BIDEN POSTS A NOTE

PRESIDENTIAL SHIP SETS OUT TO STORMY SEAS

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The point of all this public speaking is to self-assure the citizenry that all is well that moves forward beyond the first 100 days of the 46^th President’s four year mandate.

United States President Joe Biden wanted to assure everyone, particularly himself it seemed at times, that he was leading the people out of troubled times, and that he would continue to do so, in his First Address to Congress as President.

Biden still seems to be pinching himself in having received the once in a lifetime windfall of the Presidential Office. The career politician has been at the political game so long, he likely no longer believed that he could attain the pinnacle of political success anymore.

Biden goes back a long time in his speech to before he was elected to Congress, and kind of shortly after or was it just before the reference, squeezed his eyebrows together as if he had befuddled himself.

And indeed, Mr. President quickly would become befuddled, referring to his Presidency in the past tense, when he surely knows that he is not quite at 100, still sitting at 99 days in the present, and him having said as much last night. 

America though chose to look aside as their leader misspoke once again.

Benjamin Franklin would have shaken a head and pointed a finger at the television screen at just the slightest appearance of imperfection in the American image as an industrious and truthful nation.

You cannot bet Joe Biden out though, just like he said the world has learned that “it is never a good bet to bet against America.”

Biden seems to be getting stronger as the days tick by on his four years in office, like getting to the Oval Office was the most difficult part of the journey, and once there, there is a whole team hand-picked to keep you there and get you ready for each day of the trip.

The First Address to Congress though was a telling reminder of the path the Democrats will be on for the duration of the term.

Biden leans left with one foot in the center, whereas Donald Trump had both feet right, leaning so far right as well that he almost fell, and Barack Obama had both feet in the center, but winked and bit his lip to the left. Russian President Vladimir Putin is still safe in isolation all alone far off on the left with both feet firmly planted in farmer’s soil and oil swells.

Trump was not quite isolationist, but he was decidedly ‘America First’. And Biden seems to be tarred and feathered with some of that vitriol just to keep the nation unified.

Just to mention climate change and clean energy and the EV charging grid in the same speech is more than I remember Obama advocating for in his Addresses to a Joint Session of Congress. Obama expanded offshore drilling, and he also did a bunch of other questionable things, like bailing out Wall Street, but then Obama enabled the creation of conservation zones, including one in Hawaii and another one in the Antarctic.

America is getting old. Miles of water pipes for drinking water in daycares and public schools still have led in them. And the chimneys still spit out carbon at alarming rates.

America still buys steel products from China instead of Pittsburg. American communities involved in steel production formed the Rust Belt when everyone including the Americans bought cheap steel from China. And the world turns.

Biden attempted to unify political pressure groups last night by suggesting that Pittsburg can manufacture the large blades required for wind turbines currently being imported into the United States from Beijing. In this one swell swoop, Biden reached out to the steel lobby, the clean energy lobby and the ‘America First’ lobby.

And then Biden reached out to Trump voters in 35% of rural communities who are still without the Internet, which is a lot considering much of America, including the Heartland, consists of rural communities. 

Biden still seems to be reaching for sure footing as he lays out for all the world to witness his political platform for at least the next 265 days.

Next year, come February, Biden will deliver his first State of the Union Address to a Joint Session of Congress, and Americans will check and measure just how far down the agenda Biden has got.

Hopefully, the fight against Covid-19 will be a wrap, and Biden will be more learned in reading from teleprompters to the left and to the right of him, with the Prime Time camera so squarely in the middle looking right at him.

Biden’s agenda is not all about industry and America looking industrious to the world.

Biden hammered in some planks about human rights and violence in America.

America is often America’s own worst enemy.

The young nation initially picked a fight with everyone to shore up territory inland and to the south after the American Civil War. Soldiers secured borders between Texas and Mexico and New Mexico and Mexico while waging the Indian Wars and forcing indigenous populations onto reservations after long years of bloody internal conflict.

And the great plains buffalo disappeared in the hundreds of thousands to the white riflemen, just as the whales vanished from the great oceans to the Boston fishermen.

This history of violence has left a long shadow protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the nine learned judges on the Supreme Court of the United States, who possess the power to end the gun violence and mass shootings all in a fortnight with the candle lit in the window and the Washington frost creeping in to the writing chambers.

Biden spoke out against violence against women, who die in America at the alarming rate of 50 per month, at the hands of their gun toting husbands/domestic partners.

In Chicago, as many as 10 to 20 people can die from gunshot wounds on any given weekend on hot summer nights as the house parties swell out onto the streets with potentially everyone or anyone carrying hand guns with the right to bare arms guaranteed to them by the Second Amendment.

I am sure many Chicago gangsters are carrying hand guns illegally, especially the drive by shooters. And the police have geared up to the challenge, no doubt, eh.

Policing has become so unlawful in the United States that the Federal Government has had to send in special task forces to audit police departments in cities such as Chicago and Seattle.

Lawlessness becomes a state of being as the parties involved try to survive by increasing the level of violence regardless of who is wearing what uniform.

Biden also relabeled white supremacy as domestic terrorism, while making overtures to Black America.

Then, Biden reached out to Republicans, not with compromises and innovative ideas that address concerns raised on both sides of the House, but he did so with democracy and the long standing invitation in America to argue and debate and to disagree, but not to take up arms and fight because of a difference in opinion.

America is a tight slow moving ship with the cops and the judges and the politicians controlling all possible outcomes, hand in hand and in lock step with the public.

Biden has a good way to go yet, with time and democracy the ultimate deciders.