In reality, his corrupt core knows how to stay on its axis. But senility floats around him like a miasma.
Senior-momenting with 'Where the hell is he?' Joe Biden
Joe Biden was out and about having another "senior moment."
According to Bob Hoge at RedState:
President Joe Biden hosted the National Governors Association Winter Meeting in the East Room of the White House Friday, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to toss out one of his trademark not-off-the-cuff quips.
“Every time I hear ‘the President of the United States,’ I look around and say, ‘Where the hell is he?’” Biden said. The line apparently failed, as very few in the room laughed and some looked confused or concerned.
Which is telling enough. Biden has regularly been caught in "senior moments" even as he seems to deny that his faculties are declining. He gets caught being flummoxed or in a garbled gaffe, and then goes on to get caught in another, all the while saying "watch me" when challenged on the matter on a rare occasion by a reporter. He forgets which day of the week it is. He forgets which state he's in. He forgets which country he's in. He calls Kamala Harris the president and Chuck Schumer the Senate Minority Leader. He forgets where he's going and has to be guided off-stage by a child.
Hoge points out that the Biden attempt at humor fell flat, for a very good reason:
... although he’s made similar jests in the past, it points to a larger problem: many don’t believe the President is really in charge—including seemingly himself. This is due to his frequent mangling of the English language, jokes like these which imply he doesn’t even really feel like he’s the Commander in Chief, and the widespread belief that his handlers and his wife Jill are actually running the country.
That conclusion is only strengthened when Biden admits he wanted to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon on a Wednesday but was told to wait by the Pentagon, who finally blasted it out of the sky a few days later. Similarly, he’s frequently talked about not being “allowed” to do something, and his advisors won’t “let him” answer any more reporters’ questions:
Hoge's piece is very funny and takes us all through the implications of Joe's growing senility.
All the same, it's not completely satisfactory. If Joe were really that gone, he'd be at the dog tracks right now and cackling Kamala would be measuring the White House drapes.
As Joe plays the pretend-dotard with the real dotard uncomfortably close, there's also Joe the power-monger, the mean creep, the election cheat, the persecutor of dissidents, the suer of the Little Sisters of the Poor, the flaming liar, the plagiarist, the pocket-lining "big guy," the hypocrite, and the guy who would cling to power at any price, revving up as he is his 2024 re-election bid, even as most Americans of all parties don't want him.
Those aren't quite senile qualities even though some of them suggest a man who's out of touch, or someone who's believed his own lies for so long he can no longer distinguish them from truth. That's a character flaw, made uglier with age. But it's not actual senility with no recognition of reality at all.
Joe's out of touch all right, but only on external things. Biden has just enough 'there' to know how to fight for his own survival. He's running for re-election against all common sense which should keep the prosecutors away. He tells us what a great job he's doing, the full gaslights blowing, such as at the State of the Union. He has his moments of lucidity and maybe it's some kind of drug-taking that enables it.
But he's fundamentally a flawed creature with just enough rat-like canniness to keep himself in power. No Democrat seriously challenges that, because the only thing Democrats respect at all is power.
Biden's stupid claim about not knowing where he is is probably some kind of trolling to get a rise out of conservatives. In reality, his corrupt core knows how to stay on its axis. But senility floats around him like a miasma.
Image: Twitter screen shot
The 'let's try it again' leftist balloon PR blitz
Suddenly, U.S. president Joe Biden and Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, are decisively shooting down new "UFOs" that purportedly wandered into their national airspace. They are doing so with personal verve and command, displaying their sudden prowess as defenders of their nation's respective airspace borders. Don't believe it.
The manner in which the press releases were written indicates that the writers went out of their way to make the story about the president and prime minister, and about their newfound leadership, as well as positioning NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) as suddenly now on top of its game.
NBC declared, in its headline story, "Trudeau ordered takedown of unidentified object in Canadian airspace," that "Canada's leader" had bravely ordered fighters to intercept a UFO. American and Canadian military aircraft were "scrambled" and "successfully shot the object down." NBC then reports: "'I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,' Trudeau tweeted" (evidently with a commanding pair of thumbs on his iPhone).
The Biden report by the New York Times was even more determined to get the P.R. message right: "The Friday shootdown showed Mr. Biden taking direct and forceful action far more quickly."
In public relations, these are traditional ways of engaging in "bridge and spin" topic management, by overwhelming their prior failures as commanders in chief with sudden, and convenient, opportunities to replay their previous responses, with rewritten and crafted acts and statements. Modern electoral government is a highly scripted activity; it is not an institutional culture that is inherently poised for spontaneous action.
This is the great risk that the public faces with elected leaders who are otherwise merely legacy political ideologues like Trudeau or proxies like Biden: when actual national security requires actual civilian leadership, they are unprepared or unqualified, or both. They are not trained in leadership or military operations or strategy. They are completely dependent, especially in Biden's case, given his obvious mental dysfunction, on an unorganized cabal of various advisers and handlers. And those political appointees are not directing their attention to national leadership or national security or national defense, but to private interests that can be affected through government institutional manipulation. For them, national security is merely national theater.
I'm not saying that various objects may not have been intercepted in national airspace. What I am saying is that it is possible, and meaningfully probable, that these are crafted or embellished stories designed to assuage the critics of two obviously compromised civilian commanders. Moreover, a "UFO" in this context may be "unidentified," but it is not unidentifiable. All flying objects can be identified. They may be, or may remain, "unidentified" to the public, but to the military, and to military commercial contractors, they all fit in one of several traditional categories of operations.
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung wrote clinically on the UFO phenomenon back in the early 1960s, not in flattering language, concerning their representation as psychic phenomena beyond what physical properties they may possess. In the case of North America's political leadership, the "unidentified object" is indeed the symbol of their vacancy in command and capacity.
Matthew G. Andersson is a former executive adviser in the Aerospace and Defense practice of Booz Allen Hamilton and is a jet-rated airline transport pilot. He has testified to the U.S. Senate on aircraft in the National Airspace System.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Biden's grinding millstone: Half of Americans worry about paying their credit card bills
Joe Biden had a grand old time hailing his presidential performance, telling Congress what a great job he was doing for the economy at his State of the Union address this past week, knowing the media would lap it up.
Two years ago, our economy was reeling. As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12 million new jobs, more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.
...said Joe, driving his point further with:
As my Dad used to say, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say, “Honey — it’s going to be OK,” and mean it.
So, let’s look at the results. Unemployment rate at 3.4%, a 50-year low. Near record low unemployment for Black and Hispanic workers. We’ve already created 800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth in 40 years. Where is it written that America can’t lead the world in manufacturing again? For too many decades, we imported products and exported jobs. Now, thanks to all we’ve done, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs.
Inflation has been a global problem because of the pandemic that disrupted supply chains and Putin’s war that disrupted energy and food supplies. But we’re better positioned than any country on Earth. We have more to do, but here at home, inflation is coming down. Here at home, gas prices are down $1.50 a gallon since their peak. Food inflation is coming down. Inflation has fallen every month for the last six months while take home pay has gone up.
Additionally, over the last two years, a record 10 million Americans applied to start a new small business. Every time somebody starts a small business, it’s an act of hope. And the Vice President will continue her work to ensure more small businesses can access capital and the historic laws we enacted.
This is vomit-inducing, given the lies emitted against the consumer sense of unease about the economy now, with 63% of Americans believing we are in a recession right now, according to a TIPP poll.
But naturally, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan found a lot to like about it, even hailing the speech as 'Trumpian':
It was the most effective of his presidency and for interesting reasons. Its first purpose was to demonstrate to his party that he’s in charge and formidable. He did that. The second, in my read, was to present himself in a new way to voters, especially those in the middle, and especially old Democratic constituencies. I think he did himself some good there.
Some are saying they heard a lot of Bernie Sanders in the speech. I don’t think that’s the headline. The first hour, which contained the parts Mr. Biden’s people wanted the audience to pay attention to, was Trumpian. There was little in it Donald Trump wouldn’t have been happy to say.
Which is unintentionally ironic. After all, doesn't she hate Trump?
There were also the flipper-beating seals at CBS News, a whole table of them, finding one way after another to praise Biden and his speech right after it was done. I cannot find the YouTube of it, perhaps because it was so repellent the network decided not to put it up, but I certainly saw it on television after Biden left the stage. CBS's website has this sort of coverage now to give you the flavor:
Washington — President Biden took a victory lap Tuesday to celebrate Democrats' legislative accomplishments while pledging to find common ground with Republicans in his second State of the Union address, speaking before a divided Congress for the first time since the GOP took control of the House.
They just can't stop praising him, can they?
Now the hard facts are in about Joe and his economic performance, and it's not a pretty picture.
According to a brand new IBD/TIPP poll:
Nearly one in two Americans is concerned about making on-time credit card payments, an IBD/TIPP Poll of 1,358 Americans nationwide completed early this month showed. 49% expressed concern about making timely credit card payments.
The online survey was conducted from February 1 to 3.
The survey’s credibility interval (CI) is +/- 2.8 percentage points, meaning the study is accurate to within ± 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Americans been surveyed.
The survey asked respondents, “As a result of the current economic conditions, how concerned are you about the following? Making on-time credit card payments?” The results read as follows:
- 25% were very concerned,
- 24% were somewhat concerned,
- 17% were not very concerned,
- 17% were not at all concerned, and
- 2% were not sure,
- 15% not applicable
This is ugly stuff, a sign of an economy in distress, with huge numbers of consumers worried about going under.
It also follows from other economic bad news, this one from the Wall Street Journal four days ago:
Squeezed by higher prices and short on cash, more Americans are tapping their 401(k)s for financial emergencies.
A record 2.8% of the five million people in 401(k) plans run by Vanguard Group tapped their retirement savings in 2022 to cope with hardships such as medical bills, eviction or foreclosure, the company said. That is up from 2.1% in 2021 and a prepandemic average of about 2%.
This one's from Fox Business three days ago:
Amid high inflation and rising interest rates, credit card balances increased to $931 billion in the final quarter of 2022, according to the latest Credit Industry Insights report by TransUnion.
Additionally, credit card originations hit a new record. The number of new credit cards opened spiked by 21.6 million in the third quarter, representing a 7.4% year-over-year increase. Now, more than 202 million consumers have access to credit cards."Bankcard balances and originations continue to climb as consumers seek ways to cope with inflation, and this is particularly the case among Gen Z consumers, who have seen growth of 19% in originations YoY and 64% in balances over the same period," Paul Siegfried, the senior vice president and credit card business leader at TransUnion, said in a statement.
This one from Motley Fool just now:
If you have a 401(k) plan through your job, your goal should be to max out your contributions or get as close to maxing out as possible.
...
Unfortunately, recent data from Bank of America shows that 401(k) contribution rates shrunk in 2022. As of this past December, the average contribution rate across all participants was 6.4%, down from 6.6% in December 2021.
I wasn't able to locate good figures on how payday lenders, or "market cash advance" financial companies are doing, but based on this data above, you can take a guess.
It doesn't take a genius to see that inflation -- and taxes -- are behind this sudden delving into savings and credit lines, loading up the middle class with debt, and grinding it down, ultimately hearkening to an era of reduced consumer spending, a flagship indicator of recession.
I just paid nearly eight bucks for 18 eggs at Walmart; got the receipt, left the sticker.
Image: Monica Showalter
Biden has not only inflicted fresh and unsustainable inflation on the American people based on his grotesque expansion of public spending, he's also raised taxes on Americans making less than $20,000 a year, putting many into a bottomless pit on their finances. The Federal Reserve's hike in interest rates which is done to squeeze the inflation out of the system is nowhere near done, given the excess money still rolling around in the system, driving prices higher.
Biden can blame Putin all he likes for inflation, but the Fed's rate hikes tell the story.
Even as those rate hikes act to kill inflation, they harm consumers, too, with higher credit card interest rates and mortage rate hikes so high many first-time homebuyers are now shut out of the market.
All of this, piling up, piling up is bound to wear voters down -- with delayed car repairs, skipped vacations, skipped dental care, a putting off of getting the kids' braces, delayed medical and veterinary appointments, house repairs going undone, an end to meals out, and a sense that it's never going to get better.
Inflation and taxes have become a grinding millstone for the middle class, courtesy of Joe Biden.
And where have we heard that before?
Sure enough, from Biden's spiritual mentor, V.I Lenin, who reputedly declared:
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
Are you better off than you were two years ago? Only the Bidenite political class and its allies can answer that with a hearty 'yes.' Biden's SOTU speech was an insulting mess of lies, done to cover up his record and preserve his political hide.
Image: Monica Showalter
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