President Crack-Pipe’s Very Bad Week
Posted on | February 10, 2022 | Comments Off on President Crack-Pipe’s Very Bad Week
First of all, Jen Psaki wants you to know that “inaccurate reporting” is to blame for all those stories about Joe Biden wanting to spend $30 million to give crack pipes to drug addicts:
The original request for funding proposals from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration had listed “safe smoking kits/supplies” among the items that could be purchased with taxpayer money. They were among a dozen categories that included overdose prevention drugs, medication lockboxes, test kits for infectious diseases, and syringe disposal containers. The grant solicitation did not specifically mention pipes, although they can be a part of safe smoking kits.
Daniel Raymond, director of policy for the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, said only a few programs in the U.S. have handed out safe smoking kits.
“None of this was being done with federal funds,” Raymond said. “I feel very confident in saying that. I would have been aware if that were true.”
Nonetheless reports that the Biden administration was using federal dollars to pay for “crack pipes” took off. Some Republican senators piled on, castigating the administration.
Misleading claims about the HHS program dominated social media early Wednesday, many of them from conservative commentators and Republican politicians sharing memes and tweets that received tens of thousands of likes.
Got that? Anything about this program that looks bad for Biden is because of “misleading claims,” despite the fact that “safe smoking kits” are indeed part of what the federal government is proposing to provide dopeheads at taxpayer expense. So, as far as official White House policy is concerned, Hunter Biden is the only drug addict that the president is helping get high. And Hunter’s drug habit is being funded by Chinese “investors,” not taxpayers, so don’t worry about it.
Good news. Biden’s HHS is no longer funding crack pipes.
But make no mistake: yesterday’s change in policy is because HHS got caught. pic.twitter.com/s7nW1mN3GS
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) February 10, 2022
Alas, this fiasco, bad as it was, wasn’t the worst news for Biden this week:
U.S. consumer prices jumped by the most in nearly four decades as the new year started, sapping the savings of American families, diminishing the purchasing power of worker paychecks, and putting pressure on the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates beginning in March.
The consumer price index climbed 0.6 percent from a month before, the Department of Labor said Thursday. Compared with January of last year, consumer prices are up 7.5 percent. . . .
Polls show the public’s rating of Biden’s handling of the economy is at a record low. Biden’s overall approval rating has plummeted. Forty-five percent of Americans say inflation has put a strain on household finances.
Wait, there’s more:
Rising inflation is eating away at strong wage gains that American workers have seen in recent months: Real average hourly earnings rose just 0.1% in January from the previous month, as the 0.6% inflation increase eroded the 0.7% total wage gain, according to the Labor Department. On an annual basis, real earnings actually declined 1.7% in January.
Price increases were widespread: Although energy prices rose just 0.9% in January from the previous month, they’re still up 27% from last year. Gasoline, on average, costs 40% than it did last year. Food prices have also climbed 7% higher over the year, while used car and truck prices – a major component of the inflation increase – are up 40.5%. Shelter costs jumped 0.3% for the month and 4% year-over-year.
The inflation spike has been bad news for President Biden, who has seen his approval rating tumble as consumer prices rise. The White House has blamed the price spike on supply-chain bottlenecks and other pandemic-induced disruptions in the economy, while Republicans have pinned it on the president’s massive spending agenda and his energy policies targeting the oil and gas industries.
Biden shut down the Keystone XL pipeline on Day One of his presidency — so he’s anti-pipeline, but pro-crackpipe. However, you can’t use wind mills and solar panels to deliver food to grocery stores, so the 40% spike in fuel prices is driving prices up across the board. And speaking of “across the board,” let’s talk about Biden’s plummeting poll numbers:
The good news for Joe Biden in today’s CNN poll: his job approval got above 40%. The bad news is that there are nearly no undecideds when it comes to his performance as president. Biden hits a high of 58% disapproval in the latest CNN survey and gets a -17 gap in approval that manages to outstrip his already-pathetic RCP aggregate gap.
CNN’s data provides the real takeaway, which is that Biden’s confidence-crisis cascade has accelerated rather than slowed:
Nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of how Joe Biden is handling his presidency, with most of that group saying there’s literally nothing Biden has done since taking office that they approve of. The finding, from a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS in January and February, highlights the entrenched politics driving the nation at the start of the midterm year, with little agreement across party lines on priorities for the government or how to handle the coronavirus pandemic.
The President’s ratings have fallen across the board, the survey found. Just 41% approved of the way he’s handling his job while 58% disapproved, a significant drop from his approval numbers in CNN polling last year. Just 36% of independents and 9% of Republicans approved. Although his approval rating still stood at 83% among Democrats, that was down from 94% late last summer. Biden also continues to have more strong detractors than he does fervent supporters: 41% of Americans disapproved strongly of his performance as President versus 15% who strongly approved. Some of the shift in Biden’s numbers comes from a change in Americans’ partisan tilt: Republicans and Democrats were about at parity in the new poll, with fewer identifying as Democrats than in other recent CNN polling.
Biden is so unpopular, Democrats are ashamed to admit they voted for him. They don’t even want to call themselves Democrats anymore.
Except the crackheads. They love Biden. Next time you see a poll and wonder how anyone could possibly approve of the job Biden’s doing as president, that’s your answer — the crackheads are now Biden’s “base.”