The supply chain crisis that stole Christmas

Who knew our relationship with China would be responsible for ruining not one but two Christmases?

At least this year we had a bit of warning. Our own vice president told us of the current supply chain issues back in August.

While most Americans were worried about President Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, Vice President Kamala Harris was in Singapore discussing a different topic altogether. “The stories that we are now hearing about the caution that if you want to have Christmas toys for your children it might be the time to start buying them because the delay may be many, many months.” For once, Kamala was correct.

Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, Americans had very different concerns. We were instructed by The Experts to steer clear of in-person gatherings and to avoid “unnecessary” travel. We were bombarded with sappy commercials that seemed hellbent on making us believe that there was something charming about our dystopian new normal. See, Santa is video conferencing with his elves in order to maintain social distance too! Isn’t this fun Thankfully, this year the Little Lord Fauci has generously granted us permission to gather for the upcoming holidays.  But that doesn’t mean it will be festivities as usual.

Instead of governors holding press conferences about the danger of Christmas caroling, we now are subjected to secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg joking about holiday shopping on CNN. That is when he decides to show up for work. “I think there have always been two kinds of Christmas shoppers. There’s the ones who have all their list completed by Halloween, and then there’s people like me who show up at the mall on Christmas Eve…if you’re in that latter bucket, obviously there’s going to be more challenges.” How relatable. Biden’s unqualified cabinet members — they’re just like us!

Pete isn’t the only Biden lackey laughing off the concerns of Americans. Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, shared a tweet from Harvard professor Jason Furman that read, “Most of the economic problems we’re facing (inflation, supply chains, etc.) are high class problems. We wouldn’t have had them if the unemployment rate was still 10 percent. We would instead have had a much worse problem.”

Not to be outdone, when asked about the supply chain disruption by a New York Times reporter, White House press secretary Jen Psaki sarcastically replied, “The tragedy of the treadmill delayed.” The Beltway elites have convinced themselves this disruption is only causing boutique problems for spoiled Americans. The truth is a lot less amusing.

NBC reported that small business owners, who are coming off a particularly brutal year thanks to COVID-19, are now worried about losing out to big companies with more spending power. Megan Gluth-Bohan, the CEO and owner of TRInternational Inc., told NBC, “What the American public needs to understand is that this isn’t just for items that you get for Christmas shopping. This is for items that you use to clean your clothes or to have liquid oxygen and ventilators at a hospital.”

Liquid oxygen? Ventilators? Someone tweet at Ron Klain and ask him if these are also high class problems.

A recent New York Times story revealed that this year’s Thanksgiving feast, “will wallop your wallet.” This won’t come as a shock to anyone who has been in a grocery store at some point during the last few months. Naturally it stunned Joe Scarborough. When his wife Mika read the story on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Scarborough couldn’t believe that the price of everything from turkey to pie had increased.

The Times’s Kim Severson steered clear of placing blame for these staggering prices on the bone-headed decisions and policies made by the Biden administration. I’m sure, if President Trump were in office, she would have resisted blaming him for this disaster as well. Severson informed her readers that there is no “single culprit” for the high prices. Maybe someone can ask Kamala Harris to get to the root causes of this issue once she finishes fixing the border problems.

I wish I could say the Biden administration isn’t doing anything to fix the problem. If only that were the case. As always, this  administration seems determined to make the problem worse.

At a time when Americans need to be incentivized to get back into the workforce (say, to drive trucks), this administration is pushing for more welfare policies and handouts. Santa thinks he “doesn’t need to work” this year. If that weren’t bad enough, the president is eagerly supporting vaccine mandates, which are exacerbating our country’s labor shortages.

Biden ran on restoring normalcy. But it would seem this holiday season is going to be as dysfunctional as ever.