Your Czarness:

Once again your humble correspondent is indebted to Your Czarness for sacrificing his time and, potentially, his mental health. I refer, of course, to your handy-dandy “State of the State of the Union” post.

And served with a heapin’ helpin’ of Czarish snarkability, thoughtfully posted in Red Letters, much like the words of Jesus in my King James version of the New Testament.

Coincidence? I wonder.

But last evening a very important and exciting basketball game required my attention, and so the TV here at the Doublewide was not tuned in to hear our President’s address. My team won (yeah!) AND I was spared roughly 80 minutes of speechifyin’, so I count that as an excellent evening all around!

But first thing this morning, right after my moonshine-and-BC powder, I checked your posting. Whew, did POTUS ever go on …and on. Your Czarness really took one for the team sitting through it all.

There was at least one point of the speech that seems innocuous enough when read, and yet takes on a very different feel when seen in video, and that is the section where the President dresses down the Supreme Court for striking down large parts of McCain-Feingold. When I read it, it did not stand out from the rest of the speech. However, the video shows something that I found quite disturbing.

You can clearly see Justice Samuel Alito silently mouthing “not true” in response to the accusation that the decision opens the door to foreign governments influencing our elections. Then the Democrats rise in unison behind and around the Justices, who remain seated and impassive. You can see Justice Ginsberg, lean forward a bit, and I had the impression that a muscle in her jaw twitched. The Dems are cheering and clapping. The President paused for the applause, of course.
I found it mean. Like watching a bully on the playground with his gang ringing his next lunch-money victim.

I wonder what Justice Ginsburg could have been thinking. Here is somebody’s grandmother, who is obviously still plenty spunky, but who is clearly not in the best of health. Furthermore, she dissented from the majority opinion. And yet she is still subjected to a public dressing down, complete with cheering Dem-bots.

How tacky.

Mr. President, the members of the Supreme Court who show up for the State of the Union address are just like the military officers seated down front. They serve the country, not you. The Supremes don’t answer to you. They don’t applaud you. They’re not supposed to. Agree with their opinions or don’t, but try to show some respect.

Yours from the Doublewide,

JAB

Thanks again, JAB, for your ongoing support. The Czar received quite a bit of fan mail, and he replied to each and every one personally. Except yours: he wants to address a point or two.

The use of red letters was merely to draw attention and not meant to imply any kinship to the KJV. One might suggest coincidence (heck, you did), but there is every possibility someone did it intentionally. But it was not us.

Regarding the slam of the SCOTUS on live television, there is not much more to say that has not been around the conservo-sphere already. Bad taste? Absolutely, especially when Justice Alito was right and the President could not have been more incorrect. One might say the President “acted… stupidly.” He really needs to spend more than a second thinking before he speaks. But while he was trying to win points with his fading liberal electorate by echoing what they are probably all thinking (wrongly), he wound up demonstrating that he knows astonishingly little about the US Constitution. He would not have passed Ms. Hall’s seventh grade civics class in Muscovy, we assure you.

But more than that was his introduction to that: “with all due deference to the separation of powers….” That is, to the Czar, as hollow as someone saying “with all due respect.” You know that whatever follows will not be respectful at all.

Indeed, he is showing his progressive irritation with the idea of a Congress and the Supreme Court. Things would be so much better for his authority if he could just get rid of those outdated branches of government.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.