The Roundup

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy almost gets killed, Donald Trump keeps on winning primaries, Nikki Haley finally wins two primaries only to drop out and more!

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address

Last night President Joe Biden gave his State of the Union address in front of both houses of Congress as mandated by the US Constitution. Here's a choice quote regarding Russia and Ukraine:

Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. 

If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not. 

But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. That is all Ukraine is asking. They are not asking for American soldiers. 

In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. And I am determined to keep it that way. 

But now assistance for Ukraine is being blocked by those who want us to walk away from our leadership in the world. 

It wasn’t that long ago when a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, thundered, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” 

Now, my predecessor, a former Republican President, tells Putin, “Do whatever the hell you want.” 

A former American President actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. 

It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It’s unacceptable. 

Here's an excerpt from his speech, courtesy of The Lincoln Project.

You can now read that speech in its entirety right here.

The Republican Party made its rebuttal to Joe Biden's State of the Union speech and they got Alabama Senator Katie Britt to deliver it. Her speech has gone viral for all the wrong reasons. This headline in New York magazine says it all: Katie Britt’s America Sounds Scary, But Not As Scary As Katie Britt.

She delivered her speech using this low-key baby voice that reminded me of those late night TV ads for those 976 phone chat lines from the 1990s. Here's her speech below. You could make a game out of how long you can stand to listen to it before you turn it off.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Almost Got Killed Yet Again

Ever since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has ordered hits on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. There have been plenty of assassination attempts against Zelenskyy over the past two years but he continues to survive.

This week, during a meeting in Odesa with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Russia launched missiles into Odesa that had nearly hit the two men. Both men were unharmed. Had that attack been successful, NATO could have invoked Article 5 against Russia since Greece is a NATO member.

Sweden: NATO's Newest Member

And speaking of NATO, here's a big welcome to Sweden as the newest member of the alliance. For this special occasion here's an appropriate AI generated Pippi Longstocking graphic that I recently found on Twitter/X.

The Trouble With Truth Social

Truth Social is the Twitter-like Social media platform that was created especially for Donald Trump after he was banned from Twitter for his role in the US Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021. (He was later reinstated on Twitter after Elon Musk purchased that platform but he still posts exclusively on Truth Social.) Truth Social is among the biggest right-wing social media platforms, which isn’t saying much because other social media platforms that cater to a more variety of people with diverse viewpoints (such as Facebook and TikTok) simply draws more folks than Truth Social.

Now Truth Social's parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, is being sued by two of the company's co-founders. The lawsuit accuses Donald Trump of trying to drastically dilute the value of stock shares in his social media company held by the two co-founders, potentially depriving them of hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

Gee, Donald Trump being accused of misrepresenting the value of stock shares so he could avoid paying someone else? What a surprise! He was found guilty in a New York City courtroom of misrepresenting the value of his properties and that's the reason why he's on the hook for paying that $354 million penalty.

What's pretty amusing about the whole thing is that the two co-founders were both contestants on Trump's reality TV show The Apprentice. It's not surprising that Trump would be accused of ripping off his own former contestants. He's been accused of ripping off members of his own family, which his niece, Mary Trump, documents in her own tell-all book about her family.

You Can Now Buy $399 Gold Trump Sneakers For Only $99

I thought Donald Trump claimed that his butt-ugly gold sneakers were sold out. But last weekend they were put back on sale with prices slashed at 75% off from the original $399 to a new price of only $99. Which means that those who purchased the shoes for the original price were played as being suckers and fools.

With Trump needing to put up at least $454 million in bond in order to appeal his recent court decision and with him now claiming that, despite his previous boasts about being a billionaire, he is broke, he's going to have to sell a lot of gold sneakers in order to raise some much-needed cash.

Donald Trump Gets a Visit From the Leader of Hungary

Usually when a foreign dignitary makes an official state visit to America, he/she visits the current serving president in the White House. When it comes to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, he decided to bypass President Joe Biden entirely and instead fly to Florida to visit Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Largo club, which has raised eyebrows in both Washington, DC and Budapest.

Election News

Last weekend Donald Trump swept the Republican caucuses in Missouri, Michigan, and Idaho. On Monday Nikki Haley had finally won her first election in the Washington, DC Republican primary.

The next day was Super Tuesday, where 15 states and the territory of American Samoa held their primaries. Nikki Haley won her second election in Vermont. But the bad news was that Donald Trump won the rest of the elections.

My previous post that I wrote last month, where I predicted that Nikki Haley will never become president, finally came true on the day after Super Tuesday. She has formally dropped out of the race, thus paving the way for Donald Trump to become the Republican presidential candidate.

Trump scored a major victory in the Supreme Court this week. Colorado, Maine, and Illinois had tried to keep Trump's name off of the ballot based on his inciting people to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 while citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution that says that those who previously held public office but engaged in insurrection were prohibited from seeking public office. The Supreme Court justices unanimously struck down all efforts to remove Trump's name from the ballot, which definitely helped him on Super Tuesday. It looks like voting against Trump is the only option left to stop him. If Trump gets the Republican nomination, which is now very likely (unless he suddenly drops dead, somehow ends up in jail, or he suddenly decides to permanently leave the country), then everyone needs to vote for Joe Biden in November.

Meanwhile the Russian election is gearing up where Vladimir Putin is running for yet another term. Early voting has already begun in the four partially-occupied areas of the Donbass region where the residents are reportedly being pressured into participating.

Changes on Capitol Hill

Even if Joe Biden is reelected, he will need support in Congress if he is going to get any of his proposed programs through both houses. For far too long there were certain people in both houses who were obstructionists to the point where Congress has become dysfunctional. There is now hope that maybe things will turn around and new legislators can be elected who are more focused on serving the constituents who elected them instead of simply being obstructionists.

Following on the heels of Senator Mitch McConnell giving up the Senate Majority Leader (while continuing to serve in the Senate until his term expires), Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has announced that she will not seek reelection after serving one term. She is someone who changed her politics as often as a snake sheds its skin. She intially began in politics as a Green Party activist only to later switch to the Democrats. She is someone who ran for her Senate seat as a progressive Democrat. She spoke about how she grew up in a family that was so poor that she spent part of her childhood living in a deserted gas station. (Although there were members of her family who disputed that claim.) She touted herself as a feminist who was also the first openly bisexual elected to the Senate.

Her promise that she would be a progressive who would take on income inequality went down the toilet pretty quickly after she was elected to the Senate in 2019. In March, 2021 there was a vote in the Senate to include a $15 per hour federal minimum wage as part of a COVID-19 relief package. Even though that idea received enough “no” votes to defeat it, Senator Sinema received extra scorn for not only breaking her promise to serve as a progressive by voting “no” but she did it in such a cutesy way that infuriated a lot of people, especially those in her own home state of Arizona who were low-income and who really needed a raise. She wore a facemask (as protection against the COVID-19 virus) along with what looked like a schoolgirl outfit—complete with a pleated skirt and pullover sweater—and carried a brown backpack on her back as she walked down to the voting area. She curtsied while making the thumb down gesture. That video showing the curtsy and thumb down soon went viral.

That video created so much outrage that this this meme showing Senator Sinema as a cute anime character who is winking and curtseying while giving the thumb down became the most shared anti-Sinema meme on social media.

That vote alienated Senator Sinema from her own supporters (many of whom favored raising the federal minimum wage) and things didn't improve as she showed her true colors in the Senate. She consistently broke with the Democrats to side with the Republicans on legislation. She soon gained a reputation for being one of the biggest obstructionists in the Senate who frequently thrawted Democrat-led bills that would have dealt with issues like voting rights and gun control.

Then there were the bright and loud outfits and wigs she wore on the job in the Senate, the revelation that she spent more than $200,000 of taxpayer funds on private jet travel, the revelation that she spent $180,000 of campaign funds to go on lavish trips across the US and Europe and to run in various marathons, the revelation that she received money from Wall Street investors in exchange for voting against bills that would raise taxes on wealthy investors, and the revelation that in the first quarter of 2023 she raised over $2.1 million with more than 30% of the haul came from just five major companies—including hedge funds, investment groups, and private equity firms.

She angered her constituents even more when she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Independent, which altered the political balance in the Senate. It was when the current Arizona Democrat in the House of Representatives, Ruben Gallego, decided to launch his own primary challenge and his campaign, along with the campaign of Republican challenger Kari Lake, began to raise more money than Sinema that she decided to just leave the Senate. If Gallego wins, there could be a chance that the Democrats will take over the Senate, which will affect issues like helping Ukraine with fighting off the invading Russians.

As for Sinema, her reputation has made her into such a corrupt overpaid clown that she won't be missed much, especially by those who were initially fooled by her claims that she was a progressive Democrat who was concerned about income inequality.

It Must Be Spring Because Love is in the Air

Rupert Murdoch, the former Fox and News Corps chairman and the founder of Sky News is 92 years old but he isn't just spending whatever remains of his life resting on his laurels. He has just announced his engagement to his Russian-born girlfriend Elena Zhukova. It will be marriage number five for the Australian-born billionaire media mogul.

In a way it's not a shock that Murdoch has Russian tastes. During his time running News Corp, Fox News frequently amplified Kremlin propaganda and it still goes on today.

The Gen Z Lord Haw-Haw Attempts Legitimacy in the US Media

NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo interviewed the Gen Z Lord Haw-Haw Jackson Hinkle in a friendly manner while not asking too many tough questions about some of his stances (such as Hinkle’s open admiration for authoritarian leaders like Bashar al-Assad). Cuomo explained that the main reason why he wanted to interview Hinkle was because he considered Hinkle to be the “head” of the “next generation” of “political thought in the country.” That interview went about as well as you'd expect.

If you mainstream media people are going to interview Jackson Hinkle without even asking any tough questions, you'd might as well save yourself some time and just read the posts I've written about Hinkle based on my own research starting with an introduction to the Gen Z Lord Haw-Haw. From there you can read about his bizarre obsession with Ben Shapiro and how his Miss Russia ex-fiancee spilled all kinds of tea when she dumped him, including a revelation that he named his own company Fake News Media LLC. You're very welcome! 🙏

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