One of the best moments this week came as President Biden played Republicans like a uke:
- Nan’s Notebook really wants President Biden to retire after this term.
- Max’s Dad was impressed with the State of the Union, but especially enjoyed the State Of Joe Biden.
Key beginning:
Hey I thought that octogenarian cognitive declining Sleepy Joe Biden was President but what we got the other night was Scranton Joe, who rolled up his sleeves and told the screeching spider monkeys of the GOP to put up their dukes.
- Republicans heckle the SOTU.
President Biden has fun playing them like a musical instrument.
And YellowDog Granny has her share of hilarity.
- At The Onion, President Biden engages the new Republican Congress by reading from the Illustrated Children’s State Of The Union.
- In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson commits accuracy, quoting Mike Pence advocating the privatization of Social Security.
- The Palmer Report connects three facts.
- Republicans are attacking Medicare
- 28.4 million Americans rely on Medicare
- Most of those 28.4 million Americans do not follow politics
So…
What would happen if more discovered what Republicans plan? - driftglass goes SOTU fashion hunting.
- Iron Knee at Political Irony takes a look at the Republican response and detects a whiff of hypocrisy.
- Biden’s call to ban assault weapons brought to mind an office discussion. Decades ago, a co-worker mocked the standard NRA position of Good‑Guy‑With‑a‑Gun:
I’m definitely for arming 2md graders with handguns.
One horrified co-worker thought she was serious.
Here in Missouri, the land beyond parody, Scotties Playtime covers the legislative vote to allow kids to carry deadly weapons.
Key quote about a minor change that Republicans voted down:
Democratic Rep. Donna Baringer said police in her district asked for the change to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”
“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them,” Baringer said. “Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.”
- As Biden promotes action to counter climate danger, tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors shows us the path that France is showing us that California has been showing on a quick opportunity for solar power.
- The President had as guests the bereaved parents of Tyre Nichols.
Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has some numbers. Most Americans in pretty much every demographic group see police violence as a problem.
Most groups see police violence as common against Black people, with one predictable exception.
- Donald Trump Jr. chose a lamentable attack on the President’s SOTU:
- Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson responds to a whitewash with typical reserve:
— James Wigderson (@jwigderson) February 8, 2023
- Disaffected and it Feels So Good reports as Republicans fight for free speech by threatening social media employees with arrest.
Key observation:
As they did with Religious Liberty, Rightwingers & Republicans have turned the concept, implementation, and very idea of Free Speech into its opposite.
- The federal debt ceiling as we know it now has been in effect since 1995. A different form was in effect before then, but it was automatically raised whenever required.
Most Americans don’t know (I know because I’m a nerd) that the debt ceiling is not a ceiling on debt. One of those misleading labels from Congress that don’t really mean what they say.
What is called the debt ceiling but is not the debt ceiling is only authorization to pay bills we already owe.
So it has the same effect as you have if you refuse to pay your mortgage and car payment. It ruins your credit and keeps you from having nice things. Like a home or transportation.
For government, it ruins US credit and keeps us from having roads and bridges and pretty much anything for veterans and widows and orphans and ABMs.
Some Republicans say they want to make a deal that will let us pay bills as long as we slash Social Security or put the program up for a revote every few years. Others say they don’t want to do that, but won’t say what they do want.
So the reason I said all that was to say this:
My long time conservative friend Darrell Michaels is at it again. Apparently Democrats are a mass of Incompetence, Ignorance, Malfeasance, and Unfitness.
The examples begin with the debt ceiling and end with the Chinese balloon. Who would have thought it?
Top key passage:
Most Americans oppose raising the federal debt ceiling without accompanying cuts to federal spending, or even with spending cuts according to a new RMG Research poll.
Well Duh.
Bottom key passage (in fairness, before the balloon was shot down and salvaged: an American victory):
I wonder if we do decide to shoot it down if the “Big Guy” will still get his 10% from China with Hunter’s business deals?
Might be convincing to the already convinced, compelling to the already compelled.
- What should a President do when a spy balloon is spotted over Montana? The balloon is big enough to hold football fields and can be deadly if shot down over …you know… people.
So…the decision to shoot down the thing was done on Weds. We monitored it, jammed its sensors, and gained intel on its capabilities, waited until it was out range where a crash could cause civilian harm, shot it down, and this is what is causing a million MAGAs to lose it.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 4, 2023
Republicans go loud and public: the fact that a spy balloon from China got over Montana shows how weak Biden is. AND why didn’t he shoot it down right away?
The Pentagon interrupts the tirades by confirming that China put spy balloons over the US multiple times during the Trump administration. Trump and Republicans did nothing, not even a public objection.
News Corpse has mr Trump’s response to the Chinese balloon intrusions during his term in office: Deny that what happened ever, ever happened.
Lesson here: In any intelligence gathering crisis, Biden will do just what I would do.
In the balloon case, I could hardly wait to see what Biden did, so I could discover what I would do. - At The Moderate Voice retired U.S. Air Force Major and former aerospace/defense executive, Dorian de Wind, has the technical details of the steps used to follow Biden’s orders to block signals to and from the balloon, then capture it intact.
- Before the big balloon from China became a balloon formerly known as a balloon, with valuable counter espionage insights gained from salvaging the massive equipment, Julian Sanchez of Cato Institute had about the ideal reaction to the standard MAGA reaction:
Just to state the obvious: No civilian weaponry fired from the ground would get anywhere near hitting a stratospheric balloon; they would have no effect if they did hit it; and if it did somehow come down, they’d have no control over who or what it hit.
— @normative@mastodon.social (@normative) February 4, 2023
- Green Eagle reveals the hidden Truth they don’t want you to know about what was hanging from that Chinese balloon.
- Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit can draw better lines than conspiracy theorists without resorting to conspiracies. So let’s connect the dots for a balloon big enough for a fleet of buses, falling debris, Senator Ted Cruz, Austin, and Cancun.
- Satirist Andy Borowitz reports as Elon Musk seethes with envy over the attention the balloon is getting.
- Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged notes beginning in headline that Dark Brandon Took Down the Bad Balloon, but the real revelations are about what Trump is and Republicans have become.
- Hackwhackers brings the exchange as mr Trump pushes blurry photos that seem to say that, during his former teaching career, Ron DeSantis was a child groomer.
I don’t much care for Governor DeSantis, but Donald casting him as a child molester? Seriously?
- Tommy Christopher brings us Neil deGrasse Tyson turning around a question by interviewer Chris Wallace: How important is it for white people to see me where I am?
- SilverAppleQueen is not anti-trans, but has concerns.
Key concern:
Transitioning is a decision that ONLY adults should be allowed to make.
- It will seem like a universal fact of life for most of us.
A key part of any workable society will be a legal construct composed of rules. Individuals or groups can voluntarily choose to live by stricter rules if they want.
Evangelical Christians, Lutherans, Muslins, and occasional Buddhists are a few examples of religious groups who do just that.
Ideological extremism carries with it the temptation to turn such simple facts into points of ideological purity. For a few way-far libertarians the world is binary, composed of those favoring virtually no laws, which is to say freedom-loving libertarians, and everyone else: Everyone else being soul-crushing Stalinists.
The headline chosen by Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara contains the question:
QUORA: ‘Why don’t socialists in free capitalist societies use their freedom to join together in communes, start living like socialists and stop bothering the rest of us?’
Michael has an answer: They can and they have. He points to Kibbutzim and Amish enclaves.
He might have included the anti-establishment communes from back in my day, or The Way of the earliest Christians in Biblical times.
His key point:
Socialists are free to live their creed in a Capitalist social system. Not so for Capitalists in a socialist political system.
He is correct, according to his definitions. The world is divided in purely binary terms: black and white, up or down, with us or against us, good or evil.
Socialists who see the issue of ownership of means-of-production, liberals who want social safety nets associated with capitalism within human limits, those who see an ideal in a theoretical dictatorship of the proletariat, even conservatives who favor traffic laws are all Stalinists.
Michael A. LaFerrara resists any temptation he may feel toward nuance.
- In Ant Farmer’s Almanac, we read about the uncontrollable side effect they don’t want you to know about: the urge for prescription drugs you see in TV ads.
- Reductress has the latest evidence for anti-vaxers to use.
Key intro:
Although I have always been against getting the COVID-19 vaccine and its boosters, I was unfortunately required to get them by my employer. But after getting the most recent booster, I finally have proof that the vaccine isn’t safe for the public.
Headline:
I LIVED IT: The COVID Vaccine Made Me Text My Ex the Lyrics to ‘Hey Soul Sister’.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, the brother of an unvaccinated Evangelical has a harsh message and a plea to Christians after his brother dies.
- PZ Myers poses a question that should matter to those of us who share the faith – the headline: How did the world’s greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate group?
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz repeats the obvious question: Are the Bad People Really Winning? He offers encouragement and a call to action.
Key message:
It is not that good people are gone, it is just that too many of them have gone silent.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil links to conservative groups concerned about the decline in religiosity in the US. Apparently it’s a result of a vast FBI and DOJ conspiracy to blacklist Christians and conservatives. M. Bouffant seems skeptical.
- In those wayback times of my long ago youth, psychological counseling had an unfortunate stigma. A lot of that has changed, but we still have a way to go.
Infidel753 shares some private details of personal history about the benefits of the right kind of professional help (non-religious).
- In Happiness Between Tails da-AL hosts blogger and prolific reviewer DJ Sakata on her lifelong love of reading, including her early discovery of Marquis de Sade.
Key question:
Have you ever been shamed for what you read?
- Dave Columbo has an old person’s perspective on rude comments.
My rude comment: No idea why, on some browsers, TikTok goes to autoplay and defaults to zero volume. Try clicking volume, then reload (grrr)@davecolumbo These comments will be lit
- @whiskeywhistle98 selects the best method of birth control:
Gaaaa – Once more: No idea why, on some browsers, TikTok goes to autoplay and defaults to zero volume. Try clicking volume, then reload (such a bother)@whiskeywhistle98 It is time….#GetCrackin #snipsnip #noswimmers #fyp #csectiondelivery #twotimes #foryourpage #tiktokmom #kids #nomorebabies #yep #done ##fairisfair ♬ Pass or Smash – 💜The Simple Touches💜
- John Scalzi at Whatever comes up with an epiphany about Luke and Leia in Star Wars.
- Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes explains why British cryptic crosswords are so cryptic for anyone outside Britain and helpfully decrypts an example. Fascinating in a convoluted sort of way.
– Podcasts –
thank you!