The Boss has always been a fan of ending the annual dog and pony show that is the State of the Union address. I've been a little more resistant to banning it, viewing them through the lens of show prep for audio/video clips, and on the off chance that they may contain some soaring rhetoric that can actually help unify a country that is pulling itself apart on a number of social and policy issues.
The last true State of the Union that had any cohesive, uplifting words was the 2002 Axis of Evil speech by George W. Bush, clearly outlining the three biggest threats facing the United States at the time - Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The clarity, followed by an unwavering resolve that we would rise to meet and eventually defeat those threats, made a lasting impression...until the next administration came in and started negotiating a nuclear deal with one of the three evil countries - Iran.
This year, President Joe Biden, and his apparently vast team of pharmacologists, worked together to present an awake Joe Biden. A feisty Joe Biden. An angry Joe Biden. From a policy standpoint, there's not much they could do to make any of Joe Biden's decisions make any sense, but they at least made him seem like he wasn't dozing off while watching Wheel of Fortune.
Among the highlights, and by highlights, I mean policy proposals that literally everyone could see what would result in disaster if implemented, had to be what would derisively come to be known as Port Biden.
We're going to immediately build a pier literally nobody wants, a pier that doesn't actually connect to shore, we have no idea to whom we are going to hand off whatever relief it is that's being transported up the length of the pier, and we can tell you with absolute certainty no American boots will be on the ground. This was on March 8th, 2024. Democrats leapt to their feet. Virtually no one in the audience had a clue this was coming, but you have to hope that at least a few Democrats rising to their feet and applauding because their president successfully finished delivering a complete sentence had to look at each other, wondering what exactly it was they were applauding. How did the plan play out? Utterly disastrous.
Not even a month went by between the President's Gaza Moon shot and its first ominous setback - an engine fire to a U.S. naval vessel on the way to help build the pier.
An investigation into the fire’s cause is ongoing, and a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operations said the Navy is in the midst of assessing whether Bobo can carry out the mission, or if another ship will be tapped for the task.
Bobo was one of three Navy vessels joining five Army ships in the Army-led mission to build a humanitarian pier using the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, capability.
Initial estimates for the project were sold to members of the relevant committees on the Hill as being in the range of $160 million dollars. Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker told Reuters the costs have exploded, with some revised estimates doubling the tab up to $320 million.
The U.S. military's cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a U.S. defense official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The figure, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 U.S. service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.
Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Why has the cost gone up so much? Well, some of it has to do with Hamas repeatedly attacking it, because as everyone predicted, no one really wanted this done in the first place, especially the terrorists.
Militants launched mortars at Israeli forces in Gaza as they prepared for the arrival of a floating U.S. Army pier dispatched to facilitate delivery of humanitarian aid, U.S. officials said Thursday, an incident that underscores the mission’s vulnerabilities.
The attack on a “marshaling area” for the pier caused minimal damage, and occurred while U.S. ships involved in the operation remain a ways off shore, said Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman. The pier is under construction by U.S. troops — though “nowhere near mortar range,” he said — and expected to be put into service by early May.
Biden fecklessness is relentless, however, and isn't deterred by logic, reason, or facts on the ground. Operation Port Biden continued until aid began to be rolled off from boats onto truck beds, and driven away into the hands of...Hamas terrorists.
None of the aid that has been unloaded from the temporary pier the US constructed off the coast of Gaza has been delivered to the broader Palestinian population, as the US works with the UN and Israel to identify safe delivery routes inside the enclave, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
Whatever aid was reaching the beach wasn't going into the hands of intended Gazans. It was immediately looted.
As for the pier itself, while Biden stressed the word "temporary" a few times in his State of the Union, people probably didn't have a week of functionality on their scorecard before being destroyed in the surf.
Here's the thing about piers. They usually are a thing because they are anchored to stuff that isn't sloshing or moving around - land. Port Biden, however, was never truly tied to anything on solid ground, so the inevitable happened - it broke and ended up washing ashore like a beached whale, taking at least one naval vessel with it. And as an added bonus, three U.S. servicemembers were hurt in the collapse, one of them critically injured.
Port Biden has become the living embodiment of all that is wrong with the President's domestic and foreign policy. It's unmoored from reality. In this case, reality means anchors being sunk into the ground.
US vessels used to unload Gaza aid run aground on Ashdod beach | The Times of Israel https://t.co/30gGhhlOxH
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) May 28, 2024
The remainder of Port Biden and your $320 million dollars? Well, it looks to me like it's sinking into the Mediterranean Sea.
Biden's PR stunt of a Gaza floating pier is reportedly sinking pic.twitter.com/5Ol4sDrSPV
— HalalFlow (@halalflow) May 27, 2024
By the way, just to make the State of the Union promises by Joe Biden complete in their failure, remember that part about American boots not being on the ground?
The footwear adorning our U.S. Servicemembers on Gaza beach don't seem to be flip-flips. They look to me like boots.Boots, meet ground.
— Mike DiMino (@mpdimino) May 26, 2024
American crews seen stuck waiting on the beach in Gaza after high seas washed several support vessels ashore.
Biden’s Gaza pier is playing fast and loose with the lives of our service members.
The Pentagon should never have allowed this to go forward. pic.twitter.com/YEabo549JQ
The weekend, and Port Biden, wasn't a complete loss for Joe Biden and the Democrats. Despite the President going to the Tomb of the Unknowns and talking about his son getting cancer and dying after serving, serendipity finally smiled on the Biden and his party. They finally have some good news on which to run a fall campaign for reelection. Angel Hernandez, the worst umpire Major League Baseball has ever had, has had his contract bought out by MLB and announces his retirement, effective Tuesday.
2024 continues its Shermanesque, yet surreal march through the calendar by documenting that Angel gets the boot before Hamas does. Joe Biden can now open the DNC convention in Chicago, provided, of course, that he survives the June 20th debate with Donald Trump, by claiming that on his watch, at least one reign of terror has now come to a close.
In case you aren't at least a casual observer of the game, you can't get fans of the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Phillies, Braves, or Angels to agree on anything...except that Angel is the worst. This news will unite baseball fans about as much as Joe Biden's disastrous presidency is uniting Republicans, independents, and possibly even Libertarians now, if reviews of Donald Trump's address to the Libertarian convention over the weekend are accurate. But if you don't know about the job performance of Angel Hernandez as an umpire, here are just a couple of examples.
America, you, too, can be like Major League Baseball and removed the laughing stock from your midst. And you won't have to buy out Joe Biden's contract. That money's already been spent. $320 billion on his week-long port alone, and a national debt, as of this writing, north of $34.55 trillion dollars. It's time for Joe to go.
