Biden’s blunders
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Give me Liberty
Rodger Williamson
If you have read any of my previous contributions, you already know that I am neither a fan of Republicans nor Democrats. I am neither a fan of Biden nor most other presidents of our modern past. I am not a fan of any form of big government, as I believe in our Constitution.
I believe in small government, free trade, big liberty, and personal responsibility, and I will rip equally upon all who wish to exceed their constitutional authority or use the power of government to force their will upon we-the-people. I am confident that I have already fairly ripped upon Joe Biden and given him his due; however, recent news announcements gave me pause to consider a timeline of Biden’s blunders and failures thus far.
To sum up the entirety of Biden’s political accomplishments to date, Robert Gates, the former defense secretary for Barack Obama, stated in 2014 that “I think he (Biden) has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Regardless of his past political track record, Biden ran for, and won, the presidency in 2020, and we all have been stuck with him since.
Creating a chronological list of Biden’s failures, gaffes and errors has proven difficult, as many of them overlap, but I shall endeavor to do my best to sort them out and break them down to fit within the restrictions of the printed page.
One debacle that began before Biden was elected was the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in August of 2021. U.S. troops had been in an undeclared war in Afghanistan since shortly after the Osama bin Laden / Al Qaeda terrorist attacks of 9-11-01. As the United States was approaching the twentieth anniversary of the attacks, then President Trump signaled that he wanted U.S. troops out of Afghanistan prior to 9-11-21.
Trump then failed to get reelected, making Biden the new commander, who, in order to make the withdrawal order his own, moved the date earlier to 8-30-21. While pulling out of Afghanistan was always the intended plan, leaving before Afghan forces were prepared; abandoning the Bagram Air Base before evacuating all American citizens and Afghan allies; and leaving American citizens, weapons and equipment for the Taliban to commandeer; Biden committed both a strategic, and a humanitarian, blunder that cost lives.
Another issue that had begun before Biden became the president was the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden continued governmental violations of the 1st Amendment right of the people peaceably to assemble. Furthermore, despite his so-called “pro-choice” posture, by September of 2021 Biden sought to force Americans to put vaccines into their bodies by issuing a vaccine-or-test mandate for most American workers.
The mandate was rightfully overruled by the Supreme Court, but not before untold thousands of citizens who had no desire to get the vaccine either did so as a forced condition of employment, or stood their ground and lost their job.
Following Donald Trump’s lead, when Congress approved a third round of stimulus checks, Biden signed off on the bill without regard to what dumping that much unearned currency into the economy would do. While inflation has been the policy of the Federal Reserve for more than a century, the dump of stimulus funds compounded the already-existing problem, making Biden partially responsible for the current inflation numbers as he failed to veto his round of stimulus checks. Without a clue as to the understanding of basic economics, Biden wants to spend trillions more, which will then make inflation even worse than it already is.
The most recent of Biden’s blunders to affect us all began with his campaign promises back during the 2020 presidential campaign. On Day-1 of Biden taking office, Biden ripped off nine executive orders, with number 6 (E.O. 13990) effectively shutting down all work on the Keystone XL Pipeline and undoing all that had been accomplished by the prior administration toward making the United States more energy independent.
Simple economics dictate that when unchanged demand is coupled with a reduced supply, it will equate to an increase in prices, and prices rose. Biden then compounded the national energy problem that he created when he announced in March of 2022 that he was authorizing a tap into the United States’ oil reserve.
Simple economics also dictate that unchanged demand, when coupled with the appearance of an increase of supply, will equate to a temporary decrease in prices, but only until the public realizes that the temporary supply will end, causing prices to again inflate. Instead of saving the stockpile for an actual real emergency, or resurrecting the energy projects that he had killed, Biden authorized the largest release from our reserve stockpile in history, with the selling of 1 million barrels of oil per day, for six months, from our national emergency reserve, banking upon the good will of foreign oil producers to satisfy the U.S. energy demand.
Coincidentally, at the very same time, Russia opted to invade its neighbor of Ukraine, and on April 6 of 2022, President Biden issued Executive Order 14071 – essentially mandating economic sanctions upon the second largest oil producer in the world and a member of “OPEC+” that Biden had been betting upon to provide oil to meet the U.S. demand.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s third largest oil producer and the leading member of OPEC. In July of 2022, Biden personally slighted Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman when Biden avoided a traditional handshake greeting with the official representative of a nation that Biden had previously vowed to treat as a “pariah” for their differing cultural views regarding human rights, and instead “fist-bumped” the prince.
Let us say that the slight by Biden did not go over well with the Saudis, or the rest of OPEC. This just in (and while completely unrelated to the fist-bump incident), OPEC announced this week that it was making additional oil output cuts of around 1.16 million barrels per day (exceeding Biden’s tapped amount into the U.S. oil reserve). Analysts and economists everywhere immediately predicted an immediate correlating rise in fuel prices with the announced decrease in supply.
Unfortunately I must stop here because of the limitations of space, but I have much, much more to add that will be in my column for next week’s paper.