The SOTU Speech
Biden delivered a feisty campaign speech. But Gaza genocide remains the albatross around his neck.
It’s day 153 of the war on Gaza. The health ministry reports that at least 30,878 Palestinians have been killed and dozens more, mainly children are dying from starvation daily.
Democrats obviously rejected my suggestion of injecting Seth Meyers’ brilliant takedown of D.T. into Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech. In fact, Biden never even mentioned Trump by name. They also unsurprisingly, ignored my suggestion for a radical change in Middle East policy, but I’ll get to that later.
None of that of that mattered to his cheering and chanting congressional supporters Wednesday night. Not only was Biden able to get through the speech without a major stumble or mumble, he performed it with some pep in his step, unshaken even by catcalls from the evil one, Marjorie Taylor Green.
But the problem for Democrats wasn’t in Biden’s over-rehearsed delivery, but rather in the fact that there’s a real-time genocide taking place in Gaza right now, carried out by Israel and underwritten to the tune of billions of dollars by the US and that millions of voters, especially battleground-state voters are having none of it.
I was good with about 75% of the SOTU speech. I liked Biden’s defense of unions, social security, prescription drug price cuts, women’s health care, and more. I was glad he introduced an old friend, Civil Rights Movement singer Bettie Mae Fikes, and U.A.W. President Shawn Fain.
The other 25
But it was the other 25% that has me and so many others currently voting for UNCOMMITTED, CEASEFIRE or just leaving the top of the ballot blank, in the primary. That was the neocon, war-mongering part, including him regurgitating many of Israel’s main talking points on why the war on Gaza is justified and beating the drum for war on Russia and Iran. (China?)
Biden did softly nudge Netanyahu a bit on taking care not to harm civilians and he did call for a cease-fire that would last for six weeks to “get all the prisoners released — all the hostages released.”
It was just 10 days ago that Biden told us to expect that ceasefire to start last Monday and when that didn’t happen, he moved the date forward to the start of Ramadan. But now we’re hearing that the closer we get to the start of Ramadan, at the beginning of next week, the deeper the pessimism becomes that a new hostage-release deal will be struck anytime soon.
Sen. Bernie Sanders summed it up pretty well with this post-SOTU tweet.
The American people understand a simple truth that Congress ignores: It is absurd and hypocritical to criticize Netanyahu’s inhumane war in one breath and provide him another $10 billion to continue that war in the next.
I take everything in a campaign speech like this with a grain (whole shaker) of salt.
At the very moment Biden was at the podium wringing his hands about the poor Palestinian children, he was using every legal loophole at his disposal to hide over a hundred new clandestine shipments of weapons to the IDF death machine without congressional approval.
When I first heard about Biden’s plans to airdrop aid into Gaza and build a new port on Gaza’s coast, I thought they were pure madness. I still do.
Why not just demand that Netanyahu immediately allow those hundreds of trucks free passageway in from Egypt and stop shooting starving Palestinians coming to get food for their families? The answer is that Netanyahu doesn’t give a wit about what Biden wants, so long as the money and arms shipments keep coming. And they will.
And then, this from Biden…
Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters. No U.S. boots will be on the ground.
Really?
CBS News reports that the project will take two months to complete and that hundreds of US troops are on their way to Gaza to build and protect it.
About 1,000 U.S. forces will be needed to build a temporary maritime corridor to get aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Friday.
And what happens when and if Hamas or Israeli fighters attack the pier? No one’s saying.
And then, just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse…
Five children were allegedly killed in the Gaza Strip by a humanitarian aid airdrop from an unidentified foreign country on Friday, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said. Several Palestinian civilians were also injured in the airdrop, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza, which called the airdrop "random." — ABC News
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Britt’s GOP rebuttal was custom-made for SNL
It’s been rumored that DT is considering Sen. Katie Britt (Alabama) as his potential running mate. I think he can kiss that thought goodby after her hilarious but deadly Republican rebuttal to Biden’s speech.
Although you never know. Remember, John McCain chose Sarah Palin.
Tommy Tuberville, the Senator buffoon from Alabama, thought Britt was great. She gave him a chance to talk about schools and stuff. He says schoolchildren “aren’t being allowed to read and write and do arithmetic.”
Instead, “they’re being indoctrinated in all these pronouns and all books in the library about sexuality…”
The funniest mock on Britt (there are dozens to choose from) came from satirist Heather Gardner.
“I have to send my kids to school with books that aren’t the bible.”
I doubt tonight’s SNL can top it.
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One last point about the speech.
Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal, that’s right. But how many thousands of people are being killed by legals?
Biden should stop referring to new sanctuary-seeking migrants as “illegals.”