By Larry Huss

 

“Looking out on the road rushing under my wheels

Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields

In ‘65, I was seventeen and running up 101

I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running

[Chorus]

Running on, running on empty

Running on running blind

Running on, running into the sun

But I’m running behind.”

Jackson Brown

Running on Empty (1978)

President Joe Biden is the useful idiot for the progressive movement* in the Democrat Party. Mr. Biden is hardly the leader of the progressive movement – nor are those seven airheads constituting The Squad**; that singular honor probably lies more with former President Barack Obama. But it is Mr. Biden – the aging and cognitively challenged Mr. Biden, the vacationing Mr. Biden, the four hour work days Mr. Biden, and the teleprompter dependent Mr. Biden who serves as the progressives’ titular head.

The Mr. Biden who by accident or intent has compromised American energy independence, fostered unquenchable inflation, funded our acknowledged enemies (Russia, Iran Venezuela, etc.), opened the southern border to every segment of foreign populations including terrorists, drug merchants, gang members, rapist and common criminals. And at every turn Mr. Biden and his policies have failed. Remember it was Mr. Obama that noted that no one should underestimate Mr. Biden’s ability to eff everything up. And so it has been. Virtually everything that Mr. Biden and his progressive handlers have adopted has failed – usually of its own volition. Here are a few examples.

According to a February 21, 2024 article in The Hill, Mr. Biden is quoted as saying:

“As I walk out of meetings, a head of state will find an excuse to come up close … and say, ‘You’ve got to win,’ Biden recalled as a fundraiser in San Francisco.

“’Not because I’m so special,’ he added. ‘You’ve got to win because my democracy is at stake if the other guy wins,’ the president, quoting head of state. “Nine head of state have done that with me.’” (The only true part of that statement is that Mr. Biden is nothing special – everything else is clearly baloney.)

The Cornell School of Law published a treatise on the Federal Rules of Evidence noting in particular the Rule relating to the veracity of witnesses. In part it reads:

”Truthfulness or Untruthfulness

“(a) Reputation or Opinion Evidence. A witness’s credibility may be attacked or supported by testimony about the witness’s reputation for having a character for truthfulness or untruthfulness, or by testimony in the form of an opinion about that character. But evidence of truthful character is admissible only after the witness’s character has been attacked.”

Mr. Biden is a notorious liar, particularly when it comes to self-aggrandizement. His fifty year history as an elected official is replete with one lie after another – most regularly when the result is to make him look better than he is or too deny events that cast him as a crook. Given Mr. Biden’s comments regarding conversations with deceased world leaders and those who held office decades ago, it is likely that those “world leaders” included former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (in office from 1988 to 1998) and deceased French President Francios Mitterand (d.1996). It is much more likely that the current world leaders of democratic countries have wondered in their private conversation as how low America has sunk to send an elderly gasconader** with failing cognitive skills and diminishing physical capabilities to engage in discussion about such serious matter as those currently pending. The point is that Mr. Biden is running on empty and making it up as he goes.

* * *

The social agenda of progressives was pretty much encapsulated by the Green New Deal. It is often attributed to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). On the one hand I doubt that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was the actual author – otherwise it would have a dance video. On the other hand it reeks of the kind of simple minded, one-dimensional naivete that is her trademark. Regardless it became the Fool’s Guide to the destruction of American energy independence, the premature assumption of the contribution of alternative energy and the justification of massive government deficit spending in pursuit of goals not ready for prime time. It also served as the bible for the jabberwocky regarding gender fluidity, racial identity, and ethnic bipolarism. They also imposed their empty philosophy on the business world which – to their eternal shame – the business community embraced in order to avoid the shunning and shaming that is the primary means for progressive to enforce that which defies fact, logic and history.

But in the end, it was also just bat guano. Major business that adopted diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as the cultural norm found out that what progressives meant was the subjugation of white, male and financially secure people. The banking and finance industry, for the same reason, adopted “equity, sustainability, and governance (ESG) in lieu of profit and growth for investment purposes. Both are failing and business is rapidly turning away “diversity specialists” and many investment houses have purged their prospectus as well as their portfolios of reference to ESG as they discovered that investors wanted a return on their investment and not just a “virtuous” conversation at the cocktail parties.

While Mr. Biden’s administration worked feverishly to shut down American fossil fuels, it was busy making deals directly and indirectly to purchase “dirty” fossil fuels from the likes of Russia, Iran and Venezuela. While they were busy trying to shut down coal mining and coal-fueled generation, our greatest economic competitors, China, was completing two new plants per week and India one every other week. And while America’s contribution to carbon emissions diminished in the last several years, China, India and Russia vastly increased their carbon emissions far in excess of the reduction by America.

And while Mr. Biden’s administration was busy providing vast sums of taxpayer funded incentives at every level of electric vehicle (EV) production, it is now obvious that the infrastructure to fuel them has fallen so far behind that it is virtually impossible to keep up and may be even further behind when seeing the lack of infrastructure – limited to non-fossil fuel sources – to deliver the necessary power as well as the distribution network necessary to deliver the power to the users. And along the way we have now seen that cold weather severely deteriorates the ability to operate EV’s. As it stands today sales of EV’s are diminishing, used car lots are stacking up with unwanted used EV’s and there is a growing recognition that EV’s are basically an urban commuter vehicle with only seasonal reliability in the northern climates of America.

In other words the “progressive agenda” while it hasn’t been abandoned by the politicians is running on empty with the public.

* * *

While “virtue” seeps from every pore of the progressives body and they condemn, cancel and criticize those who succeed, they themselves are busy using government as their means of obtaining, retaining and increasing their power over the rest of us – and along the way becoming rich, sometimes filthy rich. Running through the members of Congress who have become multi-millionaires while earning $170,000 per year in one of the most expensive cities in America is a Who’s Who of political greed and duplicity. We can start with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who has amassed a fortune of over $180 million while denying that either she or or husband made an investment based on her inside knowledge of matters pending before Congress – most recently in regard to her recent 90-day $1.4 million dollar gain from the purchase and sale of NVIDIA stock. But some are not just content to use their position to make money on insider information. Some seem to treat public office (and the amounts they raise for campaigns) as their personal bank accounts for a standard of living far in excess of their income disclosures. In recent days we have been treated to Dolton, Illinois, Mayor Tiffany Henyard, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) all living high on the hog. (I would have included Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) but even though he is a Democrat, he is unlikely to be considered a progressive.) And while the disclosures of their hypocrisy have not yet resulted in them being turned away from the public trough, we all know what kind of public servants they – they are running on empty.

You can run through the whole litany of progressive policies and note the failures – failures because they would not look beyond the immediate consequences of their actions.

Open borders – FAILURE

Sanctuary cities – FAILURE

Defund the police – FAILURE

Soft on Crime – FAILURE

Drug legalization – FAILURE

Appeasement of hostile nations – FAILURE

Deficit spending – FAILURE

Transgenders in sports – FAILURE

Go ahead and add to the list but with always the same result – FAILURE.

Running on empty because that’s what happens in progressive America where nothing matters – including the truth – beyond today.

___________________________________________

* I use the term progressive movement advisedly because nothing that the progressive movement can be deemed universally acceptable to the rank and file of the working people who once formed the foundation of the Democrat Party.

** For those of you forced to endure a teachers union led education in the Portland Public Schools gasconader refers to someone who regularly boasts about his accomplishments. If you would have looked it up in the dictionary you would have seen Mr. Biden’s picture next to the definition.