Joe Biden's Gung-Ho State of the Union Speech

It's arguably not the right time to focus on Joe Biden's verbal slips, but it's a little unnecessary when leaders of the free world say 'Iranian' - or possibly 'Uranian' - when they mean to say 'Ukrainian'. These are dangerous times and we need politicians to speak frankly.

Still, Biden kept his word in his State of the Union address. He announced that he was closing US airspace to Russian aircraft. He led a standing ovation for Ukraine's ambassador to the US, Oksana Markova.

He said Putin is "now more isolated from the world than ever before".

The president also said: 'In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are on the rise right now, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security.'

As my colleague Matt Purple noted, Biden alludes to the George W. Bush-era when he called Putin a 'dictator'. It is again the good guys vs the bad guys in the 'battle of democracy and autocracy'. He finished by raising his fist and said, 'Go get him!' or 'Go get them!' It's hard to tell which is which.

For now, it seems fair to say that Putin's offensive has given the Biden administration such a desperate need for a political mood-change. His approval rating may still be very low, but given the widespread panic over Russia's actions in Ukraine, he can expect some support for his speech.

With greater difficulty, Biden attempted to impose a new sense of geopolitical unity on Ukraine in the rest of his agenda. He said he wanted to fund it, not the police, although many of his fellow Democrats have said the opposite. He spoke about his successes on COVID and tried to explain how his Build Back Better plan has improved the economy.

As Biden noted, Russian forces were still launching heavy attacks on Ukraine, bombing the central square of Kharkiv, the country's second largest city, and continuing their assault on Mariupol to the southeast.

I am currently in Lviv, Ukraine, near the Polish border. It is morning here and the Lvivs have not had much opportunity to digest the President's message.

I text Olesya, a mother of three who volunteered to show us her surroundings. She responds in a formal but clear Ukrainian style:

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