A hopped-up Biden, who must have ingested a pharmacy to stay up so late, gave an hour-long state of the union speech that opened with a rousing few minutes about a war in which we have no part and went down from there. He rewrote history, misstated facts, and insisted that the government, using our tax dollars, can end inflation and create full employment, all without increasing our energy output.
The speech was a combination of unicorn dreams and unicorn poop. Through it all, the trained seals in the audience…er, members of Congress clapped and cheered. Not that there were that many of them. A few (like the decrepit Jerry Nadler) had ditched the masks but the Democrats rigorously maintained social distancing, limiting the audience size. But about the speech.
Joe ignored the usual presidential habit of opening the state of the union by talking about America and the American people. He spent several minutes giving a rousing cheer for Ukraine and its president. Matt Margolis tweeted that “Joe Biden is trying to rebrand as a wartime president” and Stephen Green noted that “He’s giving a victory speech for a war that isn’t over and we haven’t won.” Biden even gave a call out to the “hearts and souls of the Iranian people.” Ukrainians wondered about that.
Biden obliquely acknowledged high fuel prices but pretended they were related to Ukraine. He promised to release “30 Million barrels from our own Strategic Petroleum Reserve.” Don’t be impressed. That’s 1.5 days’ worth of America’s average oil consumption.
As always, Biden brought in his childhood in Scranton and his sainted Dad looking for work. He lambasted the Trump tax cut, which got the economy humming, and celebrated his stimulus, which got inflation humming. When he boasted about creating 6.5 million jobs, he ignored that (a) this resulted from re-opening old jobs following the lockdown and (b) that unemployment is higher than it was under Trump—and that doesn’t count those who dropped out of the workforce.
Although Democrat policies have destroyed the middle class, Biden sang a paean to the middle class, promising the infrastructure it deserves. While celebrating hard infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.), he ignored that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s idea of doing that is to end road racism—although I guess he gave it a nod when he promised to “withstand the devastating effects of the climate crisis and promote environmental justice.”
Sounding like a Republican, Biden promised to buy American—except what he wants to buy is a fleet of electric cars, which will power from an electric grid that doesn’t exist, that will eventually require fossil fuel from…Russia, I guess.