“This poor kid is down a hundred-foot vessel, chimney, scraping the hydrogen bubbles off of the inside,” the President told the Special Counsel. “And he was wearing the wrong pants, wrong jeans, and he—a spark caught fire…and he lost part of his penis and one of his testicles and he was 23 years old.” This is enough said about Biden in general and the budget in particular.
On Monday, President Joe Biden released his budget blueprint for 2024, recommending the federal government spend an absolutely astounding $7.3 trillion while increasing taxes by almost $500 million, calling for an expansion in the size and scope of government unseen in modern memory or any memory at all outside a World War. To put this in perspective, the total budget was $4.5 trillion as recently as 2019, a scant five years ago, which now seems a relatively quaint figure. Last year, we spent $6.4 trillion, an increase of 40% in just four short years, but President Biden wants almost another 15% and would double the size of the government by the end of this decade. In fact, he would have us spend significantly more than at the height of the pandemic ($6.8 trillion) when the government was literally paying people not to work and subsidizing millions of tests and vaccinations per day. What would we get for all of this money? A litany of inflation increasing government handouts and giveaways including expanded child tax credits, prescription drug coverage, healthcare subsidies, childcare subsidies, housing subsidies, mortgage interest rate buy downs, subsidies to build more homes, help with down payments, free community college, and more combined with massive tax increases on the supposed rich and corporations, plus onerous regulations on corporate pay and revamped army of IRS agents to audit more people than ever before. If you look at the state of the country today and think to yourself that, above all else, we need more government, doing more things, and handing out more money regardless of the cost or unintended consequences, this is the budget for you. If, on the other hand, you are a rational person, like say former member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, Larry Summers, and understand that inflation is at least partly driven by massive government spending, believing that there was no need on this planet to keep government growing after the pandemic anymore than there was after World War I, you likely have serious doubts. If you are a conservative, who believes that government is the problem rather than the answer, and we should be focused on ensuring people receive value for their tax dollars, you are undoubtedly appalled that supposedly intelligent individuals could waste thousands of man hours producing complete nonsense. The budget itself represents government waste at its finest.
For better or likely worse, we can tell which side the media is on from the headlines alone. The New York Daily News, for example, declared that the “Biden plan is rooted in common sense” and “making smart budget choices” without bothering to explain why anyone would want to double the size and scope of the government in just a decade barring any wars or other major catastrophes. Their delusion extends to the President himself, when they claimed “Coming after a forceful State of the Union address in which the longtime senator and vice president took a step back from his tendency towards reflexive bipartisanship to bash the radicalism of the Trump-captured GOP, it’s refreshing to see a continued embrace of expansive social policy, backed by a commitment to progressive taxation,” leading one to wonder whether they are observing the same universe or perhaps some quantum entangled netherworld. President Biden, after all, is the man who referred to Texas as populated by Neanderthals, said you were a Confederate if you believe voter’s should provide ID, and regularly claims his political opponents want to end democracy as we know it. Bipartisan he is not, reflexively or otherwise, as evidenced by the simple fact that the only major achievement he managed to pass with a filibuster proof majority was the infrastructure bill, where over 60 Senators pulled off the magic trick of making a trillion dollars disappear without a trace. Everything else that has earned him the 14th spot on the all time President’s list has been through creative use of the reconciliation rules in the Senate, passing without a single Republican vote. Regardless, “Let the Republicans return to their districts and explain to their constituents why they stand united in opposition to ameliorating the skyrocketing cost of child care and instituting the paid family leave mandates that all but a handful of countries worldwide have — both significant drivers of people who want to have kids delaying the decision or changing their minds altogether. Force them to explain what’s so bad about tax breaks for would-be homebuyers struggling with housing costs, and why reversing the sweetheart deals billion-dollar corporations and the wealthiest Americans got from Trump’s 2017 tax cuts is such an objectionable principle that it trumps having these things.” How about they explain that the country is going bankrupt? The dollar is worth less with each passing day? Or that the solution to these problems is to bring the actual freaking costs down, rather than take money from someone else to pay for it, which will only increase the cost further and lead to even more inflation? Maybe they can add that their employer, I don’t know, pays them, and will have less to do so if you increase their taxes?
The Associated Press, meanwhile, simply repeated President Biden’s talking points, claiming “Biden’s budget proposal: Family tax breaks, cheaper health care, and more” as if we can simply take him at his word, especially given how costs in general including for healthcare have been skyrocketing on his watch, no need to consider that these grand schemes will not turn out as they claimed. For its part, CNN noted the budget “hits populist economic themes,” which was bad, very bad when President Trump did it, now not so much. Perhaps even more absurdly, all of these sources and more bought the ridiculous claim that growing the budget by almost 15 percent year after year after year is going to magically reduce the deficit by some $5 trillion thanks to the proposed tax increases – because there’s no better way to save money than to spend more of it. Imagine telling your significant other that your plan to get out of debt is to take on more debt at higher and higher interest rates. We can’t afford this Toyota, so let’s get a Porsche. This is especially acute these days when simply paying the interest on the current debt is 17% percent of the total budget and rising. In fact, we are spending more on debt, some $870 billion this year, than we do Medicaid, federal programs for children, income security programs, including those targeted at lower-income Americans such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, earned income, child, and other tax credits, and Veterans’ benefits. In other words, if you are remotely interested in protecting programs for the poor, your number one priority should be getting the deficit under control before debt payments crowd out everything else. President Biden, however, in a classic have your cake and eat it too conundrum, believes he can jack up spending and reduce the deficit at the same time. Ultimately, neither the President nor any of the fawning media propagandists bothered to ask a simple question: What possibly justifies doubling the size of the government over a decade, especially when it cannot perform its current functions successfully? Did the economy double in size? Did the population? Did anything in your life save for perhaps the size of your grocery bill and filling up your gas tank?
On Tuesday, Special Counsel Robert Hur testified before Congress about his conclusion that President Biden was too old, infirm, and mentally unfit to stand trial for his illegal possession, retention, and distribution of classified documents. Prior to his appearance, a full transcript of his interview with the President was released, providing background information on why the final report on the matter, issued last month, claimed Biden couldn’t remember what year his son died, what years he was Vice President, and more, that he was “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” When the report itself was released, President Biden responded in unfeigned outrage – and outright lies. “My memory’s fine. My memory’s – take a look at what I’ve done since I became president,” he blustered. “How did that happen? I guess I just forgot what was going on.” At the time, he reserved his most indignant response to the report’s reference to his inability to remember when his son died, a damning indictment of his memory if ever there was one. “There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?” He bellowed. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought, ‘It wasn’t any of their damn business.’” The only problem: Neither Special Counsel Hur nor anyone on his team asked such a question. The President himself brought it up in a frightening exchange, familiar to anyone who has dealt with a loved one suffering from the early stages of dementia. Special Counsel Hur asked a simple question about the classified documents the President had kept illegally, “So during this time…where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?” The President responded by saying he didn’t know and wasn’t sure of the time frame, “Well, um… I, I, I, I, I don’t know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?” After the Special Counsel confirmed that was correct, Biden sputtered, unclear as to whether his son Beau was deployed in Iraq or dying from brain cancer. “Remember, in this timeframe, my son is — either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was — ” To put this gap in perspective, Beau returned from Iraq in 2009, almost 10 years before the period in question. Even then, the President was unable to continue his thought, launching into an unexpected, unprompted aside about people wanting him to run for president in the first place, “— and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the President. I’m not –and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did…” He rambled in what appeared to be an incoherent reference to Barack Obama, who reported favored Hillary Clinton in 2016 and is supposed to have said to never underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” The President then stumbled back to the original train of thought, though remained unable to answer the question. “And, and so what was happening, though – what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th –” Here, someone else jumps in to inform him that Beau died in 2015, at least two years before the events that were being discussed, but the President still isn’t sure, asking “Was it 2015 he had died?” An unidentified male speaker assured him for the second time that was the case, and only then does Biden finally assert. “It was 2015.”
Thus, in a single exchange he cannot remember when his son was deployed, when he died, and he launched into a bizarre aside about running for President, which of course would have occurred the year before in any event. Nor is this the only time he appeared confused about the basic fact that presidential elections occur in only even numbered years, or his own involvement in them and in office. He asked, not stated, when President Trump was elected. “And what’s happened in the meantime is that as — and Trump gets elected in November of 2017?” Then, seemed confused why he had a reference to 2017 on his notes, “’16, 2016. All right. So – why do I have 2017 here?” He had to be reminded that was when he left office, “That’s when you left office, January of 2017,” and seemed confused yet again, “Yeah, okay. But that’s when Trump gets sworn in then, January —” At another point in the conversation, he suggested he left office four years earlier, “Well, if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?” and had to be told it was 2017. Elsewhere, he could not remember the word “fax machine,” not once but twice, and confused Iraq and Afghanistan, what CBS News described as “reaching for words he cannot find.” Beyond these lapses in memory, his testimony also included rather bizarre rants and random non sequiturs. He joked about the FBI finding “risqué” pictures of his wife, “You left everything in place,” he said about the search of his home, “I just hope you didn’t find any risqué pictures of my wife in a bathing suit. Which you probably did. She’s beautiful.” He claimed he was an excellent archer of all things, having hit a target at hundreds of yards in Mongolia in 2011. “I’m not a bad archer,” he claimed, immediately after calling the native Mongolian archers “gorillas.” “But…I hit the goddamn target,” he added, despite that there was no target to be hit and the entire sequence is on video from the time. He babbled about how he “didn’t take law school very seriously.” “We had a really difficult professor,” President Biden reminisced. “He called on me to—you know how they do in law school, discuss a case, you know, in your first torts class. And I had never read the case, and I stood up and I spoke for 10 minutes. The whole class stood up, started clapping.” Still, nothing was stranger than his description of the incident he claims led him into politics after law school, where he described a construction worker who apparently seared his penis on the job. I am not making this up, “This poor kid is down a hundred-foot vessel, chimney, scraping the hydrogen bubbles off of the inside,” the President told the Special Counsel. “And he was wearing the wrong pants, wrong jeans, and he—a spark caught fire and got caught in the containment vessel and he lost part of his penis and one of his testicles and he was 23 years old.” To my knowledge, no other official proceeding in the entire history of the world has descended to quite this level of madness and irrelevance, clearing showing a Commander in Chief that is not only cognitively impaired, but completely unhinged, unable to follow a basic train of thought and more intent on spinning wild tales like a drunken grandfather on Thanksgiving.
Needless to say, the mainstream media didn’t see it that way, not in the least. CBS News, for instance, dismissed these obvious signs of dementia by claiming this sort of thing was “common” for President Biden in particular, as in these “missteps appear to be common lapses for Mr. Biden who for years has struggled with names and dates in public speaking engagements.” The Washington Post said the interviews were “nuanced,” it “Paints a nuanced portrait” of what no one knows. The Hill said the same, “Transcript shows nuance.” Others said it was complicated, “The interview transcript is more complicated,” rationalized the Associated Press, once again without saying what is complicated about man obviously losing his mind while his finger remains on the nuclear button. A couple of outlets insisted that the faulty memory and bizarre behavior existed amid cogent details, as though somehow the President lapsed between random incoherence and genius. “Shows memory lapses, but also detailed exchanges,” explained NBC News. The New York Times said that “otherwise [he appeared] clear headed” and described it as “a tour of his life.” President Biden’s fellow Democrats, meanwhile, bizarrely insisted that Robert Hur had “exonerated” him – of precisely what, I have no freaking idea. Regardless, no one is supposed to notice that all of these players took the exact opposite approach less than four years ago when President Trump was in office. Way back then, we were told that erratic behavior of any kind, even something as silly as walking slowly down a ramp or holding a glass with two hands, was a sign of a deep psychological or physical problem that made someone unfit for office by definition, up to and including removing him under the 25th Amendment. It didn’t matter, they insisted, that all the major elements of American life remained stable and showed signs of flourishing (before the pandemic) or there were no wars, conflicts, military escalations, or random disastrous occurrences while President Trump was in office, suggesting to most who don’t suffer from a derangement syndrome of their own that his verbal bluster, which can admittedly be off putting at times, was just that, bluster. All that mattered was that he might be erratic in a critical moment and everything up to and including nuclear war could result. By any objective standard, President Biden is far, far more unhinged and mentally diminished than Trump ever was, not to mention that there have been three new wars on his watch, the first firing of missiles over US airspace at amateur balloons of all things, unprecedented attacks by Iran on our assets in the Middle East, a border so broken a new record gets broken almost every month, and an economy mired in high inflation and interest rates with little growth, just for starters.
Somehow, however, none of this matters, even as he proposes to double down on all of this with one of the most bloated budgets in history. Perhaps, I should rephrase the title: President Biden’s enablers and his budget are as demented as he is.
PS Here’s a bonus non sequitur, though one closer to my own heart as a lifelong fan of cars. Apparently, at some point during the interview the President launched into an aside about the launch control feature on a modern car, which revs the engine for optimal power before engaging the transmission, enabling mere mortals to achieve drag racing speeds. “You know, think about this. You had one of those big four by fours, the — I think it’s a Ford Bronco, whatever it is. Zero to sixty in four six.” “That’s fast,” the Special Counsel noted. “Yeah. By the way, you know how it works?” The President asked, laughing. “Sir, I’d love — I would love to hear much more about this, but I do have a few more questions to get through,” Mr. Hur tried to keep him on track. “You can take 30 seconds, but you put your foot on the brake, you hit, you hit a button that’s in the — and it says ‘launch.’ You step your foot on the accelerator all the way down…” “Woah,” the Special Counsel agreed. “…until it gets to about six, seven grand,” President Biden continued. “Then all of a sudden, it will say ‘launch.’ All you do is take your foot off the brake,” he joked, before the transcript claimed he “Makes car sound.”
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 