Well, it seems that went exactly as expected. From what I hear, he had a captive audience and he held them hostage for nearly two hours. Some of it, you have to be honest, was the Republicans making such a show of jumping to their feet every time he finished a sentence and applauding whatever moronic stupidity he had just spewed. That might not be so bad, if he had said anything of value but after the fact-checking, it seems he didn’t even say anything honest.

Some Democrats attended. Some walked out during the speech, which I kind of liked, but I would have been happier to have that entire side of the chamber empty to begin with. Al Greene, a Democrat from Texas, went but only long enough to get thrown out for holding a sign that read, “Black people are not apes,” a sign referencing the racist video trump, except, no, some unnamed staffer, posted to trump’s account showing the Obamas as apes.

There was a time when Congress Critters sat, respectfully, and listened to the speech. I should mention, many of them have actually been fairly good speeches, unlike this mess. But that has changed. Several years ago, a Congress Critter named Joe Wilson (a Republican, obviously) shouted, “You lie!” at Obama during one of his State of the Union addresses. MTG did it again, shouting at Biden.

So, turnabout being what it is, the Dems added their own spin and started fact-checking him in real time, during the speech. He talked about the fictitious fraud case out of Minnesota he’s using to smear Somalis in a trumped up fraud case, to which Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib shouted, “That’s a lie!” and “You’re a liar!”

Trump tried to trap Democrats into standing for him by saying, “If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” The Democrats remained seated. Trump retorted: “You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up.” But not only did they NOT stand up, Omar yelled, “You have killed Americans! You have killed Americans! You have killed Americans! You have killed Americans!”

It was a solid point. He’s NOT protecting American citizens. Is now the time to mention that the Constitution often uses the word “people” and not “citizens,” meaning the job of the US government is to protect everyone in the country? That seems relevant, too. When President Pedo claimed, “No one cares more about protecting America’s youth…” Talib interjected, “Then release the Epstein files!”

People are going to hammer on the lies so let me highlight a truth that slipped out, apparently accidentally. At one point, he said he could say “with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages.” That’s actually true. It just isn’t good. Despite the falsehoods from MAGA media, the country was humming along when Biden left office. 47 has crashed it into the ground in record time. It really is ‘a transformation like no one has ever seen before.’

Sadly, it’s been a transformation for the worse, not the better. On the up side, I DID have “like no one has ever seen before” on my SOTU bingo card. It’s one of his favorite phrases, though, so it wasn’t much of a reach. Despite your every day, lived experience, he said everything is better. As you pay more at the grocery store, he told you you’re paying less. As your costs go up across the board, he’s telling you how much he loves that and thinks it’s great. It’s almost as if he lives in an entirely different United States than the rest of us.

My favorite part? That TCM showed the movie ‘Gaslight’ at the same time as the speech. It seemed the perfect summary of Trump and pretty much every word he says…

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Epstein’s BFF is still a pervert, child-raper, though, and he’s still working as hard as possible to protect himself. People are digging pretty carefully through the Trump/Epstein information that has been released. Carefully enough, that they found a place where 50 relevant pages of information have been withheld. It’s the section where Trump stands accused – by the accuser – of raping her when she was thirteen years old.

It’s a pretty amazing coincidence that the parts they won’t release happen to be the same parts that implicate Trump. I’m sure it’s some kind of oversight. They’ll “happily” get it straightened out the very minute they’re totally forced to and have exhausted every alternative. It’s not even a matter of critical thinking, anymore. Any child knows that if those files exonerated him, he’d be waving them around in public. That same child knows that hiding the files is because the files will get him in trouble.

Trouble. I wonder what that might look like. So far, it mostly seems to mean some hyper wealthy or well connected sex pervert is going to have to get a different job. Yeah, yeah, Andrew got arrested. Not for the kid-diddling, though. Andrew got arrested for passing sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Gates just apologized. Gates says he didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe he didn’t, but, hell, Felon 47 says the same thing. I would REALLY like to see someone, somewhere face responsibility for they things they’ve done…

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Since we’re on the topic of inappropriate sex, a House member and Republican from Texas, Tony Gonzalez, started sexually harassing one of his aides. The press is characterizing the relationship as an affair and maybe it was, but among the news articles, I read this paragraph: “The paper also published apparent text messages between Gonzales and Santos-Aviles, showing Gonzales allegedly pressured her into sending a sexually explicit photo and described graphic sex acts. Gonzales continued messaging her even after she warned her boss he was going ‘too far.'”

I don’t know, but in my experience, one does not have to “pressure” one’s lover into doing lover things. That feels more like harassment. The main part, though, is that after the interactions were discovered, the staffer fell into a deep depression and then killed herself – and MAGA Mike, the Johnson swept the thing under the rug because his margin is so small in the House. If Gonzales is forced to step down, they’re WAY too close to losing the majority.

If you’re keeping score, that’s the Republicans protecting some unknown number – let’s go with “countless” – perverts and pedophiles for political reasons and now they’re protecting a member who sexually harassed a staffer to the point of destroying her life, also for political reasons.

Even some Republican members think Gonzalez should step down or be pushed out. Johnson is far more worried about what he and his cronies can do to harm the American people and help the billionaires to risk holding anybody to any account. Sure, there’s a dead woman involved, but billionaires have a chance to keep a few thousand dollars more. Priorities, people…