Like George Clooney, I love me some Joe Biden.  With decades of experience in the Senate, then as Obama’s VP, and then as President who pulled us back from the TFG and Covid abyss in 2020, Biden has been in the right place at the right time for years.  I supported him strongly in 2016 when Hillary boxed him out and handed the White House to TFG the first time.  I backed Biden in 2020 because he was the only Dem candidate running who had a chance of unseating TFG.  He succeeded magnificently and has done a great job shoveling out the manure that TFG piled into the White House the previous 4 years.  However, the Biden of 2024 is clearly not the Biden of 2008, 2016, or 2020.  Like many others whose opinions count for a lot more than mine, I agree that Biden cannot beat TFG, period.  Clooney says that, three weeks ago when he was with Biden in NY for a huge fundraiser, Biden was the same Biden we all saw on national television who totally and completely fumbled THE debate.  The orchestra is playing, and it’s time to gracefully exit the stage.

I know this is not a popular opinion among many of the party faithful and a lot of customers of the Salon, but the numbers support my opinion.  Though Biden is statistically tied with TFG in national polls, he’s LOSING EVERY SINGLE SWING STATE by an average of over 5 points.  At this point in the cycle, that almost guarantees, barring a miracle, a Biden loss.  To believe Biden can win the electoral college in 2024 requires complete suspension of disbelief and blindness to facts.  In a word, if Biden doesn’t drop out, and I mean RIGHT NOW, we’re all fucked in 2024, because we’ll not only lose the White House, but likely the House and Senate.  That means, especially with a packed and corrupted SCOTUS, that there will be no guard rails to stop the goons who will be running the entire federal government and most of the states.  That, my dear readers, is unacceptable risk.

Like LBJ, Biden must graciously withdraw and then actively support a plan to replace him as a candidate.  Carville published a great plan a couple of days ago that outlined a short, transparent primary process moderated by 42 and 44 to select a new candidate.  This opinion will also piss off some of our customers, but I disagree that Biden should just endow Harris with the nomination.  Her numbers are almost as bad as his and won’t garner the support of undecideds like an open process.  This needs to be thrown open to other very strong candidates like Witmer, Newsom, Buttigieg, Moore, AND Harris in a process that is public, transparent, and fair.

I don’t want to hear the bullshit argument that the “primary voters have already spoken”.  That’s nonsense.  There was no real primary process; no debates, no real alternatives (including Dean Philips), and no active process, so the voters have NOT spoken.  There must be another alternative and that needs to happen NOW.

Americans should have one goal, and one goal only for 2024: soundly thrashing TFG at the polls.  We have to kill the cancer of MAGA and the cult of personality and that needs to happen now.  The DOJ has failed us; the federal and state courts have failed us; the SCOTUS has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the majority is profoundly corrupt and ruling for their actual constituents (the billionaires and extremists) and not for the rule of law.  None of our guardrails are working.  To save the US and our almost 250 year old form of government, we have to save ourselves.  And we, as voters, need someone to coalesce around, and that ain’t Joe Biden.

So there.

We all remember the disastrous (and laughable) Republican responses to the SOTU over the years.  Bobby Jindal’s and Marco Rubio’s responses were cringe-worthy, and Jindal’s 10 minute spotlight moment ended his career.  Well, last Thursday, freshman Alabama senator Katie Britt said “hold my beer”, launching into the weirdest SOTU response in history.  Typical for Republicans, they put her in a fucking KITCHEN while she breathlessly disclosed the horrors of the Biden administration like protecting women’s health and preserving the right to vote.  If it wasn’t so strange it would have been hilarious.

One of Britt’s blood curdling stories was one she recounted of a private conversation she had with one woman who had been sex trafficked by the cartel in the US after crossing the border during Biden’s presidency.  The story was truly horrific as she described being repeatedly raped and being held captive in a shoebox-sized room.  Simply awful…with the one exception that it was complete bullshit.  Not that the woman was raped and held captive – that story is likely true.  The bullshit happened when Britt pinned the whole terrible scenario on Biden and his border policies.  Tim-Tokker Jonathan Katz did all the work on this, so I’ll let him tell the story:

@katzonearth

This isn’t going to make her like TikTok more. #katiebritt #sotu #stateoftheunion #lies #politicians #biden2024 #trump2024 #immigration #traffickingawarenes #mexico #bordersecurity #fyp

♬ original sound – Jonathan M. Katz

So, the victim here, Karla Jacinto Ramiro, was a victim of child sex trafficking when she was 12.  In 2004.  When George W. Bush was president.  IN MEXICO.  Ramiro is now an advocate for victims of sex trafficking and is in her 30s.   Ramiro even told this same story in a congressional hearing in 2015.  So, Katie Britt picks up this tragic 20 year old story and recasts it to place blame on Biden who wouldn’t be president until almost 20 years after it happened.  That’s like Republicans blaming Obama for the great recession that happened under GWB or Biden for the disastrous response to COVID  and Afghanistan debacle that were caused by TFG.

Not only was Britt’s melodramatic and creepy SOTU rebuttal cringe-worthy, it was also nothing but vicious character assassination and pure bullshit.  AND she did it on national television.  With any luck, Britt will go the way of Bobby Jindal.

Lacking enough votes to open an impeachment “inquiry” by multiple House committees, Kevin McCarthy opened it by fiat today, under mutinous pressure from the Crazy MAGA wing of what’s left of the GOP.  I actually burst out laughing at his reasoning when he said,

“House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct.  Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”

“Allegations.”  “A culture of corruption.” Right now all the red Irony Lights are flashing and Hypocrisy Sirens are howling.  Without a vote, McCarthy is trying to keep his job by feeding the alligators that are threatening to devour him if he doesn’t do TFG’s bidding.  Remember that TFG is the guy impeached twice for extortion of a foreign government and insurrection, under indictment for 91 felonies, liable for sexual assault and defamation, being sued for massive financial fraud in New York, and who had his “charitable” foundation shut down for fraud.  Add that to his history of screwing investors and contractors, friendship with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, lusting after young girls, and stuffing his pockets with other people’s money, and you have the actual walking, talking textbook example of corruption.

But, hey, let’s go after Biden after a 5 year full on effort to dig dirt on him without unearthing one credible shred of evidence, just to placate the actual criminal.

I say, bring it on.  The shit show will be epic.

The list of crimes, lies told, corruption, self-dealing, fraud, theft, extortion, sexual misconduct, insurrection, obstruction, conspiracy, and cruelty committed by TFG is long, growing, and in plain sight.  Predictably, though, that very same list is totally invisible to MAGA Republicans.  Fearful of retribution from their mouth-breathing base and TFG himself, they perform more gymnastics than an Olympic athlete to avoid seeing what is obvious to the rest of us.  Congressional Republicans had TWO opportunities to get rid of him, and made the wrong decision.  Since he’s left office, they have continued to cow tow to him, regularly doing the MAGA Hajj to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his ring (and his ass).

It’s no surprise then, that the GOP has been completely blind to the slow motion train wreck of TFGland including investigations and convictions for tax fraud, election denial, insurrection, and, of course, his hoarding and concealment of over 11,000 US government documents including 100 classified documents and 90 empty folders marked classified.  They’ve also ignored the fact that the National Archives tried to get the documents back for 18 months, finally getting a federal grand jury subpoena that TFG promptly ignored.  When the FBI took the radical step of going and getting the documents themselves, GOP screamers amplified his lies that it was a “smash and grab” and “all they had to do was ask.”   They then fabricated the story that he “declassified” these documents “in his mind” tryin to excuse TFG’s behavior.

Then comes the discoveries of classified documents at Biden’s home and former office.  Numbering about 20, having those documents was sloppy at best, but was immediately reported to the National Archives, and Biden is cooperating in the investigation.  The incident is certainly not helpful to Biden, but it’s extremely unlikely there was any nefarious intent in having these documents.  Conversely, Trump took something like 50 boxes of government documents when he finally left office, concealed them, lied about having them, moved them several times to avoid having them found, and even had his lawyers lie that there were no more documents after returning about 20 boxes last year.  Beyond his attraction to shiny things, a worse reason for keeping them, as Maggie Haberman of the NYTimes reported, TFG was trying to use his possession of US government documents as trade bait to get files from the DOJ about their investigation of his longstanding relationship with the Russians and their interference in the 2016 election.  Believing you can trade something you stole for something that you would never get in a million years is insane, which explains why TFG thought it was such a good idea.

Not surprisingly, while looking the other way on TFG’s hoarding of thousands of documents, Republicans are going apeshit over the discovery of the 20 documents in Biden’s possession, and they are already launching an investigation of the incident in the House.  I say fine, investigate your ass off.  However, the Dems must be uncharacteristically aggressive here.  Each time the Republicans introduce some testimony or evidence about the Biden documents, the Dems must introduce ten times that amount of evidence of TFG’s hoarding, and then concealing his possession of the thousands of documents he took.  This is eye for an eye, fighting fire with fire.  It’s time to take their selective outrage and turn it on them in public.

The Chaos Wing of the GOP is going after a jaywalker while a serial arsonist is burning down the Capitol. It fits.

Let’s all keep in mind that Putin killed a new democracy in its crib back in 2000 when he took over Russia after Boris Yeltsin.  Using the KGB skills he honed in Communist East Germany in the early 80s, Putin then created a Russia that is now more dangerous and rich than the previously known Soviet Union.  Putin was ashamed that the Soviet Union collapsed after the Berlin wall fell, and he wants it rebuilt, but not as the Soviet Union, but as an imperialist Russian Empire.  He doesn’t want to be president, he wants to be Czar.

He can do that now that Russia is one of the largest oil and gas producers and controls energy supplies into Europe.  He has rebuilt the Russian military, now has a warm water port after taking Crimea from Ukraine, quashed all opposition, changed the constitution so he can stay in power for life and has made elections there a joke.  Billionaire oligarchs support and protect him, and his drive to build a new Russian Empire is relentless.
And who’s happy about it?  TFG himself and his supporters. Last night Putin brazenly invaded Ukraine, even shelling facilities near Kyiv, and millions of Ukrainians, in disbelief that he actually attacked, are fleeing to the west.  On Tuesday, TFG call Putin a genius and said how smart he was to go in as a “peacekeeper”.  Last night, right before Putin launched attacks in to Kyiv and other cities, TFG did it again, praising Putin at a fund raiser at Mar a Lago, saying how smart Putin is, walking in “for two dollars worth of sanctions”, then ironically claiming that if he were in office,

“This would never have happened, ever in a million years, it would have never happened.  And I know him very well. I know him probably almost as well as I know anybody in this room other than Doc Ronny [Jackson].”

So, let’s be clear – TFG is characteristically praising, as he has for years, then tried to push blame onto Biden for Putin doing what he himself supports.  Of course, his sycophants fell in line, praising Putin and TFG, bashing Biden.

If anyone doubts what the US would look like during a second TFG term, just look at Russia today and listen to TFG’s actual words.  He dreams of being a dictator and almost accomplished that in 2020.  With the Republican Party in tatters and now virtually 100% aligned with TFG and Russia, the only thing standing in his way is the rest of us making sure he never gets close to the Oval Office ever again.

TFG and his supporters are using Putin to undermine Biden and the US government to his own advantage, and Putin is so long term focused and patient that I don’t have any doubt that another TFG victory in 2024 figures into his calculus in going after Ukraine today.  Even if he doesn’t succeed this time, he’ll just come back in 2025 as Trump holds the door open for him by lifting all sanctions (like he did in 2017) and undermining NATO while fantasizing doing the same thing to Mexico.

If one ever needed another justification for abolishing the Electoral College, TFG is it.

Peter Doocy, yet another example of nepotism being alive and well at Fox “News” is the White House “correspondent” for the propaganda network, and is the son of “Fox and Friends” talker Steve Doocy.  Like his father, he has made a career of making a fool of himself on national television, carrying the water for the network and the party of Trump.  Doocy, not that smart himself, always tried to catch Joe Biden out with leading questions from the “Do you still beat your wife” genre, and tried again yesterday shouting at the President if inflation is a liability to him.  Biden responded appropriately.  You can see the exchange here.

The network went into full on Karen mode, led by Sean Hannity, moaning and whining about how terrible Biden’s behavior was, while missing the irony that they worship a guy who has spent a lifetime engaging in childish behavior and public profanity.  Don’t remember?  Here’s a little reminder from Time about Trump’s language, and keep in mind this was over 4 years ago, less than a year into TFG’s infestation of the Oval office.

In 2018, Ari Melber of MSNBC did a piece on the hypocrisy of Fox and the evangelical right’s endorsement of TFG’s constant stream of profanity in private and public, when historically offended at that very same language from other politicians.  It’s a 6 minute segment, but a good listen.

Meanwhile, Biden has called Doocy to “clear the air” between them, something that TFG would never do, and who indeed banned from the White House any reporter challenging him or asking tough questions.  Personally, I thought Biden’s response to Doocy’s idiocy was pitch perfect and accurately described him, but that’s just me.