The Right Resistance: What happened when Joe’s Afghan struggles met Pelosi’s House conundrum?

Everyone knew senile Joe Biden wouldn’t work very hard as president, and based on his run-of-the-mill daily calendars, that speculation turned out to be true. The question is, should we

or should we not be glad Biden isn’t more personally involved?

It’s a two-sided coin. On the one hand, not having Biden sitting behind the Resolute desk all day means he can’t screw things up any worse than they’re already being unraveled by time, events, enemies and his fellow Democrats in Congress. On the other, not having the hair sniffin’, shoulders massagin’, child repellin’, prodigal son protectin’, nude swimmin’, back slappin’, senatorial aide molestin’ good guy president at his post means issues aren’t being addressed. The chain of command is broken at the very top link, and the leadership void is large enough for a Taliban militant to drive a Biden administration abandoned Humvee through.

As a lot of people have done this week, it makes for harkening back to a year ago when President Donald Trump was still in the White House, when the mundane matters of government were handled by people who’d demonstrated capabilities of putting two coherent sentences together. Trump’s openness and willingness to address the media wasn’t just a big snow-job to get his underlings through the day without something going to ruin, which seems to be an hourly occurrence on senile Joe’s watch.

No one -- except for perhaps the 75-million odd Trump voters -- thought it was going to be this bad, but now it’s hard, even for the establishment media, to avoid the morbid curiosity of “what crisis is going to happen today?”

Where’s Joe? Should we wonder, or not care? Michael McKenna wrote at The Washington Times:

“We can … say with some precision a few things about his schedule, his apparent lassitude, and that of his administration.For at least the last six months, the president’s daily schedule seems to have consisted of the Presidential Daily Briefing (usually in mid-morning rather than at the start of the day as is typical for presidents) followed by one internal meeting or perhaps a phone call or video chat with a small group of whoever.

“Last Friday, for instance, Mr. Biden had his daily briefing, then a meeting in the Situation Room, then brief remarks (no questions scheduled) in the East Room. Then a flight out to Delaware. It is not clear whether any of the 10,000 Americans stranded in Afghanistan will be able to fly to Delaware this weekend.

“There are seldom two meetings on the presidential schedule, and there have only been a handful of trips to places other than Delaware. Announcements of the closure of the news-making portion of the day (‘lids’) have been called as early as 11 am. During and after the fall of Kabul, the president was at Camp David, apparently by himself.”

As alluded to above, senile Joe’s presidential schedule closely mimics his agenda as a candidate last year, though heck, back then, he had a much better rationale for maintaining his distance from civilization. As a candidate for the most important office in the world in his late seventies, Biden couldn’t afford the possibility of contracting the then mysterious Chinese Communist Party (CCP or Wuhan, if you prefer) virus, and needed to stow away accordingly.

But now that he supposedly won the election, was vaccinated, and has been serving for over seven months, one would think Joe would take his duties a little more seriously. While it’s true that’s he’s fouled up just about everything he’s ever touched, over half the country did vote for him (or election workers scanned more ballots for him) and his signature is required quite a lot. Problems need answers and someone has to be in charge.

Average Americans can’t be the only ones tracking down Joe for input. For example, the congressional leadership of his own party needs to figure out how to proceed in ignoring the fiasco in Afghanistan to pass his agenda. I can only imagine what the conversations must sound like:

--The other day on Capitol Hill:

Rep. Adam Schiff peeks around the slightly ajar Speaker’s office door, his eyes bugging out of his head again in anticipation of a confrontation with Republicans over the budget resolution and the “bipartisan” infrastructure bill. Democrat moderates want the infrastructure-alone legislation advanced and voted on -- just as Chucky Schumer’s senate did first -- and they then could deal with the big welfare “infrastructure” pork package conceived of by Bernie Sanders.

Schiff blubbered nervously to the dead silence of the room, “Um, Madame Speaker, we need to get the president’s okay to proceed with our scheme that we talked about yesterday in the caucus strategy Zoom call. Can you give him a jingle and then cue me in on what he’s decided?”

Jarred out of her regular stupor, Pelosi exclaimed, “Oh cripes! That means I’ll have to call over to the White House, doesn’t it? No problem-o, Adam. I could use a little airy banter with Joe after what we’ve been through the past few weeks.” The Speaker’s hands trembled slightly as she dialed P-O-T-U-S on her 1980’s style push button phone, the tones still pleasing to her ears after all these years.

Upon hearing “Joe Biden’s White House” on the other end of the line, Pelosi spoke up. “Hi, who’s this? Doesn’t matter. Anyway, this is Speaker Aunty Pelosi on the line and I’m looking to, pardon the pun -- speak -- with my buddy Joe. We’ve got a bit of a conundrum up here on the Hill and I think we need his thoughts on how to solve it.”

The undefined voice at the executive mansion hesitated, then replied, “We’ve been instructed that we’re not taking calls from anyone on Afghanistan, ma’am. We’ve already had over a zillion contacts from ordinary people wondering what the heck is going on over there, and everyone’s claiming to be an uncle or aunt or husband or wife or father or mother of someone still in the country. How can that be? There aren’t that many relatives on earth, are there?

“The president has already said we’re doing the best we can to get people out and there was no way that anyone could’ve foreseen the situation on the ground there, even if the embassy did warn that this was coming. Oops. Wasn’t s’posed to mention that.”

“Sorry, we can’t help. But also, just between us, no one knows where Joe is, anyway. He was last sighted drifting past the East Room heading towards the dining room, but that was hours ago. This is a big place and Mr. Biden loses his direction a lot. We usually assign Kamala to shepherd him from room to room, but she’s in Asia now.”

Pelosi fought hard to control her temper. “I’m not calling about Afghanistan. I’m the Speaker of the House of Representatives, you twit. We appropriate money over here and we also, from time to time, convene investigations into the way the executive departments conduct their business. But we stopped doing a lot of it when that orange devil Trump left office. Now we do stuff like impeachments and the January 6 commission, but otherwise we couldn’t care less about foreign policy.

“Go find him and get him on the line. Now, if not sooner.”

Hearing a stern click in her ear, the Speaker wondered whether the staffer was rushing to fulfill her demand or if she’d just been hung up on. Drumming her fingers on her desk, the San Franciscan didn’t have long to wait to find out.

“Never mind. The president just wandered in,” the voice indicated excitedly. “He was raving about the crescent rolls Dr. Jill taught the chefs how to cook the other day. You’re lucky. He’s in a great frame of mind today.”

Joe Biden picked up the phone: “Yeah? I already said I’m not gonna say anything more today about the Afghanistan thing, Jack. What are you, a dog-faced pony soldier? This crap ain’t funny anymore. I told my people to put a news cap on for 11 a.m. It’s eleven-oh-one now. I’m headin’ to Delaware for a clambake. What do you want?”

“Joe, it’s me, Speaker Nancy. I’m not a reporter,” the slightly older woman giggled in Kamala Harris fashion, figuring it would soothe the oft-cranky near octogenarian escapee from a care facility when his dander was up. “I wish I could just ignore the political optics, too. Then we could do everything we wanted instead of just most of it. I need to consult with you about your agenda. We could get some of what you want… or we can get all of what you want. What’s it gonna be?”

The Speaker cringed, wondering if she’d dumbed it down sufficiently for the simpleton Forrest Gump-like president to comprehend. Stupid is as stupid does, right?

“I told you I wanted it all, you crank,” Biden replied, his voice rising to practically a shouting level. “It’s bad enough that I have the media breathing down my neck on Afghanistan. Breathing down the neck… I always thought that was a good thing… But I have to find a way to get back in the good graces of the folks back home. They’re realizing that my candidacy and presidency is a farce. We need you, Nance. We need you to come through with a few trillion more so we can toss it to the crowd like they used to throw bread at the gladiator matches in ancient Rome.

“Some guy told me during my mid-morning briefing that my approval ratings are tanking. I haven’t heard from Obama in weeks. Michelle either. Or Hillary, for that matter. I think he’s still sore at me because I didn’t go to his birthday party. They’re saying Hunter’s art isn’t for real. And then some white supremacist protesters wandered around the capitol building. What’s this world coming to?”

“I wonder it myself, Joe,” Pelosi replied, trying to remain patient. “But if we’re going to stay in power, we need to settle on a strategy to pass both of these bills. The media is so dumb that they’ll forget about sob stories from people being left in Afghanistan soon enough. Who knows, maybe we can even get them to paint Republicans as racists because the Taliban are Muslims and they wear turbans, don’t they? We can point out that most of the Americans left over there are white and they’re just oppressing the native population by refusing to come home.

“If we work at it long enough, maybe we could even pass a reparations bill including relatives of the Taliban in addition to African-Americans.”

At that thought, Joe sang a little ditty and spun around with newly infused energy emulating a Michael Jackson moonwalk, even though Pelosi couldn’t see him do it through the phone line. “I’m diggin’ it, Nance! We’ll twist the story just so until it’s more contorted than a pretzel and we’ll cue the media to continue calling Trump a racist and that the Taliban is only ticked off at us because of that ‘extreme vetting’ rhetoric of his.

“Go ahead and go for the big bill with everything in it. The ‘moderates?’ They’re chumps! Threaten to confiscate all their campaign dough and they’ll march to the beat like ‘Corn pop’ and all those hairy leg rubbing racial jungle kids from the old days.

“Now I’m gonna head out and take a nap before jumpin’ on the big bird to The First State. Nice talkin’ to ya. I always did enjoy the scent of your shampoo!”

--Joe Biden’s presidency might be a joke, but today’s events certainly aren’t. Biden has never been serious, being too inane and out-of-touch to match his reputation as an everyman-type person. The fact that he’s away from the fracas much of the time may very well be a good thing.

But our country today is like a rudderless ship adrift in a storm of domestic and world events. Joe Biden sure as heck isn’t acting like the captain. The decisions -- or lack of them -- are being made by somebody. Now more than ever, elections have consequences. Americans have seen what Democrats do… and it’s a frightening prospect.

• Nancy Pelosi

• $3.5 trillion budget resolution

• Joe Biden

• Afghanistan evacuation

• Republicans

• Democrat moderates

• Chuck Schumer

• Bernie Sanders

• Donald Trump

• 2022 midterm elections