Such A Lonely Word

Honesty, the famous song by Billy Joel, was released in 1978. The memorable chorus goes like this: “Honesty is such a lonely word, everyone is so untrue. Honesty is hardly ever heard, and mostly what I need from you.” These words would serve nicely as an anthem for our political discourse in the United States. As I’ve stated before, politicians have a very slippery relationship with the truth. Like Billy Joel, many voters bemoan the fact that consistent honesty is very rare in the political sphere. Yet honesty is what we most need from our leaders. All Americans hope that our elected officials will employ wise policies which will allow us to prosper and flourish. But if we do not have a solid grasp on the truth about our world and the problems we face, there is little chance that such wise policies will be implemented. In fact, if politicians deceive themselves and others, it is quite certain that their actions will actually make things much worse.

So when it comes to choosing our leaders, honesty is crucial. Voters should consistently hold our all of our leaders accountable when they engage in deception.

The dynamic of the 2020 election was such that many Americans – and some Christians – voted for Joe Biden believing that he was a man who offered superior character to Donald Trump. Many voters arrived at this conclusion based upon relentlessly negative media coverage which portrayed Trump as a pathological liar. Meanwhile, the media thrust Joe Biden forward as a paragon of virtue – the man who would lead our nation out of darkness and back into the light of truth. Unfortunately, the mainstream media outlets have themselves become strongholds of deceit. Sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and NBC have become de facto propaganda organizations working feverishly on behalf of the Democratic Party. And not just the Democratic Party, but the most radical elements of the Democratic Party.

So a little more than one year into his presidency, it’s well worth taking a closer look at Joe Biden’s track record. How has he done when it came to telling the truth? In a previous blog, we’ve already described the long sequence of calumnies spouted by Joe Biden regarding election law. The “voter suppression” lie has become a central theme for the entire Democratic-Media establishment with no end in sight. But Joe Biden has engaged in many other deceptions.

Following the Afghanistan debacle, Biden denied that his military advisors had advised him to keep at least some American troops in place in order to maintain the relative stability which Afghanistan had enjoyed over the past several years. We soon learned that this was a blatant lie. Based on sworn testimony before Congress, it became clear that all of Biden’s top generals had consistently urged the President to keep at least 2,500 troops in place. They warned Biden that a full withdrawal would risk a rapidly deteriorating situation whereby the Afghan military and government would collapse. Oops.

Soon thereafter, Biden was smearing the poor border control agents who were attempting to control the chaotic situation along our southern border. Stationed in Del Rio, Texas, border patrol agents mounted on horseback were doing precisely what they’d been trained to do – deterring migrants from illegally crossing the border. Joe Biden soon went before the American people, falsely accusing the border patrol of running over migrants with their horses and whipping migrants with their reins. Biden seethed: “It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay.” In this case, Biden’s lie was exposed almost immediately. Eyewitness testimony and video evidence demonstrated that the agents had never struck or whipped anyone. Yet the President never apologized to the agents he had slandered and threatened.

Joe Biden made the “Build Back Better” bill the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. The President clearly has a very shallow reservoir of energy. But whatever enthusiasm he can still muster, the President used to lobby Congress on behalf his signature legislation. The BBB bill is an amazingly misguided and irresponsible splurge of government spending. We can all thank Senator Joe Manchin that this monstrosity didn’t pass for the bill would have fueled inflation and deficits for years to come.

However, our main purpose here is not a political analysis but an assessment of Biden’s character. Once again, on that account Joe failed miserably. One honest assessment of the BBB bill determined that it would cost a breathtaking $3.5 trillion dollars over a 10 year period. (Yes, that’s trillion with a ‘t’!) The Biden administration and congressional democrats employed all kinds of accounting trickery in order to pretend that the price tag was only $1.75 trillion. Yet even this figure was apparently too much for Biden. In late September, Biden astonishingly tweeted that “my build back better agenda cost zero dollars.” This ridiculous piece of mendacity was immediately mocked across the political spectrum. Yet a few days later, Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki repeated the false claim.

More recently, the Biden administration has done everything it can to deflect blame for record high gasoline prices. During the presidential campaign, Joe portrayed himself as a moderate. But since assuming office, it has become sadly obvious that Biden is beholden to the most deluded and radical elements of the environmental left. In the past year, Joe Biden has done everything he can to hinder domestic energy production.

On the day Biden was inaugurated, the national average for gasoline was $2.37 per gallon. Just before to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, gas prices has risen to $3.53 per gallon, a painful increase of $1.16. This 49% surge was the direct result of Joe Biden’s war on energy. Since the Russian invasion, the price of gasoline has spiked up to $4.32 per gallon (as of March 12), a further increase of $0.79. Now the responsibility for this latest surge in prices can quite reasonably be laid at the feet of Vladimir Putin. However, long before to the Russian incursion, Biden’s policies had done substantial harm.

Every president’s values are reflected in the first actions they take upon assuming power. On his first day in office, Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition to providing an estimated 11,000 high paying jobs, the Keystone XL pipeline would have allowed 830,000 barrels of Canadian oil per day to reach American refineries on the gulf coast of Texas. This far exceeds the 672,000 barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products that the US imported from Russia in 2021. Yet with one swipe of the pen, Biden killed this important project.

Sadly, Biden was just warming up. His administration refused to allow drilling on federal lands and offshore oil fields despite being ordered to do so by a federal judge. Moreover, under Joe Biden’s direction, the federal government has repeatedly used it’s regulatory power to obstruct oil and gas companies – all while bizarrely attempting to thrust the blame onto the companies themselves.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki recently asserted, “There are 9,000 approved drilling permits that are not being used. So the suggestion that we are not allowing companies to drill is inaccurate. The suggestion that that is what is hindering or preventing gas prices to come down is inaccurate.” Psaki’s comments are another flagrant lie. Psaki knows full well that most of these unused drilling permits have been hindered either by litigation (encouraged by the Biden administration) or fierce bureaucratic resistance. Joe himself recently claimed, “It is simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. It’s simply not true.” It must take a certain kind of boldness to stand before the American people and spout such brazen lies. No doubt Joseph Goebbels would be proud.

Dramatic inflation is one of the most pernicious problems facing Americans today. Prices have soared 7.9% over the last 12 months – the highest level of inflation in over 40 years. Inflation has been powered by unrestrained spending by Democrats in Congress and foolish monetary policy by the leftists at the Federal Reserve. As always, the surge in prices has been particularly hard on the poor and working class. In fact, thanks to raging inflation, American workers took a significant pay cut in 2021, with real average hourly wages declining by 2.4%. Joe Biden knows that Americans are suffering, yet he refuses to take any responsibility for this rolling catastrophe.

The president has vigorously denied that government spending has made any contribution to inflation. Joe Biden has never been regarded as a man of high intelligence, but even he can understand that dramatically increasing the money supply inevitably causes the devaluation of the currency. He has simply made a deliberate choice to deceive the American people. Instead, Biden unconvincingly attempted to shift blame onto – you guessed it – Vladimir Putin. Yet inflation had already reached 7.5% long before Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Space precludes us from further exploring the mountain of Biden’s deceptions. We could go on for days. Some of these falsehoods are of the less harmful variety, such as his serial fabrications about driving an 18 wheeler (he didn’t), or being arrested at a civil rights protest (nope), or that he had visited the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh following the shooting there in 2018 (he called the rabbi but never visited). Unfortunately, many of Biden’s lies are much more serious and damaging.

No doubt Biden often deceives because he knows that the media will cover for him. Of course, the media were obsessed with Donald Trump’s dishonesty. Trump’s mendacity will be the subject of a future blog, especially since it looks like the Donald might be back on the presidential ticket in 2024. But let’s not pretend that Joe Biden is any less of a liar than Trump, or that his lies are any less damaging to our country.