Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Come on, man.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Their freedom requires your slavery.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

The revolution will be supervised.

I was promised a recession.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

“But what about the lurkers?”

The willow is too close to the house.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / State of the Union Through the Eyes of an Imbecile

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  2. 2.

    Jerzy Russian

    Apparently the Third Lady hung a metal around the fat neck of a loudmouth asshole who pollutes our airways.  No word yet on what the citation of the award reads.

  5. 5.

    Seanly

    I don’t give a rat’s ass what Trump says as he only speaks for his stupid base. He thinks being President means he can rule by fiat for just his donors, religious zealots, racist buddies, and duped followers (in that order too).

    Good for Nancy for tearing up his stupid fucking speech.

    Left off the closing bit that wishes for bad things for certain people…

  7. 7.

    Redshift

    I only caught the bits that were on the Daily Show, so all I know is that he lied about how the country is doing, lied about it doing better than under Obama, and lied about it being because they reversed Obama policies.

  9. 9.

    Kent

    It was lifeless.  He is definitely sedated in some fashion.  Total monotone.  Most low energy Trump speech I’ve seen.

  12. 12.

    Redshift

    @Jerzy Russian: I think the only reasonable response to that is for Democrats to talk about how they prefer presidents who don’t turn out country’s most important ceremonies into crass reality TV stunts.

  13. 13.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Cheryl Rofer: that is so fucking good, the way they edited it is amazing, the way trump’s gestures underline Schiff’s words, the pictures of nutty Lindsey Graham and befuddled Susan Collins…

    that clip of him mugging and goofing off like an eleven year old during the anthem was barely 48 hours ago

  15. 15.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kent: Weird isn’t it? You think Trump would be has a high as a kite right now with the Impeachment fix.  Considering he is so self absurd it makes one wonder if their something to these rumors about Trump’s health. Like Trump giving Rush that medal was Trump trying to reassure himself?

  16. 16.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Kent:

    Most low energy Trump speech I’ve seen.

    Careful, prolonged exposure to these things will cause brain damage.

  17. 17.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    MSNBC panel talking about how trump put his critics in a box with the soldier’s reunions, and they’re not wrong, it’s a tricky thing for pols to point out how cheap and exploitive it was and how it contrasts with trump’s increase of troop levels in KSA

    but maybe as fucking journalists who don’t have to worry about Uncle Dub and Aunt Myrt showing up to yell at them in a town hall, they could mention something like this, that happened today

    Top Navy SEAL commander to resign after apparent disagreements with Trump

    those apparent disagreements were named Eddie Gallagher

  18. 18.

    Ohio Mom

    Pelosi’s tight little smiles, hardly-there grimaces, blank stares ahead (instead of watching Rush be knighted), and all her other facial expressions, as subtle as they were, were my lifeline watching that hot mess. Tearing up the transcript at the end was comic relief.

    Trump was indeed very subdued. I am afraid people will interpret that as “presidential.”

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Giving rush the metal most likely was not trump’s idea. He’d want one for himself before he’d ever want to give one to someone else. rush is a hero to a lot of the extremists because they think he’s telling the truth. As I said on another thread, conservatism is now a cult, like scientology.

  21. 21.

    AnotherBruce

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:  I think that was a kind thing to do, because cancer. But strokes, heart attacks, corona virus, falling down the stairs, falling after being pushed off a skyscraper, getting torn to pieces by a pack of rabid dogs are acceptable for both Rush and Trump.

  22. 22.

    Ohio Mom

    What disgusted me most were the people who agreed to be props for Trump — tne parents of the slain aid worker, that military wife, there were others too, and the Tuskegee Airman, and his grandson. They should know better.

  23. 23.

    Anya

    You know what makes me so fucking angry? The fact that Trump can award someone as despicable as Rush Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom and Manchin can talk about healing the country and bringing the country together. Why isn’t it the responsibility of the supposed president to bring the country together or heal the nation? Why must we sacrifice every ounce of respect of the law and human decency and gets to do what the fuck he wants?

    Sometimes, I hate this fucking country.

  25. 25.

    Raven Onthill

    Lots of fascist stuff. I think Stephen Miller and his Nazi friends were major contributors to the speech.

    Trump refused to shake Nancy Pelosi’s hand at the beginning. AOC did not attend. Democrats were walking out throughout the speech. Fred Guttenberg shouted something when Trump started talking about the Second Amendment and was removed by the Capitol Police. At the end, Pelosi tore up her copy of the speech.

    I wonder what SOTU responses were like in the 1850s.

  26. 26.

    Ruckus

    @AnotherBruce:

    Kind thing to do? Giving that lying sack of shit the medal of freedom? What about all the people who won’t have healthcare, who will die in custody after walking hundreds of miles actual looking for freedom, whose kids are being treated like literal garbage and who may never see their parent(s) again? How about all the bullshit he’s broadcast about people like Michael J. Fox with his Parkinson’s? He deserves the metal of freedom about as much as trump does, which is less than zero. Rewarding him for smoking for 50 yrs and lying about the effects now that he is suffering from that is just massive bullshit. It’s so much bullshit he should have had to give him the medal with a bulldozer.

    He just did to that medal the same thing he does to everything he touches or is any part of, turned into worth absolutely nothing.

  27. 27.

    hilts

    OT

    Your gutless lamestream media on bended knee before Trump:

    Donald Trump served various television news personalities a lunch described by one White House guest as soup and filet of sole Tuesday—but soon the assembled anchorpeople were eating out of his hand.

    Much to the disappointment of folks at CNN, nobody at the long table—who included NBC’s Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC’s David Muir and George Stephanopoulos, and CBS’s Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan—bothered to ask why the president had gone out of his way to exclude the cable network run by Trump’s former friend Jeff Zucker.

    “MSDNC isn’t here as well,” Trump quipped—to polite chuckles but zero protests (not even by Meet the Press and MSNBC anchor Todd) from his captive audience, who were there ostensibly for a briefing on tonight’s State of the Union address but instead were treated to a lot of presidential boasting about his poll numbers and the “through-the-roof” stock market, and a lot of gloating about the “fiasco” of Iowa’s Democratic caucuses and the general disarray in the out-of-power party.

    Trump and his lovingly admiring vice president, Mike Pence, sat directly across from each other. The president was flanked by O’Donnell and Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum; Pence, meanwhile, drew Todd and Fox News’ Bret Baier as his lunch partners. Also enjoying the cuisine—but staying away from the offered Chardonnay—were PBS’ Judy Woodruff, C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, CBN’s David Brody, and Newsmax’s Emerald Robinson, formerly a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist at Trump’s favorite media outlet, One America News Network.

    While Trump fielded earnest queries about troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the United States’ recent confrontation with Iran (“Nobody knows how close we came to war,” the president confided in an answer to Holt), nobody saw fit to challenge him on his regular attacks on members of the press the “enemy of the people,” “scum,” and other choice epithets.

    h/t https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-had-americas-top-tv-news-anchors-over-for-lunch-and-ate-them-aliv

    Jake Tapper @jaketapper

    AP: “No news organization boycotted the event to show support for CNN, in contrast to the British journalists who walked out of a Monday meeting with an aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson to back competitors who were being kept from the session.”

  29. 29.

    Raven Onthill

    I would really like to hear someone with a big platform say point-blank that Trump is a fascist, he has fascists in his administration, and he does not belong in office.

  30. 30.

    dnfree

    Well, I was downhearted. First the Iowa debacle, still not resolved, and apparently untested software from a new firm with ties  to the Clinton campaign.  Great setup for Sanders conspiracies. Then Trump gives his speech competently, without major flubs, claiming all sorts of triumphs that will be fact-checked but won’t be contradicted for ordinary people. And a fair number of relatable and admirable people are recognized. A little girl gets a scholarship and a Tuskegee airman and his great-grandson are saluted.

    I’m afraid this won’t be easy. The presidency is a great bully pulpit.

  31. 31.

    JoeyJoeJoe

    @Anya: it’ll be the responsibility of the president to bring people together as soon as the president is a Democrat, even if the other side refuses to work with him; that’s according to the media anyway

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raven Onthill:

    I would really like to hear someone with a big platform say point-blank that Trump is a fascist, he has fascists in his administration, and he does not belong in office.

    Adam Schiff and the rest of the impeachment managers have been saying he’s unfit for the better part of the last two weeks, every day, on all the cable channels, clips and quotes all over the internet. Every presidential candidate says it in every speech and in all the debates. I guess they don’t use the word “fascist”. What do you imagine would happen if they did?

  34. 34.

    Emma from FL

    @dnfree: Give him three days. He’ll screw up again. And nobody ever said it would be easy. It won’t be easy. But it will be worth it.

  35. 35.

    RaflW

    @Kent: I heard about one minute on the radio this evening. It sounded to me like he was short of breath.

    He’s just standing there, reading aloud, and he can’t get enough oxygen? His health is shit.

    God knows how the MAGs are got react if he is incapacitated. Oddly enough, I don’t think they will tolerate Pence. They will tear shit apart, demanding one of his spawn be some completely extra-Constitutional caretaker “president”.

  36. 36.

    Avalune

    I liked the part where he bragged about getting so many off Snap and welfare as if they rose above it with his generous and guiding hand vs I kicked their asses off the government teet.

  38. 38.

    Avalune

    Or the parts that were like a gameshow. You get a prize. You get a prize! Look under your chairs!

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    You know why he gave it to Rush?

    Because Obama gave it to Biden, and Trump MUST shit on everything Obama did at all times.

    That’s why.

  40. 40.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’m pleasantly surprised by Hoyer’s response, I hope other Dems follow his lead

    @ChadPergram
    Hoyer on if Pelosi should have taken the high road & not ripped up speech: Nobody booed. Nobody yelled “You lie!” The fact checkers are going to have a field day..there were no facial grimaces at any time in the speech

    @brianbeutler
    Reporters are, of course, not fanning across the Capitol to ask Republicans whether Trump should’ve taken the “high road” and not strewn his speech with lies. They are instead pretending to believe Republicans who are pretending to be offended by Pelosi.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @hilts:

    Isn’t Jake Tapper the one who whined when Obama tried to exclude Fox News? And now Fox News has done jack shit to return the favor?

    Shoe’s on the other foot now, Jake. Sorry it doesn’t fit as comfortably as you hoped.

  42. 42.

    Tazj

    @dnfree: Robby Mook from Clinton’s campaign had nothing to do with that app. That rumor was going around earlier today and it was proven not to be true so don’t be depressed about that.

  43. 43.

    RaflW

    @hilts: Lester Holt, Chuck Todd and the rest of the access / courtier press can just fuck right off. If they don’t know they’re on the list to be booted at Trump’s convenience, they are every bit as stupid as I think they are.

  44. 44.

    Avalune

    Or the part where he talked about bagdaddy in that very who’s your daddy way he has of saying it which makes me vomit a little. Or where he was like look at this guy Brett K the rapist isn’t he great we got a bunch more lined up in the pipeline! Or how ICE is amazing and people would still be alive if not for those skanktuary places. Or or

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:

    Possibly. But do you really think he remembers that? In the past I might easily believe that he did but now I’d bet somebody had to remind him and I’d bet suggest rush as a recipient. Hell they may have pushed rush to openly admit the cancer because of it so they could give it to him. Because I have somewhat of a hard time believing that rush would admit any thing in any way negative about himself.

    I do have just a touch of cynicism in my personality though.

  49. 49.

    psycholinguist

    It was so bizzare – there was this extended bit where he was giving out stuff like Montey Hall or something. It was a damn low rent game show

  53. 53.

    jc

    @Anya: What you said. My take: it’s a geiger-counter spiking, warning how dangerously broken our system is — that a corrupt, impeached Republican president could present the medal of freedom to a poisonously partisan, racist, sexist pig like Rush Limbaugh, and the beltway press just shrugs.

    If Obama had done the same for … is there anyone on the left who is spews anywhere near that extent of extreme, vile rhetoric? What a sickening display.

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    I think that Trump is so obsessed with Obama that he keeps a list of all of the things he’s going to do to try and reverse everything Obama did. Plus he’s dying to discredit Biden any way he can — a twofer!

    So, yeah, I 100 percent think he did this as a slam on Obama.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @jc:

    In Trump’s eyes? It’s Biden. He did this to diminish Biden getting the same award and to equate Biden with Limbaugh. Guaranteed. The fucker is petty that way.

  57. 57.

    Raven Onthill

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know. But as historian Timothy Burke says, “The Democrats are still preparing to run in an election, while their opponents are preparing to go to war.”

    None of the Democratic presidential candidates seem to know how to address this, Sanders and Warren maybe more than the others. I would feel a lot better, though, if I saw some signs that the Democratic democratic leadership knows they are in a war. The general election is going to be an absolute shitshow and I don’t think we’re ready.

    PS: this. I think issuing a call to metaphorical arms would help. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe it would not be enough. But we need to rouse the Resistance.

  58. 58.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:

    I wasn’t saying you are wrong about why, only the current process. Had this been a year ago, I think you would be 1000% correct. I just think he’s no longer capable of this level of process. This level of hate and bullshit – absolutely. I’m not saying someone had to talk him into it, just remind him, probably read it off that list for him.

    IOW we are not in disagreement that he is a fucking asshole, always has been and always will be, only that he’s getting to the point that he needs daily help getting it done.

  60. 60.

    Martin

    Bad day on the coronavirus front. 4000 new cases today, and 24 new ones outside of China. Those are notable accelerations. Still poses almost no threat outside of China and very little threat outside of Wuhan, but today was not a day when the health community gained the upper hand.

  61. 61.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raven Onthill: well, I don’t know who the historian Timothy Burke is, but I know when, what and where the battlefield in that war is, and if you think Bernie Sanders is the general we want to follow, then please, for the love of god and the future of this Republic, stop fucking reading Jacobin and The Fucking Intercept. Warren is a better choice, but she cost us a lot with that charge up Single Payer Ridge, and someone’s got to get through to her that the Rose Twitter Brigade is not a force we should look to.

  63. 63.

    Aleta

    Pelosi has rudely ripped apart this great tradition with her crass partisanship, say Repubs who cheered and whistled through an entire SOTU made of lies and despotic displays.

     

    I turned it off after 10 min but still heard it in the next room.  The cheering, which sounded like augmented reality, really got to me.  As though this is a sport and the faker the better.  Tonight for the first time I’m deeply discouraged.

  64. 64.

    Tim Wayne

    @Leto: I read this tonight:

    I’d rather swap livers with Charlie Sheen in a backalley surgery performed by a bathsalting baboon with a spork, & only Roseanne’s sweaty leather thong to bite down on for pain, than hear 2 tattered syllables of Orange Foolius taking his adderall-ternate reality victory fap #SOTU

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    It’s probably been on the list for a while (yes, I think Trump keeps a list of all of the petty anti-Obama shit he wants to do). They just rushed the timeframe because Limbaugh is dying.

  66. 66.

    andy

    a participation trophy was awarded by a “man” who was himself awarded a participation trophy

  67. 67.

    Eric S.

    It is 0030 hours CST and I am just home from bowling league. I assume it was all lies.

    PS. FWIW, I could’ve bowled better but I would be hard pressed to find a better way to ignore the poseur in chief.

  74. 74.

    jl

    @Tim Wayne: “I think sitting on the toilet eating a pastrami sandwich would be a better use of time.”

    Yeah, from the way Trump droned through the speech, that looks like what he was thinking. Maybe get really exotic and eat it with Russian dressing instead of ketchup.

    I couldn’t watch the whole thing, but from the bits I could bear to hear before turning off the sound, as far as policies and vision, it was vile pandering to his base, and no one else, delivered in a stupefied drone. The babbling drones I heard in media so far pay no attention to the vile policies advocated in the speech and admire that Trump didn’t go raving starkers, so think the benighted babble had broad appeal.

  77. 77.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raven Onthill:

    Not Joe Biden, with all his talk of compromise.

    God. This again. When Joe Biden talks about this election as a battle for the soul of the nation, when he says that the country may not survive a second trump term, all you hear is some of the necessary pablum about compromise that’s meant to reassure people whose votes he’ll need to win what you call a war.

  78. 78.

    Feathers

    @dnfree: Of course the firm has ties to the Clinton campaign. Clinton was the fsckin’ Democratic candidate in the last presidential campaign. Any Democratic shop that doesn’t have some Clinton ties is  suspect, not the other way around.

    This is the sort of BS that I truly hate from the Berners. Pretending that the candidate who won the last primary AND the popular vote in the general election is some sort of tainted ghoul, rather than an elder statesperson in the party. Agree or disagree with the Clintons (and I do have problems with them), wishing them into the well is just doing the world no good at all.

  80. 80.

    Raoul

    This has to be viewed in the context of NPR being blocked at State, and CNN being ousted from the SOTU lunch.

    Our press is not going to save the republic. Most will try to save their own asses.

    @NorahODonnell
    This was a speech unlike any other I have witnessed from President Donald Trump – the reality TV president took on the state of the union, a master showman at his best.

    We have live analysis on @CBSNews as we await the Democratic response from MI Gov. Gretchen Whitmer #SOTU https://t.co/6s61MCgULb

    End-stage sycophancy. Vile.

  82. 82.

    Bruce K

    I may be late to the party, but I’ve changed my mind on Limbaugh. I hope he survives long enough to see the destruction of the fascist autocracy he helped create. I hope he lives long enough for it to penetrate his mind that his name will go down with Goebbels and Goering and Vidkun Quisling and Pierre Laval.

    Then I hope the cancer does its thing.

  85. 85.

    Kathleen

    @Raven Onthill: Sanders and Warren don’t get it. Harris did. Biden might. This is not about the 1%. It’s about existential threat from foreign power which has coopted major institutions including media. If I weren’t on phone I’d link to video of Sanders, Michael Moore and Warren where Moore is mocking concerns about Russian interference in elections.

  86. 86.

    dnfree

    @Tazj: I know this thread is dead, but I’m not referring to the Robby Mook rumor. I’m referring to the people actually involved with ACRONYM and Shadow and their superPAC. Look up some articles on how those companies got started.

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