Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The revolution will be supervised.

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

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

You cannot shame the shameless.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

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

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Republicans in disarray!

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Nothing worth doing is easy.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

T R E 4 5 O N

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

After roe, women are no longer free.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Post SOTU: Dark Brandon Is In The House

Post SOTU: Dark Brandon Is In The House

by | 143 Comments

This post is in: ,

With apologies to howler monkeys:

As I said in a comment, “Damn, I need some ice cream after that SOTU”

Discuss  – anything but botox. JFC

Open thread

Reader Interactions

143Comments

  2. 2.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Reed Galen @reedgalen 8m
    He led y’all into a box canyon like Butch Cassidy.

    House Judiciary GOP @JudiciaryGOP1h
    Joe Biden is lying about Social Security and Medicare.

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    I’m sure Sarah Huckabee Sanders will top that, what with all of her no-doubt soaring oratory about the evils of wokeism. Or Wookieism.

  5. 5.

    Another Scott

    Great job, Joe!

    Meanwhile, … Phys.org:

    Secret, coded letters penned by Mary, Queen of Scots, while she was imprisoned in England by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, have been uncovered by a multidisciplinary team of international codebreakers.

    The contents of the letters were believed for centuries to have been lost. That was until George Lasry, a computer scientist and cryptographer, Norbert Biermann, a pianist and music professor, and Satoshi Tomokiyo, who is a physicist and patents expert, stumbled upon them while searching the national library of France’s—Bibliothèque nationale de France’s (BnF)—online archives for enciphered documents.

    The trio only discovered Mary was the author after solving her sophisticated cipher system. Their decipherment work of 57 letters, which is presented in the journal Cryptologia, reveals approximately 50 new scripts previously unknown to historians.

    These date from 1578 to 1584, a few years before her beheading on this very day 436 years ago—February 8, 1587.

    Mary’s correspondences expose fascinating insights into her captivity. Most are addressed to Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissière, the French ambassador to England. He was a supporter of Catholic Mary, who was under the Earl of Shrewsbury’s custody when she wrote them.

    [ embedded YouTube video ]

    Interview with George Lasry. Credit: Taylor & Francis

    “Upon deciphering the letters, I was very, very puzzled and it kind of felt surreal,” says lead author Lasry, who is also part of the multi-disciplinary DECRYPT Project involving several universities in Europe, with the goal of mapping, digitizing, transcribing, and deciphering historical ciphers.

    “We have broken secret codes from kings and queens previously, and they’re very interesting, but with Mary Queen of Scots it was remarkable as we had so many unpublished letters deciphered and because she is so famous. This is a truly exciting discovery.”

    He added, “Together, the letters constitute a voluminous body of new primary material on Mary Stuart—about 50,000 words in total, shedding new light on some of her years of captivity in England.

    […]

    “Grandpa, what’s a ‘letter’???”

    Hehe.

    Neat stuff.

    There’s always more to learn about the past.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  7. 7.

    CaseyL

    A stemwinder, a barnstormer, of a speech.

    A couple post-speech things I’m curious about:

    My Rep, Pramila Jayapal, spoke to Biden for a while, probably about Washington state issues.  I’m curious mostly because, as I said, she’s my Rep.

    And: while Biden was making his way to the exit, a tallish blonde woman stopped him, spoke in his ear for a long time, ended by saying “I’ll do whatever I can to make that happen,” and Joe directed one of his entourage to get her contact info.  I wonder what that was all about.

  9. 9.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Jethrene, Jethrene, Jethrene, Jethreeeeeeeen

    You’ll forever be our lyin’, bullyin’ possum queen

  10. 10.

    Raoul Paste

    It’s really too bad that the Fox audience lives in a world of lies.    What Biden said about the economy, the deficit, and trump’s deficit was completely true, but that impact will be lost on the suckers, who watch Fox

  11. 11.

    HumboldtBlue

    I don’t think Huckabee ever served on the pep squad or the cheerleaders, she’s got all the pizzazz of cement.

    Huckabee telling the tale of how trump fucked up Xmas for a whole battalion of personnel.

    The soldier had tears…. no he was openly weeping and all the strong men cried. ALL OF THEM

  13. 13.

    Citizen Alan

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I generally try not to focus on appearances, but I have to wonder who recommended to Possum Queen that she deliver her nonsense with her hair parted down the middle and wearing a white bathrobe.

  20. 20.

    RaflW

    Ed O’Keefe is saying that Santos’s response to being told by Romney that he should sit in back was to call Romney an “asshole” to his face.

    The continuing MTG-ization of the GOP.

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Paleo Conservative (as he used to describe himself) Tom Nichols is unimpressed

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom 7m
    Man, I don’t think Sanders realizes that this line might not be landing the way she thinks. This is a speech aimed narrowly at the Tucker Carlson zombies.

    This is just not a well-written speech, regardless of whether I agree with its content. “Born in the waning days of the blah blah blah” It’s also a very creepy delivery.

  24. 24.

    zhena gogolia

    @Elizabelle:
    Let’s remember Michelle Wolf’s brilliant joke

    Wolf said in her act, “I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”

  25. 25.

    dmsilev

    @Quinerly: If she doesn’t complain about volcano monitoring or rehydrate on camera, she’ll be at least above average for GOP SOTU responses.

  28. 28.

    Elizabelle

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  Agree with Tom Nichols.

    Sanders’ is not a speech for “independents.”  It’s purely for the up is down crowd.

    I don’t think it will play well if anyone who is not a loon watches it.

  31. 31.

    JWR

    SHS told us the story of the legend that was TFG sneaking into Iraq(?) under cover of darkness, as if no president had ever accomplished such a daring feat. Boy, was he ever brave!

    Also, Woke and Crazy were tonight’s approved SOTU responses.

  32. 32.

    zhena gogolia

    Well, I can’t watch SOTUs by anybody, but I’m glad to hear from you all that Biden wasn’t quite ready for the nursing home.

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’ve got this muted but based on this tweet: 1) Jethrene is running for Popess of Oral Roberts U (is that institution still with us?) and 2) good for this kid

    Christine Emba @ChristineEmba 6m
    The left is forcing is to “partake in their rituals, salute their flag, and worship their false idols” ????
    i’m watching this with students and one just deadpanned “yeah in my public school in provo utah, we had to salute the LGBT flag and then sing nicki minaj” 

    ETA: twitter keeps calling this the “Sanders speech” and I got confused

    and muting again

  34. 34.

    RaflW

    Wanted to see the SHS white bathrobe. Caught her closing, saying that America is “the country where freedom reigns and liberty will never die.”

    And she didn’t get smitten in a stroke of lightning for such brazen reversal of the GOP ambition to strangle freedom and immolate liberty! Dammit.

  35. 35.

    Mai Naem mobile

    SHS’s rebuttal is the best of any recent GOP rebuttals I’ve seen and I am genuinely surprised.  Its full of crap but it doesn’t look cringey like Booby Jindal’s and Lil Marco’s did.

  36. 36.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Looking Green’s coat, the GOPers are really murdering dogs now for the hell of it.

    Also The Onion

    ‘But The Scary Balloon Popped, So They Went Back To Worrying About The Recession Monster,’ Says Joe Biden, Reading Illustrated Children’s State Of The Union

  38. 38.

    RaflW

    @zhena gogolia: I mean, it would be quite satisfying to know that someone called Mittens that to his face in the people’s chamber. But what a pathetic and deeply distasteful messenger.

  39. 39.

    sab

    My pitbull just woke up, wagging her tail madly. Typical pitbull: life is amazing until you discover today’s disappointment.

    No disappointments today except for that extra midday snack she didn’t trick me into ( yes you did get lunch, and breakfast, and dinner.)

    ETA She is attentive so resident cats love her: we are lonely, please lick us.

  40. 40.

    pat

    I haven’t read any comments but I watched the speech and I have only one thing to say:

    FOUR MORE YEARS.

  41. 41.

    Ohio Mom

    I hope to catch the “highlights”/worse of SHS’s rebuttal on Aaron Rupar’s twitter later. Probably tomorrow because I want to savor this moment.

  42. 42.

    hueyplong

    @RaflW: Not sure I follow her argument. If “freedom reigns and liberty will never die,” then there is no dire emergency and we need not elect dimwitted, dog torturing yokels like members of the Huckabee family.

  47. 47.

    cain

    Tom Nichol’s feed on the Sander’s speech was good times. I honestly had a fun time reading it. Plus I think it’s really the first time I’ve seen him fanboy Biden.

  48. 48.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom 20m
    Sanders is doing some weird recitation of how she was in mortal peril with a visit to A Dangerous Place with A Certain Former President and how this relates to the GOP alternative to Biden is a mystery but apparently the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor and she’s rolling

    Basically, Sanders is telling a “sir” story

    Nichols notes she refuses to name the “former president” she told the fake combat sir story about. I hope someone points it out to The Beast of West Palm Beach

    This isn’t Sanders responding to the GOP, it’s Sanders pleading with some GOP front-runner to pick her for something for 2024 and get her the hell out of Arkansas

  49. 49.

    cain

    Damn mastodon is all praise – I think POTUS knocked this out of the park and gave our side the adrenaline rush it needed to keep going forward. Well done.

  50. 50.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    “Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom 7m
    Man, I don’t think Sanders realizes that this line might not be landing the way she thinks. This is a speech aimed narrowly at the Tucker Carlson zombies.”

    This was a campaign speech, totally unrelated to a SOTU response.

  51. 51.

    Dangerman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: This isn’t Sanders responding to the GOP, it’s Sanders pleading with some GOP front-runner to pick her for something for 2024 and get her the hell out of Arkansas.

    I wonder if she remembers Bobby Jindal?

  52. 52.

    different-church-lady

    Romney is just not with the current program:

    Sen. Romney: Rep. George Santos ‘shouldn’t be in Congress’

  53. 53.

    columbusqueen

    i see that MTG was her usual charmingly bitchy self. I keep hoping she chokes on her own venom, but I doubt God loves me that much.

  54. 54.

    Jackie

    Per CNN re the Mitt Romney/Santos exchange:

    Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) told Rep. George Santos (R-NY): “You don’t belong here,” according to a member who witnessed the tense exchange in the House of Representatives chamber Tuesday night, CNNreports.

    Different church lady beat me lol

  56. 56.

    CaseyL

    @different-church-lady: I read that Santos’ response to Mitt was “Asshole,” which is true.

    And I wonder why Romney said he (Santos) didn’t belong there, when financial chicanery is very near and dear to Mittens’ heart (well, heart-shaped facsimile).  Maybe because Santos cheated people out of their money using ordinary scams, while Mittens cheated people out of their money, businesses, pensions, and livelihoods  using only the finest white collar criminality.

  62. 62.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jackie: Santos apparently confirming after the speech that he called Romney an asshole

    Kadia Goba @kadiagoba 1h
    Rep. George Santos describes, to me, his exchange with Sen. Mitt Romney during the State of the Union tonight:
    Mitt: You don’t belong here.
    Santos: Go tell that to the 142K that voted for me.
    Mitt: You’re an ass.
    Santos: You’re a much bigger asshole.

    I guess it’s okay, as my little cousin used to tell his mother, ass isn’t a swear cause it’s in the Bible.

  63. 63.

    sab

    @Another Scott: Mary Queen of Scots poem wasn’t encoded. It was in Latin, understood by everyone well-connected in her day. I learned it in 9th grade Latin in 20th century USA.

  72. 72.

    Another Scott

    @sab: ? I’m a little lost.

    He’s talking about encoded letters they found in a library.  In the YouTube video, he says that she learned how to cypher when she was 9 years old.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    Martin

    @different-church-lady: And then Mitt said “You shouldn’t be here”, and that when I roundhouse kicked him in the head. He started crying and his wife came over called him pathetic and we had sex, right there on the floor of Congress.

  75. 75.

    Quinerly

    For what it is worth, CNN reporting Matt Gaetz SECRETLY added to the Weaponization of Government Subcommittee. Kevin McCarthy submitted the change to the Congressional Journal without any public announcement.

    Gonna be a shitshow.

  77. 77.

    TS

    Anyone have a clue as to why the media didn’t find out the Santos issues until AFTER the election, cause if he had been running on the democratic party ticket I am sure if would have been revealed when he was nominated?

  80. 80.

    patrick II

    @RaflW:

    Calling Romney an asshole is the first and only thing I have admired about Santos so far.  I am only sorry he left out the word “pompous”.

  81. 81.

    Bill Arnold

    @Quinerly:
    “United States House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government”
    It’s related to Nominative Determinism.
    It will be fun when people start pointing this out when the subcommittee gets rolling.

  88. 88.

    TriassicSands

    @Alison Rose: @Elizabelle:

    I’m pretty sure if Biden spent an hour talking to Sanders, he would no longer be even a little bit optimistic about the future of this country. Or anything else. The idea that people would actually vote for her for anything but capital punishment is impossible for my mind to grasp.

    If there were such a thing as a “sourness” scale, Sanders would blow the fuse in the meter used to measure it.

    (Note: I’m totally against capital punishment.)

  90. 90.

    TS

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    They didn’t care.

    As I thought, worldwide it seems the media is 99% supportive of right wing politics. I find it truly heartbreaking to see the massive divides between rich/poor in countries where post WWII, for the next 20-30 years this was not the situation.

  94. 94.

    Mike E

    That sotu was a Biden F*cking Deal, all prose but the way it shut up all of the ageist concern trolls was truly poetic!

  98. 98.

    TriassicSands

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
     

    Sheesh. And I’m pretty sure you take things too literally and didn’t understand the point of the comment, which was about how profoundly sour Sanders is. Or maybe you just like being contrary..

  103. 103.

    TriassicSands

    @Alison Rose: ​
    I don’t know. I never argue for the sake of arguing. Though, maybe, I’m be in the minority.

    Anyway, I’ll give you a trillion dollars if you watch Sanders’ response from start to finish.
    (Note: I’m not worried about having to pay up, since I seriously doubt you’ll survive the experience. So, please don’t try; I don’t want that on my conscience. Plus, some things just aren’t worth it. Oh, and I don’t have a trillion dollars. But you probably suspected that.)

  104. 104.

    JAFD

    My mother – God rest her soul – worked twenty-five years as office manager of Local 654 of the IBEW, which represented the construction electricians of Delco and Chesco, between the Twelve-Mile Arc and the Philly city limits, and she was one of Biden’s greatest stans.

    Am sure she was chortling, there in Heaven, over the President’s callout tonight.

  107. 107.

    Alison Rose

    @TriassicSands: See, the problem is, the money would be useless because I would’ve clawed my entire face off by the end and I’m pretty sure that’s not a survivable condition.

    Also too, I saw a headline at Slate that said “The symbolism of Sarah Huckabee Sanders” and I didn’t read it but that sentence alone makes my brain twitch.

  108. 108.

    NotMax

    Ugly is the only word to describe that “speech.”

    If it were alive it would be the spawn of The Witch of Endor and Joseph Goebbels.

  113. 113.

    TriassicSands

    @Alison Rose: ​
     

    I tried to watch the Sanders response and had to turn it off. I could feel my will to live slipping away. My first real awareness of her was when she was Trump’s mouthpiece translating his lies into lies for the people. Seriously, there are very few people as unpleasant to watch and listen to as SH Sanders.

    Early on in her response she said: “I’ll be the first to admit that President Biden and I don’t have a lot in common.”

    Yeah, like humanity. Biden is all about being upbeat. Sanders is “Elect us or burn in a pit of socialist hell fire for all eternity.” Which is a perfect fit with the Republican Party.

    Onward. things to do. G’night.

  115. 115.

    guachi

    I would have loved if Biden had taken Republican’s newfound love for Social Security and Medicare and told them they should follow through on that promise and raise the debt ceiling. They wouldn’t want to harm seniors, would they?

  116. 116.

    lgerard

    @JWR: ​
     

    She doesn’t think “the government” should be involved in health care. She’s 68. overweight, and has hypertension and ulcerative colitis. Without Medicare she could not obtain health insurance at any price. but there is no explaining that to her. She nods her head, and then goes on thinking the same stupid thing.

  117. 117.

    AxelFoley

    @TS:

    Anyone have a clue as to why the media didn’t find out the Santos issues until AFTER the election, cause if he had been running on the democratic party ticket I am sure if would have been revealed when he was nominated?

    You just answered you own question. But, I think it was rhetorical and you meant to do that.

  119. 119.

    Citizen Alan

    @lgerard:

    it wasn’t worth the effort to try and explain it to her

    Comments like this exasperate me. It’s like surrendering to willful ignorance. If ever confronted with someone who said that, I would probably lose my temper and scream “Your Medicare plan is SOCIALIST!”

  120. 120.

    Baud

    @Citizen Alan:

    You could just say, “I hope everyone will be able to have a good Medicare plan one day.”

    ETA: FWIW, unlike Republicans and lefties, I don’t consider social welfare programs “socialism.”

  122. 122.

    JWR

    I forget if I saw this here, but too funny anyway.

    GOP
    @GOP
    Wait until the coastal elites find out that this is where their food comes from!
    7:10 AM · Feb 6, 2023

    Kevin M. Kruse
    @KevinMKruse
    Replying to @GOP
    All you had to do was find a picture of farmland in the Midwest and you somehow screwed that up. Amazing.
    5:53 AM · Feb 7, 2023

    Akilah Hughes
    @AkilahObviously
    Replying to @GOP
    Yeah definitely there’s zero produce in California or upstate New York. It’s all Alabama oranges and Montana Bananas.
    7:17 AM · Feb 6, 2023

    The consensus is that it’s a picture of Manteca, about 65 miles from San Francisco. Oh, and “Montana Bananas”. Good band name.

  124. 124.

    JWR

    @JWR: Yeah, I did see it here, at the end of Anne Laurie’s Tuesday Evening Open Thread: While We’re Waiting post.

  127. 127.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Mimi haha: try telling them how the NFL is socialist

     

    Goodell responded “It’s a form of socialism. And, it’s worked quite well for us”.

  128. 128.

    Princess

    One of the reasons we can’t have nice things is that Americans on the left and the right all think social welfare programs are socialism. They are not. You can have an entirely capitalist economy with robust social welfare programs including single payer healthcare.

  129. 129.

    Baud

    @Princess:

    Yeah, that’s really what western Europe is.  Old school socialists would turn over in their graves if they heard people today describe that as socialism.

  130. 130.

    Geminid

    Ukrainian Oresident Zelenskyy flew to Great Britain this morning and is meeting with PM Sunak and other British officials. This is Zelenskyy’s second trip outside Ukraine since Russia invaded last February.

  134. 134.

    brantl

    @Elizabelle: She isn’t trying for them, no one in the Republican party really is, she’s boxing out the territory under the net, trolling for MAGAts. None of them will reach beyond the crazy, before they lock up the crazy vote, THEN they will try to pull in the moderates, because all their “Friends” (read that as frenemies) are doing exactly the same thing, and she (they) have to get there FIRST. Unfortunately for them, Independents and Democrats have memories longer than a gnat, and they won’t get any of them.  HuckSter and the “leading lights” of the Republican Party are trying to suck off Donny Doll-hands mob, and, one, it won’t work, and two, it won’t leave them any steering room that gets any of the non-crazies.

  136. 136.

    Another Scott

    @brantl: There’s a fine line between acting out for attention and an unrecognized cry for help.  The GQPers have been over the line for a while.

    Joe’s right to keep trying to call them back to the side of sanity, but also right to keep pushing forward regardless – the world and the future cannot wait.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  138. 138.

    artem1s

    @Princess: ​
     

    You can have an entirely capitalist economy with robust social welfare programs including single payer healthcare.

    To your point it would be more accurate to call them state sanctioned monopolies and/or public trusts. All the professional sports leagues have antitrust exemptions. Nonprofits enjoy antitrust exemptions to some extent as well, especially religious institutions.
    Sherman Antitrust Act
    The Federal Government enforces three major Federal antitrust laws, and most states also have their own. Essentially, these laws prohibit business practices that unreasonably deprive consumers of the benefits of competition, resulting in higher prices for products and services.
    Conservative Chamber of Commerce types hate these programs because they involve an enormous amount of cash flow and they can’t profit off it. It’s the sole reason they are attacking the public school system and slowly replacing it with private schools and vouchers. They want to privatize SS so they can pour all that cash into the stock market and Ponzi schemes. They never intend to stop collecting SS on workers paychecks – that’s the dirty little secret that tanked W’s effort to privatize it. They just want access to all that cash flow.

  139. 139.

    artem1s

    Mitt’s just pissed at Santos because his dog torturing act didn’t cost him his election.

  142. 142.

    Paul in KY

    @TriassicSands: She is, unfortunately, a non-attractive person, physically (and this would be if she had the greatest personality). When you throw in her personality (which is akin to Umbridge’s from Harry Potter combined with Anna Wintours’ on her most bitchy day) , you sure have a horrible soul.

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