RUTHFULLY YOURS

Joe Biden’s first 46 months in the White House were an exercise in political vandalism, the effects of which the world will be dealing with for years. But it wasn’t enough for him. He’s accelerated his offensive on his way out. Inauguration Day can’t arrive soon enough.

The candidate who ran in 2020 on restoring dignity to the office of the president is a small and petty man. This is not a revelation but a fact known since he “served” in the U.S. Senate and was especially evident when ran for president the first time, nearly four decades ago, dropping out after he could no longer cover his serial lies, blatant plagiarism and the vicious side of his personality.

So it’s not in the least surprising that he would try to burn down the world around him as he moves toward the door. Following is a brief glimpse of Biden’s efforts to handicap the next president and add needless hassles and costs to the lives of everyday Americans.

Energy

An executive order designed to permanently ban new offshore oil and gas development along some yet undetermined coastlines is expected to be issued soon. The decree will be difficult for Donald Trump to reverse, as it “is rooted in a 72-year-old law that gives the White House wide discretion to permanently protect US waters from oil and gas leasing without explicitly empowering presidents to revoke the designations,” Bloomberg reports.

It’s a red-hot poker in the eye of Trump, whose agenda includes U.S. energy dominance, and average Americans, whose wallets will be adversely affected by higher energy prices.

Biden is also “attempting to implement last-minute restrictions on oil and gas drilling,” says Fox News, pursuing a “20-year ban on oil and gas leases in 264,000 acres of Nevada’s Ruby Mountains.”

The day after Christmas, Biden’s Energy Department adopted “conservation standards for gas-fired instantaneous water heaters” effectively outlawing a significant segment of that market in four to five years.

Another “December surprise” intended to undermine Trump’s reasonable and rational energy policy was the administration’s “ambitious new climate target under the Paris Agreement” that mandates slashing “greenhouse gas emissions by 61% to 66% below 2005 levels by 2035.” Charles Rotter at Watts Up With That? called it “a final act of defiance before Trump takes the reins and charts a radically different course.”

Foreign Policy

Matthew Petti of Reason suggests that Biden has considered leaving “a very big mess on President-elect Donald Trump’s desk” by bombing Iran’s nuclear sites before his term is over. Not that doing so would be such a terrible idea. A nuclear-armed Islamist regime poses a grave danger.

But the timing is suspect. Biden could have taken out the mullah’s atomic weapons program at any time during his watch. Instead, he’s thought about dumping a problem on Trump’s shoulders and escaping the responsibility that would come with such an operation. Should Biden follow through, it would not be done in the interest of national security but rather the spiteful act of a wretched man.

An interesting reminder from Petti: Four years ago, the left was accusing Trump, whom Biden called a reckless warmonger, of having plans to attack Iran and saddle Biden with a Middle East war.

Student Loans

Though he has been told by the U.S. Supreme Court to cease making executive decisions that are not within his constitutional purview, Biden granted another round of student loan debt forgiveness just before Christmas. This time, it was $4.28 billion of relief for 54,900 borrowers.

Personal Vendetta

With his last days coming fast, Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney, both of whom tried to derail Trump’s presidency with lies and nasty, baseless political attacks.

The most infirm of all lame ducks also gave the same honor to George Soros, a fiendish, destructive, and callous socialist. Not because “the billionaire has funded a movement that puts Americans in danger but because his massive funding network enabled Biden’s allies to implement their radical agenda through the administrative state,” says the Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neil. It is the same administrative state that was at war with Trump before, after, and during his first term, the one he’s said he has plans to root out.

Let’s not forget that Clinton and Soros are both enemies of liberty and malign adversaries of Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and free-thinking independents.

Pardons And Commutations

The soon-to-be-former president unleashed child killers and mass murderers on society and still has time to protect those who persecuted and prosecuted Trump through pardons, as he has been encouraged to do.

The Border And DEI Poison

With one hand, Biden has been selling off since 2023 material that was to be used to build a national security border wall. With the other, he’s lacing the federal workforce with as many as 1,200 new “diversity, equity, and inclusion” employees.

The courts told the administration to halt the fire sale, but Biden was able to undercut Trump’s popular immigration policy by disposing of a sizable chunk of material before he was stopped. The DEI hires are clearly an effort to make Trump’s task of draining the swamp more difficult.

Trump will be sworn in two weeks from today. We hope the next 14 days go by so fast that the doddering, addled Biden, and his unprincipled. vindictive, hard-left administration will not be able to sabotage more than they already have.