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.

On Christmas Eve, Joe and Jill Biden live-streamed calls into NORAD’s Santa Tracker, talking to kids about Santa, what they want for Christmas, and other kid friendly topics.  It was all in good fun, right up until a smart ass named Jared Schmeck of Oregon called in with his 4 kids; Schmeck was pleasant enough making small talk with the President, but when signing off, he thought it was a great idea to say, “Let’s Go Brandon.”  That’s right, Schmeck used a euphemism to tell the President of the United States, “Fuck Joe Biden.”  To make matters worse, he videoed himself doing it, then he and his wife posted it to their social media accounts.  That wasn’t smart.

The metaverse did what the metaverse always does – it exploded.  MAGAts gloated with glee at the the insult lionizing Schmeck’s disrespect, but also something else happened.  Normal people were shocked at the insult and responded to the Schmecks’ posts, flooding their accounts.  Then, netazins started researching Schmeck and his family.  What they learned, and then published, was not attractive.  Turns out he works for his father’s electrician company, which claims to be a “Christian owned” company complete with a code of conduct which included treating everyone “with respect”.  It also turns out that his father was a Navy Seal when he was arrested for his involvement in a gun trafficking ring back in the early nineties.  It goes on and on, but I won’t repeat all that here.

Schmeck also did what all MAGAts do when caught doing something stupid or cruel and then shamed for it – he blamed everyone else for “attacking” him for exercising “free speech”, and then lied saying his insult of Joe Biden was “just a joke” and “innocent jest”.  It most certainly was not a “joke” and he was not  “just frustrated with his policies.”  It was the normal lame excuses always spoken by the guilty.

Schmeck is now learning that free speech goes both ways.  Sure, you can say what you want in public, even posting a video of yourself personally insulting the President of the United States on a public livestream.  But if you do that, expect a full helping of response to that insult.  This is the problem with living in an echo chamber.  Schmeck thought it was hilarious to insult the President and his friends likely did, too.  Now he’s shocked at the response of normal people.  What he and others in his echo chamber don’t understand is that fully more that HALF of Americans disagree with his politics and most certainly his smartassed disrespect of the President.  He’s now learning that lesson.  Maybe he’ll think twice before doing that again.  On second thought, I doubt it.