When they did cutaway shots of people in the audience during the SOTU I was surprised by the number of people who were scrolling through their phones during the speech.

Yeah, one of the NPR commentators this morning mentioned one of the GOP senators sent out a tweet about an hour into the speech, complaining it was more like a political rally speech than a "dignified SOTU address" (which a) yeah, it's an election year, it always is, and b) were any of Trump's SOTU's as "dignified" as he wants?).  I suspect it's not just GOP senators that do this, though.  They mentioned some people even leaving.

Who was the young lady with the two-toned hair, next to Bettie Mae Fikes?

 

MTG was obviously applying for the job last night. He’d probably be more interested in Boebert and her hand.

MTG, Boebert, Kari Lake - they all attract far too much attention and would take it away from Trump. He would never go for that. Kristi Noem is more likely; she's attractive in the conventional way that he likes, she worships him publicly, and she isn't louder than he is. I've also heard Tulsi Gabbard bandied about. 60-40 he goes for a white guy though.

 

MTG was obviously applying for the job last night. He’d probably be more interested in Boebert and her hand.

I could see Boebert being the President's hand

 

Yeah this is another reason I think she has a very good shot, I am certain it is a consideration for someone he's going to be hanging out with on the campaign trail. I am going to put my money on her over a white guy.

And Noem will be the perfect All-American girl in her rodeo queen outfit horseback with the flag. (I don't disparage some of the those gals - I went to high school with some amazing cowgirls, some of who did do the rodeo queen thing, but Noem plays it a little too hard.)

I did notice that Katie Britt did not mention Trump's name at all during the rebuttal.

Katie Britt also defended in vitro fertilization, although she's an Alabama official.

All of this is sort of amusing to me.  One hand in the Republican Party does not know what the other hand is doing.  They have no cohesive vision.

Finally, as an old manager of mine used to say, "If you come to me with a problem, then you need to have an idea for a solution."  

Katie Britt only mentioned problems.  There was no talk of solutions.  I have a feeling that none of the Republican candidates this year will offer solutions at their rallies.

 

I have more confidence in Biden's corpse animated by Chat GPT than I have in the Trump Administration.

 

Seriously, how did we get here? Have politics always been this bad and I'm only now paying attention? Will there ever be rational, competent people in power, or will we continue to fall to the "tyranny of the minority"?

Lol

Yeah...I don't think it's always been this bad.  Everything's so hyperbolic, and "the other side" is so thoroughly demonized.  I think I've said this before, I keep coming back to an anecdote about the attempted assassination of Reagan...as he was being wheeled back for surgery, he said to the doctors something like, "I sure hope you gentlemen are Republicans," to which one replied, "Today, sir, we all are Republicans."  Possibly apocryphal (though it sure sounds like something he'd say), but I just don't think anything like that exchange would happen nowadays.

 Seriously, how did we get here? Have politics always been this bad and I'm only now paying attention? Will there ever be rational, competent people in power, or will we continue to fall to the "tyranny of the minority"?

 Two words. Social media.

This all has its roots in 1987, when the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which had been instituted decades earlier and had mandated that broadcast networks and ratio stations devote equal time to contrasting viewpoints on noteworthy issues.  After the FCC repealed that Fairness Doctrine during the Reagan Administration,  Following the repeal, hundreds of radio stations began to air partisan talk shows (Rush Limbaugh, etc.).  Fox News, One America News Network, and other media venues are consequential offshoots of the repeal.

Ideally, someone like Joe Rogan who has a vaccine denier on his show, for instance, would also have to feature a medical expert who attests to the validity of vaccines.  Since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, however, news sources are basically a free-for-all Old West style.

Social media and troll news sites exacerbated the polarization among the public, but the extreme polarization had its roots with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, a decision that has resulted in vast portions of the American populace not having a grip on reality.

 

Two words. Social media and Fox News

90% of that channel is opinion dressed up like news.