In political news…

You little jabronis...

I thought both the State of the Union and the Republican response were very well done.  It turns out Obama does have a fastball, and will be interesting to see if he starts using it.  I was hoping he’d break out the Sam Jackson “get these motherloving tea partiers off my motherloving White House lawn!” (link nsfw)  Alas, he kept it civil-ish. But he did lay the smack down a bit, with postpartisan postracial postmodernism at the beginning and end. It was like a turkey sausage sammich – hot in the middle with plain white bread on either side.  Speaking of, during the speech, I almost forgot I was white. Isn’t that right, Chris Matthews? People afterward made a big deal about Harry Reid yawning and Alito mouthing off (literally) but there were two Republicans using their blackberries – there was a camera that kept panning overhead from the back, and the blue screens in their laps were unmistakable. Maybe they were tweeting “zomg i cant believe how orange Boehner is!!!1111”. John Boehner really is incredibly orange – it looks like he follows the same “GTL” system as The Situation and Paulie D. Bro, lay off the tanning bed, bro.

There he is! And by "he", I mean a CNN camera!

For the Republican response, Bob McDonnell actually did a good job of being “firm but fair” in his response, although the fawning statehouse audience was a bit disrespectful – they tried (and succeeded) to make it look like a mini State of the Union.  If it was pure showmanship, it went a little far, but if it intended to be a “Federalist/Anti-Federalist 2K”, I’m ok with it.  I’m not sure any modern politician could be that subliminally clever – showing the limits of the federal government by having the speech at the state capital. Someone should have asked him what he thought about Federalist Paper #10, which is the only one I remotely remember from college.  But his speech itself was very good – he pointed out areas of difference and also areas of common ground.  McDonnell’s going to be a political rock star, as long as he doesn’t start trying to marry off his sons to Scott Brown’s daughters. Political hotness will ensue, although TMZ would have a field day. If Jenna Bush sticking out her tongue was a big deal, these kids are going to make moveon.org’s collective heads explode. Literally. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing – as Jon Stewart quipped, moveon has the distinct ability to disgust even people who agree with them.

I'm too sexy for a razor...

In other news, Persian Ron Jeremy (Khalid Sheikh Muhammad) might or might not be tried less than a mile from the twin towers. It took months for NYC to realize that they were going to have to build a mobile fortress around him to keep him from getting lynched wild west style, and that this was going to be very expensive. I don’t really have a point, I just wanted to call him Persian Ron Jeremy.

I motion to raise the roof!

Lastly, I was at an event recently where Sheila Jackson Lee crashed, even though she was invited and said she wasn’t coming. This was fantastic – she crashed an event that she was actually invited to. Of course she grabbed the mic from the presenter and started rambling like Kanye and Taylor Swift. This isn’t the first ninja move SJL has made – there are several other times when she or her aids have showed up invited-but-didn’t-rsvp to events and demanded to interrupt the proceedings to do her own thing. Goldfish also was at a Rita relief center where people were giving foodstuffs and water to victims as they drove through in cars. SJL showed up, grabbed a bottle of water, pretended to give it to someone in a car, and then when the photographer said “we got the shot”, she actually gave the bottle back to the volunteer instead of completing the handoff to the Rita victim. Then she rolled out of the center with her Entourage. Sheila Jackson Lee, you are the worst person ever. Hallelujah, holla back.