By Michael Woyton
Full disclosure: I do not intend to watch a minute of the State of the Union speech tonight. If I still had cable, I would probably be watching TCM for their lineup of “Gaslight” at 8 p.m. and “Imitation of Life” at 10 p.m. A tip of the hat to whomever chose those two films for this evening.
Regarding the speech, I am positive that president felon (I’m following his social media post that said he will only refer to the Supreme Court in lowercase because he has a complete lack of respect for them) will say how great he has been, how great everything is and how Joe Biden is the cause of everything that’s bad.
The followup analysis, for the most part, will gloss over the slurring of his words, the lack of specificity in policy and the orange-tint of his face makeup.
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If we want a more realistic idea of how the state of the union is, we could turn to the opinion of a majority of Americans who said in response to the NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll that the “United States is not very strong or not strong at all.”
The poll, released Monday, said that six in 10 Americans believe this country is worse off than it was a year ago.
Even more said the system of checks and balances is not working.
The bottom line, according to Marist, is that “the results of these questions underscore the view of more than seven in 10 Americans that U.S. democracy is in jeopardy.”
When asked to describe the state of the union, 57 percent of respondents said it was not very strong/not strong at all — up from 53 percent in March of last year.
Of the six in 10 Americans who said the nation is worse off than it was a year ago, 90 percent were Democrats and 68 percent were independents.
The notion that the system of checks and balances in the U.S. is not working well is up by double digit percentage points, according to the Marist poll.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans disagreed or strongly disagreed that the system was working well — up from 56 percent from last year or 12 percentage points.
Interestingly, the largest change on the checks and balances system occurred among Republicans and independents, with 43 percent of GOPers, up from 26 percent, and 75 percent of independents, up from 64 percent.
The question as to whether there is a serious threat to democracy was answered in the affirmative by 78 percent of Americans, with 22 percent saying things are hunky-dory.
This NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll surveyed 1,462 adults and was conducted from Jan. 27 through Jan. 30. Results are statistically significant within ±2.9 percentage points.
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Speaking of the Epstein files:
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Still speaking of the Epstein files. Gotta get some of those signs for up here.
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