SOTU Update

Katie Britt didn't just fuck up the performance - seems odd that a party so totally committed to performative bullshit would flop like that - anyway, she did what dog-ass Republican fascist-wannabes do practically all day every day: she flat-out lied by spinning a yarn that had no relation to the truth.

Katie Britt’s false linkage of a sex-trafficking case to Joe Biden

“We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days. When I took office, I took a different approach. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas. That’s where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoe box of a room, and they sent men through that door over and over again for hours and hours on end. We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

— Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Ala.), in the Republican response to the State of the Union address, March 7

If you were watching Britt’s speech on Thursday night, you likely would have thought she was talking about a recent victim of sex trafficking who was abused in the United States and suffered because of President Biden’s policies.

If you did, you would have been wrong. Sean Ross, Britt’s communications director, confirmed that she was talking about Karla Jacinto Romero — who has testified before Congress about being forced to work in Mexican brothels from 2004 to 2008. (A viral TikTok by journalist Jonathan Katz first revealed that Britt was speaking about Romero.) In a phone conversation and a statement, Ross disputed that Britt’s language was misleading.

We disagree. Let’s take a look.

The Facts

Britt’s account of Romero’s experience was a centerpiece of her rebuttal to Biden’s address. The way Britt sets up the story, there is no indication that she is talking about a woman who was working in brothels in Mexico during the George W. Bush administration. This is how the passage unfolds.

• She first blames Biden for the surge of migrants at the border.
• Then she says she visited the border shortly after she took office. That would be 2023.
• At length, she details the story of an unnamed victim that she says she met on her trip. The implication is that the woman recently crossed the border — because of “sex trafficking by the cartels.”
• She strongly suggests that her abuse took place in the United States: “We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it.”
• She ends by reinforcing that such alleged trafficking is Biden’s fault: “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

But Biden has nothing to do with Romero’s story. As she testified nine years ago, her mother threw her out of her house at age 12 and she “fell prey to a professional pimp.” She says she then spent the next four years in brothels before a regular client helped her escape when she was 16 years old. There is no indication in her story that drug cartels were involved, though Britt said that in the State of the Union response and has made a similar claim on at least one other occasion. Romero was never trafficked to the United States; instead, she says many men who paid to have sex with her were “foreigners visiting my city looking to have sexual interactions with minors like me.”

In a YouTube video, Britt features images of her hugging Romero during her 2023 trip to the border. “If we as leaders of the greatest nation in the world are not fighting to protect the most vulnerable, we are not doing our job,” she said in the video. The implication again is that this happened on Biden’s watch.

When Donald Trump was president, he regularly decried human trafficking that he claimed was happening at the border, including that “thousands of young girls and women” were being smuggled across the border for prostitution. In 2019, we investigated that claim and found no evidence to support it. Most human trafficking prosecutions generally involve legal border crossings, visa fraud and travel into the United States on airplanes. Victim organizations say there are relatively few cases that involve forced kidnapping across the border. This might be one reason Britt regularly cites a case that happened long ago and did not involve crossing the border.

Ross, Britt’s spokesman, said that Romero’s story was indicative of trafficking that is now happening at the border and that should be clear from Britt’s framing in the speech.

He said the reference to a “Third World country” was generic and was not intended to refer to Mexico, which he said is not a Third World country. Third World is a dated Cold War-era term previously used to refer to poor or developing countries. Global South, indicating low income and high poverty, is a more common expression today. Mexico is considered part of the Global South, though it is also a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In a written statement, Ross said:

“The story Senator Britt told was 100% correct. And there are more innocent victims of that kind of disgusting, brutal trafficking by the cartels than ever before right now. The Biden administration’s policies — the policies in this country that the President falsely claims are humane — have empowered the cartels and acted as a magnet to a historic level of migrants making the dangerous journey to our border. Along that journey, children, women, and men are being subjected to gut-wrenching, heartbreaking horrors in our own backyard. And here at home, the Biden administration’s policies are leading to more and more suffering, including Americans being poisoned by fentanyl and being murdered. These human costs are real, and it’s past time for some on the left to stop pretending otherwise.”

The Pinocchio Test

In a high-profile speech like this, a politician should not mislead voters with emotionally charged language. Romero’s story is tragic and may be evocative of other Mexican girls trapped in the sex trade in that country. But she was not trafficked across the border — and her story has nothing to do with Biden. Britt’s failure to make that clear earns her Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

SOTU

Highlites

Oh my god Katie Britt actually wore the Serena Joy outfit for her State of the Handmaid’s Tale. I’m dying. pic.twitter.com/hGJ8GGUopF

— Chad Chavez (ChadC.bsky.social) (@ChadAChavez) March 8, 2024

Some of the Press Poodles got it about right:

Then there's NYT:

And never mind that the lede paragraph

began with "Biden did great, and then

the GOP sent out this fuckin' loon."

(I may have paraphrased a little)

I encourage everyone to watch this, but you're going to need a stiff drink and a subdued gag reflex.

All it needs is the Sarah McGlachlan music in the background.

I'm A Bad Person

Sometimes, I just cain't help myself.

SOTU Fact Check

There's whole big bunches of nit-picky shit in this breakdown at WaPo by Glenn Kessler - some, admittedly, a bit more than that - but the main takeaway is that Biden was mostly on the nose.

Fact-checking President Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address

“I stand here tonight after we’ve created — with the help of many people in this room — 12 million new jobs, more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.”

“We’ve already created 800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth in 40 years.”

“For too many decades, we imported products and exported jobs. Now, thanks to all we’ve done, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs.”

“America used to make nearly 40 percent of the world’s chips. But in the last few decades, we lost our edge and we’re down to producing only 10 percent.”

“We used to be number one in the world in infrastructure. We’ve sunk to 13th in the world.

“It’s not fair the idea that in 2020, 55 of the biggest companies in America, the Fortune 500, made $40 billion in profits and paid zero in federal income taxes? Zero.”

“Because of the law I signed, billion-dollar companies have to pay a minimum of 15 percent.”

“Pass my proposal for a billionaire minimum tax. … Because no billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a schoolteacher or a firefighter.”

“In the last two years, my administration cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history.”

“Under the previous administration, America’s deficit went up four years in a row. Because of those record deficits, no president added more to the national debt in any four years than my predecessor. Nearly 25 percent of the entire national debt, a debt that took 200 years to accumulate, was added by that administration alone.”

“Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s a majority. … Anybody who doubts it, contact my office. I’ll give you a copy.”

“While the virus is not gone, thanks to the resilience of the American people and the ingenuity of medicine, we have broken covid’s grip on us. Covid deaths are down nearly 90 percent.”

“Ban assault weapons once and for all. We did it before. I led the fight to ban them in 1994. In the 10 years the ban was law, mass shootings went down. After we let it expire in a Republican administration, mass shootings tripled.”

Knives Out

Nobody's going to be surprised to learn George Santos has joined the Mean Girls Caucus, right?

Romney goes after Santos in tense exchange at the State of the Union

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) exchanged harsh words on the House floor Tuesday night before the State of the Union began, with the Republican senator telling the freshman GOP lawmaker that he should not be in Congress.

As lawmakers and other guests were entering the chamber ahead of President Biden’s speech, Romney and Santos were spotted having a brief but tense conversation. Romney glared at Santos, who smiled slightly, nodded and seemed to dismiss Romney before continuing to greet others.

Romney later said that he told Santos — who has admitted to fabricating large swaths of his biography and whose campaign finances are under investigation — that he did not belong there. Santos is under investigation by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee and last month stepped down from his committee assignments.

“I didn’t expect that he’d be standing there trying to shake hands with every senator and the president of the United States,” Romney told reporters after Biden’s speech concluded Tuesday night, when asked why he had confronted Santos.

“Given the fact that [Santos is] under ethics investigation, he should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room,” Romney added.

Romney said that Santos’s claims that he had “embellished” his record were absurd.

“Look, embellishing is saying you got an A when you got an A-minus. Lying is saying you graduated from a college you didn’t even attend,” Romney said. “And he shouldn’t be in Congress. And they’re going to go through the process and hopefully get him out. But he shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”

Romney told reporters that Santos may have responded to him, but that he did not hear it on the House floor. After the State of the Union concluded, Santos lashed out at Romney on social media.

“Hey @MittRomney just a reminder that you will NEVER be PRESIDENT!” he posted to Twitter.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) later defended Santos, describing Romney’s words as “the rudest I’ve ever seen a human being be to another human being.”

Say what, Tom?

Romney, who was the Republican nominee for president in 2012, was the only Republican to stand and clap when Biden said unemployment was at a 50-year low Tuesday night, and applauded alongside Democrats at other points in Biden’s speech.

SOTU 2023

Biden laid it down, and certain Republicans couldn't help but show their ass, as the rancor was on full display last night.

"It was one of a number of moments in which he was heckled in the chamber, and he seemed to relish the open exchanges that broke out in the House chamber and played on national television. McCarthy, sitting directly behind Biden and in view of the cameras, several times appeared to shush his colleagues."

"McCarthy ... several times appeared to shush his colleagues."

Kevin McCarthy will be remembered as a pretty bad Speaker - like Ryan and Boehner before him.

I can't condemn the antics completely. There has to be room for protest no matter what the venue. That said, protest can be lodged in a way that's less egregiously demagogic - less like some asshole teenager who covets attention so badly, he has to stand up at assembly and call his ex-girlfriend a scumbag slut for dumping him or some such.

Greene is indulging in bullshit theatrics because that's her brand. It's who she is. She's being egged on by her fellow assholes, but what gets ever more disgusting is the fact that the "normal" Republicans sit by and do nothing.

Marjorie Taylor Greene yells ‘liar’ during combative State of the Union

After guidance to behave themselves from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans had plenty to say in the chamber

Midway through the State of the Union address, the room turned feisty as some Republican lawmakers began booing President Biden. Some pointed fingers toward his position at the center of the House chamber. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) stood and yelled at him: “Liar!”

It was a remarkable display of partisan animosity, one that illustrates the challenges gripping a deeply divided Washington. And it put on vivid display the power of Greene as leader of the Outburst Caucus — and the struggles that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has in controlling the behavior, let alone the votes, of his conference.

Hours before the speech, McCarthy (Calif.) and other Republican leaders had told lawmakers during their weekly conference meeting that all eyes would be on them as Biden delivered his remarks, according to people in the room for the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it freely.

That guidance echoed a similar message sent out by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.): “Cameras are always on and microphones are always hot.” Ahead of the speech, Republicans did not anticipate any outbursts, and McCarthy had said Monday that he would not shred the president’s speech as then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did with President Donald Trump’s.

But about 40 minutes into his speech, Biden turned to one of the most contentious current topics facing Congress. Halfway through a speech that was by turns folksy and feisty — and contained more than a hint of swagger — he looked to the Republicans sitting in the chamber to his left, chiding them for a lack of specificity in their approach to cutting the budget.

Their decisions under Trump, he said, added more to the national debt than any president, triggering boos from Republicans.

“They’re the facts!” Biden responded. “Check it out. Check it out!”

It was one of a number of moments in which he was heckled in the chamber, and he seemed to relish the open exchanges that broke out in the House chamber and played on national television. McCarthy, sitting directly behind Biden and in view of the cameras, several times appeared to shush his colleagues.

As Biden mentioned potential cuts to Social Security and Medicare — and how some Republican-backed proposals could lead to cuts in the entitlement programs — it triggered one of the most disruptive moments of the night, and loud protests that had been kept at bay for much of the speech were unleashed.

Greene stood up, jabbed her finger, and yelled toward Biden: “Liar!” Others followed. It was one of several outbursts from Greene who interrupted Biden’s speech by yelling, “China’s spying on us!” and later, “Secure the border!”

Biden, seeming both perplexed and energized by the sudden shift in the room, responded by saying, “Anyone who doubts me, contact my office ... I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.” He emphasized that it was “not a majority” of Republicans who support such a plan and that it probably was not “even a significant” portion of them.

At least one Republican lawmaker yelled, “Then don’t say it!”

“I enjoy conversion,” Biden quipped, suggesting that minds in the room had changed on the topic.

After some of the commotion had died down, Biden said that everyone in the room apparently agreed that “Social Security and Medicare is off the books! We got unanimity!”

“So tonight, let’s all agree — and apparently we are — and stand up for seniors,” Biden added, after which most in the chamber stood up. “Stand up and show them! We will not cut Social Security! We will not cut Medicare! Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned it. ... If anyone tries to cut Medicare, I’ll stop them. I’ll veto it ... But apparently it’s not going to be a problem.”

To get scoops, sharp political analysis and accountability journalism in your inbox each morning, sign up for The Early 202.

White House staffers watching on televisions in the West Wing cheered and high-fived at that moment, according to an administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Biden’s focus on Social Security and Medicare was one of his chief arguments during the midterm elections. He often pointed to a plan from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that was aimed at cutting the federal deficit with a proposal to “sunset” all federal programs after five years, meaning they would expire unless renewed.

Scott’s plan does not specifically say Social Security or Medicare will expire, but it recommends that “all federal legislation sunsets in 5 years.”

Some top Republicans had suggested that Scott’s approach was unwise — “That will not be part of the Republican Senate majority agenda,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said when Scott’s plan was released — but that didn’t stop Biden from trying to make Scott the face of the GOP.

More recently, Biden has said that Republicans need to offer more specifics about which programs they want to cut. He has accused them of being vague even as they threaten not to raise the debt limit without budget cuts.

“Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage,” he said during the speech.

After the speech, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Biden was wrong to keep associating his party with wanting to cut those programs. “He tries to keep spreading this false narrative about getting rid of Social Security and Medicare,” he said. “And I think by the end he finally acknowledged it’s not true, but he was trying to imply something about Republicans. That’s just not true.”

Sorry not sorry, Steve, but until you stand up and forcefully condemn the ongoing efforts of your party to kill Social Security outright, or to privatize it so you can boost the GOP's Wall Street Welfare program, you're squarely in opposition of what practically all of us want. Live with it.

The back-and-forth in the chamber was a discordant note and had the feel of the rambunctious, free-flowing nature of the British Parliament at question time with the prime minister, rather than the traditionally more stately setting of the presidential address.

Much of Biden’s earlier portions of the speech was focused on seemingly bipartisan basics — blue-collar job growth, boosting American manufacturing, promoting infrastructure projects — that dared Republicans not to stand. And through much of it, McCarthy remained seated.

McCarthy and Greene have come a long way since the Georgia congresswoman was elected to the House in 2020. McCarthy’s defense of her when Democrats stripped Greene of her committee assignments ultimately led to the two forging a closer relationship. She was a vocal supporter of his bid for speaker, but it wasn’t enough to ensure an easy path to the gavel for the California Republican.

While McCarthy ultimately won by hashing out deals, he remains beholden to the splintered factions of the conference. Greene’s display against Biden underscored that tenuous grip — that McCarthy couldn’t contain an ally, even after he and other GOP leaders warned lawmakers not to hastily react to Biden during his speech.

“He did, frankly, lie, talking about Republicans and Social Security and Medicare,” Greene said in a video she released after the speech.

“We have not talked about cutting Social Security and Medicare ... We’re not,” she said. “So we called him out on the House floor. I called him a liar because that’s what Joe Biden is.”

She went on: “Joe Biden doesn’t know anything he’s talking about. That’s the state of our union.”

About Last Night

The big takeaway is that the buzz today is all about Badass Boss Pelosi and not that miserable 90-minute infomercial, all dressed up and trying to look like statesmanship.

Bryan Tyler Cohen

Read Me Lips

Bad Lip Reading - SOTU:

SOTU

Ironically, the State Of The Union target audience is The Confederacy.

-- Rocky Mountain Mike

When it was announced that Rick Perry was the Designated Survivor this year:

Like millions of other atheists, I experienced a Temporary Situational Conversion and offered up a little prayer.

We truly need leadership to unify the nation at this time. After two years of division and demagoguery, President Trump has spoken some words about unity. Unfortunately, what the TelePrompTer giveth, the President’s daily actions and hourly tweets quickly taketh away. #SOTU

— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) February 6, 2019

Don’t worry, we saw your sign! pic.twitter.com/MKX5gSpvA1

— W. E. B. Dem Bois (@WEB_DemBois) February 6, 2019

WaPo:

President Trump’s State of the Union speech once again was chock-full of stretched facts and dubious figures. Many of these claims have been fact-checked repeatedly, yet the president persists in using them. Here, in the order in which he made them, are nearly 30 statements by the president.

Daniel Dale, Toronto Star:

“We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution and embrace the boundless potential of co-operation, compromise and the common good,” Trump, who has repeatedly spoken of his fondness for punching back at enemies, told a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night.

“Together, we can break decades of political stalemate. We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions, and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future,” he said. “The decision is ours to make.”

Trump’s kumbaya pitch was sure to be greeted with widespread skepticism. He has followed previous moves toward high-minded statesmanship by reverting immediately to his usual bellicosity.

About Last Night

I didn't watch the SOTU - for the first time in a very long time. 

I decided instead to binge "Dirty Money" on Netflix (which was even more depressing), and then I switched to picking fly shit out of my pepper shaker because that at least retains a tiny bit of entertainment value.

First blush - WaPo:

Have a president’s words ever rung more hollow? In his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Trump spoke of “what kind of nation we are going to be. All of us, together, as one team, one people and one American family.” Yet Mr. Trump could not avoid, even for an hour, lacing his address with divisive references to hot-button issues and graceless attacks on his predecessors: to “disastrous Obamacare,” “the mistakes of past administrations,” “the era of economic surrender” and more.

You caught that, right? Translation: "You look like me and you think like me and you act like me, or you get the fuck out."

Cult45 devotees believe America is some kind of social club, and the first order of business is to keep people out of it.

More to the point, he offered little reason to hope that his second-year policies would be more constructive than those of his first. The president spent the past year attacking America’s democratic institutions and splitting the “American family.” His concern for building “one team” has not stopped him from ramping up deportations of harmless people or imperiling the future of the “dreamers,” all of whom have played their part on the American team. His desire for bipartisanship has not led him to negotiate with Democrats in good-faith on health care, taxes or immigration. His search for unity did not stop him Tuesday from taking a gratuitous dig at football players who kneel during the national anthem. As he took a victory lap on the economy, Mr. Trump displayed his typical indifference to the truth, claiming he “enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history.” They are not.

So, typical of the Daddy State, the "speech" was a fair demonstration that it takes about 90 minutes for a below-average rooster to claim credit for the sunrise, and to intimidate the other chickens by flapping his wings a lot and strutting around desperately pretending not to know that most of us can see him for the phony tin-plated martinet that he so obviously is.

- and this doozy from Ed Rogers:

Oh, and by the way, you probably haven’t heard much of this from the liberal mainstream media, but Democrats could not appear more fractured in the aftermath of Trump’s State of the Union address. Democrats scheduled six separate responses to the president’s address...

No, Ed - there were six responses (and more than that number were justified, I think) because that's just how bad your "president" has stunk up the joint.

For all you "Yeah-but-the-Dems-don't-have-a-message" dolts in the immediate vicinity:  Oh for fuck's sake.

First, stop thinking you can talk some sense into the rubes - you're not The Idiot Meat-Bag Whisperer.

Second, "What Message?" Pick a fucking message; any fucking message. We heard exactly the same 10 or 12 policy messages  from the SOTU Responders last night that Hillary and Bernie and many others spent all of 2016 trying to get across to us.

Economic equity
Infrastructure
Training and/or schooling
Equal rights
Rule of law
Environment
and
and
and

But no - Fart Breathers like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon saw large numbers of rubes who were making the deliberate choice to be deaf and blind, and they decided the only possible conclusion was that Hillary had gone mute.

Of course, you can only make that stick if you assume 2016 happened under "normal" circumstances - which brings us back around to the simple fact that way too many of us are trying to pretend "The Presumption Of Regularity" is still valid and in place. It isn't.

BTW: Hey, Press Poodles - we know y'all went to school and learnt your-bad-selfs a right big bunch about how this politics bidness is supposed to work; and we know you're just dyin' to show that off a little. We get it.

But here's the thing: All of that's about halfway down inside the dung heap now.  So stop looking for every goddamned opportunity to show us what you think you know about how things oughta be, and start reporting on the way things are.

We're all being buried in this shit pile together, so you can be all college-y and impressive later - for right now, we need you on a shovel.

On President Showboat

So, OK, I'm starting to warm up to Matthew Yglesias.  And not just because he's lined up with me on the anti-Trump thing. That's very nearly enough, but I think he's writing better stuff - trying to get at more than the usual shit we hear and see from the Press Poodles.

This is some good old fashioned nerd porn.

Vox:

If you take any one moment from the Trump Show out of context, it’s striking. But together, Trump’s antics are now banal. He says, tweets, and does weird things. He gets attention. He pisses people off while thrilling others. Tonight, he even managed to attract attention and garner praise for slightly dialing it down. But speeches are supposed to be tools to help do the work of actually being president — learning about the issues, making decisions about trade-offs, and collaborating to get things done.

Amid the nonstop and increasingly tedious theatricality, Trump is only ever performing the role of the president; he’s never doing the job.

-- and --

You can’t parse a president who doesn’t sweat the details.

In a normal address of this sort, the role of a policy reporter is to serve as a kind of translator. Having spent days, weeks, and months following policy debates in Washington, we are able to catch the quick references in the president’s speech and understand them in fuller context. In that spirit, for example, I might note that Trumps’ reference to creating “a level playing field for American companies and workers” appears to be a move toward endorsing a controversial corporate income tax reform that big exporters like but retail chains hate.

The problem is that to draw that conclusion would require us to believe the speech went through a traditional drafting process. That the Treasury secretary and the National Economic Council director and the legislative liaison staff all briefed the president on the meaning of the line, and that he therefore made a coherent, deliberate effort to embrace this plan.

But here’s another theory. The speech seems to be largely the product of tensions between Reince Priebus’s traditional Republican Party ideology and Steve Bannon’s populist nationalism. Priebus is close to Paul Ryan, who likes the controversial tax reform. But one interpretation of the tax reform idea is that it’s protectionist trade policy, which Bannon likes. So the two of them may have put the line into the speech even though Senate Republicans and the Trump administration economic team seem to think it’s a bad idea.

The premise of taking a close look at these speeches to read the tea leaves, in short, is that the president actually understands the policy issues facing him and cares about the words he’s speaking. With Trump, that’s far from true. He doesn’t like to read briefing books or make hard choices. His words about clean air or infrastructure or anything else are completely meaningless until we see real plans. And there’s no real indication that we ever will. The show is an increasingly meaningless spectacle.

 

Whoa, Lady

For a minute there, I tho't I'd accidentally surfed into a That Girl rerun.  But anyway.

Governor Nikki Haley, R-SC:

These things are never good and most often flat-out awful, so she gets a little credit just for having the guts to try, and by comparison, it's a shitload better than Rubio or Jindal, so there's that(?)

Conventional wisdom has it that this is mostly a message aimed at Trump on behalf of a GOP Establishment as they finally start to wake up and get worried that the Monster Of The Id that they created in the 80s and 90s and fed for 35 years has crashed through the fence that was supposed to keep it in the Democrats' yard and is now completely fucking up the GOP rose beds, shittin' in GOP swimming pools and sniffin' everybody's butt cracks - which is pretty much exactly what the "Libruls" (and the GOP's very own "moderates") have been trying to tell them would happen for those same 35 years.  Because rational thinkers understand that you don't control people for very long.  And - not to get too nerdily metaphorical on ya here - when you push somebody to tap into something that always includes that "dark side", try not to act so surprised when Kylo Ren shivs you through the fucking heart, Mr Solo.  (hat tip = driftglass)

Anyway.

She makes the GOP's big point about immigration and terrorism, and how we have to be really really really careful and even straight-up suspicious of new-comers and outsiders and people who're different from us.  Then, not more than a few paragraphs later, she slides right into "nine beautiful souls" welcoming a stranger into their worship circle only to be gunned down because he turned out to be a terrorist jerkwad.  Of course, she disguises it by glossing it over with how forward-thinking and courageous she is for having taken down that stoopid fucking flag (props for that BTW), but she's inviting that standard xenophobia inference, and she knows the people she wants to make the connection will make the connection.

This shit doesn't happen by accident, kids. That's some of the best code-speak ever.

She's not saying "stop being a buncha ignorant racist assholes".  She's saying, "stop being ignorant racist assholes out in the open because that embarrasses me because I have to get you to vote for me".  

In the end, she's telling people who're in open revolt against what they see as a party - that they've been taught BY THAT PARTY - to believe is being ruined by "Political Correctness"  to be politically correct.  She's demanding it.

I'd say the horse has left the barn, but that assumes the barn's still there as some kinda point of reference.  You're in a bit of a pickle, Nikki.

SOTU 2016

Some faves:
(about 14:00) 

"It's not too much of a stretch to say that some of the only people in America who're going to work the same job in the same place with a health and retirement package for 30 years are sitting in this chamber."

(about 18:50)

"But after years now of record corporate profit, working families won't get more opportunity or bigger paychecks just by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at everybody else's expense." 

(about 22:00) Talking about innovation and research. He's trying to reassert government's proper roll in pushing for progress while trying to keep the privateers and the rentiers from controlling the mechanisms of that progress solely for the sake of corporate profit.

(starting about 30:00) Let's go back to being the smart country when it comes to what we do about terrorism.  Let's not help the bad guys by repeating their rhetoric about how big and bad they are, and how they're coming to fucking destroy America. Basically - "Stop losing your shit all the fucking time."   These are bad guys and they "have to be rooted out, hunted down and destroyed", but stop saying that a buncha slavering fanatics charging around in a used Toyota pickup is somehow the equivalent of any random squad of US Marines - why do you not understand how insulting that is to the troops you claim to have the highest regard for?  Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people? 

NeoLib uh-oh:
(about 17:00)  - This one sounds like he's selling an investment plan for Wall Street - but it ties into the remarks on not letting the too-big-to-fail gang play by their own rules - he's going for that famous "Obama in the middle" thing(?)

"(on a guy losing his job)...he should still be able to save for retirement  and take his savings with him."

Full remarks: Watch @POTUS deliver his final State of the Union address. #SOTU https://t.co/AOyWjdFk4O

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 13, 2016

It was a good one to go out on. I wonder how long before the Repubs get their strategies in place for what to do now.  Gov Haley's "response" seemed to hold some interesting weirdness.  I'll try to get to that later.

Can You Say, "Flop Sweats"?

I knew you could.  How about, "not ready for prime time"?



A bad case of Performance Jitters almost always sneaks up on you at the worst possible time, and while it can happen to anybody, there's usually some kind of underlying reason for it (duh).  The big one of course, is that you're not feeling quite as well prepared as you'd like to be.  And there's always that little guy's voice in the back of your mind telling you to shut up and get outa there 'cuz you suck at this and nobody likes you. (I hate that little guy)

So anyway, Rubio does get a coupla points for trying to "do it live" instead of putting together a bunch of pre-recorded junk and just guessing at what the Prez was gonna say.  But I think the real problem is that he's not convinced of a good bunch of what he was saying, and when you haven't fully rationalized those internal conflicts, then your body language is going to betray you almost every time.