Happy New Year or Ground Hog Day

We are united in our desire to close the book on 2021 but have we moved onto the sequel. Is 2022 going to be the final act in the COVID Trilogy? By what has happened just this week, we will not see a friendly start to the New Year.

This week, we saw video loops of President Joe playing ball with his new dog, Commander, on a Delaware beach. Joe was adorned in his dress- black mask while Dr. Jill was maskless. Apparently, this was to satisfy both sides of the mask debate. It didn’t work. They look foolish. The visual of Biden frolicking on the beach while Dr. Fauci is giving his daily restriction update is very bad for the President. The question should be, how his low approval rating is so high?

The Good Doctor is killing another holiday for Americans as he tells us to refrain from partying on New Year’s Eve. He is also pushing more boosters and says they should be administered every 90 days. He is also intimating more restrictions on airline travel are around the corner. This as thousands of flights are canceled each day, making travel a nightmare.

The NHL has returned to play after their COVID break but has opted to have none of its players going to the Olympics. NCAA Bowl Games are being canceled or filled with replacement teams. The NFL has modified its COVID testing protocol to minimize players being quarantined and impacting games going into the playoffs. So far, fans are still filling stadiums coast to coast.

Schools are reverting to virtual study to incarceration. That is not a joke. Princeton University forbids international students from leaving the campus during the holiday break. Michigan school districts are putting bus drivers and cafeteria monitors in the classroom as substitute teachers. New York students will find themselves at home staring at a computer screen in the New Year. All this is happening as the CDC has cut the quarantine period from 10 to 5 days. There is no consistency to the madness.

Biden, Harris, Fauci, and anyone else in the administration that can find a microphone are pushing vaccines and boosters while people are lining up for blocks in the bitter cold to be tested. Biden claims the test kits are coming, but he has yet to sign the purchase order. This week, he was bragging about a new test kit factory, but it will not produce kits until 2024. That is Warp Speed for Joe Biden.

Two issues are going to drag this President down in 2022. There are dozens, but the two that will do the most damage are COVID and Inflation. Americans are tired of restrictions on their lives but are growing angry with money sucked from their wallets. The administration still claims inflation is only at 5-6%, but do the math. Gas is up 60%, home heating is up 45%, groceries are up 10-20%, more shelves are empty, and somehow this equals 5%. Only in new math can that work.

People may learn to live with COVID, especially if it will be with us forever, like the flu. But they will not tolerate double-digit inflation. Inflation hits low and middle-income people the most. These are the folks that Democrats need in their corner. That corner is emptying quickly and justifiably so.