I PREFER “THE SCANDULARITY”: Clinton Corruption Update: The Converging.

Lawrence is gonna need a bigger blog.

IT ISN’T ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY: Washington Post changes front page after complaints it was too pro-Trump.

TOP HOUSE DEM: Trump ‘Would be Mussolini and Putin Would be Hitler.’

MARKER LAID: Democrats are in the catbird’s seat in the 2018 midterms.

WOKE FAIL: Ron Perlman Shames First Lady, Bernie Sanders, and Nikki Haley.

I’D LIKE TO SEE JOHN HEILEMANN TRY TO RUN A FARM: MSNBC Analyst Mocks Devin Nunes for Being Former Dairy Farmer: ‘He Has No Idea What’s Going On.’

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: SOTU Reviews, Dems Deliver Funeral Vision of America and Much, Much More. “The President’s guests at the speech were a great way to tell the story he wanted to tell. The Democrats looked like sour pusses and bitchy babies but that’s no surprise since their political position is to sell misery and discord.”

But after that speech, there may be fewer people buying.

ALLIES:

That’s a pretty clear threat of war coming from a putative military ally.

FASTER, PLEASE: Trump on #ReleaseTheMemo: ‘Don’t worry… 100 percent.’

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuelans Are So Hungry ‘They Have to Loot to Eat.’

Sporadic looting, food riots and protests driven by the hungry poor have surged in Venezuela, a country that’s no stranger to unrest. But the uprisings playing out recently have a different face than the mostly middle-class protesters who took to the streets for months last year in political demonstrations trying to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

“These protests are coming from people of the lower classes who simply cannot get enough to eat,” said David Smilde, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, who has spent decades researching Venezuela. “They want relief, not necessarily to force Maduro from power.”

They’re going to find they can’t get the former before they get the latter.

IRAN: Woman Arrested After 10 Minutes of Hijab Protesting, Two People Filming Her Also Arrested.

YUGE NUMBERS: Viewers approve of Trump’s first State of the Union address.

Three in four Americans who tuned in to President Trump’s State of the Union address tonight approved of the speech he gave. Just a quarter disapproved.

Eight in 10 Americans who watched tonight felt that the president was trying to unite the country, rather than divide it. Two-thirds said the speech made them feel proud, though just a third said it made them feel safer. Fewer said the speech made them feel angry or scared.

The optics aren’t good for Democrats who sat and scowled for almost everything garnering numbers like those.

IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN HILLARY DOES IT BECAUSE SHUT UP:

SCOTCH & SOTU: I’m drunkblogging Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, along with the rest of PJM’s Hot Mic crew.

The liveblog page updates automatically, so just click and scroll.

Tonight’s cocktail is Basil Hayden’s and a splash, if you’re playing along at home.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: Elon Musk Sells $3.5 Million Worth Of Flamethrowers In One Day.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: SOTU Day, ‘Andy’s office’ is Empty and Much, Much More. “Presidential-hopeful Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) is bringing the wacky Mayor of San Juan. Some politicians will be bringing members of the DACA crew. Some will not show up at all. The left will also offer no less than six different responses to Trump’s speech.”

I’ll drunkblog SOTU tonight, with the able assistance of the Hot Mic crew.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Two men who were in the US under the DACA program are arrested for ‘human smuggling’ in San Diego.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Here’s How Reports of Trump’s Stormy Daniels Affair Gave SHARK CHARITIES a Boost Worldwide.

WELL, GOOD: North Korea, Under Sanctions Strain, Dials Back Military Exercises. “Winter maneuvers are less extensive than in previous years; restrictions on fuel imports are seen as having an effect.”

The North Korean maneuvers, which typically run from December through March, were slow in getting started and are less extensive than usual, according to American officials familiar with intelligence reports and experts outside the government.

One possibility is that restrictions on shipments of oil and refined petroleum products to North Korea imposed by the United Nations have led the country, which has one of the world’s largest standing armies, to conserve fuel by cutting back on ground and air training exercises.

“Where this will have an effect is on ground-force readiness,” said Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. , a military analyst for 38 North, a website on North Korean affairs run by Johns Hopkins University’s U.S.-Korea Institute. “Military units have to train to maintain their proficiency.”

Still, military analysts inside and outside the government cautioned that the development hasn’t yet led to a dramatic decrease in the North’s military capabilities. There also appear to be no signs that sanctions are limiting North Korea’s push to strengthen its nuclear and missile arsenal.

This is no time to go all wobbly.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Making Iran Great Again.

JIM GERAGHTY: Koch Network Prepping ‘Largest Investment Ever’ in Midterm Cycle.

Speaking to reporters at the opening session of the Koch Seminar Network’s winter meeting, Phillips said he foresees a “very challenging environment at both the federal and state level to protect the policy majorities that made these victories possible.” (The group is eager to avoid being perceived as partisan, and thus emphasizes its preferred lawmakers as “policy majorities.” The overwhelming majority of political figures the Koch network and AFP supports are free-market conservative or libertarian-leaning Republicans.)

To deal with that challenging environment, the Koch network is prepared to spend a sum “on the high end” of $300 million to $400 million, according to James Davis, a spokesman for the network.

Phillips called that “the largest investment we’ve ever had in a midterm election. To give you a sense of that, that is 60 percent more than we [spent] in the in 2016 presidential cycle.”

That’s yuge, even in a non-off year election.

HARDBALL: Senator Encourages Democrats to ‘Reveal and Shame’ Trump’s Judicial Nominees. “Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Democrats should ‘reveal and shame’ President Trump’s judicial nominees since they do not have the power to filibuster them.”

Judicial confirmations is one area where the GOP majority has been performing inarguably well, as Blumenthal’s apparent desperation shows.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies.

One ingredient for removing a president would entail a nonstop effort by the opposition to use the courts, the legislative branch, the investigatory agencies, and the administrative state to discredit, undermine, and remove an elected government. In modern terms, that might entail opponents suing to challenge the legitimacy of the election, perhaps by charging in court that according to “experts,” voting machines were dysfunctional and thus some state tallies were null and void.

The effort might embrace trying to subvert the Constitution by pressuring state electors not to honor their constitutionally defined responsibilities to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their respective states. It might also include an effort to introduce articles of impeachment in the House.

A resistance might sue under the 25th Amendment to find the president non compos mentis, accompanied by a popular campaign to clinically diagnose the president as mentally unfit or physically decrepit. Or a resistance might use the courts to seek the removal of an elected president on grounds he was a rank profiteer and had violated the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution—or to file suits with cherry-picked liberal judges to delay and stop the president’s executive orders. On the petty side, an organized effort to discredit a president would range from boycotting the Inauguration to deliberately holding up and delaying confirmation of his appointees.

In fact, in just Trump’s first year we have seen all these things and more.

They won’t like it when it’s their turn to live under the new rules they’ve established, as Kurt Schlichter likes to say.

QUESTION ASKED: Is US bailing on Syrian Kurds?

Turkey’s local partners in the Afrin campaign include jihadis, Salafists and those looking to settle scores with the YPG. Tastekin explains, “It worries many people that even as Erdogan claims to be ridding Afrin of ‘terrorists,’ that’s how Syria describes some of the groups he wants to move into the area. Many have backgrounds, ideologies and attitudes that are unfavorable to Kurds. Those groups include former al-Qaeda members, Salafi jihadis, a variety of Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, mercenaries and some volunteers controlled by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

“Among the groups besieging Afrin and participating in the operations under [Turkish Armed Forces] and MIT guidance are Faylaq al-Sham, Jaish al-Nasr, Jabhat al-Shamiya, Ahrar al-Sham, Nureddin Zengi Brigades, Suqour al-Jaber, Sultan Murad Brigade, Samarkand Brigade, Muntasir Billah Brigade, Sultan Mourad Division, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Brigade, Hamza Company, Northern Storm, Turkistan Islamic Party and Salahaddin Brigade.”

Metin Gurcan writes, “It appears Turkey had Moscow’s go-ahead for the offensive, given that Russia controls all Syrian airspace west of the Euphrates River. Russia no doubt sees that the operation will drive a deeper wedge between the NATO allies Turkey and the United States in light of the latter’s support for the YPG. Moreover, Russia probably calculates that, faced with the threat of being overrun by Turkey and its Free Syrian Army (FSA) allies, the YPG will now be more open to Moscow’s earlier suggestion of handing Afrin back to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

Gurcan adds that Turkey “has gone back and forth on the issue of whether Assad should remain in power, [and] has been negotiating with Assad about possibly working together against the YPG and the Kurdish nationalist [PYD]. But the Syrian president knows Erdogan’s preference is an Assad-free Syria, so the Syrian army may end up assisting the Kurdish forces to an extent.

There’s actually little in the article related to the headline, but the story does a solid job of detailing a sticky situation.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Guess what? Trump’s not a feminist. “No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.”

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz this morning.