He was wandering around South America at another of those alphabet summits that world leaders gift themselves every few months for being leaders. They eat well at those things, raise toasts to each other, and issue empty promissory statements soon forgotten. 

Joe Biden missed his last official Group of 20 photo. But it’s OK; he doesn’t know.

Goodbye, Joe! Don't Let the Amazon Swallow You on Your Way Out!

Biden Sets Tongues Ablaze After He Misses Group Pic at G20

Now, South America is a swell place to live if you like Christmas in summer. But sadly, the continent exists largely outside the North American consciousness. And it’s a black hole for U.S. leaders whose visits often mean trouble, as in war.

Barack Obama took his mother-in-law with him down there in 2011. On the way, without informing Congress, the Nobel Peace Prize winner joined the European war to overthrow Libya’s leader.

Months later, a mob killed Moammar Gaddafi. So, the unprovoked war was successful — if the goal was to turn Libya into a lawless nation where bands of terrorists freely train to infiltrate Africa.

This month, in addition to escalating combat in Ukraine as a gift to his despised successor, Biden said he would spend billions more to save the planet’s environment.

With Biden mentally crumbling before our eyes, a RedState writer you might recognize warned six months ago that someone needed to admit we no longer had a real president in office. 

It got so bad with political doom looming that Democrats called in Nancy Pelosi, who’s even older, to engineer a political coup and install Kamala Harris as the party’s next hapless, hopeless nominee. She lost anyway.

By the way, where was the defeated but still incumbent vice president last week with war escalating and Biden absent?

She was relaxing or pouting or both on a distant Pacific island. She’s still there, resting up for unemployment.  

In case you need a chuckle, a new Morning Consult poll finds that, based on her resounding defeat Nov. 5, Harris is the (very) early leader in a 2028 Democrat presidential primary.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden was robotically reading a rainforest statement before literally wandering off into the Amazon jungle (see video below at the 6:50 mark). The presidential advance team that set that up should get detention.

But the chief executive was returned to the White House just in time for an NBA photo op to demonstrate for cameras that he had absolutely no idea what team he was celebrating. They still gave him a jersey.

Since then, Biden's gone silent.

So, again — or still — Americans could see for themselves that no one elected is actually in charge. We have 57 dangerous days (or 1,380 hours) of this before someone conscious takes over. God help us! Please.

Mainstream media, of course, is obsessing instead over who’s been invited to join Donald Trump’s next Cabinet, who doesn’t like that, who might be invited, who shouldn’t have been invited, who’s been disinvited, who should be disinvited. And then there’s a tattoo that, who knows, could be suspicious.

This is, in my opinion, an unforgivable sin against the media’s constitutionally protected duties that during the entire 46 months of this disastrous Biden-Harris administration, not one of those so-called professionals has displayed the slightest curiosity to explore who really is making “presidential” decisions in the White House of this addled man.

“Here, Mr. President, just sign this. It’s all been approved.”

Hopefully, some rogue adversary doesn’t take advantage of the glaring weakness during this interregnum and holidays.

You may have noticed that throughout Trump’s first term, Putin suspended his wanton and illegal annexations of neighboring lands that began in 2008 and 2014. Here’s why.

Less than two months after Democrat Biden’s 2021 arrival, Putin began organizing the largest European invasion and conflict since 1945.

Trump has boasted that he could end the Russian invasion within 24 hours. If selling out a nation we promised to defend for giving up its nukes is the goal, Ukraine could do that itself quicker simply by surrendering to Putin and allowing him to move on to his next European conquest.

Such submission would continue a growing list of failed U.S. military assistance attempts, including Vietnam and Afghanistan. 

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told FoxNews last week his country would lose without U.S. aid. Realistically, no president should want that on his resume.

As one indication, a new Gallup poll of Ukrainians found hope of maintaining their national independence has declined.

History demonstrates that successful invaders do not stop until they are forcibly stopped. Oh, look! That’s what Russia did to Hitler’s invaders in the 1940s.

But Ukraine, which has about a quarter the population of Russia, has the quaint notion that its independence is important to a free world. Also, in case it matters to anyone, Russia, the U.S., and Britain guaranteed Ukraine’s independence when it surrendered its 1,700 Soviet nuclear weapons in 1994-96. 

Of course, the West made the same promise to Gaddafi in 2001, betrayals that Iran and North Korea have surely noted.

Since February 2022, to observers’ surprise, out-manned and out-gunned Ukraine has valiantly resisted the unprovoked Russian invasion at the cost of scores of thousands of soldiers and civilians as Russia destroys housing, hospitals, and infrastructure.

And with the help of vast military equipment and aid from NATO countries, Ukraine has revealed the fundamental command and strategic weaknesses of the once-respected Russian forces.

Neither country releases casualty figures, but the Wall Street Journal said Western experts estimate 80,000 Ukrainians and perhaps 200,000 Russians killed. Including wounded, total casualties could be a million.

Ivan Krastev, a political scientist and author on European demographics, told the Journal, “For Ukraine, the dilemma is existential: How many people can you lose in a war before losing your future?” 

As in World War II, Russia relies on sending waves of poorly-trained troops at enemy lines. Any troops resisting or retreating are shot by Russians.

U.S. officials estimate more than 10,000 North Korean troops have now joined the Russian side, earning valuable combat experience they could use someday back on the Korean Peninsula.

While media coverage focuses on weapons and minute territorial gains and losses, besides reconstructing a Greater Russia, Putin’s needs are, in reality, demographic and economic. 

With a sluggish economy and declining birth rates among Russia’s 144 million, Putin needs more people and productive areas, notably Ukraine’s vast, rich agricultural lands. His takeover excuse is Ukraine was once part of czarist Russia’s empire. Of course, so was Alaska.

The United Nations estimates that since 2014, Russia has taken one million children from their families in Ukraine/Crimea. Moscow sources put the number around 700,000 removed to Russia for resettlement.

The youngsters are given Russian names and citizenship. Refugee organizations say some show up on Russian adoption sites or get sent to reeducation camps where they are punished for speaking anything but Russian.

In occupied Ukraine now, no land sale is possible without Russian citizenship.

One of Trump’s strongest first-term boasts is that U.S. troops did not engage in any new ongoing military actions during his presidency. If Putin wins and moves on to attack any NATO ally, that goes up in smoke.

The U.S. also aids Ukraine with intelligence, mainly electronic, and strategic advice. No U.S. troops are involved in combat against Russia. 

Early in the conflict, Secy. of Defense Lloyd Austin made a candid admission about the proxy war that he may have regretted later: 

We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.

Future Russian aggression in Europe would, almost by definition, involve NATO countries and instant inclusion of U.S. forces in active combat under the mutual defense Article 5 of the NATO treaty. That has been invoked only once since 1949 — to help the U.S. in Afghanistan after 9/11.

Pentagon officials have gained priceless insights on Russian strategies and the weaknesses of their equipment during the proxy war.

Despite the historic example of France assisting American forces during the Revolution, resistance to continually helping Ukraine against Russia has increased, mainly among Republicans. 

Together, European countries have provided far more military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. 

Since Russia invaded, Congress has approved five bills that include $106 billion for Ukraine. Of that, $70 billion was for weapons, equipment, ammunition, and training.

But, as Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute has written, contrary to rumor, around 90 percent of the military aid "sent" to Ukraine is actually spent in the United States.

It supports thousands of domestic jobs across the U.S., making weapons, ammunition, and missiles, such as the Javelin anti-tank weapon that has destroyed thousands of Russian tanks no longer threatening any other country’s independence. 

All without endangering a single U.S. service member.