2 March 2022 — 1045 mst

State of the Union speech, Ukraine

By James Conner

SOTU. After losing my network connection three times, I decided to read President Biden’s state of the union speech. Although written at an eighth grade level, Teleprompter formatting — 370 of the 487 sentences were their own paragraph — made it difficult to read. Here are the standard metrics:

It was part annual report, part campaign rally speech.

He promised Ukraine solidarity, supplies, and sanctions on Russia, but not American soldiers. American hearts will bleed for Ukraine, but American bodies will not.

He promised Americans he would control inflation without creating unemployment. He promised to rebuild bridges and roads; to protect the middle class and the poor; to make everyone proud of being American.

Republicans will call Biden’s SOTU a strike-out, but objectively it was a long triple or a short home run depending on the ball park. According to a snap poll by CBS News, 78 percent of those watching Biden’s speech approved of it.

Rosendale again makes Montana unproud. Montana’s sole representative in the House of Representatives, Republican Matt Rosendale, did not attend the speech, having refused to be tested for Covid-19, a condition of entry into the chamber where the speech was delivered. Perhaps he watched it in his office, sipping branch water with the staff members who should have made him take the test and attend. Rosendale’s unstatesmanlike conduct should not resonate with Montana’s voters, but it does.

Ukraine. While Biden was promising help, but not the calvary, a 40-mile-long Russian military convoy continued moving south from Belarus, encountering little resistance, evidently intent on encircling Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Once the tanks, rocket launchers, and artillery are in place, expect a devastating bombardment to commence.

Although at this point Ukrainians are displaying great courage and resolve, they are outnumbered, outgunned, and cannot prevail militarily. Their only hope is that the sanctions will cause Russians to rise up against and depose Putin, possibly stringing him up from a lamppost. That could happen — and it’s what the sanctions are intended to provoke — but it’s not likely to happen before Ukraine is forced to hoist the white flag.

The Cold War has resumed. It will be expensive and stressful.