Joe Biden, Man – The Joke's on Us

To hear Joe Biden tell it on Tuesday's State of the Union address, we sure are lucky to have him as president.

If anything, he was far too modest in refraining from enumerating many of his hallmark achievements over two brief years.

Spending and Inflation

Whereas Biden previously claimed he had lowered the national debt — which according to the Congressional Research Service stands at $31.43 trillion — by $1.7 trillion, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that his administration actually added $4.8 trillion to our deficits through executive actions and legislation in addition to normal spending.

Not included in this accounting is a new $1.7 trillion 4,000-page omnibus bill with about $15 billion in 7,200 mostly unread earmarks rammed through by a Democrat-controlled Congress in December.

As for that mythical "transitory" inflation, there's a time — very much like the present — to realize that spending is an accelerant, not a cure.

Energy Costs and Security

A major contributor to painful inflation is the unforced consequence of his war against fossil energy enacted during his first days in office banning the Keystone XL pipeline along with myriad other executive orders placing regulatory restrictions on drilling.

In doing so, thus ended globally enviable U.S. energy-fueled independence and prosperity on a deluded notion that the more than 80% of our reliable and abundant supply provided by hydrocarbons can be replaced lickety-split by intermittent wind and solar which account for less than 3% combined.

Don't be conned into a notion that "old" fossil energy is obsolete ... not modern technology like producing electric power with windmills. If that were true, both would have gained prominence a long time ago without requiring passage of that ridiculously branded $739 billion Democrat "Inflation Reduction Act" climate and tax bill.

After all, both technologies were invented around the same time: the internal combustion engine by American engineer George Brayton in 1872; the electric wind turbine by Dutch inventor Poul la Cour only about 20 years later.

Saving the Environment

Democrats purport to love wind energy so long as those giant bird Cuisinarts aren't located anywhere near their own backyards or within sight of their expensive beachfront residences.

As for benefits to ending climate change, if fossil fuels were the problem, tell that to China — the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter — which is building the equivalent of about one new coal-fired plant weekly with a free pass from commitments to the Paris climate accord.

Let's remember that China controls 80% of the global rare earth minerals, including lithium, that will be needed to supply those so-called "green technologies" such as heavily subsidized electric vehicles that Democrats are pushing.

Consider also that those vital materials, along with cobalt from the Congo, are being mined under horrific working conditions, including child labor, that no environment or truly human rights-minded societies would conscience.

National Defenselessness

In a failed quest for a self-edifying photo opportunity that went terribly wrong, Joe Biden's precipitously disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan left 13 Americans dead, abandoned possibly as many as 9,000 others behind, and turned over the strategic Bagram air base along with advanced weaponry worth several billions of dollars.

The Afghanistan debacle has made a global mockery of America's top leadership and military judgement with a predictable consequence of emboldening our adversaries and causing legitimate jitters on the part of allies who depend upon us as a reliable defense partner.

This, at a time when our newly woke military commanders are politically preoccupied with introducing proper pronoun etiquette like gender-neutral "Zur, Yes Zur!" into training preparedness protocols.

Southern Border and Crime

The primary beneficiaries of Joe Biden's open southern border policies are criminal human trafficking and drug cartels.

Since Joe Biden canceled the Remain in Mexico policy and ordered ICE not to enforce court-ordered deportations, abandoned the border wall, and signaled to the world that America’s borders no longer mattered, weive seen 1.7 million illegal migrants deliberately admitted into this country and another 1.2 million known got-aways have entered while the Border Patrol has been overwhelmed changing diapers and taking names. 

Now that is an illegal migrant population of 2.9 million. That is the entire population of the state of Mississippi just since this administration changed these policies and precipitated this crisis. 

And as the Democrats’ witness testified, illegal aliens are now being rapidly and efficiently trafficked by our government to every community in our nation.

This total amounts to an equivalent of the entire Mississippi population since his administration changed former President Donald Trump's policies to precipitate this crisis.

Attendant with those got-aways has come an opioid disaster including deadly fentanyl which is now the leading cause of U.S. deaths for people ages 18 to 45.

COVID Policy Confusion

Biden's reversals of Trump border security and immigration, including ending the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) which keep unvetted and unvaxed migrants in Mexico as they await their political asylum hearings, fly in the face of administration pretenses of concern regarding safeguards during a COVID emergency.

Meanwhile, after declaring the COVID-19 pandemic to be over during a "60 Minutes" interview in September of last year, he has continued to require that military and other government personnel get vaccinated as a condition of continuing in service.

Ballooning Biden Buffoonery

Then there's the curiously concerning matter of why the Biden administration allowed a Chinese spy balloon to traverse the entire continental United States, presumably collecting data over top-secret military installations and missile sites before shooting it down.

Maybe it's high time to pop Joe's hot air balloon in 2024?

As Joe often says, "That's no joke, Jack!"

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.