Could it get any more blatant than this?

Nancy Pelosi has put forward a plan to limit the actual in-person attendance of the upcoming State of the Union address to 25 people.  According to Alayna Treene:

Scoop: McCarthy told members of Republican leadership at an ELC meeting today that Pelosi told him she was instituting a 25-member attendance cap for Biden's State of the Union address, two sources in the room told @axios

Kevin McCarthy is said to have replied that "Democrats fly on planes with more people than they planned to allow on the floor."

This is perfectly understandable.  By that time, the upsilon variant will be ravaging the country, infecting hamsters and guinea pigs from coast to coast.  Or maybe it's the white supremacists that Nancy is worried about.  One of them might sneak in if you allowed more than a busload of people to attend.  Or it could be those January 6 protesters — they might come back, at least the ones who aren't being kept in solitary in condemned 19-century-era jailhouses.

But we know what it is, don't we?  The day is not far off when Joe will step to the podium and begin conversing with Corn Pop (or Satchel Paige, one or the other), or start swatting imaginary flies, or screaming that velociraptors are coming in the doors.

This is inevitable, and everybody outside the Beltway knows it.  Just last week, during his infrastructure speech in Pittsburgh, Joe went into a wild rant about the woes encountered by the parents of diabetics, who, according to him, have to choose between food and insulin for the children.  Voice growing ever louder, Joe pledged to do something about it...evidently forgetting, if he ever actually knew, that it was he, Joe Biden, who eliminated, by executive order, the Trump program aiding poor families in obtaining insulin and other medicines.

This kind of irrational, unfocused querulousness is a hallmark of advancing senility.  Anyone who has ever dealt with a failing older person recognizes it.  The only way to handle it is to lead poor Grandpa to a quiet place so he can calm down.

But this is the president of the United States we're talking about.  Since Jill evidently thinks there is nothing at all the matter with Joe...if people would only stop bothering him so much...it's up to Nancy to step into the Edith Wilson role and control the environment completely enough that Joe can at least appear to function.  With only 25 people, it will be possible to keep distractions to a minimum, to assure that there will be no interruptions, and to control the narrative if "technical difficulties" occur after Joe wanders away from the podium looking for an ice cream cone.

And of course, with only 25 people, it would be impossible to have any children around, God forbid...

In the meantime, inflation blossoms, the grocery shelves grow barer, the tanks grow thicker on the eastern border of Ukraine, and Comrade Xi gazes across the Taiwan Strait while fingering his copy of Mao's writings on warfare.  That, playmates, is the true State of the Union in 2022.

As for Donald Trump, he goes from strength to strength, racing from one end of the country to the other, holding massive rallies that rival those of his campaign, bounding over tall buildings, and carrying entire orphanages through raging flood waters on his broad shoulders.

Twenty twenty-four can't get here fast enough.

Image: Gage Skidmore.