A Presidential Administration as Sophomoric Theater

 

As sad as the obvious truth included is regarding the truly pathetic state of our Beltway Behemoth (and thus our nation as a whole), this passage from VDH earlier this month is too perfect not to reuse again and again:

Cabinet secretaries ignore their duties—somewhat understandable given their resumes never explained their appointments. What binds a Pete Buttigieg, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Jennifer Granholm is not expertise in transportation, border security, or energy independence but allegiance to an entire menu of woke policies that are often antithetical to their own job descriptions.

[Emphasis added]

When I went searching for that just now, I came across this slightly older piece from the same eminent mind:

A Cabinency of Dunces

As the nation sinks inexplicably into self-created crisis after crisis, debate rages whether President Joe Biden is incompetent, mean-spirited, or an ideologue who feels the country’s mess is his success.

A second national discussion revolves around who actually is overseeing the current national catastrophe, given Biden’s frequent bewilderment and cognitive challenges.

But one area of agreement is the sheer craziness of Biden’s cabinet appointments, who have translated his incoherent ideology into catastrophic governance.

The common denominator to these Biden appointees is ideological rigidity, nonchalance, and sheer incompetence.

They seem indifferent to the current border, inflation, energy, and crime disasters. When confronted, they are unable to answer simple questions from Congress, or they mock anyone asking for answers on behalf of the strapped American people.

We don’t know why or how such an unimpressive cadre ended up running the government, only that they are here and the American people are suffering from their presence.

[Emphasis added]

I serve up all of that as a contextual backdrop for a rather pathetic article that appeared on Yahoo! Finance this week. I know, not the journalistic powerhouse of a CNN, NYT, or MSNBC but these things are all part of the forced narrative delivery system. This one is notable for just how shallow the script was and how sophomoric the delivery. Everyone involved, if there was an ounce of self-respect between them, should be embarrassed into permanent hiding:

Big oil executives to receive ‘stern message’ on gas prices from Biden administration

As part of a range of actions this week on gas prices, the Biden administration has summoned the heads of seven top oil refining companies to Washington after a week of tense back-and-forth with industry leaders.

The CEOs will meet with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm after the president blasted their high profits as “not acceptable” in a recent letter to the companies. In one response, Chevron (CVX) pushed back by saying that Washington’s approach was actually the culprit for high prices.

Nevertheless, President Joe Biden’s aides say they hope for a constructive conversation.

Let’s put every idea on the table so this is not the president just scolding,” White House senior adviser Gene Sperling told Yahoo Finance Live on Wednesday.

[Emphasis added]

Everyone willing to live within the truth has likely seen the “high profits” lie put down two weeks ago but the strong man scolding them from behind his podium (and through his unqualified, unimpressive cabinet) narrative must be pushed anyway.

“We are going into this to have an earnest conversation … Let’s see how that conversation goes,” Granholm said in a press briefing in response to a question about how she will respond if the refiners “don’t play ball.” She is not ruling out out use of the Defense Production Act to force oil companies to ramp up supply, which could ultimately push prices down.

[Emphasis added]

Did I say unqualified and unimpressive?

[Sperling] stressed, “I don’t think that people should be offended because the president is standing up for consumers who are being squeezed at the gas pump.”

[Emphasis added]

Aside from the fact that it has been clearly understood here, there, and everywhere that sky-high gas prices were the plan from the very first hours of the Biden administration, the fact that Granholm and Sperling faithfully play their parts in this laughably shallow production and some aspiring nobody named Ben Werschkul dutifully transcribes the fiction for all three Yahoo! Finance readers confirms much about the (direct and indirect) characters involved in this four-year experiment in sophomoric Oval Office theater. God help us.

Only 940 looonnnnggg days left in the constitutionally mandated Biden-Harris administration. May America get every one of those to the fullest…and emerge on the other side certainly bruised and battered but also wiser.

Into the abyss…

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  1. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    It’s a circus clown show.

     

     

    • #1
  2. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    When John Reed, an American socialist back in the 1915 to 1920’s era, went off to Russia to experience first hand the glories of the newly established  worker’s paradise, he spent time with fellow radical Emma Goldman, who was also visiting  that nation.

    She was appalled at what she discovered – that although people were without basic necessities, railroad cars full of the necessities people were lacking sat abandoned on tracks not that far from the cities where people were going without.

    She tried to explain this to Reed, before she left to return to the USA.

    He refused to listen. Instead in his articles that have come down to us, he lays the blame for food and fuel shortages on the “Imperialists” waging war against the Reds.

    We are in the same situation today. Many of those opposing us conservatives are idealists, who in many cases have not yet experienced the “fruits” of their struggles to   soon free the USA from capitalism. (I should probably state “rotten fruits.”)

    They are buying into the ideals: that every other moment of their lives should be spent focusing with love on newly arrived immigrants. That concentrating on the huge numbers of White Supremacists is one way to make the public safer. (Here in Calif I have been told that Wisconsin is the Headquarters for the W Supremacists. It is likely back East that California is considered the headquarters. CIA tactic #406.)

    They want a pristine environment. They want to adapt to whatever the top people in the Global Climate Crisis movement tell them to do.

    They ignore many realities that would have them realize they are off on thew wrong path.

    Since they remain unaware of the massive loss of property, business income, and human life that was destroyed when AntiFa/BLM forces raged throughout cities in the USA in 2002, they still support AntiFa/BLM.

    No one has ever explained to them that once the Revolution istaken over by bureaucrats, they will face the same fate as Trotsky-ites, who were killed off by first Lenin and then by Stalin.

     

    • #2
  3. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    When John Reed, an American socialist back in the 1915 to 1920’s era, went off to Russia to experience first hand the glories of the newly established worker’s paradise, he spent time with fellow radical Emma Goldman, who was also visiting that nation.

    She was appalled at what she discovered – that although people were without basic necessities, railroad cars full of the necessities people were lacking sat abandoned on tracks not that far from the cities where people were going without.

    She tried to explain this to Reed, before she left to return to the USA.

    He refused to listen. Instead in his articles that have come down to us, he lays the blame for food and fuel shortages on the “Imperialists” waging war against the Reds.

    We are in the same situation today. Many of those opposing us conservatives are idealists, who in many cases have not yet experienced the “fruits” of their struggles to soon free the USA from capitalism. (I should probably state “rotten fruits.”)

    They are buying into the ideals: that every other moment of their lives should be spent focusing with love on newly arrived immigrants. That concentrating on the huge numbers of White Supremacists is one way to make the public safer. (Here in Calif I have been told that Wisconsin is the Headquarters for the W Supremacists. It is likely back East that California is considered the headquarters. CIA tactic #406.)

    They want a pristine environment. They want to adapt to whatever the top people in the Global Climate Crisis movement tell them to do.

    They ignore many realities that would have them realize they are off on thew wrong path.

    Since they remain unaware of the massive loss of property, business income, and human life that was destroyed when AntiFa/BLM forces raged throughout cities in the USA in 2002, they still support AntiFa/BLM.

    No one has ever explained to them that once the Revolution istaken over by bureaucrats, they will face the same fate as Trotsky-ites, who were killed off by first Lenin and then by Stalin.

     

    Great comment. Thanks.

    I picked up Reed’s Ten Days that Shocked the World for $1 at the local library sale several years ago. I will have to go review my notes…

    Also, your comment reminds me of parts of Solzhenitsyn’s In the First Circle but, again, I will have to go to my notes after my mid-afternoon nap.

    • #3
  4. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    philo: Did I say unqualified and unimpressive? 

    H/T RufusRJones:

    A cabinency of dunces indeed.

    • #4
  5. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    philo (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    When John Reed, an American socialist back in 1915 to 1920’s era, went off to Russia to experience first hand the glories of the newly established worker’s paradise, he spent time with fellow radical Emma Goldman, who was also visiting that nation.

    She was appalled at what she discovered – that although people were without basic necessities, railroad cars full of the necessities people were lacking sat abandoned on tracks not that far from the cities where people were going without.

    She tried to explain this to Reed, before she left to return to the USA.

    He refused to listen. Instead in his articles that have come down to us, he lays the blame for food and fuel shortages on the “Imperialists” waging war against the Reds.

    SNIP Many of those opposing us conservatives are idealists, who in many cases have not yet experienced the “fruits” of their struggles to soon free the USA from capitalism. (I should probably state “rotten fruits.”)

    They are buying into the ideals: that every other moment of their lives should be spent focusing with love on newly arrived immigrants. That concentrating on the huge numbers of White Supremacists is one way to make the public safer. (Here in Calif I have been told that Wisconsin is the Headquarters for the W Supremacists. It is likely back East that California is considered the headquarters. CIA tactic #406.)

    They want a pristine environment. They want to adapt to whatever the top people in the Global Climate Crisis movement tell them to do.

    They ignore many realities that would have them realize they are off on thew wrong path.

    Since they remain unaware of the massive loss of property, business income, and human life that was destroyed when AntiFa/BLM forces raged throughout cities in the USA in 2002, they still support AntiFa/BLM.

    No one has ever explained to them that once their Revolution is.taken over by bureaucrats, they will face the same fate as Trotsky-ites, who were killed off by first Lenin and then by Stalin.

     

    Great comment. Thanks.

    I picked up Reed’s Ten Days that Shocked the World for $1 at the local library sale several years ago. I will have to go review my notes…

    Also, your comment reminds me of parts of Solzhenitsyn’s In the First Circle but, again, I will have to go to my notes after my mid-afternoon nap.

    Thank you for the kind words.

    Remember the old saying of “those who fail to remember history are condemned to repeat it.” ??

    Of course a big part of what’s happening now is how  the Left feasts on quite specially selected ideas from history: for example, that the 1789 French Revolution freed the prisoners in the Bastille, and brought about liberty equality and fraternity. (If only it had!)

    So they simply don’t take in the parts of history that disagree with their narrative.

    • #5
  6. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    What is also striking is the complete absence of embarrassment or self-awareness when uttering complete and utter BS. It is as if they have never had any sentient, sane adult acquaintances or relatives.

    These clowns announced and then actually acted to curtail oil production. The greenies have already made expansion of refinery capacity near impossible. Activists have moved to divest institutional investors from oil companies meaning that new investment requires a higher return from more limited sources. And now they demand a sudden, magical ramping up requiring large investments which they are committed to turn into losing propositions with no long term value.

    I have not seen any polling on it but I suspect it will not be long before oil company execs are seen more favorably than Biden appointees and crazed greenies.

    There is not a single bright light or competent appointment in the bunch which is unprecedented as far as I can remember.

    • #6
  7. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    June 26 Update:

    I cannot read the article beyond the first paragraph but the title and introduction take an interesting theme:

    Witnessing Joe Biden’s Amateur Act These Days Is Like Attending a School Play

    You know how you go to a child’s school play. And even with makeup and fake grey hair and as earnestly as four-foot-eight youngsters can pretend to play grownups and recite their adult lines, it just doesn’t work as theater?

    But no one in attendance cares – right? Because they’re kids…

     

    • #7
  8. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    philo: Did I say unqualified and unimpressive?

    H/T Instapundit:

    Lloyd Austin needs to resign as Secretary of Defense

    The error here has to do with Austin’s … almost comical lack of knowledge in terms of the policies he’s discussing. …

    The idea that there is “nothing more important” to the United States Secretary of Defense than abortion access is insulting enough. …

    But let’s just pretend for a moment that this was okay. Austin said he would ensure that his department will “continue to provide seamless access to reproductive health care as permitted by federal law.” Really? …

    And as to Austin’s statement about “as permitted by federal law,” as of Friday there is no relevant federal law. Those decisions have been returned to the states, whether you agree with the resolution or not.

    Yet another dunce.

    • #8
  9. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    NOTICE: This Member post has been promoted to the Main Feed. Content may have been edited / corrected from the original without attribution by Ricochet.

    (Somewhere along the line it seems we – or I – stopped getting notifications about promotions. For what it’s worth, that is/was an important feature to at least one of us.)

    • #9
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