It’s not exactly a merry Christmas at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
President Joe Biden’s approval ratings are the lowest they’ve ever been, and heading into an election year, he trails Republican front-runner Donald Trump in the polls. Inflation isn’t at the eye-popping levels it was, but it still remains above the Federal Reserve’s target rate, with price increases already baked into a faltering economy.
Americans are unhappy, and rightly so.
Abroad, the administration’s weakness has invited Russia to invade Ukraine and Hamas to invade Israel, leading to prolonged conflicts on both fronts. Neither seems likely to abate anytime soon. At home, the president’s son faces tax and gun charges, and the president himself faces an impeachment inquiry over whether money from Hunter’s suspicious foreign dealings found its way into his father’s account.
However, the folks at NPR affiliate WBUR-FM in Boston don’t seem to have access to the news — or, if they do, they choose to ignore most of it. That’s the only conclusion one can draw from the fact that our state-funded radio broadcaster published this commentary piece on its website: “Joe Biden’s drama-free White House is America’s most under-appreciated Christmas gift.”
Read those words to yourself again. They’re not from The Onion, nor the Babylon Bee, but NPR. Your tax dollars at work, America!
Steve Almond is a writer whose animus toward Republicans is pretty obvious; of his five commentary pieces for WBUR before the uproarious one about “Joe Biden’s drama-free White House,” three were about Donald Trump (titled “Trump is a clear and present danger,” Donald Trump and the trap door” and “What to do about Donald Trump,” respectively), one had to do with Fox News (“When truth is an ‘unsellable product’”) and only one of which had to do with something other than propping up the Democrats while excoriating Republicans (a piece about the allegations that former “Daily Show” contributor Hasan Minhaj has fabricated much of the backstory that’s made up his onstage comic act).
But here he is, just before we unwrap presents under our respective Christmas trees (which are more expensive than ever, thanks to rampant inflation), filled with jolly ho-ho-hokum about how we ought to be thanking our senescent puppet-in-chief for all he’s bequeathed upon us this holiday season.
“With Hanukkah just over, and Christmas fast approaching, Americans are thinking a lot about gifts these days. According to Gallup in fact, we’re on pace to spend more this holiday season than we have in a quarter century,” Almond began.
Should NPR be defunded?
“Much of the reason for this can be attributed to President Joe Biden’s administration, which has helped engineer an economic recovery few thought possible when he came into office. Under his watch, inflation has plummeted with no sign of a recession. GDP growth was at 5% last quarter, with historically low unemployment, and robust wage growth.”
This is basically a two-paragraph synopsis of everything wrong with those who rush to the defense of “Bidenomics.”
First, the “historically low unemployment, and robust wage growth” has largely been fueled by the slow-but-steady recovery from pandemic lockdowns that decimated the American economy. All Joe Biden had to do to achieve that was nothing — and he did less than that, pursuing policies that ushered in rampant inflation, encouraged workers to stay out of the workforce and which did nothing to alleviate gas and housing crises.
The second problem, of course, is this sentence: “According to Gallup in fact, we’re on pace to spend more this holiday season than we have in a quarter century.”
Yes, we are — and a cursory look at the data reveals it’s in real, not adjusted, U.S. dollars, meaning inflation might also play a part in that. The pollster also noted “the increase could consumer interest in retailer promotions that kicked off ahead of Black Friday,” adding that the “estimate[s] run contrary to the implications of Americans’ continued pessimism about the economy and relatively sluggish overall spending in October.”
Well, what about the White House being “drama-free?” Here’s a spoiler alert: There are no mentions of “Hunter” anywhere in the article, and the only mention of “scandal” is this riotous sentence from Mr. Almond’s keyboard: “Biden may be 80 and a little bit boring, but his administration has been chaos and scandal free.” He even managed to get Biden’s age wrong. (The president turned 81 in November; the article was published Thursday.)
Instead, here are the talking points Almond points to as to why we should be grateful for whoever is pulling the strings on the 81-year-old celluloid marionette in the Oval Office:
“A holiday meal sans masks.” (We could have had this in 2020.) “More buying power.” (This is because wage growth is now higher than inflation — a relatively recent phenomenon.) “Cheaper prescription drugs.” (Because Joe Biden “took the fight to Big Pharma and capped the cost of insulin at $35 per month” and now allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly — meaning the invisible costs inherent in America’s broken health-care system will be invariably pushed elsewhere.) “Jobs, jobs and more jobs.” (Translation: Democrats killed jobs with lockdowns, and are now taking credit for the fact they’ve come back. Woohoo!) “Student debt relief.” (Although nowhere near as much as the president wanted — which is probably for the best, considering how popular paying off student debt is among those who paid theirs off beforehand or never took loans in the first place.)
You get the idea. I’ll cut this out before you and I get migraines, but not before noting Mr. Almond’s almost-pathetic naïvety regarding why Americans might not regard the president as Saint Nick with hair plugs.
“The central mystery of this holiday season, for Biden, is why the American people seem to regard this booming economy as a lump of coal,” Almond wrote. “Whatever the reasons, I can’t help but think of Biden and his economic team, toiling away without much fanfare, like Santa and his elves. Whether or not you support him, it’s worth acknowledging a few of the gifts Santa Joe has tucked under our tree this year.”
I’ll pause to allow you a hearty outburst of schadenfreude-induced laughter over that nugget.
But fine, whatever: Thanks, Joe Biden, for making my job as a conservative content creator so much easier. Then again, NPR affiliates and bobblehead media Democrat boosters like Steve Almond also do — and they don’t spend trillions of my money on infrastructure bills that have little to do with infrastructure, or inflation bills that have nothing to do with inflation. They just fritter away a tiny bit of it on a puff-piece commentary about how the “drama-free White House” currently in the midst of an impeachment inquiry and with roughly the same approval rating as malaria “is America’s most under-appreciated Christmas gift.”
At least this waste of my tax money made me laugh, I suppose. New headline: “NPR station’s clue-free commentary is random writer’s most under-appreciated Christmas gift.” Thank you, Mr. Almond. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a lying dog-faced pony soldier. Corn Pop was a bad dude. Huh? Where’s Jackie?
