ4N3vB

— María Corina Machado (@MariaCorinaYA) October 18, 2023

So the "three stooges" who are running U.S. policy on Venezuela and who have just instituted a phony go-around to get Venezuela out of sanctions so it can pump oil for Joe Biden, somehow, didn't think to include Machado, who knows what a fair election is, in this set-up. They've been trying to get sanctions dropped and get Venezuela to pump oil for us since the beginning of the Biden presidency. And yes, they are called 'The Three Stooges' by experienced professional diplomats. 

Sound fishy? It does to me -- and everyone else who's been watching Venezuela for years.

This isn't about free elections in Venezuela. It's about rigged elections in the U.S., and Joe Biden's prospects for getting re-elected.

Image: Nicolas Raymond, via Flickr // CC BY 2.0