The CPI report data was a surprise to all the analysts on Wall Street and Biden administration officials. They had hoped for a negative month to month number, even if barely, and a measurable lowering of the year to year inflation number. Team Biden counted on lower gasoline prices of late being enough to at least show a bending of the curve. None of that happened, and the bottom fell out of the market, causing the worst one-day drop since the lockdown of the economy due to COVID in 2020.

The timing or release date of the CPI report, however, was not a surprise. Everyone knew this would be coming at 8:30am on the second Tuesday of the month like clockwork, just like the PPI number is released on the second Wednesday of the month. So for the first of many times in this column, the rhetorical question is asked, what in the world was the Biden White House thinking? Can’t anyone here play this game?

To hold a ‘celebration’ event marking the one-month anniversary of passing the Inflation Reduction Act, which does no such thing especially when you add in the effects of the student loan forgiveness executive order, on the day when the CPI number is released, is political malpractice of the highest order. Even if their wildest fantasy for a positive outcome from the IRA were realized, there’s no way over $700 billion dollars would be spent. And certainly the impact of that money on the economy could not possibly be felt substantially enough in 30 days to bend the arc in the CPI number. At best, the White House celebration looks like a feeble attempt at a Jedi mind trick in order to divert attention from what they fear would be a disastrous result. At worst, the idea demonstrates they don’t have the foggiest idea of how the American economy works at all.

But celebrate, they did…sorta. Joe Biden came out with his aviator shades on flanked by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and they would all in due course take credit for having turned the corner, past tense, on lowering inflation on kitchen table issues. Now I don’t know where you come from, but in our house, we usually put food on the kitchen table, being that’s where it’s kept and prepared. Declaring that food prices have already come down when the CPI showed they most certainly had not, as can be attested to by every American who eats food every day, was alternate reality stuff.

But every celebration needs a kick-off. A surprise party needs, well, a surprise. A wedding reception normally needs a wedding. New Year’s needs the ball to drop. Students need to actually graduate before having the party afterwards. Thanksgiving dinner needs the Cowboys and Lions to lose first. We have our traditions for celebrations. How did the Biden White House kick things off? We got our first clue in Politico Tuesday morning before the CPI number was released, well before the stock market collapsed.

Meanwhile, at the White House – Playbook got a sneak peek at the preparations underway for this afternoon’s IRA celebration ceremony. Here’s what to expect:

Biden will tout the IRA as “a win for the middle class,” according to a White House official. He’ll also knock Republicans for not supporting a $35-a-month cap on the price of insulin – a provision which made it into the final legislation for Medicare Part D beneficiaries.

Climate activist and singer-songwriter James Taylor will perform a few songs.

Wait, what? James Taylor? He’s going to help start the festivities? What’s he going to sing? Mockingbird? Mexico?

The first thing that popped into my head when I saw Taylor was going to perform was the very unfortunate episode in January of 2015 after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris. John Kerry, then-Secretary of State for Barack Obama, decided it would help ease Parisians’ pain to have James Taylor come and sing a song or two. They just had no concept of how to not make it look and sound stupid. They set up one microphone in front of his guitar, forcing Taylor not only to play You’ve Got A Friend, but simultaneously allowing him to try out for the part of Quasimodo in Hunchback of Notre Dame. Remember this?

As I went to bed after producing the Hugh Hewitt Show very early Tuesday morning on the West Coast, with the CPI number already having been released, the market already tanking by 600 points, and knowing that James Taylor would be trotted out to celebrate, I closed my eyes with the anticipation of a kid on Christmas Eve thinking of the possibilities when I arose a few hours later. When I did wake up, the first text I saw on my phone was from someone asking if this James Taylor stunt was a hoax, or if it could possibly be real. What song did he sing? Fire and Rain. I’m not kidding.

Now we all know the song. Most of us with gray hair, if we have any hair at all, have sung it a few times. You know a lot of the lyrics. But do you actually know what the song is about? Keep in mind the optics here. Team Biden flailing around like Jack in the North Atlantic after the Titanic sank trying to hang onto the floating door that won’t support the weight of him and Rose’s sizeable hindquarters, and the Dow nosediving past the 1,200-point mark as traders were desperately looking for the closing bell to stop the bleeding.

The first verse of this peppy ditty Taylor sang talks about the suicide of a girl friend of his who committed suicide. Considering the amount of money that Democrats spent these last two years to cause the inflationary spiral we’re in, and doubling down at the last minute with a student loan forgiveness chaser, the irony meter is pretty much pegged at this point when you consider their electoral prospects in less than two months.

The second verse is much more uplifting than the first. It’s about Taylor’s addiction to heroin almost killing him. Hey, I said it was uplifting. It’s not as if Taylor was fighting a fentanyl addiction. He didn’t die like … oh, wait. Perhaps Democrats really don’t want to talk about drug problems in the country, with fentanyl currently killing tens of thousands, but they’ll certainly sing about it, apparently.

The third and final verse thankfully does not deal with addictions or self-immolation. It does, however, talk about Taylor’s first band longingly, and how it broke up, and the pain of how disappointed he was that things didn’t work out very well. That’s it. That’s the song. Time to party like it’s 1999. Time to get Happy. Was Justin Timberlake or Pharrell unavailable?

Here’s the thing. We like to mock Karine Jean-Pierre daily in the WH press room as being really, really bad at this. But she’s not the disease. She’s just a symptom. Joe Biden has been in national politics for 50 years. Half a century. He’s been in the West Wing for 10 of the last 14 years. And he’s surrounded by people with whom you might disagree on policy, but who have served in and around Democratic administrations in the past. Yet there’s not one fact in evidence that any of these people have a clue of what they’re doing.

Casey Stengel was a legendary Major League Baseball manager for the Mets in 1962, helming the ship for a remarkably inept season of 40-120. One of his most famous quotes out of exasperation was, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?”

After what we saw at the White House Tuesday, the answer is clearly no.