The True State of the Union This 2026

trump is going to lie his ass off at tonight's State of the Union address, so here are the facts as you need to know them.

The state of the Union is strong divided. The polling by most Americans show a lot of us are miserable at the direction our nation is turning. And the disapproval is far higher than it was in trump's first run at misrule:

from the NPR report on trump's bad standing before this SOTU.

The division in the country is due to trump's heavy-handed immigration policy, as his ICE and Border Patrol thugs are smashing and shooting their way through too many of our cities and states grabbing families and children. The current regime is at open war with our own communities, dragging us into culture war racism and misogyny that tore the United States apart the last time we went down this path.

The division in the country is due to trump's arrogant and violent handling of foreign policy, threatening unwanted wars against allies and enemies alike while committing war crimes that a majority of Americans can't abide. trump's open calls about attacking Iran over the past month - and growing louder by the day - have little support within his own nation even as most of us are mortified we have nobody - cough GOP Congress cough - in a position to stop it.

The division in the country is due to trump's unstoppable obsession with using tariffs and his overall mishandling of our economy. Inflation is still a problem, the job market is unsteady, and far too many of us are struggling with housing, debt, and other costs. The only economic sector that's chugging along are the stock markets, and even they are one bubble burst away from a meltdown that would make the Great Recession look like a hiccup.

If there's any issue a majority of Americans are united, it's that we need to see more of the Epstein Files documents and more accountability of the elites who engaged (and profited from) in sex trafficking of teens. And on that, trump and his lackeys are clearly ignoring the people's demands - openly committing obstruction by hiding (or worse destroying) documents showing trump's culpability - to the detriment of our country.

So that's where we stand, America, on this eve of trump's lie-fest to the Union.

Gods help us.

What I Want to Hear from President Biden's First State of the Union Speech

So it's over 100 days into President Biden's term of office, and House Speaker Pelosi sent the invite to Biden to appear before Congress (and members of the Supreme Court) to give his first national prime-time speech about the state of the nation, such as our ongoing vaccination efforts to end the threat of COVID as well as ongoing and future plans to get our economy rolling post-pandemic.

To which I would make a few suggestions as to what I hope to hear from Joe Biden this Wednesday night:

1. "My fellow Americans, the state of the union is VIGOROUS. Or 'Able-Bodied'. Let's try 'Strapping', no no too sexy, wait how about Hard As Nails! Hmm, I will draw the line at 'Tenacious'. No, I will NOT say 'Strong', I'm sick of hearing it, we need to add more words to our political vocabulary, it's called a thesaurus people, break it out once in a while!" 

2. I want to hear Biden apologize to Generation X for promoting Dokken over the likes of Night Ranger, Guns N Roses, or Skid Row.

3. "And a shout-out to Tucker Carlson, who should be told that filing false parental abuse claims in many states is grounds for felony arrest for the accusers. Good luck in jail, pal."

4. "It should be the policy of the United States of America to fight injustice everywhere, to which my administration will be enacting national policies to reform our city, county, and state police departments to reduce brutality towards our unarmed citizenry, and push for stronger civilian oversight of those departments to reduce abuses and improve our nation's trust in the institutions we need to keep the peace."

5. Biden's new tax plan of any person earning over $250,000 a year either in income or capital gains be taxed $1,000,000 each time said person acts like an asshole and refuse to put money in the tip jar at any of the local Starbucks.

6. Seriously though, Biden needs to confirm that taxes are going to go up on the 1-2 percent of highest incomes in the country to help pay for that massive infrastructure plan our nation needs.

7. "And even though I come from Delaware, my love of American sports is such that I will sign an executive order forcing the NFL to sell the San Diego Chargers to a local coalition of stock holders similar to the Green Bay setup, because FUCK the greedheads who moved the Chargers to an L.A. city that still hasn't accepted them. Chargers are San Diego, dammit, and that's the way things ought to be."

8. "Also, new rule: every Oscars Best Picture nominee list should include at least one superhero movie regardless of its comics 'verse, be it DC or Marvel or Dark Horse or Image or other, as long as that movie stars either Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Gal Gadot, or any of the guys and gals who played Doctor Who."

And in closing: "Get to it, people. We got shit to do. AMERICA, TRANSFORM AND ROCK OUT!" (leaves the stage to the Night Ranger song "You Can Still Rock In America")

If I Gave the 2019 State of the Union Speech

Just noting at the moment that Nancy Pelosi - using her power as Speaker of the House - is NOT inviting trump to make a State of the Union speech this year before Congress.

She's publicly noting the security concerns are different this year due to the ongoing trump Shutdown, and that Secret Service protection will be less this time because of it. It's also quite likely Pelosi is doing this to fuck with trump's ego, on which point I heartily applaud.

The invitation has usually been something of a formality, and there's been times either side - the President or Congress - had openly mused about rejecting the offer out of partisan spite.

It's also become a terrific bore of a speech, if you ask pundits and historians. If the President and Congress are of the same party, it turns into one big rally with standing ovations and ego-boosting and nothing else. When it's split, the speech is pretty much a laundry list of "Oh hey let's do these things this year."

Even the Opposition Reaction speeches are useless.

Pelosi suggests trump is better off giving his State of the Union from the Oval Office, make it a televised spectacle to the nation without involving a Congressional background. It has the advantage for trump of being able to give the speech without having much of the House booing him for every lie he spills every five seconds.

So in some respects, this might actually be a good time to end what had been a meaningless spectacle. Our nation's actually done well without it for more than a century, after Washington stopped doing it after one year - he received a lukewarm response from Congress and swore never to return - until Woodrow Wilson revived it because he was the kind of President who believed a President should serve like a Prime Minister and make such appearances (also because film became prevalent and it was a good way to perform before the cameras).

But if it came to it, if I were President and I were still able to give a State of the Union speech before the entire Congressional body, what would I give?

Maybe something like this:

My fellow Americans, tonight the state of our union is... OH JESUS CHRIST IS trump STILL HERE?! GET him OUT! Grab him! Drag him back to the jail cell where he's waiting for his Obstruction trial.

Anyway, we are currently looking at repealing much of the Ryan Republican Tax Cut fiasco that has created billions in deficits rather than growth, we are struggling to improve health care coverage for more Americans, and we are waiting on the next Avengers Endgame movie to see how Spider-Man and Nick Fury get back (relax, no Spoilers, the trailers are already out for that).

We need to set higher goals and make better objectives this year in education. We've got to provide relief to millions of college students wallowing in loan debts. We've got to raise taxes at the federal and state levels to spend more money on upgrading every school for every city and every county. We've got to promise to ourselves and to our nation's future we WILL dedicate ourselves to making smarter and stronger children grow up to be better and happier adults.

We need to make a serious effort to fix every broken and aging bridge. We need to make a serious effort to clean up our water supply. We need to make a serious effort to end our carbon emissions to turn our planet away from the ecological disaster we are hurtling towards.

I want to count on every American to stand up in these coming days and weeks, for your families, for your communities, for your futures.

And now is the moment in the speech when we DANCE! BREAK OUT THE MOVES, SANDY!

GOD BLESS YOU, AND GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

...think it'll work?

The State of the Union is Divided. And That's How Republicans Love It.

Things you should know before leading up to tonight's State of the Union address.

We are currently dealing with a federal government where the White House and certain Republican members of Congress are openly attacking agencies like the FBI and Department of Justice, because those agencies have been digging into financial and political scandals caused by the current White House administration before trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017.

There have been signs that the FBI has been digging into the backgrounds of various trump lackeys - such as Paul Manafort and Carter Page - years before trump even announced his candidacy in 2015.

Yet we've got Congresscritters like Nunes tossing around "classified" memos - that he and his staffers created - trying to discredit the Bureau for really only one purpose: protect trump from the oncoming inevitability of Mueller prosecuting him for Obstruction (or worse).

Referring to David A Graham at the Atlantic:

Not long ago, the standoff now consuming Washington would have been unthinkable.  The Trump White House and Justice Department are sharply at odds over releasing a memo prepared by Representative Devin Nunes, alleging misconduct by the FBI and Justice Department. The president seems poised to approve the release of the document in order to seek his own vindication...

Most remarkable of all is the all-out assault by Trump and his allies on the independence of the Department of Justice and the FBI. On Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan joined the chorus of critics calling for the release of the Nunes memo. “Let it all out, get it all out there. Cleanse the organization,” he told Fox News.

This crisis may have arrived suddenly, but the conditions that allow for this moment have been building for some time. While there’s great concern about Donald Trump destroying longstanding norms, this is the latest example of how the Trump presidency has hastened the demolition of norms that began eroding long ago.

Consider the Nunes memo. Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, prepared the memo along with staffers. The four-page document reportedly suggests that DOJ and FBI officials relied upon information from Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official who investigated Trump on the Democratic Party’s dime, in applying for a warrant to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump foreign-policy adviser...

This ties into the trumpian argument that the Steele Dossier is a partisan hoax, getting abused as a source of information that the FBI is relying on to get illegal FISA warrants (and other calamities).

Problems with that argument are:

1. The report notes that Rod Rosenstein - Deputy Attorney General backing Mueller's special counsel investigation into trump/Russia - requested a renewal on a FISA warrant on Page, meaning there was existing evidence that passed muster for a FISA warrant in the first place.
2. Steele's Dossier isn't what started the investigations into trump, Manafort, Page, and others in trump's orbit. FBI had received reports from other foreign agencies and contacts about Russian meddling into our elections for years (look at the Dutch giving us heads up about Russian hackers as early as 2014). All Steele's dirt-digging turned up was corroborating evidence...

You don't even have to scratch the surface of this faux outrage to see what Nunes is attempting: He's trying to discredit Rosenstein (at the worst to drive him from office), any high-ranking FBI officials in favor of the investigations into trump/Russia (to purge them out as well), and create any kind of excuse (even a lie) to justify shutting down Mueller before he hits trump with any charge.

This is all causing a Constitutional Crisis where the political partisanship of one party is hampering a federal agency's ability to do its job. Back to Graham:

Seldom has a congressional committee launched such a frontal assault on the FBI and Department of Justice. It’s been more common for oversight panels to be criticized for excessive coziness with the executive-branch agencies they regulate. A rare exception is the mid-1970s Church Committee, which investigated intelligence-community abuses. Yet that committee conducted lengthy investigations following standard procedures; the rush to push out a short memo that seems mostly to serve the president’s political purposes is rather different...

This is not to say that any of these institutions were ever beyond reproach. As I wrote last week, the FBI and the intelligence community make for imperfect vessels for the hopes of those who see them as defenders of rule of law against Trump. The FBI has at various moments in history wielded its powers to persecute political opponents. But the FBI, and the Justice Department, were granted a presumption of some objectivity. This, like the delicate diplomatic concepts that Trump has casually destroyed, was a fiction, but it was a fiction that allowed the system to function by presenting procedures and rules. Institutions provided a framework, and while there might be differences of opinion about the conclusions reached, there was a process for reaching them.

Now, however, the various factions can’t even reach an agreement on what the rules are. The Republicans and Democrats on the intelligence committee don’t agree on the rules, much less the outcomes. The White House is attacking its own Justice Department; Trump expresses puzzlement at why “my guys” in the department don’t care of his dirty work, while the Department of Justice puzzles over why Trump is endangering their procedures and reputation...

We are at the point where one of the major institutions of our government - one responsible for investigating crimes and performing some semblance of justice for our citizenry - is under partisan attack on a scale darker than any previous ones. An attack designed to force that agency - and others - to become partisan wings to a single political party (Republicans) dominated by a would-be dictator eager for such powers to abuse to his whims.

It’s important for Americans to question the FBI and the Justice Department, and to criticize the press. Accountability is essential in a democracy, and none of these institutions has ever been perfect. But in the present case, those leading the assault seem to be doing so for cynical reasons. Trump is attacking the Justice Department and FBI because of an investigation that threatens his presidency; he has repeatedly made charges (remember the “wiretapping” claim?) that proved to be false. Nunes and other House Republicans claim overreaches by the intelligence community, yet just voted against reforms of the surveillance process.

These attacks aren't out of any duty toward reform, or reparation. These attacks are by a criminal president (and his Congressional allies) doing everything he can to stop investigations into crimes he may have committed before (and especially during) his political campaign.

The consequences to these attacks can be devastating. If trump gets his way, he gains full control of an agency in the FBI able to investigate any individual on any charge that trump can aim at them. trump could gain full control of the Department of Justice that could carry out any criminal proceedings on people guilty only of opposing trump. Critics in the media could find themselves in jail. Democrats at the federal and state level could find themselves hounded out of elected office, creating a one-party authoritarian rule.

trump becomes the bullying dictator he dreams of being. And the Republican Party gets to tag along for the ride.

We are at the point where it's clear that the United States is now in another Civil War. It's not like the first one, where it was mostly states vs. states. Today, it's a civil war between Parties: between one party still holding to the rule of law and constitutional norms (Democrats) against a party driven to the extremes of breaking every law in order to seize and keep power (Republicans).

The state of the Union tonight is in tatters. It's Republicans vs. Democrats. It's trump vs. the Constitution. It's Russia, standing on the sidelines laughing their collective asses off at our riven status.

If trump succeeds at breaking the FBI, at turning the entirety of the DoJ bureaucracy to his whims, we are so very royally fucked. Charles I of England won't have sh-t on what trump could do.

People, you need to call now, before it's too late, and let every Congresscritter - Republican and Democrat both - know you will stand up against trump's attempt to save his criminal ass from the rule of law.

What I Want To Hear From President Obama's Final SOTU Speech

Update: Thanks again to Tengrain and the crew at Crooks & Liars for adding me to the Mike's Blog Round-Up today. How did I do with predicting the SOTU speech? Well, Obama didn't use the word "energetic" to describe the nation, did he? No, he did not. (openly cries). Also I missed the Dozens he dropped on Trump. Otherwise... Please do take the time to view the rest of the blog and see the other articles I've written, thank ye.

Tuesday night (tomorrow) will be Obama's last appearance before the whole floor of Congress - barring any special session - as President of the United States.

As such, I have high hopes - like before - for what we will likely get from a President who has demonstrated the last eight months he has no more f-cks to give.

1) "The state of our American union is ENERGETIC." I'm sick of using the word 'strong' every speech. It's called a thesaurus people, and they have them online and YOU STILL need to diversify your word usage, a'right? Yeah.

2) "To the National Shoot-Everybody Association, you know what? I'm going to play into your conspiracy bullsh-t about me coming to take all your guns. You terified about that? Fine. I AM GONNA COME TAKE YOUR GUNS. So there. I swear right here and now before 240 million American who wants universal background checks and stronger gun safety laws, that I will personally come and take all assault rifles and sidearms owned by all 4.5 million members of the NRA. And I will come and do this, you gun-worshiping death dealers, between the hours of 3:47 PM to 10:18 AM, just so that you paranoid f-ckers will miss half your work day, stay up all afternoon and all night long defending your metal gods of death and NEVER get any sleep in. So SUCK IT, Wayne LaPierre, you will never know the comfort of your own bed again."

3) "To the idiots holed up in a federal wildlife park in Oregon, did you think that thing through? You're doing it in winter, without fresh socks for God's sake, out in the middle of nowhere where I can get that secret Clinton death squad that owes me a few more favors to make it look like you all froze to death during a blizzard. All we gotta do is wait, suckers, and you will never know what hit you."

4) "To anybody who thinks that Trump's Wall isn't going to end up costing the United States TRILLIONS of dollars and ruin MILLIONS of American lives, you are getting conned by the biggest scam since Bernie Madoff."

5) "That said, you got a Powerball ticket for this Wednesday? Damn, the jackpot is gonna be up to 1.5 Billion for certain, even when you get only half of that in the lump sum payment that's a lot of money to spend on Lego Star Wars sets."

6) "It's been confirmed that there is NOT a special clause in the sales contract for the Wu-Tang's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album that allows Wu-Tang and Bill Murray to steal it back within an 8-year time frame. However, if the Wu and Bill want to pull that heist, I will have pardons ready for them if they reclaim that vinyl disc and bring it safely to the Oval Office in person so we can party to it."

7) "I want to announce it here first that Cuba has agreed to full and open elections with a multi-party race, partial reparations to private property owners from the 1950s to help resolve that issue, and allowing Disney to build a Star Wars themed park in Gitmo. One of the last vestiges of the Cold War will end. That does mean we are going to need to move the remaining Gitmo prisoners to federal prisons here in the U.S. right away. We will do this, because man, when Disney wants a park built, they will get it. YOU DO NOT WANT TO F-CK WITH DISNEY. YOU DO NOT F-CK WITH DISNEY. They go after day care centers, for God's sake..."

8) "What's this I'm hearing about you Republicans wanting YET ANOTHER government shutdown? How many times you gonna break Congress with these shutdowns that cost MORE MONEY than what you're claiming to save before American voters realize that's ALL YOU DO up here is break sh-t?"

9) "If you crazies want some new Constitutional amendments up here, why not an amendment for universal voter registration so you all can't lie about voter fraud being a problem? Why not an amendment making it so that elections are required to stay open for voters until a confirmed super-majority of voters have done so, in order to combat terrible turnout for half our elections? Why not an amendment for better financial and banking regulation so we can reduce the threat of personal debt and financial instability? These are amendment ideas worth passing for the common good."

42) "What did I tell you last State of the Union about 2015? WE HAD SOME AWESOME MOVIES LAST YEAR! Age of Ultron, loved it. J.J.? That work you did on The Force Awakens, damn dawg you got mad skills, you made us love the series again. Daisy Ridley, you stole our hearts, all of America loves you and wishes you were the cool sister we deserved growing up. Okay, Jurassic World, at least you had dinosaurs fighting and that Star-Lord guy leading a pack of raptors. And, above all, I wasn't expecting Fury Road to be THAT EXCELLENT! That was... sniff... George Miller, my man, you are a visionary GOD carrying each and every one of us to the gates of Valhalla. And so here we are, we got Captain America Civil War coming, we got another X-Men, we got a sick Deadpool coming out, we got a female Ghostbusters, we got a Trek movie for the 50th anniversary of the whole thing, we got Batman and Superman and I gotta say it looks like Gal Gadot is gonna kick ass as Wonder Woman. I will say it again, this is a great time to be alive as a geek! GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES, AND LIVE LONG AND PROSPER! (sprays mouth with silver food coloring) WITNESS IT!"

You think we can at least get one Force Awakens shout-out? I'm hoping.

Follow-Up to Obama's 2015 State of the Union

While I didn't completely get what I wanted from Obama's address - although he DID push for an economic and tax agenda I can support - I did get to bear witness to one of the epic smackdowns in American History:

During his scripted speech, Obama claimed his position as "I have no more campaigns to run."

This prompted a round of applause from the Republican Congresscritters seemingly celebrating that Obama's unable to run for re-election.

Obama then ad-libbed "I know... because I won both of them."

Boom.

Burn.

Dunk.

Mic Drop.

Linkage to some Twitter reactions - usually the go-to source for the immediate OMG pulse of the moment - here and here and a few others if you look for them.

It was sweet.

If I ever have kids, I will tell them of this moment.

What I'd Like To Hear From Obama's State Of the Union Tonight

I'll be working evening shift so I won't see any of it until I get home.

So here's the list I hope to hear about later.

1) "The state of our union is ROBUST." I am sick and tired of hearing 'strong'.  IT'S CALLED A THESAURUS PEOPLE, THEY HAVE THEM ONLINE NOW.

2) "Thanks to massive gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states and pitiful voter turnout efforts by Democrats that turned into a turnoff, a meager 36 percent of voters this past November put a bunch of batsh-t crazy politicians in charge of Congress.  Yeah, I went there.  Now I gotta manage the crazy 24-7 until 2017.  Like I said, thanks."

3) "I will not make any deals on Social Security or Medicare. You are not going after our social safety nets that do work, that just needs minor and yes I mean minor reforms to make them solvent.  Just don't even try cutting Social Security benefits, Congress.  I will make you eat your own serving if you bring that sh-t to my house."

4) "I will insist on a budget where the nation's entire tax burden will be placed on Grover Norquist.  I'm gonna drown YOU, buddy."

5) "We as a nation thrive on immigration.  It's how we went from some rustic backwater of the 19th Century into a major superpower by the 20th Century.  It's how we keep ourselves innovative and refreshed with talent and drive.  For us to turn our backs on millions of hard-working, intelligent young adults that can become part of this great nation through the DREAM reform efforts is not only offensive, it is short-sighted and harmful.  We are going to reform our immigration policies to make it easier to keep families together, to make it easier for our workforce to stay strong."

6) "We need to do something about reducing college costs.  This is why I'm pushing for local, community college programs to be free to millions of American families.  We need to do more to stop the growing amount of financial debt that millions of families are incurring in order to have their own children achieve success.  What good will all that effort be if entire communities go bankrupt, killing all hope for that success?"

7) "If Congress passes one more self-serving pay raise while doing nothing about the wages of all other workers, I swear to God I will personally bitch-slap each and every one of you.  You're already earning six-figure salaries with this job, that's more than what 95 percent of our nation's workers ever see."

8) "Seriously Hollywood, you pat yourselves on the back for awarding a hokey, poorly-scripted movie on race like Crash and yet you snub the hell out of a historic, well-acted and genuinely impactful film like Selma?  I was already upset with your Oscars voters for how they snubbed TRON for Best Visual Effects - TWICE - but now this sh-t..."

9) "We are this close to letting Disney take over Cuba as the first nation-sized Epcot Center.  Don't ruin the deal, Congress, just let me handle it..."

10) "The real reason this nation's future this year is so incredible, why we've got a good year ahead of us?  Because Age of Ultron AND Episode VII are coming out this year!  YES DAMMIT IT IS GOOD TO BE A GEEK IN THE USA!  GOD BLESS US!  LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!"

Here Comes The State of the Union

"...He shall, from time to time..."

The biggest question about Obama's upcoming SOTU speech among the Talking Heads on television will be if he speaks out against Keith Olbermann's ouster from MSNBC.  Kidding.  But I wouldn't be surprised if those self-absorbed nabobs went there.

No, the biggest question is if Obama will surrender his forces to the GOP House / Teabagger leadership under threat of government shutdowns and whatnot.

The buzz is that Obama will address the deficit as the primary issue, but how he will address it is the key.  Will Obama push for drastic cuts on everything the Republicans hate - Social Security, social safety net spending, education, state funding, etc. - or will he aim for more moderate cuts with a stronger emphasis on spending caps?

For myself, I hope that Obama comes out swinging on the issue that's REALLY the major issue for most Americans: the ongoing unemployment crisis.  For every Congressperson obsessed with the deficit (THAT THEY CAUSED) there's about ten Americans obsessed with how bad the job market is and how bad the wage earnings are.  Obama's probably unable to push for any government project (the Republicans still hate Obama's stimulus package with a vengeance, and most Americans still aren't aware how effective that stimulus was in keeping us out of a full-blown DEPRESSION), but he's got to do something to address the fact that there's at least 15-20 million Americans who have been unemployed longer than 27 weeks... and that those long-term unemployed are frozen out of the sluggish recovery we've recently been watching on the financial news.

Obama better have something good on the table for the jobs issue.  If he doesn't, we're screwed.  It's jobs, people, it's JOBS that help keep this economy going...