Who will really be standing behind Biden in the State of The Union Address

 Who will really be standing behind Biden in the State of The Union Address

By Hal Brown

It's supposed to be the House Speaker, but who will really be there symbolically as the real power in the House?

As far a McCarthy goes, he made his bed and now he has to sleep in it. I hope this takes away some of the glory he'd otherwise feel standing in a place of honor during the State of the Union Address.

I bet Greene wishes that she was selected to give the GOP response instead of Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

By DonkeyHotey

She was probably selected based on this:

Excerpt:

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will deliver the GOP’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night ― but viewers might want to do some fact-checking before taking anything she says at face value.

During Sanders’ two-year tenure as the press secretary for Donald Trump’s White House, stint as a Fox News commentator and new job as Arkansas’ Republican governor, Sanders has earned a reputation among her critics for lying with ease ― something she’s admitted under oath to doing ― and fiercely defending Trump’s most offensive behavior.

I wouldn't say that all, or even most, of the Republicans in the House of Representatives would benefit, indeed, that the country would benefit, from an assessment by psychiatrists to see if they'e be helped with treatment by major medications known to reduce delusional thing.

Will he become Jim Janus-faced Judas Jordan and run for president against Trump?

 Will he become Jim Janus-faced Judas Jordan and run for president against Trump?

By Hal Brown

Note to regular blog readers: I doubt I will be putting a new blog on today since due to upgrades    my Internet provider is working on all day I won't have any service.

After reading Heather Digby Parton's column about Jim Jordan I wondered why this vomit inducing congressman wasn't being talked about as a possible primary candidate for president.

Click above to read

I did a web search "Jim Jordan for president" and all I found was a letter in Cleveland.com.

Jordan decided not to run for the open Ohio Senate seat of the retiring Rob Portman in 2022.  There's no way this was because of a lack of ambition. I think he decided he'd rather wield incredible power in the House which he thought correctly that the GOP would control than be a freshman member of the Senate.

Jordan is power mad. I believe that as a staunch supporter of Trump he has no real loyalty to him, hence the alliterative title of this blog.  

I think the chances are slim to none that he'd hesitate to run against him in the primary if he saw an opening in what is sure to be a crowded field even when the long shots drop out.

While DeSantis and Trump compete for media attention with each other, Jordan will be all over the news for the next two years. He'll be center stage without trying while Trump, DeSantis, and anyone else trying to get media attention will be desperate to be booked for interviews. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of them, horror of horrors for most Republicans, on MSNBC.

Nobody has ever accused this congressman of being a shrinking violet. His belligerent personality is constantly on display in the media. We've seen his  scowling, sneering, or screaming mouth and his pointing finger ad nauseam. 

  I wonder if his right index finger is insured for a million dollars.  

He is sometimes called "Gym Jordan" because of accusations that as a wrestling coach at Ohio State he ignored and covered up allegations of the sexual abuse by the team doctor of some 150 athletes (reference). 

Jordan received a BS from The University of Wisconsin - Madison, a masters degree from Ohio State, and went on to get a law degree from the less than stellar Capitol University Law School. It is an ABA accredited private law school located in downtown Columbus. U.S. News & World Report listed Capital's full-time Juris Doctor program as "Rank Not Published" in 2018, but in 2022 it was ranked as tied for No. 147-193 out of 197 schools in Best Law Schools. (Wikipedia)

Call him Gym or not, I have never heard Jim Jordan called dumb. His deciding to get a law degree at a school that might have been easier to get admitted to than a highly ranked school might have been a smart decision.

Ron DeSantis seems positioned to be Trump's number one competitor although while the field has some other top contenders it is interesting to note that absent from this list is Jim Jordan:

Declared Candidates

• Nikki Haley, Former Ambassador to the United Nations
• Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States

Possible Candidates

• Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas
• Liz Cheney, U.S. representative from Wyoming (At-Large District)
• Chris Christie, Former Governor of New Jersey
• Bob Corker, Former Senator from Tennessee
• Tom Cotton, U.S. Senator from Arkansas
• Daniel Crenshaw, U.S. Representative from Texas (2nd District)
• Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator from Texas
• Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida
• Doug Ducey, Governor of Arizona
• Mike DeWine, Governor of Ohio
• Joni Ernst, U.S. Senator from Iowa
• Josh Hawley, U.S. Senator from Missouri
• Larry Hogan, Governor of Maryland
• Adam Kinzinger, U.S. Representative from Illinois (16th District)
• Mike Lee, U.S. Senator from Utah
• Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota
• Mike Pence, Former Vice President of the United States
• Mike Pompeo, Former Secretary of State
• Mitt Romney, U.S. Senator from Utah
• Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator from Florida
• Ben Sasse, U.S. Senator from Nebraska
• Rick Scott, U.S. Senator from Florida
• Tim Scott, U.S. Senator from South Carolina
• Elise Stefanik, U.S. Representative from New York (21st District)
• Chris Sununu, Governor of New Hampshire
• Glenn Youngkin, Governor of Virginia

If it turns out that Jim Jordan does decide to run I will expect major prognostication points.

Update: 

I thought this was a joke:

It was real. Maybe it is an example of Jordan's idea of what's funny. It did get him in the media.

Hiding the gullible Greene and brainless Boebert boneheads, GOP pushes out higher IQ members on mainstream TV

Hiding the gullible Greene and brainless Boebert boneheads, GOP pushes out higher IQ members on mainstream TV

By Hal Brown

Marjorie Taylor Greene made the news (temporarily pulling ahead of her estranged BFF Lauren Boebert in their media spotlight hogging competition) with her tweet suggesting people try to shoot down the Chinese spyloon:

A few days ago Boebert also demonstrated the obsession with guns among some Republicans:

Currently you can tell who the most gun obsessed by seeing who is wearing these assault rife pins:

Click above the hear his tweet.

The Representative responsible for handing out the pins has been identified (story).

The Washington Post published this yesterday:

EXCERPT: Awakening from a traditional media hibernation, House Republicans have begun to blitz the airwaves they previously shunned with brushoffs about the “lamestream media.”

On any given day now, the new GOP majority posts a half-dozen or more members on CNN and MSNBC — two networks that increasingly became no-go zones for conservative lawmakers in the Trumpian era of “fake news” attacks. Republicans have appeared on streaming network news shows online and done interviews on those nightly news shows for cable.

From an MSNBC article:

About a week ago, Republican Rep. Scott Perry sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos and expressed confusion about the White House’s line on the debt ceiling. “I don’t know why President Biden says he’s not going to negotiate,” the chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus said.

Exactly seven days later, Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska — known as a far more pragmatic lawmaker than his Freedom Caucus colleague — appeared on the same Sunday show and said largely the same thing. 

This is just in from NBC News:

Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday criticized the Biden administration over its timing in taking down the Chinese surveillance balloon off the Carolina coast.

“The president taking it down over the Atlantic is sort of like tackling the quarterback after the game is over,” Turner said in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “This should never have been allowed to enter the United States and it never should have been allowed to complete its mission.”

 saw one or two other GOP members of the House interviewed on an MSNBC show but can't find their names.

Here's another example:

ABC host pops Marco Rubio's balloon rant: It 'happened three times' under Trump

 Here are those Republicans on non-right-wing media I easily found form the past week: 

• Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was on Meet the Press for the first time in four years. He is either toning his act down of taking a lot of Valium and he's put aside the screaming banshee version of himself.
• ABC’s “This Week” and “Fox News Sunday” heard from a pair of prominent House Republicans, Reps. Michael R. Turner (Ohio) and Michael McCaul (Tex.).
•  CBS’s “Face the Nation,” had House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)
• Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), newly empowered as the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has his pick of prime opportunities every day, particularly on Sundays. From: Reference.
• Rep. Scott Perry
• Rep. Don Bacon
• Rep. Mike Turner
• Sen. Marco Rubio

I am curious whether there has been a high level decision to rehabilitate the image of House GOP members among people who don't watch Fox News or NewMax exclusively. 

Perhaps the final straws breaking the GOP's back were the media slavering to get hallway interviews with George Santos where came across like an arrogant idiot...

...  and the statements and behavior by their two biggest stars, Greene and Boebert. The media has a new version of the "if it bleeds, it leads" saying referring to local news:

 If it bleeds bullshit bloviating babble it leads.

It seems that a group of sane strategic GOP leaders are trying to convince viewers of the mainstream media that these people are on the fringe by putting their higher IQ and reasonable sounding House members on shows viewed by people whose votes may actually swing critical elections.

The risk  to them of course to having these Republicans on stations that aren't firmly in the bag with the right-wing is that they will be subjected to questions that may range from mildly critical to downright provocative making them look like liars, fools, or both. 

Whether they can counter moronic statements like this from Marjorie Moron Greene who doesn't understand that $5 billion is the same as $5000 million and would build and fund many elementary schools remains to be seen:

At the risk of piling on, I must note that even Fox News covered this Santos story:

Not to belabor McCarthy's "oh shit what did I do" thoughts about not booting Santos out when he could when all the lies were revealed, and my own schadenfreude at following the Santos saga, but I bet McCarthy was at least happy he could score a few points by having an openly gay member of his caucus. A "good gay" like Pete Buttigieg rather than one who likes to dress in drag but is also a predatory sexually harassing gay.

There hopefully are enough voters in the country who are truly independent and thoughtful in making decisions about who they want to elect for national office to realize that even the more rational sounding Republicans are selling them a bill of goods.

These Republican strategists know that in order to win elections even with all the impediments the GOP run states have put in place to prevent fair voting the have to get people who aren't members of the MAGA cult (like those shown below) to vote for Republicans.

Below: This is my best, although perhaps not my last, attempt at coming up with something new that MAGA can stand for. Please don't tell me how lame it is unless you can come up with something better.

My comments and illustrations on some of today's news stories:

Most people think it is hair dye, but perhaps it is brain fluid leaking in this famous picture: