First, America was on the edge of its collective seats, expecting to see Joe Biden mess up his State of the Union Speech. Apparently, his medication worked and he merely indulged in a harangue, one that reminded us all of the My Pillow guy.
But then Alabama Senator Katie Britt offered the Republican rebuttal, and did not succeed. If, as a Canadian thinker once opined, the medium is the message, Britt’s speech from her kitchen table was precisely the wrong message.
Biden was taking on the world. Sen. Britt was going all housewife on us.
True enough, she wanted to talk about kitchen table issues, but her presentation simply conceded the nation and the world to Biden. She made some good points about the economy and the world, but drowned it out with her breathy speech and generally adorable persona. She did not look like an American senator and did not look like she or the party she represents was ready to take command. She looked like she was getting ready to make dinner.
Second, speaking of the narrative, Biden’s claims were less than accurate.
Biden said:
“I inherited an economy on the brink.”
Fox News’s David Asman corrected him:
You inherited an economy growing at 6.5% with a 1.4% inflation rate.
Third, remember George Floyd. He received four funerals and forty presidential tweets.
Libs of TikTok points out a glaring disparity:
He [Biden] hasn't said a word about Christopher Gadd, a Washington State Trooper who was k*lled this week by an illegal.
True enough, Biden did mention Laken Riley Thursday night. Unfortunately, he mispronounced her name, and said Lincoln Riley. Her parents were appalled at the insult.
Fourth, Biden was all-in for sympathizing with Hamas. He claimed that some 30,000 Gazans have been killed by the Israeli offensive.
To which Guy Benson responded:
1) That’s a Hamas-furnished stat.
2) Thousands of Hamas terrorists have been killed by Israel, with more to come, hopefully.
3) All civilian deaths in Gaza are on Hamas, which started this war & use their own civilians as human shields, operating out of hospitals and schools.
Fifth, the administration arrested a gold star father at the State of the Union and charged him with a misdemeanor. He has since been released.
Erielle Azerrad comments:
Can’t arrest the crazy pro-Hamasniks that shut down federal highways, destroy statues, and attack Jewish students, but the President can arrest a Gold Star dad.
Sixth, writing in National Review, Philip Klein explains the current Biden policy towards Israel. The one that he articulated in his State of the Union:
It wasn’t until Biden nearly reached the end of the speech that he brought up the Israel–Hamas conflict — at which point he tried to turn it into a “both sides” issue describing events as “gut-wrenching for so many people, for the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, and so many here in America.”
After a perfunctory mention of October 7 and the hostages, Biden then launched an extended attack on Israel’s response to the war and the conditions in Gaza that accepted, whole cloth, Hamas casualty figures that his own administration had previously questioned as unreliable. For those keeping score, his description of the events on the day of October 7 lasted 42 words (or 77 if you count his shout-out to the hostage families present at the speech). The part of the speech describing the “heartbreaking” conditions in Gaza, demanding that Israel do more, and describing U.S. aid efforts in Gaza was 214 words.
Speaking of aid. At the start of his speech, Biden spoke of the “unprecedented moment” we’re in — and in his survey of momentous world events, he made the case for the need for the U.S. to support Ukraine. And he pitched his harebrained scheme to have the U.S. military build a port in Gaza to facilitate more aid. At no point did he make the case for the component of the security bill that would provide aid to Israel.
In the early days of the war, Biden claimed that Hamas needed to be destroyed, but tonight that got downgraded to saying that Israel has the right to “go after” Hamas.
Yet each day, Biden undermines Israel’s ability to go after Hamas. He has warned Israel not to go into Rafah, the part of southern Gaza where the last remnants of Hamas are hiding, and each day he demands a cease-fire deal. But his constant attacks on Israel are actually making Hamas dig in. As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier, “Egyptian officials said [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar believes Hamas currently has the upper hand in negotiations, citing internal political divisions within Israel, including cracks in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime government and mounting U.S. pressure on Israel to do more to alleviate the suffering of Gazans.”
The overarching message was clear: The October 7 attacks were bad, but Israel’s response has been worse. Palestinians deserve our support, but Israel does not.
It’s difficult to recall a moment when a U.S. president did more to undermine an ally in a time of war than what Biden did tonight. An utterly disgraceful performance.
Seventh, in the world of international economic competition, China is responding to American and Western sanctions and tariffs by following a new policy-- delete America.
That is, it is becoming less reliant on American technology by building its own at home.
This means that sales of iPhones have dropped precipitously in China, while sales of Huawei devices have increased significantly.
That will teach them.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
American tech giants had long thrived in China as they hot-wired the country’s meteoric industrial rise with computers, operating systems and software. Chinese leaders want to sever that relationship, driven by a push for self-sufficiency and concerns over the country’s long-term security.
The first targets were hardware makers. Dell, International Business Machines and Cisco Systems.
They have gradually seen much of their equipment replaced by products from Chinese competitors.
Document 79, named for the numbering on the paper, targets companies that provide the software—enabling daily business operations from basic office tools to supply-chain management. The likes of Microsoft and Oracle are losing ground in the field, one of the last bastions of foreign tech profitability in the country.
Keep in mind, while we are punishing China with tariffs and sanctions, it is a very big market indeed.
Eighth, the Biden administration, sitting on a pile of cash designed to advance domestic semiconductor manufacturing, has been undermining its own policy.
The Hill reports:
The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the United States. But less than a week later, Intel announced it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry (called a fab). The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab. This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies.
What explains chipmakers’ ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI. Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven’t noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.
The Act contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with “MSI’s”—minority serving institutions. A section called “Opportunity and Inclusion” instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers “increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce.”
The department interprets that as license to diversify. Its factsheet “Building a Skilled and Diverse Workforce” asserts that diversity is “critical to strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem,” adding, “Critically, this must include significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities.”
The department does not call speed critical, although the impetus for the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world’s advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 2025.
So, the diversity bureaucrats are undermining American competitiveness. Way to go… bureaucrats.
Ninth, in the world of diversity hires, we have the case of one RimaAnn Nelson. You know her because she has an important job at the VA. In that capacity she decided to ban a photo from Times Square that signified the end of World War II. It showed a man and a woman engaged in a lusty embrace.
And, you know, we can’t have that.
Anyway, if you want to know more about Nelson, consider her qualifications:
The woke Veterans Affairs official who ordered hospitals take down the iconic Times Square V-J-Day kissing photo previously mismanaged a Missouri hospital so badly, she was condemned by both Democrats and Republicans alike.
Smooch-bashing VA bigwig RimaAnn Nelson headed the department’s St. Louis hospital for more than three years, during which time the facility was rated worst in the country — with patients allegedly left in their feces for days, and more than 1,800 of our nation’s heroes being exposed to HIV and hepatitis from unsterilized dental equipment, reports said.
Tenth, meanwhile out in Oklahoma, the weirdest story of the week. From Libs of TikTok:
UNBELIEVABLE. @EdmondSchools has been holding feet licking and armpit licking events for years where students lick chocolate and peanut butter off of staff. After video surfaced last week of another school in Oklahoma holding a feet licking event, these videos were uncovered. WHAT IS GOING ON IN OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS?!
Students in Oklahoma schools have come forward and describe a culture of bullying, hazing, manipulation, and pressure to participate in disgusting dares like licking toes and armpits, spitting in people’s mouths, and having garbage thrown on you. This has been going on for YEARS.
Eleventh, on the DEI front, the Financial Times reports that American law firms are hiring fewer and fewer minority candidates. Apparently, they can no longer afford the luxury.
The FT explains:
Leading US law firms hired hundreds fewer ethnic minority candidates last year, as the sector faced a series of legal challenges over its diversity schemes.
An analysis of successful candidates’ biographies, carried out by research group Leopard Solutions, found the number of diverse entry-level hires in the top 200 American firms dropped from 2,371 in 2022 to 2,049 last year.
The number of experienced lawyers from ethnic minority backgrounds brought in by the firms fell even more precipitously, from 2,790 to 1,879.
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