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The State of the Union Is About What You’d Expect
I watched President Biden’s State of the Union Address. It wasn’t my fault; Ricochet made me. Just be thankful you didn’t have to. It was bad, needless to say. Joe Biden is, well, Joe Biden, so no one expected soaring rhetoric, achievable goals, or a political change. He is what he is.
He began talking about Ukraine, which was pretty good, graded on the steep Biden Oratorical Curve. There was a nice moment when he recognized Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US. The best part was his conclusion that “our forces are not engaged and will not engage in the conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.” He also referred to Ukrainians as “Uranians” and “Iranians,” respectively.
Then came the standard SOTU laundry list. He bragged about how great the economy is, then addressed inflation, weakly:
With all the bright spots in our economy, record job growth, higher wages, too many families are struggling to keep up with their bills. Inflation is robbing them of the gains they thought otherwise they would be able to feel. I get it.
…We have a choice. One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poor. I think I have a better idea to fight inflation. Lower your costs. Not your wages.
I haven’t seen any Republicans demand we “drive down wages and make Americans poor.” Maybe we read different newspapers. But Biden isn’t afraid to take controversial stances: he wants lower prices. Take that, Rethuglicans.
Then came the best part of the night, the President calling on a 13-year-old boy in the gallery. He needs insulin and Biden wants to make that medication cheaper. Please note, insulin was cheaper 13 months ago before Biden ended a low-cost program Trump created. Anyway, he wished the kid a happy birthday and the nervous boy beamed. The electric energy and excitement of the kid was sweet. (That’s the only reason it was my favorite part.)
Biden promised to reduce the cost of healthcare and child care by agreeing to a global minimum tax rate. This Davos/Great Reset/World Economic Forum claptrap is a dead letter in Congress, thank the stars above, but it gave Biden the chance to hate on the Kulaks and Wreckers for subverting the glorious revolution.
Biden also blasted Trump for increasing the national debt even though Biden has increased it $1.5 trillion in the past year, and demanded government spend more for an endless list of pet projects. It was odd how much time Biden spent selling failed plans from last year, but the Democrats dutifully applauded and Republicans rolled their eyes.
You could have traded half this SOTU with a Biden 2020 stump speech and no one would have noticed.
The president signaled ever so slightly that we should move on from masks, but was vague on details. Then came one of several odd statements:
We won’t stop. We cannot build a wall high enough to keep out a vaccine — the vaccine can stop the spread of these diseases…. Let’s use this moment to reset.
I hadn’t heard of a Vaccine Wall. Guess we do read different newspapers.
The president’s energy throughout was cycling up and down at random; the Biden “mumble whisper SHOUT” speaking style gave America’s volume controls a workout.
He opposed calls to defund the police, lied about gun control, and gave a shout-out to Justice Breyer, who responded with a weird “namaste” gesture. Ketanji Brown Jackson, his Supreme Court nominee, also earned his praise.
Is this article boring you yet? I’ve got no sympathy. I had to watch it. You’re welcome.
Biden lied about the border, said we should protect women and LGBTQ+ and kids and veterans and addicts (didn’t mention Hunter). Finally came the Beau Biden Section. Every time the president speaks, he mentions his late son Beau and connects his death to whatever legislation he’s boosting at the time. This speech was no different. Joe is going to end cancer as we know it. Just like he did six years ago.
The only fireworks of the evening came from a shout by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R–CO). Biden said:
Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan faced many dangers. One was stationed at bases and breathing in toxic smoke from ‘burn pits’ that incinerated wastes of war—medical and hazard material, jet fuel, and more. When they came home, many of the world’s fittest and best-trained warriors were never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin.
Boebert interrupted with, “You put them in, 13 of them,” the evening’s only reference to Biden’s disastrous pullout from Kabul. Democrats booed her but at least someone mentioned President Biden’s most enduring legacy.
And that’s about it. I assume the SOTU ratings were low, there will be no movement in the polls, and no changes in the deadlocks on Capitol Hill. A dull, meaningless hour of theater delivered only because tradition required it.
You can stop reading now. I need a drink.
Published in General
Thank you for enduring what I could not bring myself to.
The man is suffering from advancing dementia, and no one really believes that he is the chief executive of the US. I didn’t watch, but I listened in on two live chats, here (excellent as usual), and at Kira Davis’s Locals feed (also excellent). He is pitiful, and has his hand on the nuclear trigger, which I find very alarming.
The visual of the half empty House chamber was disconcerting. Someone on Fox afterwards said the speech sounded like someone had dropped the text on the floor and had randomly gathered up the pages from which he read. There was no flow, nothing about the speech was coherent. And no member of the Supreme Court should be as chummy with a president as Breyer was after the speech.
Thanks for enduring this for the rest of us, Jon. I appreciate the report.
Thank you, Jon.
I resisted tonight the temptation to turn on the address, much as I resisted tonight the gravitic pull of the lesser Jovian moons, the siren’s song of the gentle manatee in Florida’s Crystal River some 1,300 miles south of me, and the urge to join a religious cult the principal doctrinal demands of which are sexual abstinence and the renunciation of red meat. Each was about as challenging as the others.
I did spend the evening getting ejected from a public high school gymnasium, half way through a championship girls’ basketball game, for refusing to wear a mask — a preposterous requirement which will expire in New York state in… two minutes. Canada is not alone in demanding compliance; at least one ballless school superintendent in semi-rural New York is goose-stepping in unison with Madam Trudeau. I left when he told the referee not to resume the game until I donned a mask.
Somewhat later I poured myself a glass of bourbon, and have settled in for the night. I do appreciate our President’s support for the Uranians.
Someone probably complained, most likely a teacher.
I was at the gym on my exercise bike and listening to something else. But I did see a subtitle on one of the TVs with the speech that said something about making the rich “pay their fair share”. Wow! Tell me that doesn’t send a chill down the spice of Elon Musk and Bill Gates!
Those D’s… Always coming out with the new ideas and rhetoric!
Tonight’s SOTU address was brought to you by Pfizer:
Biden doesn’t care about Uranus, only about Hisanus.
Same here.
My time is apparently worth more than Jon’s, but I’m glad that some low-paid wretch was found to do the work that most Americans won’t do.
That’s heinous.
Yes, Jon, Thank you for your service.
“Lower your costs not your wages” Wages are my costs!
Cruel and unusual punishment. But… some people enjoy these sorts of things. I’d watch if the Constitution were amended to allow a maximum of 15 minutes for the SOTU. Call it the “Coolidge” rule or something.
I’m sending $50 to Representative Boebert.
Is there some way to have an automaton deliver this?
Oh, say what? You say Joe is still in Delaware. That was an automaton.
Hmmm? It looked so unreal.
He should have Zoomed it from his basement in Delaware. He could have had a bowl of rocky road ice cream close at hand.
Fox News just played a clip that said that his solution for inflation was to be mean to companies about cutting costs.
OK I just heard a longer clip with analysis on Breitbart news daily. He’s making vague statements about how everybody should increase supply. Are Democrats ever for this in anyway unless it involves government providing some thing? They always have other priorities. He’s also babbling about chip plants, which takes years. It would be very hard to find any Democrat they could say anything intelligent about that.
Life is about supply and productivity. Not government, central planning, lobbying, money printing, and inflation. Effectively, neither party has cared enough since the middle 90s. The Republicans just think they do. It’s way too late to start invoking Friedrich Hayek.
We went in and out of the SOTU; Street Outlaws at least had some energy. And you forgot to mention that he not only mentioned Beau, but he referred to his father and Scranton. Blah, blah, blah.
Yo, Jon. Thanks for taking on this unpleasant task for me. BTW, I have a digital prostate exam next week and was wondering, if you’re not too busy, could you handle that for me, too?
One other thing, I watched a few highlights this morning and did not see all the dreadlocks on Capitol Hill you mentioned at the end of your post. Must have been a BLM demonstration.
Now, get some rest.
This was one of several points where my teenage son started to giggle and ask, “Who voted for this guy!”
And then he actually took credit for reducing the deficit. I was waiting to see Manchin and Sinema stand up and take bows.
And then there was Pelosi getting excited about troops getting cancer . . .
Hunter Biden is a mess but seriously, who would like to continuously have one’s dead brother elevated nationally above a living you.
I’m surprised he doesn’t say “the wrong kid died!” Like in that parady movie “Walk Hard!”.
Thank you for your service.
Constant heckling is the only thing that would make the SOTU better.
Keep it clean.
Thank you for taking one for the team . . .
I wonder if he made history in the speech. He mentioned a private company, Pfizer, twice. Has any other President done that?
Imagine President Bush saying, our forces in Iraq are doing very well, and thanks to Halliburton, are very well supplied with food, water and ammunition.
Tonight’s State of the Union address brought to you by Pfizer…