In 1772, in an imaginary tale by Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle fell asleep up north in the woods of the Catskill mountains after enjoying some high-powered mountain dew with some Dutch dwarfs. Apparently, that stuff was even better than Relaxium sleeping pills because Mr. Van Winkle slept for 20 years. When he woke up, he was well-rested, had a long white beard and didn’t recognize anything about the world around him. I imagine a lot of us identify with Rip nowadays. Many things are not recognizable. In 2020, Joe Biden was elected President, and some would say he’s been in a permanent sleep-like state ever since. I know it's only 2023, but old Joe has already done more to change this country in a not-so-good way in a year and a half than Rip noticed changing after 20 years of sleeping out in the woods. If you don’t believe it, talk to your wife or girlfriend or whoever dares go to the grocery store. Ask them how the grocery shopping went today, and then stand back. Or better still, just don’t bring it up. Mayonnaise, my friends, is close to seven dollars a jar. Mayonnaise! A bag of Fritos is almost six bucks. That’s not even the big jumbo size, and the bag is still 35% air. You can’t even buy a normal, full-size paper towel anywhere now, and even the new “environmentally downsized” ones just look embarrassed that they aren’t filled out any better than they are and the rolls all look pitifully skinny and cost even more. Disgraceful. How is this happening? Are we running out of pine trees to make paper products? I don’t think so. We’ve got more log trucks down here than mosquitoes, and they still can’t haul all the chips and logs. What about eggs? How did they get so expensive? Did chickens form a labor union? I guess I missed that one too. If you think everything has gone up, you are correct. Yesterday, I saw a used 12-year-old Toyota advertised on the cable channel (which now costs us more each month than my poor dog’s food,medicine and chew toys) for $12,345! A 3 year old Dodge Pickup Truck was advertised for more than my first house cost, which was only 2 years old. Tell me President Van Winkle, I mean Biden, what has happened to this country? On Memorial Day, 2020 gas was $1.87 a gallon. Today its $3.12 a gallon and what nobody wants to talk about is the fact that this country's economy depends on and runs on oil. In one way or another, it's part of just about everything we buy. In fairness, Covid took its toll financially and otherwise, but the inflation that is now destroying family budgets came about largely from Biden's and the Democrat's excessive 4 trillion dollar recovery plan. Which was in truth more of a free money giveaway than an actual well thought out covid recuperative plan. When you blindly throw that much money into an economy, you are either incompetent or dreaming if you don't expect a financial disaster to result. Somebody was asleep in his basement while it happened.
Rip Van Winkle got into trouble by accident when he ran into nine Dutch dwarfs in the woods. Joe Biden stumbled into his own dwarfs and made them cabinet members. Now, while Joe continues to nap, the dwarfs cook up more and more mischief and pull the strings behind the curtain. It would make a delightful fairytale if it weren’t so scary for this country. Our economy is on the verge of snapping like a tightly stretched rubber band. Will Joe wake up in time? Will my dog have to give up Milk Bones? Will Speaker McCarthy hide the Democrats’ credit card? For the answers to these and more burning questions, stay tuned. Or just take a Relaxium and have a nice long nap.
