Earth Day, Biden style

President Biden traveled to Seattle yesterday to observe Earth Day, Biden style. The White House has posted the transcript of his remarks here.

The speech went on at what must have felt like Castroite length to those in attendance. The text is far beyond my poor power to add or detract, but it warrants attention. The transcript reflects Biden mangling names, slurring words, misreading numbers, and so on. That is the least of it, but it’s not nothing.

One can observe the madness that lies at the heart of what has become Democrat dogma as he yuks it up:

One of the things I found out as the President of the United States: I get to spend a lot of that money. (Laughter.) I get to decide where — no, I’m not joking. And we’re going to completely — but before — we’re — I’m going to start the process where every vehicle in the United States military — every vehicle is going to be climate friendly. Every vehicle. We’re going to have — (applause) — no, I mean it. (Applause.) We’re spending billions of dollars to do it.

He all but claims Earth Day as his creation as he walks down memory lane. Some translation is required here: “[I]n 1986, in the United States Senate, I introduced and we passed the first Global Climate Protection Act — the first time — and it was a warming legislation in the Senate.” The act, as you might guess, was pure Washington gasbaggery, but I don’t think that’s what he meant by “warming legislation.”

As he walked down memory lane, Biden recalled his late Senate colleague Gaylord Nelson. This line made me think of Nelson’s fellow Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire and his Golden Fleece Award: “[W]e have a $1 billion program that no one knows about except the Department of Agriculture — the grants and loans for farmers and rural co-ops to deploy solar and storage and powerlines to carry clean energy across the country.”

Despite the depredations of the president who must not be named, but who must be trashed, we appear to have achieved control of the climate (again, some translation required):

And the commitments galvanized that meet- — at that meeting, including our own goal of cutting emissions from 50 to 52 percent below ‘25[‘05] levels by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, taking the steps the United States needs to limit the planet’s warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. And the rest of the world started to come along. We did more than set bold goals; we acted to achieve them.

More surprises await those whom he has not put to sleep:

But guess what? In the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the law is going to help us cap and seal abandoned mines — thou- — there’s thousands of abandoned mines — cap and seal them. They’re no longer going to see pollution in the air or the water. The laws putting abandoned mine workers to work at the same salary they were working digging the mines in the first place. There are several thousand of these wells that have to be capped. And they have to harvest the energy. And they’re going to get paid.

So, we’ve provided alternatives. They are manufacturing and installing solar panels where they once dug for coal.

The transcript probably requires interpretation or revision here: “I have asthma, and 80 percent of the people who, in fact, we grew up with have asthma. That’s what you call a fenceline community. I understand what it’s like. I — we only lived there — I went to school there for 12 years. But I didn’t live there that whole time.”

Biden confers the honor of the Trump treatment — condemned but unnamed — on Senator Cruz in this passage:

You know, but all kid- — kidding aside, this is the MAGA party now. It’s — you know, you got the senator from Texas and others. These guys are a different breed of cat. They’re not like what I served with for so many years.

And the people who know better are afraid to act correctly, because they know they’ll be primaried.

I’ve had — I won’t mention any of them; I promised I never would, and I won’t — but up to six come to me and say, “Joe, I want to be with you on such and such but I can’t. I’ll be primaried. I’ll lose my race. I’ll lose my race.”

So, folks, we got to — this is going to start to change.

The change can’t come soon enough.

Quotable quote: “But you’re going to save a typical driver about 80,000 — 8 — $80 a month from not having to pay gas at the pump. Tax credits for folks to buy solar panels and heat pumps and more efficient windows, saving each an average of $500 a year to do this — just making your home tighter so you don’t leak the heat and leak the air conditioning going out.”