Is President Joe Biden poised on the brink of a resurgence in the polls? Well... maybe. It's no sure thing, but the conditions do seem to be improving for him so it wouldn't come as a complete surprise. The next two months will be key.

Presidents used to routinely get a bump just after their State Of The Union speeches to Congress, but these events have become less and less impactful over the past decade or so. Fewer people watch, being instead content to read or hear what someone else thought about the speech. But by at least one measure, Biden's speech last night was well-received by the people who did watch it -- a CBS insta-poll showed an astonishing 78 percent of those polled approved of his remarks while only 22 percent disapproved. Will that translate into better job approval ratings for Biden overall? It's certainly possible.

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But back to the speech. Biden's delivery was awesome both at the start of the speech and at the end. He showed honest heartfelt emotion when denouncing Vladimir Putin and Russia and metaphorically standing with the people of Ukraine. At the end, he spoke louder than the building applause when he called for what is best about America overcoming our worst impulses. Barack Obama couldn't have done a better job with Biden's closing paragraph, and that's high praise indeed!

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President Joe Biden will give his second speech to a joint session of Congress tomorrow, in his first official State Of The Union address. That seems like a contradiction, due to the quirk that the first time a president gives such a speech it is not officially known as the State Of The Union, but few care about splitting such hairs. After being in office for over a year now, the president will inform Congress and the American people what his view of the country is, looking both backward at his first year's accomplishments and forward to what he hopes to achieve in the coming year. This is normally a balancing act, but this year's speech will be unusual in that large portions of it are being rewritten at the last minute, due to the developing situation in Ukraine.

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President Joe Biden missed an opportunity to make good on a campaign promise this week. It's not the most significant thing happening in the White House right now, I will admit, but it was a missed opportunity nonetheless. Biden could have stood strongly (as he had pledged to do) for the rights of people working for him not to be bullied while doing their jobs. Instead, he wound up looking detached and weak. Perhaps this was the fault of overzealous aides who did their best to not allow a controversy to actually enter the Oval Office, but there's also a danger in protecting the president too much from having to make hard choices.

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President Joe Biden had a pretty good week, as political weeks go in Washington. First and foremost, the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 pandemic is fading fast -- the numbers are now down below half of the peak they hit roughly two weeks ago. That's good news for everybody, not just President Biden.

Then it was announced that the United States military had taken out the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. Questions still remain about the mechanics of this daring raid in Syria, but nobody is questioning the fact that the targeted terrorist leader is now dead.

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At this juncture in time, what was once seen as a radical suggestion seems more and more to now be a very smart course of action. This is far from ideal, since the original plans would have been far, far better... but we are where we are. So perhaps it is time for Democrats in Congress to consider using the budget reconciliation rules in the Senate to achieve only one of their stated objectives. And there is no more pressing concern for the voters than limiting pharmaceutical companies from their continual greed when it comes to setting the price of their wares for the American public. Lowering prescription drug prices via reconciliation would chalk up an enormous political win for Democrats, heading into the midterm campaign season.

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Perhaps it is appropriate that I chose to write about this today, since it is Groundhog Day. Because, much like Bill Murray experienced in the movie, it certainly feels like we've been here before. But maybe this time we'll actually get to continue onwards, instead of reliving the same cycle over and over again. That's my hope, at any rate.

I am speaking of the COVID-19 pandemic. The mainstream media has recently lost interest in the story, but there is some great news they really should be sharing with the American public: we may almost be at the end. We may be approaching endemic status rather than pandemic. We may be approaching the vaunted herd immunity. We may, not to put too fine a point on it, almost be out of the woods.

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We have always been a total sucker for "First Pets," we fully admit. Especially First Cats. So we simply must begin this weekly roundup by extending our warmest welcome to newly-announced First Cat Willow Biden. From the New York Times announcement:

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Joe Biden just got the best numbers of his presidency, and they have nothing to do with opinion polls. The Commerce Department today released the economic numbers for last year, and they are nothing short of phenomenal. Hopefully the media will make as big a deal over this success as they have been about inflation, because people really should have some overall context for the true state of the American economy. But if the media fails to spotlight the great economic news adequately enough, then Democrats shouldn't let them get away with it -- Democrats should continually remind the voters how good the news is and how much the economy has recovered from the pandemic, with every chance they get.

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One year ago today, Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States. His Inauguration was notable for a few reasons, first and foremost the fact that it happened only two weeks after the U.S. Capitol had been besieged and overrun by insurrectionists attempting to prevent Biden from ever taking office. So the entire Capitol complex was heavily locked down and defended for what is normally a positive and upbeat public ceremony. The other two notable reasons that stick in my mind were: Amanda Gorman absolutely stealing the show with her poem "The Hill We Climb," and Bernie Sanders providing the best photo op by sitting on a socially-distanced chair wearing adorable homemade mittens.

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