The State Of The Union

I don't watch this stuff. Life's too short. Politicians bloviating and the only people who really care are the press reporting on it.

Welcome to today, where people are in their silos and don't even realize it!

Beyoncé should boycott the Grammys! That's what Mikael Wood claimed on the front page of the "Los Angeles Times" Calendar section yesterday. Hate to tell you Mikael, but most people have already boycotted the Grammys. Sure, ratings went up a bit, but that's like saying a classic rock act got a million streams instead of 700,000. Almost nobody heard it and nobody cares! Come on, has anybody talked to you about the Grammys in the past few days? Certainly not since Monday.

You see the world has changed. It's all niche, and what happens in your niche is irrelevant to me.

Peter Paterno e-mailed me this great skit from last week's SNL:

"The Big Hollywood Quiz": https://bit.ly/3Ygq4Jf

If you watch anything this week, watch this, because it encapsulates the world we now live in. Furthermore, I don't watch SNL, because I know if anything great happens I'll hear about it, and this proves the point!

So the media keeps promoting mass, when mass is history. Which begs the question...what else are they out of touch on?

Now forget the latest political shenanigans, I NEVER watched the State of the Union address. But I am interested in the analysis, to a point anyway. And last night, hiking in the mountains, figuring the speech was over, I dialed up the news in the SiriusXM app to hear...

Sarah Huckabee Sanders giving the Republican response to Biden's speech.

It was like she was living in an alternative universe.

The first thing I wanted to ask her, the same thing I want to ask the hosts on Fox News...DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THIS STUFF?

I mean actors spew words they don't believe all day long, the people on Fox aren't a whole lot different.

But here's the dirty little secret... NOBODY IS WATCHING!

Sure, Fox gets better ratings than MSNBC and CNN. But add up all their viewers and you end up with a tiny fraction of the public. But the rest of the media reports what goes on there like everyone is paying attention, AND THEY'RE NOT!

As a matter of fact...

I still read the news, I want to know what is going on, but the red light is no longer flashing, I'm relaxing until 2024, because what we've got now is gridlock. The Republicans may control the House, but they can't get anything done. Oh, they can prevent stuff from being done, but isn't this why Trump got elected in the first place?

Let's call a spade a spade, Trump won primarily because people hated/didn't want Hillary Clinton. A smart woman so compromised in her public persona that she said her favorite book was the Bible and I don't know a single person who believed it. As for the Bible-thumpers, they were never going to vote for her anyway. I voted for her, I believed she'd be a good president, but I can understand why people were against her.

As for Trump... He snookered me, I never thought he was that stupid. He made his name rebuilding Wollman Rink, he had a real estate empire, he was always in the news, I didn't realize he was intellectually challenged until he took office. Offensive, maybe. But far from smart? WHO KNEW?

Now we all know.

Except for maybe 30% of the population, who have drunk the right wing kool-aid. And that number is shrinking. And that's the point.

The Republicans are on a losing streak. But instead of questioning why and adjusting, they continue to do the same old thing.

Sanders calling Biden crazy? This is like Trump embracing the term "fake news." You can criticize Biden all day long, but crazy? I think not. You see a great percentage of the public believes Trump is crazy. And Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. They might not agree with Mitch McConnell, but they don't think he's CRAZY!

Heckling Biden... Not the first time this has happened during the State of the Union, but how do you think this plays outside Georgia, outside the ever-shrinking lunatic base? People know how to behave, they know decorum. What kind of idiot behaves like this? Not someone you can get behind.

So you've got the nincompoops, who even deny what is on the record, in Greene's case saying she didn't use the term "Jewish space lasers." But you've also got a fierce right wing underground that will primary you if you don't heed their insanity. Ultimately driving you further and further from the average American.

Let's be clear... The average American cares about economics. Their income, their family. China? Maybe. Immigration? To a degree. But as they say, all politics is local. And to take it further, all politics is individual.

And all those polls about the state of the country, approval ratings... Come on, who would be thumbs-up in today's America, no matter which side you're on. Almost nothing can get done. So people don't hate Biden, they hate what is going on.

As for Biden... Can we stop debating his 2024 campaign?

He's not gonna run. But as soon as he declares this, he's a lame duck. So he's going to wait until the last possible moment. Sure, some people are sharp in their middle eighties, but too many are not, they've lost at least a step, therefore not only Republicans, but Democrats don't want Biden. But we've got all these articles about how last night's speech set Biden up for his next campaign. I mean don't you have something better to talk about?

As for all this woke stuff. Sure, it plays with some of the public. But the dirty little secret is very few people are on this train. Most Democrats don't agree. But the Democrats are a big tent party, where everyone gets a voice and everyone isn't necessarily on the same page.

Not that I'm letting the Democrats off the hook. They don't know how to set an agenda and stick to it when it comes to campaigning. The Republicans get their ducks in a row and the Democrats squirm.

So Sanders is playing the culture wars card.

That worked years ago, do you really think it will work now? And even if it works to a degree, does it work enough to get a Republican elected president in 2024.

Come on, the Republicans are the do-nothing party with no agenda. You think the average person doesn't get this? There was the McCarthy speaker fiasco... People just want to stop the insanity! As for raising the debt ceiling... Sure, most people don't realize it's about money already spent, but most people do understand the right is only hurting the economy demanding things most people don't want that the party won't get anyway.

I mean there's a spotlight on Congress every day. And now it's funny, because the Republican Party in the House is nearly powerless. As for all these investigations into Joe Biden. Yeah, Biden's a billionaire skirting tax laws... Come on, Biden and Trump have almost nothing in common other than they've both been president. Tit for tat might play with the base, but the base is not enough to win elections.

And these Republicans in Congress are confused as to who the base are. They're working people, blue collar, people who used to be Democrats. Talking about taking away or reducing entitlements doesn't play with these people. Look what happened with Obamacare, people want it. As they do Social Security! You can't serve two masters. And one thing the Democrats have reinforced is that the 2017 tax bill benefited the wealthy and increased the debt.

Yes, the Republican Party used to be about the fat cats. I'm a winner, don't penalize me, don't restrict me, everyone should lift themselves up by their bootstraps just like me. And although a lot of this wealthy money is still in play, and a lot of poor people delusionally believe they're going to be rich and don't want to have to pay taxes when they achieve this status...most people believe the rich are getting away with it, not paying their fair share.

Once again, it's not all or nothing. But in politics, a percentage point here or there makes all the difference. The Republicans are on a losing streak, the Red Wave was barely a ripple, but they continue to play the same cards expecting a different result. Isn't that the definition of insanity?

As for what Biden has done... You've got to give him credit, at least he's done SOMETHING! Beaten the gridlock. As for Ukraine... Americans are still suspicious of Russia, they understand the threat. And why should we be so concerned about China but not Russia? And the dirty little secret is all our electronics are made in China. That is changing, slowly, but... People are scared of Russia in an emotional way they are not scared of China.

Common sense? I'm all for common sense, but I wouldn't associate it with the Republican Party. Don't they get that people are laughing at them?

Then again, Democrats are too stupid to realize that the president gets to appoint Supreme Court justices, and by not having Hillary many lost abortion rights. And many are concerned about this. And as the years go by and women are forced to have babies because abortions are unavailable... They're not going to sidle up to the Republicans.

But it's not only politics. Evolve or die. Google owned search, but now with ChatGPT/AI, Bing has a fighting chance.

And speaking of fighting, the labels lost power by fighting file-trading, they thought the CD was forever... Do you even own a CD player today?

As for all this hatred of TikTok and social media... Rail all you want, but they're here to stay, they're what the public wants! They couldn't kill alcohol consumption with Prohibition, and the truth is people want to connect, and they want to go down the rabbit hole of their personal niche. But people in D.C. are so deep in their own B.S. that they don't really know what is going on in America today.

Trump proved this back in 2016. That being coarse and speaking English was no longer taboo. But that was six years ago, we've seen that movie, what movie is unspooling now?

We are truly living in a Tower of Babel society. Realize this. And know that what you see in your own little world... Might not reflect what is going on in the rest of the world.


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