The Union's in a state

The BBQ Pit
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Still got CNN on and they’ve got fact-checker Daniel Dale on.

Paraphrased, “Trump says he ended eight wars. How could he stop them if they never even started?”

Definitely scadenfreude at this one.

ETA: I’m going to watch the “Jeopardy” episode I DVR’ed earlier. I need a break from CNN and the SOTU.

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I heard that at least five of the men’s hockey players declined the invitation. I thought of this.

263

When Marjorie Taylor Greene and that other woman (Lauren, whatever her last name is - the one who was a grandmother before she was 40) were pulling their classless stunts a couple years ago, I referred to her as “the GG Allin of Congresspeople.” I don’t think she would have done any poop flinging, but I definitely could have seen either of them flashing their boobs on live TV, or pulling out a tampon and flinging it at a heckler, like a musician did during an early Lollapalooza concert; I think it was one of the women in L7.

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Boebert. Who surprisingly seems to have grown a conscience these days, between the petititon to get the Epstein files released and now calling on Tony Gonzales to resign.

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It made me mad when Trump said he’d lifted a lot of people out of the SNAP program. Three of my employees at work have been newly denied SNAP because they took on part time hours with us. The SNAP administration paints my employees as folks who could eventually work full time. The reality is more like our three employees have disabilities that preclude working full time. They still need to get food each week and show up to work. Trump’s indifference is exasperating to me.

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Malice, not indifference. Poor people going hungry is exactly what he wants, along with the rest of the Republicans.

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I think both she and MTG figured out that they’ll never be “one of the boys” and got sick of it.

I doubt that it’s a conscience, I’m going to suggest that it’s out of spite.

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I like to compare MTG to a wrestling fan from the '80s who believed that it was real, until she went behind the arena after a show hoping to get Hulk Hogan’s autograph and instead caught him sharing a joint with the Iron Sheik.

She was a true believer who didn’t realize the Republicans she was inspired by were in on the kayfabe. Boebert might be the same.

269

On second thought, no message.

270

So today’s Republicanism?

271

I’ve watched a few SotU addresses over the years, and it felt to me like this one had a lot more “filler” than I’ve ever seen. As I mentioned above, the Republican clapping was so coordinated, it looked like they were deliberately wasting time so that Trump wouldn’t have to say as much to fill the time. But even when he was talking, how much of it was filler? Did anyone put a timer on how long they spent on the hockey team? I think Trump spent more time talking about the goalie than he did about improving housing access. And so many “special guests” he had to introduce!

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I once, with a bunch of friends, drove a classic 1960s era VW Combi from Harare, Zimbabwe, to Cape Town, South Africa.

The amount of filler on that vehicle body we used in order to paint hippy colours on it was kind of astounding.

“Papering over the cracks” is the British expression, and is both what we, drunken, stoned teenagers, and Trump have in common.

Except we had fun.

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Aka the Howler Monkey Caucus.

274

Watching it now. He doesn’t seem to know that his father is dead. And his jaw is jutting and scraping back and forth; he’s clearly on amphetamines.

One of the hockey players looked like he was going to pass out.

Venezuela may be a reluctant partner, but he has not made a friend of them. Bragging that he used our military to steal millions of gallons of oil from them is not to his benefit.

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Didn’t watch it, but after seeing photos of the hockey team acting like willing little props I wish the fuckers would have lost.

276

I agree with you 100 percent. I had the sound off and would glance up occasionally; it was gross. That and their partying with crazy eyes patel in the locker room was disgusting.

277

I listened to the speech, and I have to say that pointing out the defective way the whip is being held while it is still being used on the American Public is not much of a moral victory.

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I actually watched it because I wanted to see if he went wildly off script. To my mind he stayed much more on message than I expected. The speech broke down into a few parts.

Part one: the Reciting of the Fake Statistics:
-gas averages $2.35
-inflation down to 1.7%
-grocery prices way down
-medication prices down by over 50%
-no taxes on tips, overtime, social security or car interest on cars built in US (technically true but no cars are 100% built in US)
-tariffs would bring in enough money to get rid of income tax

Part two: the Winning
-we are winning so much people are complaining
-here’s a winning hockey team-let’s give the goalie a medal (and ignore the rest of the Olympic medalists including the women’s team).
-we made NATO members pay 5% (to the speechwriter’s credit they did say it was money spent on defense and not just paid to NATO)
-ended 8 wars and prevented the President of Pakistan from being killed
-not one illegal immigrant has entered the country since I became President
-greatly decreased fentanyl coming in by sea (the tiny fraction that it is) and also ruined the fishing industry ( apparently a plus to him)
-lifted millions of people off SNAP ( and into food insecurity)

Part three: the Awarding of the Medals/ violence porn
-here’s a girl who got run over by a truck driven by an illegal and they never thought she’d survive. Stand up little girl ( who apparently had to be picked up by her father)

  • here’s a girl who was forced into a gender transition at school and taken away from her parents and put in a horrible place but here she is back with her parents and is now a student at Liberty University ( and looks like getting away from the fundi parents may be a high priority)
  • here’s Erika Kirk- did you know her husband was a martyr?
  • remember that terrible flood last year that killed all those little girls at the summer camp? Here’s one who survived and the pilot who rescued her.Let’s give him a medal!
  • remember the two military members who were shot in DC? Nobody thought he would survive. The doctors had given up but his mother made them press on and here he is today despite being shot in the head. Let’s give him a Purple Heart.
  • here’s a guy who flew one of the helicopters into Venezuela despite being shot in the leg twice with blood pouring out and running down the aisle of the helicopter. He landed it despite having no use of his legs and took out the antiaircraft battery before collapsing Let’s give him a medal!
  • here’s a 100 year old veteran of WWII and Korea who was terribly shot in combat. Let’s give him a medal!
  • here’s a woman whose daughter was brutally murdered on a train. Her throat was slashed, she was stabbed multiple times and with her last pleading look she wanted to know why she was attacked. Let’s focus on her mother’s grief. No medal.

Part 4: the Actual Policy:
-let’s get rid of insider trading by Congress (shocked face that both sides stood up for this). Gratuitous insult to Pelosi.

Part 5: the Owing of the Libs

  • stand up if you believe that the American people are more important than illegal immegrants. Look at all those Democrats not standing. They hate America.(Unfortunately a small win for him with a no-win option.for the Democrats).

That’s about all that I remember but I thick what sticks with you the next day may be the most important. What sticks with me is the violence porn and his gleeful description of head injuries, rivers of blood and trauma and then cutting to the actual victims who are clearly still trying to recover.

BTW I apologize for the formatting. Too lazy to figure out what I did wrong.

279

That part really kills me. He used the fact that innocent, legitimate fishing boats were afraid to go to sea out of fear of being targeted by the US military as a laugh line. Not to mention the economic issues created by bringing an entire industry to a crashing halt.

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The odds of that happening were, of course, zero. His followers worship him. Definitionally, he can’t fuck up, not to them.