Dark Brandon rides again

 "Who would have thought the old man to have had so much pizazz in him?"  (Lady Macbeth, sort of)

Joe Biden could never have been a great public speaker like FDR or JFK.  His childhood speech impediment and later acid reflux ruled it out.  But he has made himself into an effective, impassioned speaker who projects righteous anger and connects with people as more polished orators never could.  To put it another way, he would never be a Baptist preacher (as one listener suggested last night) but I could see him as a much-loved parish priest.  Maybe his sermons are a little long but you would wait in line to confess your sins to him.  He gets people.  To paraphrase George Carlin, three Hail Marys and you're back on the street with Father Joe.

Without ever using his name he covered Trump in layers of contempt and disdain and called out January 6 for the attempted coup it was.  Trump was so angry he broke his own crummy platform.  Really.  Ministry of Truth Social actually collapsed under the weight of his lies.  ("THE DRUGS ARE WEARING OFF!"  "He is so angry and crazy!"  Blah blah Ashli Babbitt, blah blah "not helpful to bringing our Country back together" -- I didn't know that was a goal of Donnie Deportations-on-Day-One.)  The rest is silence, punctuated by conspiracy theories about the Deep State censoring him again.   Probably with those Rothschild space lasers.

It was a fighting speech, listing accomplishments, daring Congress to do its job on the border bill and aid to Ukraine, making you believe for a little while that this improbable 18th Century experiment in representative government might be made to work again.  I know it was effective because the right lost its mind.  Ari Fleischer:  "His tone, his speed of delivery, his loud, punchy way of speaking is really weird.  This speech is odd."  Sean Hannity:  "...very angry, very jacked-up, you might say, maybe charitably 'over-caffeinated.'"  Oh, no, the old guy got into the No-Doz again!  "Completely partisan" -- the State of the Union, like the State Opening of Parliament, must never be partisan.  Right, Rep. Malaprop?

The hat, the buttons, presumably the Trump panties -- if only the House had rules.  It has? 

Stay tuned, folks, because Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) got to deliver the official response from her suspiciously tidy kitchen, a response that an anonymous Republican called "one of our biggest disasters ever."  Britt has stayed under the radar by being less egregiously awful than Tommy Tuberville (and less absurdly coiffed than Marsha Blackburn), but in the Gang of Putin it's all relative.   She helped to craft the bipartisan border bill and then voted against it because Trump decided he needed an Issue more than "bringing our Country back together" that day.  Which is tragic because the border is overrun (she says) with sex traffickers who rape their victims.  Oops!  Maybe don't mention r-a-p-e as long as Trump is scrambling to find the money to appeal his E. Jean Carroll verdict.  And the whole woman-in-a-kitchen visual is unfortunate when the Republican running for governor of North Carolina would like to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment, and even the Alabama legislature rushed through a bill protecting IVF clinics.  But the gold cross is a nice fashion touch.  Madonna has one like it.

More good news:  the man the Guardian calls "disgraced ex-Congressman and noted fabulist" George Santos was spotted schmoozing with Lauren Boebert (son indicted last week) and Matt Gaetz (being investigated by the House Ethics Committee) before announcing he's running for Nick LaLota's seat in the lucky old New York First.  Really, George or whatever your name is, maybe it's time to try another state.  The Wisconsin Third may be in the market for someone less excitable than Derrick Van Orden, who had to be 86-ed last night after screaming "Lies!" when Biden criticized Trump's handling of the covid pandemic.  (Last summer he had an altercation with some Senate pages who were photographing the Rotunda, calling them "pieces of shit" and "jackasses.")  By November, of course, Van Orden could be the next Speaker.

Speaking of Speakers, Mike Johnson's gallery of facial expressions from contemplative to constipated is the cause of much mirth today.  This is my favorite.

Yesterday someone told him the joke about the old woman and the three-legged cow.  He just got it.

By the way, only six Supreme Court justices turned up last night, elegantly robed.  Maybe it was the court's bowling night, suggested Keith Olbermann.  Maybe the others didn't care to be publicly scolded by the president for overturning Roe:  "With all due respect, Justices, women are not without electoral or political power.  You're about to realize just how much."  Angry Brandon!  Of course the justices need not fear accountability from voters or codes of ethics, but there's no point pretending the majority are not operatives of the Republican Party, so Biden didn't.  Maybe Clarence Thomas was picking up the keys to his luxurious new RV from John Oliver!  No, that's too much to hope.

I'll just end with Biden's reaction to seeing Marjorie Malaprop in full MAGA kit.  Priceless.

  He looks like he just answered the door and he's about to drop a Snickers in her trick-or-treat bag.