Wait until Grandpa Simpson here finds out who the president is. Won’t he be surprised to learn where this particular buck stops.

Maybe his staff should tell him that Jimmy Carter’s still in charge. It wouldn’t be far from the truth.

The RNC had fun snipping short soundbites from Biden’s remarks this afternoon about this morning’s brutal inflation report. The only good news for Democrats today is that a presidential address on the topic means the White House is now officially taking this problem Very Seriously. Hand-waving about “transitory inflation” isn’t going to cut it anymore, not after last week’s election results.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. The president is now admitting it, and making a bunch of Republican attack ads in the process:

Joe Biden: "Did you ever think you'd be paying this much for a gallon of gas?" pic.twitter.com/aqi36NkfI1

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 10, 2021

Biden admits that Americans are facing "higher prices and long delays" thanks to his own supply chain and inflation crises. pic.twitter.com/J3l1KgAjhg

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 10, 2021

Biden admits "everything from a gallon of gas to a loaf of bread costs more," then falsely claims "wages are going up."

In reality, prices are rising at the highest rate in 30+ years and real wages are DOWN. pic.twitter.com/7LcfA9BjrB

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 10, 2021

The RNC is right about wages. The number on your biweekly paycheck may be inching up but not as quickly as prices are:

After adjusting for today’s new inflation numbers, average hourly wages fell 1.2% from Oct 2020 to Oct 2021. Change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.3% in average workweek resulted in a 1.6% decrease in real avg weekly earnings https://t.co/6ybYIwIHBm

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) November 10, 2021

Biden assured his audience that he’d spoken this week with major retailers like Walmart and shipping leviathans like UPS and FedEx and they told him that the stores will be stocked this holiday season. I hope he’s right for everyone’s sake, including his. A toy shortage before Christmas is a trivial problem in the grand scheme of things but a major political problem potentially as it’s the sort of thing voters will remember when forming a judgment about whether their lives are better under the new administration.

Meanwhile, what about supermarket shelves? Will they be stocked too or will it be pizza for Thanksgiving this year?

By the end of October turkeys were over 60% out of stock—lower than the same time last year by more than 30 percentage points. A spokesperson for Butterball LLC, one of the largest U.S. turkey processors, said the company has been experiencing similar labor and supply challenges as other organizations and industries…

Essential ingredients might not be the only things absent from Thanksgiving dinner this year. Guests traveling will be faced with car rental and gas prices the highest they have been in seven years.

Rental-car fleets have experienced shortages for months, and are expected to continue into the holiday season.

It’d be nice at least if families could gather for Thanksgiving with confidence that they’ll be safe from COVID as they sit down at the table to carve the tofurky they bought at the last minute because the real thing wasn’t available. But there’s a shortage of rapid COVID tests too, thanks partly to the FDA’s inexcusable bureaucratic sluggishness in approving new tests for the market and partly to Biden’s administration having taken steps to address the test shortage far too belatedly.

In the end, his solution to the inflation crisis involved two wholly predictable points. First, never forget that it’s not really his fault. It’s COVID’s, and globalization’s.

Pres. Biden explains what a supply chain is: "Even products as simple as a pencil can't have to use the wood from Brazil, graphite from India, before it comes together at a factory in the U.S. to get a pencil — Sounds silly, but that's literally how it happens." pic.twitter.com/46Uu9V1pbx

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 10, 2021

It’s also your fault, sort of:

Biden blames his inflation crisis on Americans buying too many goods online: Americans “are not going out to dinner and lunch and going to local bars because of Covid. So what are they doing? They are ordering online and buying product.” pic.twitter.com/2qzSvuadJy

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 10, 2021

Second, and coincidentally, the way out of the crisis is precisely the same policies that Democrats preferred before inflation really began to bite:

President Biden said the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in the House of Representatives on Friday will lower the price of consumer goods, in a speech at the Baltimore port on Wednesday.

“Along with other plans that I’m advancing, this bill is going to reduce the cost of goods to consumers, businesses, and get people back to work, helping us build an economy . . . where everybody’s better off,” Biden said.

He hasn’t given the country the hard sell yet on how the reconciliation social-welfare mega-bill will also somehow reduce inflation, but it’s coming. He sketched out the argument in the statement he issued this morning following the inflation news. Soon American media will be overflowing with talking points about how the only way to ease rising prices is to inject another $1.75 trillion in spending into the economy.

Think Joe Manchin will buy it? Stay tuned.