SOTU 2022

Tonight, we meet as Democrats Republicans and Independents. But most importantly as Americans.

With a duty to one another to the American people to the Constitution.

And with an unwavering resolve that freedom will always triumph over tyranny.

Six days ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to shake the foundations of the free world thinking he could make it bend to his menacing ways. But he badly miscalculated.

He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead he met a wall of strength he never imagined.

He met the Ukrainian people.

From President Zelensky to every Ukrainian, their fearlessness, their courage, their determination, inspires the world.

Groups of citizens blocking tanks with their bodies. Everyone from students to retirees teachers turned soldiers defending their homeland.

In this struggle as President Zelensky said in his speech to the European Parliament “Light will win over darkness.” The Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States is here tonight.

Let each of us here tonight in this Chamber send an unmistakable signal to Ukraine and to the world.

Please rise if you are able and show that, Yes, we the United States of America stand with the Ukrainian people.

– President of the United States Joe Biden –

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Author: patd

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

55 thoughts on “SOTU 2022”

  3. “Go, get him!”  
    —POTUS Joe’s final words on mic at the SOTU
      (A message to Ukrainian freedom fighters, I assume.)

    “He has no idea what’s coming.” —POTUS Joe’s direct message to Putin-the-war-criminal during the SOTU

  6. Craig’s comment about the Russians sending men into battle with five year-old cans of rations  is yet another tell about this army .
    “An army travels on it’s stomach”
     Napoleon  Bonaparte
     

  7. The Ukrainian people know what they are fight for.  
    Russian soldiers have no just cause and most probably hate the guy they’re working for. 
    The West, including the US, needs to do more to help Ukraine.  This will spill over into other countries if he’s not stopped.  Civilians are dying.   
    I believe Biden said we would not commit ground troops, but let’s send drones and air support.

  8. The January-February  period in the Sierra Nevada that just ended , has been the driest since record keeping began.
    There will be no water released to California farmers this year. 

  9. WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) – Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence had predicted a blistering assault by Moscow that would quickly mobilize the vast Russian air power that its military assembled in order to dominate Ukraine’s skies.
    But the first six days have confounded those expectations and instead seen Moscow act far more delicately with its air power, so much so that U.S. officials can’t exactly explain what’s driving Russia’s apparent risk-averse behavior.

     
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-happened-russias-air-force-us-officials-experts-stumped-2022-03-01/

  10. In the next week or two, the water level at Lake Powell is likely to dip below a key target elevation of 3,525 feet above sea level — a benchmark water managers have long tried to avoid — according to Nick Williams, power manager for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Upper Colorado River Basin. 
    “I think we’re right at 2 feet above that target elevation,” Williams said. “At the rate we’re dropping we could be there in a week or two.”
    In 2019, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states in the Colorado River Basin signed drought contingency plans to protect the water in the region. Part of the Upper Basin deal included a Drought Response Operations Agreement, or DROA, which aimed to safeguard critical elevations at Lake Powell. DROA defined the 3,525-foot mark as an important “target elevation” for the reservoir. That target provides a 35-foot buffer above the lowest elevation at which Glen Canyon Dam can generate power, 3,490 feet above sea level.

    Lake Powell likely to drop below critical level in next two weeks

  11. California and Arizona better start doing snow dances in Colorado.  There are still two months left of winter in the hills (what flatlanders call mountains) which are two months of the heaviest snows.  Recycling water might help.

  12. I thought Joe did very well last night, slimeball Lauren Boebert notwithstanding. What a shameless dipshit. She even was able to outdo MTG in the Republican idiot sweepstakes last night. 

  14. https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-02-22/index.html

    “This is no longer the master chess player, the shrewd grand strategist. He is no longer a rational actor, even in the coldest and most cynical sense. He seemed unwell and unhinged,” she said of Putin’s speech last Monday.”

    “This no longer felt like a man playing a high-stakes chess game, now it felt like a scene from ‘Macbeth.’ My intuition was that an aging man facing his own death had decided to destroy the whole world. Ukraine is very possibly fighting for all of us.”

  15. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/02/asia/us-delegation-taiwan-ukraine-intl-hnk/index.html

    “The Ukrainian people’s commitment to protect freedom and democracy and their fearless dedication to defending their country have been met with deep empathy from the people of Taiwan, as we too stand on the front line of the battle for democracy,” Tsai said in remarks Wednesday before the meeting.
    “History teaches us if we turn a blind eye to military aggression, we only worsen the threats to ourselves. Now is the time for all democracies around the world to come together.”

  16. BiD, that yale prof referring to Vlad as macbeth might also want to consider king lear’s

    Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. –
    Give me the map there.
    Know that we have divided
    In three our kingdom, and ’tis our fast intent
    To shake all cares and business from our age,
    Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
    Unburdened crawl toward death.

    perhaps Vlad too is trying to unburden himself dividing and destroying the world in revenge as he himself crawls toward death

  17. The Washington Post

    Distraught dictator or rational actor? With Putin and Ukraine, the evidence is chilling.
    […]
    Putin’s behavior follows the script of Thomas Schelling in his classic 1960 study of brinkmanship, “The Strategy of Conflict.” Reckless behavior could be a useful bargaining tactic, Schelling argued. “A careless or even self-destructive attitude toward injury — ‘I’ll cut a vein in my arm if you don’t let me …’ — can be a genuine strategic advantage; so can a cultivated inability to hear or comprehend, or a reputation for frequent lapses of self-control.”
    The Biden administration initially tried to shrug off Putin’s attempt to play the nuclear card. Asked Monday if Americans should be worried about Putin’s threat, Biden responded simply, “no.” Press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration saw “no reason to change our own alert levels.” Against Putin’s irrational threat, she countered with the rational response: “Everybody knows that that is not a war that can be won.” Putin’s response was to reiterate the nuclear alert.
    As we think about ladders of escalation, America is near the top of its chosen domain of economic war. Putin has brought that devastation on himself; he has doomed his presidency, irrevocably. But in the weeks and months ahead, America and its allies will need to allow Russia an exit ramp to escape this folly — or face ever-rising danger.

  18. What possible chess-move kind of thinking would be the result from Putin purposefully botching the invasion? Did he plan it this way for some reason or is it just incompetence and underestimating the opposition

  22. Mounting evidence suggests the western United States is now in its worst megadrought in at least 1,200 years. Groundwater supplies are being overpumped in many places, and the dryness, wildfires and shrinking water supplies are making climate change personal for millions of people.
    As an engineer, I have been working with colleagues on a way to both protect water supplies and boost renewable energy to protect the climate.
    We call it the solar-canal solution, and it’s about to be tested in California.
    About 4,000 miles of canals transport water to some 35 million Californians and 5.7 million acres of farmland across the state. As we explained in a 2021 study, covering these canals with solar panels would reduce evaporation of precious water—one of California’s most critical resources—and help meet the state’s renewable energy goals, while also saving money.

    https://techxplore.com/news/2022-03-solar-canal-energy-air-climate.html

  24. We watched Uncle Joe… he done good.
     
    CBob… what’s happening out west is truly frightening… and should be for every American that is paying attention.  After all, California grows an awful lot of this nation’s food.

  27. RR –
    Yep, it is very scary because it’s coming down the tracks a lot faster than people understand.  And the area in question is huge. 
    The idea of turning the turbines off at Glen Canyon is hard to get your head around.  Or the Great Salt Lake going dry . 

  28. Renee

    California USED to grow a lot of the nation’s food.  Courtesy of having about 20 million more people than there were resources to support, this is no longer true.  I remember the long stretches of acreage that separated small towns.  Now huge amounts of that land have been given over to ever expanding suburbs into miles long mega cities with no green space in between.

    When I was born 78 (as of today) years ago, there were less than 8 million people in the state.  There were only six cities with more than 100,000 people.

    As of 2020 there were 40 million people.  It is number 1 in population and number 11 in population density.  

  29. today

    Last evening and this night Russians continued to bomb our cities with rockets, artillery, machine guns. They bombed residential areas in Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Zhytomyr and other cities and villages of Ukraine. Almost 6000 military died. At the same time, we have united millions of Europeans from the Atlantic to the suburbs of bombed cities, where fierce fighting continues. The European Union has launched a special accelerated accession procedure to join Ukraine to EU. Our diplomats and our friends unite the world for the sake of Ukraine and the world.

  31. CBS did a story on child care last night , a new term popped up in it :
    “A Child Care Desert”. 
     

    The Manchester School for Young Children in Topeka was forced to shut down after nine years in business because director Christina Turner could not find qualified help. Nearly three-fourths of counties in the state have become “child care deserts.”
    “Everyone is so burned out and everyone is so frustrated,” Turner told CBS News.
    “Everybody knows that Christina has done everything she possibly can and has fought so hard for these kids,” one parent said through tears. “It’s just too bad.” 

     
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/child-care-keeping-women-from-work/
     
     

  32. Lots of dinging of Biden and “unity” , always tilted as if it’s all his fault  we’re not more “unified”. 
    Never mind the other side is a flaming bag of rats. 

  33. Well then, congrats Jamie.  Just a year and 3 months younger than Joe.
     
    I suspect that most Republicans are too stupid to realize the impact on Russia of increasing energy sources that are not based on oil and gas.  
     
    Oh, and Lauren, 1915 Americans died yesterday from Covid, ironically enough 13 of them were from Colorado.  You’re so fucking concerned about 13 soldiers who died while we were leaving Afghanistan, but object to measures that would reduce the number of deaths here?  Get a grip.

  37. Is the big bad Russian army being brought down by the grifters that support Putin. Did most of the money spent on the military ended up in the oligarch’s pockets.  Shades of Afghanistan where everything collapsed as the grifters who we had been supporting took their money and found a sunnier place to retire to.
    Jack

  38. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/02/business/russian-jets-tracker-twitter-account/index.html

    “Jack Sweeney, a Florida teen who tracks Elon Musk’s private jet online has a new aviation-themed target: Russian oligarchs and billionaires.”

    “The 19-year-old, who rejected Musk’s $5,000 offer to delete his Twitter account, recently launched two new automated Twitter handles — @RUOligarchJets and @Putinjet — following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

    “The aircrafts these oligarchs have are absolutely crazy,” Sweeney said. The country’s richest are traveling on commercial-sized aircrafts like an Airbus A319 and Boeing 737. “Their planes are huge compared to other jets.”

  40. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/02/economy/russia-imports-sanctions-economy/index.html

    “Although Russia’s economy is primarily driven by exports of oil and natural gas, it relies heavily on imports of finished consumer products.“

    “Compounding the economic pain, two of the world’s biggest container shipping companies, Maersk and MSC, said they are halting cargo bookings to and from Russia, with the exception of food, medicine and humanitarian supplies.“

    “Russia’s currency plunged by about 25% Monday, and one ruble is now worth less than a penny. The weakened ruble will probably exacerbate inflation, which was already well above the central bank’s target before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.“

    Meanwhile, Ukrainians are still under attack. They are fighting for their lives while the world watches it happen.

  41. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/colorado-river-water-exchange-us-mexico/

    “Now, new research suggests that Mexico and the U.S. could do something similar, using desalination to reduce tensions over declining flows in the Colorado River.”

    “The U.S. and Mexico share the river’s water supply, but today it provides less water than we can sustainably take from it — 1.2 billion cubic meters less, to be precise. The new research proposes a solution similar to what Israel and Jordan worked out: a desalination plant that would benefit both countries. The plant, which the U.S. would pay for, would be located on Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. The water it provides Mexico would allow the U.S. to take a larger amount from the Colorado River without its neighbor to the south feeling the pinch.”

    This planet has plenty of water. We just need to make it useable.

  43. I think you may be right, Sturg.  He’s apparently lost his ability to analyze the effect of his invasion of Ukraine in a cause/effect framework.  I have to admit that I am not sure where I stand on what level of involvement we should have either individually or as a member of NATO. Glad I don’t have to make such decisions.

  44. Which is why someone needs to take him out of commission.  Surely there a nice, quiet dacha for him to be carted off to, or something.   

    How long will others continue to do his bidding when they see that it’s Russia that’s being destroyed?

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/02/sport/chelsea-football-club-sale-spt/index.html

    “Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich announced Wednesday he plans to sell Chelsea Football Club…”

    “… said that the net proceeds from the sale will be donated to a foundation set up to help those impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

    “Abramovich himself has not been sanctioned by the UK, according to the sanctions list website.
    The businessman maintains he’s not an official political figure for Russia. himself has not been sanctioned by the UK, according to the sanctions list website.
    The businessman maintains he’s not an official political figure for Russia.”

  45. So, Russia has 6000 nukes, one of them large enough to vaporize an area the size of Texas, if you’re wondering why we’re not providing air-support 

  47. Fifty years ago republicans taunted Dems with “America, Love it or leave it”.  Just looking at how far into Russia the greedy old perverts have fallen today.  I can say, with a lot of emphasis, gqp, Love America or leave America.  Putin is waiting for you to visit his wet dream of destroying Ukraine.

  50. Pat, What’s the chances of changing out the uncle sam donkey for a blue-yellow banner?

  51. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/02/politics/oath-keeper-plea-deal-seditious-conspiracy/index.html

    “An Oath Keeper who served as private security for right-wing figures around January 6 pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy…”

    “Prosecutors previously alleged James was with other Oath Keepers on January 6 who sped toward the Capitol on golf carts.”

    “An FBI agent also previously told the court James chauffeured Roger Stone, a longtime friend of former President Donald Trump, in a golf cart in Washington the day before January 6.”

    The indictment also alleges that in the aftermath of the riot, while other Oath Keepers plotted whether to take future action, James messaged an associate, “After this … if nothing happens …its war … Civil War 2.0.”

  53. In a major release of its findings, filed in federal court late Wednesday, the committee suggested that its evidence supported findings that Trump himself violated multiple laws by attempting to prevent Congress from certifying his defeat.
    “The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in a filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.

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