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In Cole Porter’s “Miss Otis Regrets,” the heroine announces that she’s unable to lunch today. Why? She has a good excuse — because she was strung up by a mob for killing “the man who had led her so far astray.”
Now Ms. Yellen regrets. Janet Yellen holds the venerable office of Secretary of the Treasury. Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Yellen is well qualified for the job and an ostensibly serious person. Yet she has proved unfit for the office, regurgitating administration talking points with an utter lack of seriousness. Inflation — she declared in 2021 that it was “transitory.” Abortion — restricting it would be “very damaging” to the economy. By contrast, she supports the administration’s gusher of “green” spending as constructive. ‘S wonderful.
Ms. Yellen regrets she has revealed herself to be a political hack. “I regret saying [inflation] was transitory,” Yellen said in a March 13 interview on Fox News. “It has come down. But I think transitory means a few weeks or months to most people.” Three years later, it might be worth asking what “transitory” means to her and who suggested she use the term in coordination with the other occupants of the Biden administration clown car.
When Yellen adopted the administration line on inflation being “transitory,” nobody had led Yellen astray. She killed her own reputation. However, she is also able to lunch today. Why anyone should even believe anything she says is not exactly a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. No one should.
Joe Biden is delivering his State of the Union speech tonight. Apparently he will chide Americans for not appreciating his wonderful economy; declining real wages will not be mentioned. He will denounce “shrinkflation,” as though people are too stupid to know inflation when they see it. Nor will Biden mention the eight million or so illegals who have streamed across the border, wreaking havoc, since he opened it.
Biden has always been mean-spirited. He is a nasty person, and always has been. Take, for example, his recent interview in the New Yorker. The interview is replete with Biden’s trademark classlessness, but take just one example: his smearing of Justice Thomas:
In a concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the legal rationale for overturning Roe could be applied to “correct the error” in cases on same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and access to contraception. I asked Biden if he thought that the Justices would undo those protections. “I don’t think there’s a majority to go there,” he said, but added, “I think that a couple on the Court would go considerably further”—specifically “the guy who likes to spend a lot of time on yachts.”
“Thomas?” I asked.
Biden grinned.
Those familiar with Thomas’s history will appreciate the absurdity of describing him as a yachtsman. He is better known for driving around America in an RV. But in any event, it is Biden–not Thomas–who has enriched himself and his family to the tune of many millions of dollars through influence peddling. Worst of all, he peddled his influence to powers hostile to America. It takes a lot of nerve for Joe Biden to sneer at the Court’s foremost intellectual for accepting a ride on a boat.
But that is Joe Biden: mean-spirited, through and through.
Jeffrey Anderson presents a comparative analysis of presidents and inflation. The mainstream press to the contrary notwithstanding, he explains what Biden has done to make us feel so black and blue. It’s not our imagination. It’s the inflation, stupid! See his City Journal column “No great mystery.” Anderson manages to review the data and perform the analysis with a sense of humor.
The daycare minders at the White House have persuaded Biden to single out “shrinkflation” as the villain. However, “shrinkflation” reflects “inflation.” It is a manifestation of rising prices. Sentient observers understand that Biden economic policies have triggered the inflation that we have suffered, just as they understand that Biden’s senescence has slowed the windmills of his mind. Biden trusts we won’t notice he indicts himself when he decries “shrinkflation.”
Biden’s daycare minders take us for fools. Thus the administration’s critique of Republicans for causing the invasion of illegals that Biden invited, facilitated, and denied. They think we are stupid.
We hear that Biden threatens to point the finger at alleged corporate wrongdoing as the source of our pain in tonight’s State of the Union address. For some reason or other this wave of alleged wrongdoing has run riot under the regime of…Joe Biden. It was somehow held in check under the regime of…Donald Trump. James Bovard seeks to immunize us against the foolishness of the Biden party line in his New York Post column “Joe Biden’s State of the Union ‘shrinkflation’ swindle.”
That is what Joe Biden demanded of the Israelis, Hamas and representatives of Qatar and Egypt who are trying to broker a cease-fire agreement. As though he were the party in interest. The Telegraph interprets Biden’s motives:
Mr Biden is under major pressure from voters over the US alliance with Israel, and the president was punished at the ballot box by protesting young Democrats in the primaries last week.
So what would a proposed deal look like?
A potential deal could include a six-week pause in fighting, the release of approximately 400 Palestinian prisoners in return for the freeing of 40 Israeli hostages, as well as preparation for a gradual return of Palestinian citizens to the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Why 40 hostages? Why not all of them? Why should Israel even discuss a proposal that does not include a total release of kidnap victims? And how about a Hamas surrender? Normally, when a country starts a war and then loses it, if it wants the fighting to stop it has to surrender. It is bizarre that some people take seriously the idea that Hamas should survive the war it foolishly started.
Happily, Israel has decided not to attend the cease-fire negotiations in Cairo:
Israel will not be sending a negotiating team to Cairo, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Sunday, after receiving an unsatisfactory response from Hamas on the latest framework for a hostage deal hammered out in Paris last weekend.
The Gaza-based terror organization refused to address Jerusalem’s demand to provide a list of living hostages and to lock down how many Palestinian prisoners Israel must release for every hostage freed, added the official.
My guess is that Gaza doesn’t want to provide a list of living kidnap victims because a shocking number have been murdered. In any event, Israel shouldn’t allow Hamas’s transparent diplomatic maneuvering, or hysterical reactions from the Biden administration, to distract It from the total victory it needs to achieve over Gaza.
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