Your thoughts?
Per Cole’s Twitter feed, he’s watching the Penguins play hockey, so if you want more puppy updates you’re gonna have to wait for the game to finish.
ETA:
Some fun on the floor, as Gillibrand makes a "come onnnnn" hand gesture when the Repubs around her didn't stand for pay equity #SOTU2015
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) January 21, 2015
The “Gillibrand 2016” train starts there…
Ernst: "rather than respond to a speech, I¹d like to talk about your priorities."
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2015
OK, so "I know because I won both of them" wasn't as good as "impeach THIS motherfuckers." But it was something.
— Billmon (@billmon1) January 21, 2015
Thoroughly Pizzled
Mein Gott, Chuck Todd is a moron.
Corner Stone
Cole is a caricature of a caricature at this point.
Thoroughly Pizzled
But it was a great speech. Cynicism only helps the conservative cause, ultimately. It’s good that our President understands that.
Karen in GA
Speaking of morons, I’m looking forward to this Ernst creature.
ShadeTail
Didn’t watch it, don’t care.
Anne Laurie
@Corner Stone: Think of it as performance art.
Suzanne
I love him so much.
I hope Ernst makes an ass of herself, in keeping with GOP tradition.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Did Tweety get a thrill up his leg, or is he troubled that Obama “spiked the ball”?
dmsilev
Obama just autographed someone’s tie. Heh.
lamh36
GOP thought they’d be cute by applauding when POTUS said he wasn’t running again. Then he dropped the BOOM, the ad-lib about winning two of them.
Of course totally went over the heads of most of the “older” talking heads.
slag
On wh.gov, Dan Pfeiffer laughs at the idea that Rmoney poses a “political vulnerability” on poverty. Or possibly on anything, I suppose.
Violet
I wish we could keep him for a third term. I love this president. Love him.
jl
When is the Ernst GOP response thing on?
Pogonip
I’m going to bed, to dream of pupdates in the morning.
dmsilev
@jl: A couple of minutes, I think.
Valdivia
@Suzanne:
same here. Best SOTU so far. He was really going for the Village too
Helen
@lamh36: Yeah – they are so stuck on the “he can’t talk without a teleprompter” talking point that when he does something like that they are stunned.
Corner Stone
@Anne Laurie: About now it’s more like a boardwalk caricature hack doing an impression of a Big Eyes Keane work.
Old Dan and Little Ann
And Steve Schmidt reminds me why I quit watching MSNBC months ago. Isis! Isis! Isis!
Davis X. Machina
Did you notice? Not a single mention of the public option.
Not one…
Helen
George Will is already apologizing for Ernst. Before her speech.
Karen in GA
Five Republican responses?
ETA: She’s on. She’s as creepy as I expected. And she’s not responding to the speech. Of course not.
ET also A: “I will sell this house today!”
Corner Stone
I’m Huh Huh Joni Ernst.
Huh Huh.
janeform
Matthew Dowd on ABC: Obama hasn’t shown humility. Yeah, he’s uppity.
Suzanne
Someone should tell Ernst that the fake smile makes her look SHIFTY.
mdblanche
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Tweety’s fee-fees are hurt that Obama dissed cable news by mentioning people who think they benefit from division. Since Obama didn’t mention cable news that sounds like a guilty conscience on Tweety’s part.
Old Dan and Little Ann
This is Immediately dreadful.
Elizabelle
As a mother, a soldier, and a newly elected Senator from the great state of Iowa ….
Iowa! What did we ever do to you?
And what’s she doing in fluorescent blue? Red state, lady.
Corner Stone
@Davis X. Machina:
He folded on that years ago. Why would he mention it now?
Corner Stone
Those teeth…Huh Huh.
lamh36
@Old Dan and Little Ann: yeah, I appreciate what Chris Hayes basically said ISIS would like to think it’s as “epic” as the Nazi or cold-war Russia, but the admin is trying to keep ISIS exactly in the true “value” they have in comparison.
Dexter
Twitter tells me that Rmoney thinks that Obama SOTU is “disappointing” and “a missed opportunity to lead”.
Elizabelle
The morning biscuit line at Hardee’s.
Rainy morning.
Oh Gawd. It’s the bread bag shoes.
Corner Stone
OH FUCK! NOT THE PLASTIC BREADBAGS AGAIN!!
piratedan
@janeform: dear Matthew, please get back to me when millions of Americans vote for you… to do anything. Asshat.
Suzanne
Are we seriously talking about whether or not child Joni was embarrassed by the bread bags on her shoes?!
I know, because I won both of them.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Settle down, Breadbag feet.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
Has she brought that up before?
jl
So far the Ernst response would make a great inspirational after school special.
I started laughing at the opening. Not sure why. I felt a little mean about letting that happen.
dedc79
And the Penguins lost again (woohoo!)
JPL
What hairspray do republican women and men use? They need to sue the company cuz it really makes them look like barbie and ken.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne:
You’re nicer than me. I would have skipped the F.
Failed policies like Obamacare.
Factual, as always.
She’s speaking slowly so the slow-minded can follow her,
The Keystone jobs bill?
Suzanne
#breadbags needs to become a hashtag for stupid, off-topic shit.
Corner Stone
Sorry. She absolutely spooks me right the fuck out.
Good Christ but she is awful.
Is she a robot?
Old Dan and Little Ann
Keystone will benefit nature.
CaseyL
The GOP seldom, if ever, responds to the actual speech. Their speechwriters can’t work that fast. They have a boilerplate and go with that.
It was a fine speech. I love that he threw down the veto gauntlet, and really loved the digs he got in. He’s got two years to fuck with the GOP without having to worry about the effect it’ll have on Dems running for office; I hope he takes full advantage of the opportunity.
MomSense
Just listened to a Republican woman call in to C-Span upset that the Republicans didn’t stand up for equal pay for women and added that she would like to see them try and live on $25,000 a year. The host asked again if she was a Republican.
Democrats made a big mistake not campaigning with the President in 2014. Big. Fucking. Mistake.
AnonPhenom
@Karen in GA:
She’s on now. Dispensing talking points like a vending machine.
Elizabelle
I like to think the camera will pan down.
And there she is.
In her bread bag shoes.
pseudonymous in nc
@Elizabelle:
Home of Steve Racist King, also too. So, fuck Iowa, mostly. Sorry about that.
I’m not watching Senator Wonderbread Pigdeballer.
Violet
@JPL: It looks like she’s wearing a helmet.
Corner Stone
MSNBC. Drop that stupid fucking Bing Pulse poll BS.
SiubhanDuinne
So the guy from Florida who’s giving the Spanish language GOP response and is just going to give a Spanish translation of Joni Ernst’s speech — he’s going to talk, in Spanish, about riding the Iowa school bus with plastic bread bags on his feet? Is that how that’s going to go down?
piratedan
@Corner Stone: I believe the correct term is “Stepford Senator”
Elizabelle
@AnonPhenom:
A really slow vending machine.
With false talking points.
Karen in GA
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Wonder Toes?
Anne Laurie
@Corner Stone: It’s like she didn’t need that castrating tool Lindsey Graham gave her.
(Still not sure why Graham had an antique castrating tool on hand… )
jl
Keystone Jobs Bill? Is that the official name?
Keystone pipeline is the first issue the GOP wants to talk about by name?
Now trade issue platitudes?
Tax reform generalities?
BTW is my feed skipping for is she repeating words?
Edit: video stream problems making it sound like she is repeating words, seems to me.
Elizabelle
@piratedan:
Yes! Stepford is the word.
JPL
So my TV is on mute because I’m still fixated with the hair. Republican hair doesn’t move.
pseudonymous in nc
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
Is there anything in Iowa that a lake of shale slurry will despoil? Or is that Nebraska that wants the shale-slurry lake if there’s a leak en route from Canada to China?
Corner Stone
Can-u-duh and Aus-trail-ee-uh.
Suzanne
@JPL: Neither does her face. Sooo much Botox.
Violet
Joni Ernst is setting herself up to be a VP pick.
beth
@Elizabelle: I saw earlier on twitter that she’s wearing cammo heels. With that suit?
Karen in GA
@SiubhanDuinne: Con breadbags en mis pies.
Gracias, Google Translate!
Helen
OMG – Once again look at the “agree” “disagree” She is at 29% republican “agree”
Davis X. Machina
@Elizabelle: When your target market views the world in bumper-sticker terms, that’s how you roll…
Corner Stone
@debbie: No?
JPL
@Suzanne: It’s really amazing to watch her on mute. She could be selling cosmetics.
Elizabelle
“Just look at my parents and grandparents.”
And I look at them. And they’re wearing bread bags too!
Valdivia
btw she’s wearing camo high heels. saw that on twitter. no bread bags
beth
Wow nothing above her eyebrows moves.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hardee’s?
anybody seen a live blog from Pierce? I could’ve sworn he said he was gonna
SiubhanDuinne
My grandparents had nothing to call their own except the sweat on their brow and the dirt on their hands.
Mmmm. Okay.
Karen in GA
@JPL: I was just staring at that. It’s amazing how Republican women are sprayed, shellacked and botoxed into immobility, aren’t they? Almost like they have to look like everything about them is completely controlled.
Oh, wait — big finish, Joni!
TR
Say what you will, but for a Westworld robot, Joni Ernst really seems lifelike.
Elizabelle
@beth:
Are they Naughty Monkey camo heels?
GregB
When you get to school you can keep your freshly cut hog nuts in a bread-bag.
AnonPhenom
@Corner Stone:
I think I see a turn key behind the helmet hair. Maybe they just wound her too tight?
MomSense
@JPL:
It’s made by Playmobil.
slag
Pfeiffer: “Theoretically, there should be common ground” btwn Dems and Reps. Heavy emphasis on “theoretically”.
Elizabelle
And C-Span has a visual of the Capitol dome.
Which looks incarcerated. The scaffolding.
BillinGlendaleCA
Gawd, Joni Ernst is just awful. How did this women ever get elected to the Senate.
Corner Stone
@JPL: Or the Ninja Bullet, or Bum Bum exercise workouts!
SiubhanDuinne
@Karen in GA:
¡Gracias!
AnonPhenom
@TR:
Yeah. Look, she just moved her hands.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think people in Vienna heard Freud scratching on the top of his box to get out and comment on that
Suzanne
Make another hashtag #rictusgrin .
Violet
She sounds like the concerned mom down the street. The one who you know is stabbing your mom in the back at the PTA or who is making your junior high Sunday school class memorize extra Bible verses.
mdblanche
I don’t think she passed the Turing test.
jl
Strike out a few words and that response would be good for the next hundred years. A response for the ages.
donnah
I called her the Bootstrap Bitch, til now…She’s the Breadbag Bitch!
Corner Stone
Oh, McCaskill…you suck hog nuts.
piratedan
@SiubhanDuinne: sounds like the beginning of the “four Yorkshiremen” sketch, next thing you’ll know she was living in a brown paper bag at the bottom of the lake….
Jim C
I went to school in Iowa from grade 6-12, riding a bus in grade 6, and I never once saw a kid wearing bread bags over their shoes. (And would have been a contemporary of hers, age wise)
I must have lived in a super-posh area of Iowa.
slag
@donnah: Classy.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@pseudonymous in nc: It will be minimal in either case. Any leaks can be cleaned up by helpers wearing breadbag shoes.
pseudonymous in nc
@BillinGlendaleCA:
She was sufficiently non-awful in public to avoid the fate of previous batshit GOP Senate nominees, nobody in Iowa was willing to point out that she was batshit because civility, and the Dems didn’t really show up as they never fucking do in off-years, because the national party and Senate candidates seem to want to lose those damn elections and then whine about it and beg for money over the next couple of years.
Elizabelle
@Jim C:
You apparently aren’t hard-working enough.
Taker!
Corner Stone
@Jim C:
Is there such a thing?
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
It looks like the Deathstar just in time for the Republicans.
Roger Moore
@AnonPhenom:
So, who’s been putting the money in her talking points machine?
Karen in GA
@Jim C: Bread bags, though. It’s so specific.
pseudonymous in nc
Also, who knew that Iowa would provide the nation with its first cyborg senator?
jl
The GOP is close to perfecting the Generic GOP Response Speech.
They could rerun this one next year. Maybe have to edit the Keystone line, depending on how things develop.
And Ernst will be there for the first HRC or whoever Democrat gives their first, SOTU, so can rerun it then too.
Elizabelle
C-Span: A Republican from West Virginia was expecting the President to eat some crow tonight, given the drubbing in recent elections, and he didn’t hear that at all.
He was surprised. And re overtime: why not for our military?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim C: My dad grew up during the Great Depression, I heard lots of stories how difficult life was then. Wearing bread bags was not among them.
Elizabelle
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Care of our professional press. They were so busy applauding her hog-castrating and — get this — she appeals to men! — that they didn’t cover her craziness.
She’s so refreshing!
SiubhanDuinne
@piratedan:
If you tell that to youngsters these days, they won’t believe you.
Ira-NY
Braley ran a gutless campaign.
mai naem
@BillinGlendaleCA: She replaced Tom Harkin. Jeezus Christ. Aaron Schock looks like Neal Patrick Harris.
Jim C
@Corner Stone:
Well, compared to where I live now, no. But back then, certain parts of Ames, or West Des Moines, or Iowa City had their upper income areas. Then again, I was never in Red Oak back then, maybe it was all “level B maintenance” roads.
I do know that we qualified for reduced, if not free, school lunches, and we qualified for the free cheese program when I lived there. My parents didn’t take advantage of either, but we certainly qualified, and we had shoes, plural, *and* boots.
JPL
My dad use to walk miles to school in two feet of snow, or that is what I was told.
btw .. The NY Times has a picture of Julianna Margulies and Michelle Obama wearing the same suit. Michelle wore it better. link
TS
@CaseyL:
They could find the speech on the internet – pick up the clues from the last 2 weeks of the President talking – but the reality is they do not want to talk against all the positive things the President is doing – so they make stuff up unrelated to his speech.
Corner Stone
Talking points are so awful. Why do people listen to someone saying there’s no difference between $7 and $10 an hour?
“Why not $50 an hour, then?”
These people are just fucking crazy.
AnonPhenom
TeaParty’s White Man’s Take is on now.
Damn, that is one creepy dude. Giving off a really weird vibe. Gonna need a shower before bed.
BD of MN
Maybe the bread bag thing is midwest, I have cousins who did that as kids, although they wore the breadbags inside the boots, to keep the socks dry from the old holey boots…
Jim C
@Karen in GA: I would call what I’m saying an “Iowa Nice” way of saying, “Oh, bullshit, lady.”
And piratedan’s invocation of the “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch seems particularly apt.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I wore snow boots with grocery bags over my socks when playing in the snow as a kid. I could be a Senator!
Mike in NC
@JPL: Standard issue GOP hair helmet from the 1970s. Why mess with what works?
mai naem
@Jim C: Your parents had already pulled themselves up by their bootstraps unless they were black or non-white, in which case, the gubmint gave you the shoes.
Gin & Tonic
@BillinGlendaleCA: Did bread even come in bags then?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BD of MN: I’m having flashbacks… yup. Sandwich bags (pre-ziploc, red box with a smiley alligator) and bread bags, my parents had that children of the depression frugality. And we weren’t poor, and my recollection is it was pretty common in our leafy suburb in the early to mid-seventies
Mike in NC
@BillinGlendaleCA: Ever been to Iowa?
GregB
IF Joni Ernst and the Republicans get their way a lot of Americans will be using bread bags for contraception.
Central Planning
@BD of MN:
We did that as kids, but that was because we played outside all morning and got snow inside the boots which got them nice and wet. We didn’t want to put dry socks/feet back in, so we wrapper our feet in plastic bags.
My kids do it but they use the plastic bags from the grocery stores. Same thing – they are soaking wet because the snow gets in them, not because of holes.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m guessing her grandparents lived through the Depression, in which case they survived due to the federal government’s efforts. Reconcile that with your philosophy, Joni.
lamh36
Even Micheal Steele had to give it up for that Obama ad-lib…I expect his GOP brethren though to call it uppity or boastful…
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, well, replying to myself, cause that’s cool, but the Google tells me that plastic bags weren’t invented until 1957, and didn’t start being used for bread until the late 1960’s. Ernst was born in 1970, so maybe wearing bags was new and trendy then.
lol
@pseudonymous in nc:
Because Braley utterly and completely shit the bed, slept in it and then went out campaigning. He was that bad.
mai naem
@BD of MN: Not to get nitpicky here, but Ernst wouldn”t be able to see the bread bags inside boots that she saw on the bus.
Tweety’s being Tweety today. Making me laugh.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lamh36: I saw Michael Steele on the Hayes show yesterday, basically saying that Republican talk of poverty and inequality was hollow because they had no meaningful plans. He also, without a trace of irony, said lobbyists have too much influence in Washington. Hayes was much too nice in not reacting.
elftx
I don’t know about the breadbag story. Hell if her mom was as spendthrift as she claims, no way they would have bought bread. She would have made her own.
Otherwise I laughed like hell at her
Helen
@JPL: Yeah. Michelle looked awesome tonight. I don’t always say that about her. When she goes casual she sometimes misses. But when she gets dressed up and when she gets dressed up for a formal event – va va voom!!!
lamh36
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I find Hayes much to nice alot of the times, when he should be firmer. Maddow is very good at firm, yet still mannerful (sp?)
BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: My dad did as well; uphill, both to school and back home.
danielx
@JPL:
Evidently they’ve been taking notes about Callista Gingrich’s helmet hair; you couldn’t dent that woman’s do with a fire axe.
I won’t even get into the ‘Republican woman with the craziest eyes’ contest.
kc
What is this breadbag shit? (I wasn’t watching)
lamh36
hmmm, so NYT is first up with the butthurt…
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC: Actually, I have been to Iowa.
Anne Laurie
@Gin & Tonic: We used the plastic-bag trick in the Bronx in the early-to-mid 1960s, mostly because slush puddles at the curbs would soak your socks coming over the tops of your boots.
Also, they made those one-piece molded rubber boots easier for little kids to slide on & off, because we had to switch in & out of our navy-oxford uniform shoes at parochial school. You needed three bags per kid, though — the extra was for shoe transport.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Anne Laurie:
What’s a “slush puddle”?
ETA: Oh, and while you’re at it, what’s “Freezing Rain”?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@BD of MN:
I was getting ready to say the same thing. Joni, honey, the other kids made fun of you because U WERE DOING IT RONG! Plastic bags go inside the boots.
(Also, my mom usually used sandwich bags for my boots, because I don’t have big feet. What does she wear, a size 12?)
Anne Laurie
@BillinGlendaleCA: You lucky California bastid!
Don’t know if they have slush puddles in Ernst’s Iowa, but there’s plenty of pig slurry to spare.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): You know what they say about the correlation of shoe size and…
Gus
Her smile is weird. Couldn’t help thinking of this http://bit.ly/1yIAZxz
Gin & Tonic
@BillinGlendaleCA: what’s “Freezing Rain”?
DIAF.
Elizabelle
The Daily Show.
Jon Stewart decrying the lack of exciting candidates for 2016. If only someone exciting would run ….
Clip of Lindsey Graham.
Out comes a small marching band.
Graham tells Chuck Todd he’s thinking of running for president because he feels he’s been more right than wrong on issues.
Stewart: “Because you’re delusional!”
Cue the marching band.
ETA: edited!
tazj
The reason that I remember that children wore breadbags with their boots was because the boots that they made for kids went over your shoes and the bags made it easier to pull your boots off.
I was poor child in the 70’s and wore plenty of those boots with bags from kindergarten to second grade.
Violet
@Gus: Her entire face is weird. And her hair is bizarre.
Elizabelle
@Gus:
On point.
What is that photo? From a movie?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
And as many others have said, you didn’t put plastic bags over your socks because you had holes in your boots, you did it to keep your feet dry when snow and/or slush got into your boots. Every kid did it, rich or poor.
Have I mentioned lately how much I don’t miss dealing with all of that cold weather shit? It’s chilly tonight — meaning it’s in the 50s — and I like it that way.
scav
@Anne Laurie: Well, many Californians would actually recognize same as there’s also the pointy bits, where one does a lot of the slidey on long sticky bits, but let that pass. Many Californians at present might have trouble recognizing water in the wild as they’ve gotten out of the habit.
Helen
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Awww you have lead such a deprived life. When you’re 6 years old there is nothing better than a slush puddle.
I am with Annie Laurie on this. I grew up in the 60’s in a blue collar (then “middle class”) home. We wore plastic bags on our feet in our boots to keep our socks dry. It had nothing to do with being poor.
Gus
@Elizabelle: One of the Poltergeist movies.
Elizabelle
I vaguely remember wearing breadbags maybe once, on a snowy day in Hoosierland.
Not a successful experiment. My mom desisted.
Violet
I’m wondering why she wore her “good shoes” to school on snowy, slushy or rainy days. There’s no way a child growing up on a pig farm in Iowa wouldn’t have some type of boots. Put those on for the messy trip to school and change into the nicer shoes once you got there.
Bill Arnold
@Gin & Tonic:
Could have been a homemaking tip in a popular column or magazine, then. I vaguely recall bags-as-shoe-covers in the late 60s (NY suburb) but it wasn’t a regular thing. Bread bags were however saved, and repurposed. My folks (depression babies) were saving them through the 2000s.
Elizabelle
@Bill Arnold:
Housekeeping tips like rinsing out your coffee filters so you can reuse them depress me.
Elizabelle
#No more breadbags.
#F*ck Joni Ernst.
SiubhanDuinne
Well, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wearing breadbags as a prophylactic against slush, snow, and freezing rain. But what exactly was the point of turning it into the centerpiece of a high-profile SOTU response?
jl
@lamh36: Gawd almighty. The pundits and the corporate press are such a bag of prissy pompous jackasses. No wonder only oldsters, and repressed frightened oldsters at that. pay any attention to them anymore.
So, the GOP thought they would wise ass, and Obama had a come-back.
Or, did the NYT think that joke was written into the speech before hand, and it was just a coincidence that the Congressional GOP dissed him just before he said it. Or what?
Some stuff you see in the corporate media, its like a damn cartoon or something. Hard to believe it’s real sometimes.
Or maybe the Onion is hacking news sites.
Helen
@SiubhanDuinne: Cuz she was trying to show that she pulled herself up by her breadbag boot straps!
Adam
When Ernst (hopefully) loses in a couple of years, she could always have a second career staring in a David Lynch movie, So creepy.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne:
“The president was arrogant and the GOP respondent was in bread bags.”
There. Did your hard punditing for you.
Elizabelle
Now another Keystone pipeline ad on The Daily Show.
Violet
Wow. #breadbags is trending on Twitter.
Elie
I turned the teevee briefly to MSNBC and found Tweetie and Andrea Mitchell wringing their hands about “the reality” of the failed Obama foreign policy — that ISIS is not in control, that oh mercy me, what are we going to do, things are not solved there yet and there is no plan. I had to stop myself from screaming. There is a plan — you just don like it! And that Richard Engel is another neocon. I guess they all want the US back hip deep in the ME — fixing it — supposedly — AGAIN. I HATE THESE PEOPLE!!!!!
SatanicPanic
This breadbag thing is a common wingnut whine, like someone else mentioned it’s like saying they walking uphill to school in the snow. I have listened to wingnut radio about 3 times in the last 5 years, and one of the times I listened to it (for like 5 minutes) the radio wingnut brought up this very thing. That can’t have been coincidence.
Elizabelle
@Elie:
Tweety and Mrs. Greenspan are part of why I don’t watch MSNBC. Much happier without it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam:
Ernst is just starting a six-year term.
JPL
So my son missed the state of the union but caught the republican response… this is his chat
who is this lady talking she sounds like an idiot sounds like a bad infomercialand if you donate only 2 dollars a day you too can help a child in need wow that was bad
btw.. the son is quite successful but this is chat.. and that is response
Violet
Speaking of the NBC family, how’s Chuckles Toddler’s “Meet the Republicans” going? Ratings got any better?
John M. Burt
@Corner Stone: There probably is a minimum wage which would depress economic activity. All I know is, it’s never happened. I know that because if it ever had, every GOPer would be saying, “Yeah, sure, just like Rhode Island in 1979” or “like Copenhagen in 1987” or wherever it was — and since they aren’t, it has never happened.
Violet
GOP economic plan: a breadbag on every foot!
JPL
@Violet: Mock me if you will, but I have been known to use home depot bags on my head, if it started to rain when I left the store.
jl
I’m avoiding the pundit spew on the SOTU, but did notice this item
Rep. Steve King calls Obama’s SOTU guest a ‘deportable’
“Obama perverts ‘prosecutorial discretion’ by inviting a deportable to sit in place of honor at #SOTU w/1st Lady,” the Iowa lawmaker tweeted. “
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/steve-king-calls-obama-sotu-guest-deportable
I hope King gives the GOP response next year. No more nice-guy cheap soft focus Hallmark card knock-off feelgood schlock pablum platitudes for King, I bet you.
I love GOP outreach. I want more.
Corner Stone
Richard Engel seems to be quite a kook.
And that’s kind of sad, I think.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elie: I don’t know if Engel is a neocon so much as a liberal interventionist, he’s horrified by what he sees and he believes that the USA has a duty to do… something! A lot of journalists seem to have fallen in to this, Lara Logan, Michael Ware, Dexter Filkins to some extent.
Violet
@JPL: I’m a hippie commie liberal because I use the recycled, reusable bags over my head when it starts to rain. They’re bigger and work better anyway.
SatanicPanic
@John M. Burt: I love this logic and I am going to add it to my list of responses to people who oppose minimum wage.
Elie
@Elizabelle:
I generally don’t but was flipping around. What a bunch of assholes. Add EXPERT RICHARD ENGEL, sockpuppet neocon itching for a war that he can believe in to that list along with Chuchtodd- the short ugly troll
MomSense
What bothers me about Joni Ernst is that she uses being poor to lend herself credibility but I betcha that she will vote against food stamps for poor kids.
Ain’t no breadbags for your feet if your family can’t afford to buy bread.
jl
@John M. Burt: The size of the hikes proposed are small enough so even if they did have some adverse effects on labor market, would be hard to detect without lots of fancy statistics (which is why the research is so inconclusive and controversial).
Most evidence for adverse effects is for entry level effects for teenage workers.
Thing is, IMHO, proper macroeconomic management more important by an order of magnitude for real wages and job growth than bickering over very small bore microeconomic policies like restoring real minimum wage to what it was a couple of decades ago. But, economists are increasing obsessed with fancy statistics to do extremely ‘marginal’ analysis.
Elie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Lara Logan is a bonafide neoncon.. a fave of the Bushistas.
Sorry, I do not buy that Engel is not a neocon either. He doesn’t like the way things are and his solution is to make more and deeper war. Smells like a neocon to me.
Corner Stone
Welp, a Sen from ND talking up oil production?
SHOCKING!
Corner Stone
@MomSense:
Shit. That’s a no breadbagger bet right there.
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
Wow I just went back and looked at her campaign statements and sure enough she wants to eliminate food stamps. We should start a campaign about all those breadbags that won’t be able to keep kids’ feet warm and dry because they will be too full of bread.
jl
@Elie: Huh? I’ll be damned. I heard about a plan to deal with ISIS in the news several months back. Congressional hearing. generals talking all serious about it. So far, seems to have worked. I don’t hear about rapid ISIS advances anymore, and in some areas they have been pushed backed, and have received at least one significant military defeat that set them reeling.
But, pundits gotta pundit. And Tweety needs something to get his mind off HRC, who is even more frightening to him, for God knows what reason.
Edit: never mind. I forgot that US corporate media hack pundits don’t keep track of the news. Gets in the way of opinion mongering and audience pandering.
Violet
@MomSense: There’s zero way that if Joni Ernst grew up poor and had one pair of “good shoes” that her mother would have allowed her to wear those shoes out to wait for the school bus in an Iowa winter. I call bullshit on that. Her mom would have put her in her pig stall mucking-out boots and saved those “good shoes” for church on Sundays.
catclub
I just got a push poll. It was basically Hillary bashing. Bad thing Hillary did -then asking if such a thing would change your vote. The bad things were related to bank bonuses and bailouts. Since I live in Mississippi, I assume all polling is by the GOP. So this was strange. It seemed more like pushing Elizabeth Warren vs Hillary.
Suzanne
Teabaggers and breadbaggers 4 JESUS!
Elie
@MomSense:
Gawd, I just looked at part of her speech. What a phony! What a terrible delivery! Nothing authentic in the message at all. Phony baloney. This one won’t wear well. Watch..
And oh by the way, just as I predicted, that miserable piece of shit, Patrick Lynch of the NYPBA is getting his just deserts as the rank and file turn on his creepy ass. Turns out the cops wanted help not apologies from the Mayor… go figure…
Suzanne
@Elie: With any luck, it will have killed her political career before it really started. The SOTU Response is kind of bad for the GOP. McDonnell, Jindal, Rubio, Rodgers…..not so good.
Elie
@jl:
Yeah, I get most of my news anymore from BBC and AlJazeera on TV with a passing touch of CNN for contrast. I gave up like Elizabelle on MSNBC for the most part but the devil made me look tonight. I NEVER look at Fox.
jl
@catclub: Could be GOP. Just a new edition of their con game. Did you know that the 2016 Model Mitt Romney is very concerned about income inequality and lack of economic mobility, sluggish wage growth and the fate of the middle class?
I did not know that either, but Mitt Romney said so. White man, stands up on his hind legs in a suit and tie. Can talk nice. It must be true.
Man, how many times have the gulls fallen for this since the New Nixon?
Elie
@Suzanne:
Naw — I think its great.. I hope she lasts long enough to effectively minimize any success they have. My guess is that she has zero skills or persuasion .. tonight she was a stepford wife with blank eyes and a fixed phony smile. SU-EEEEEEE — go call those hogs, honey…
Cervantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Freud was cremated in London, where his ashes remain.
(And you think you are a foolish literalist.)
MomSense
@Violet: @Elie:
Why did she feel the need to tell that story as proof of how poor she was? Was it so she can somehow maintain that she cares when she takes food assistance away from families who need the help?
Just WTF was the reason for telling us that story? I don’t understand how the experience of being poor doesn’t make a person more determined to help those who need help.
Mike in NC
@MomSense: Oh, we can bet at least half of all Republican senators and Congresspersons collect those generous farm subsidies, can’t we?
Elie
Well what they hell story would she have told if it wasn’t that? She knew that the President was going to address wealth disparity. The woman doesn’t have a genuine bone in her body but she had to speak to something. Otherwise she would have to talk about her pig castrator. She might actually have been more authentic talking about that…
MomSense
@Mike in NC:
Especially if they are farmers from Iowa.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hope she gets some kind of royalty from TDS
@Cervantes: People in London heard an urn rattle….
MomSense
@Elie:
I just hate these Republicans. Is it Omnes who has a rule about assuming Republicans are assholes until they prove otherwise? The thing is that if they aren’t assholes it’s likely they aren’t Republicans.
Elie
The media, no matter what network, cannot bear that he is a commander in chief in command of himself, what his administration has accomplished, and what he intends to still accomplish. They can’t stand his confidence, his intelligence and yes, his big black balls.
jharp
I want to watch the instant replay of the “I won them both” moment.
I really liked that.
JoyfulA
@Violet: I just stole that for Twitter. Thank you!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jesus, Tweety hasn’t gone to bed yet? I thought Rachel or Hayes would’ve taken over by now.
pseudonymous in nc
@jl:
Steve Racist King fucked off out of the chamber like shit down a drain, as befits him.
Engel, Logan, et al. are War Correspondents, and there’s a bit of the war junkie about them, and you have to filter them through that.
andy
@pseudonymous in nc: Despoil? In the glorious wonderland of pig manure lagoons? That would be gilding the lily!
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@MomSense:
That’s the weird thing about the story, though — she’s using something that EVERYONE did as an example of how poor she was. I just checked with G, who also grew up in the Midwest and, yep, plastic bags on feet in the winter. It’s. What. We. Did.
It’s now starting to come across to me that she grew up comfortably middle-class and is desperately trying to dredge up a story that makes it sound like she was poor.
catclub
@jharp: Slate has it.
lamh36
so apparently Ted Cruz was giving his own SOTU response, but there was a “glitch” . the video was swiftly deleted but Cruz crew, but some enterprising person caught the video…
https://twitter.com/katherinemiller/status/557751104952623106
EPIC fail
SiubhanDuinne
@jharp:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=993943040625726
Hope this link works.
The second or third time you watch it, take a look a Boehner sticking his tongue out at POTUS.
tazj
@MomSense: I think that many people feel that it’s a badge of honor to have grown up poor and to have never taken government assistance. They believe that they’re stronger and tougher than other poor people. I think that these people for the most part don’t know real poverty and are ignorant of history or they wouldn’t believe in cutting foodstamps.
delk
Even these days in Chicago on those “so coldI give a fuck what I look like” days, you can see people with bread bags under their boots. They help keep the feet warm.
As a kid in the ’60’s we wore them over our shoes to make it easier to get the boots (galoushes) on, and to keep our feet dry. Boot technology sucked back then, all those stupid buckles or zippers.
These days with my Neo’s I don’t have to worry about getting my shoes wet. In fact, I look for slush puddles to walk through. Bonus points: the Neos have screw in cleats for walking on ice.
Anne Laurie
New post up top, with added Ernst truthiness!
Randy P
For those curious who speak Spanish, I tracked down the Cuberlo spanish-language response
I’m not fluent, but comparing to the Joni Ernst transcript (warning: Link to Politico) it did sound, as reported, pretty much a word-for-word translation. Except he did substitute his family story and Miami for hers and Red Oak. And no breadbags.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@tazj: perfect timing for Anne Laurie’s new post above
I turned on MSNBC to see if Tweety had stopped war-gasming, and he’s interviewing Ruth Wilson about The Affair, with Frank Bruni.
Does Rachel have food poisoning or something? Alex Wagner, Joy Reid? The whole crew taken out by bad sushi?
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s dry mouth from drinking.
slag
I’ll never understand the whole, “I was poor once, so FU,” perspective members of the GOP take.
To whom is their former impoverishment going to make their current moral bankruptcy more palatable? Is the breadbag the “I have a black friend” of class warfare?
Frankensteinbeck
@MomSense:
Shibboleth. Badge of identification. Given that the primary drive of the current Republican Party is racism, their first goal has to be making the not-rich party members who do the actual all-important voting understand it’s Us vs. Them. This is essential to…
@jl:
The phrase is ‘willing mark’. The GOP base wants everything to be black people’s fault. Everything to be liberals’ fault. They’re furious that they’ve been proven wrong about everything practical, and furious that they’ve been proven right that liberal policies improve minority equality. They need only the most token gesture to grab for so they can claim their guy is on their side and putting the screws to poor blacks will make everything better for all whites.
Mike in NC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No, Ernst is the new Palin, eligible for millions of wingnut welfare payoffs in magazine, newspaper, TV, and book deals. Pity the poor Whore from Wasilla.
Roger Moore
@MomSense:
Suffering doesn’t automatically give you empathy. Escaping poverty is a good example. An empathetic person who escapes from poverty will remember how awful it is and want to help others escape. A non-empathetic person who escapes from poverty will see their example as proof that poor people ought to be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and deserve no sympathy if they fail to do so.
xenos
@Helen: I grew up in a 1%er household in the 70s and use breadbasket over my socks in snow boots. You could stay out much longer in the snow that way.
Putting bags over the shoes would not work so well, but I could see a very poor person putting them over their kid’s sneakers in the absence of boots. If that is what happened to her than I can understand her feeling humiliated.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Roger Moore:
At this point, I’m pretty convinced that Ernst was never poor. She may not have been a 1%er, but she sure as shit wasn’t “poor.”
Violet
@Mike in NC: Sarah Palin campaigned for Ernst, so she’s got no one to blame but herself.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@xenos:
Frankly, I think Ernst is lying (or, more politely, exaggerating).
Darkrose
@SiubhanDuinne: That man has absolutely zero fucks left to give.
Next year’s SOTU is going to be EPIC.
cckids
@lamh36:
Ok, so, when in response to a factual statement, the Republicans were sarcastic jackasses, the President snapped them back a bit; so according to the NYT, OBAMA’s the non-bipartisan one? Uh huh.
Says soooo much about where journalism is.
another Holocene human
@MomSense: Well, they made it And they own it cuz they lost and usually that’s an end to it unless you’re a narcissistic ex-DA who lives in a machine state. Ahem.
Patricia Kayden
@jl: “a deportable”? Is he referring to a human being? Wow.
Never heard of bread bags as shoe covers before — not even in poor countries.
JR in WV
@MomSense:
I don’t know how she could have grown up poor when her family received nearly $500,000 in support payments from the Department of Agriculture. Other branches of her family also received nearly as much as her immediate family.
Plus what they really earned, as opposed to what was given to them, they sound more like rich than poor to me.
You know how to tell when a Republican is lying don’t you?
Their lips are moving!