Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Second rate reporter says what?

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Consistently wrong since 2002

No Justins, No Peace

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Post-SotU Open Thread

Post-SotU Open Thread

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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:

The “Gillibrand 2016” train starts there…

Reader Interactions

234Comments

  3. 3.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    But it was a great speech. Cynicism only helps the conservative cause, ultimately. It’s good that our President understands that.

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Did Tweety get a thrill up his leg, or is he troubled that Obama “spiked the ball”?

  10. 10.

    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.

  11. 11.

    slag

    On wh.gov, Dan Pfeiffer laughs at the idea that Rmoney poses a “political vulnerability” on poverty. Or possibly on anything, I suppose.

  17. 17.

    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.

  19. 19.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    And Steve Schmidt reminds me why I quit watching MSNBC months ago. Isis! Isis! Isis!

  22. 22.

    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!”

  26. 26.

    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.

  28. 28.

    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.

  31. 31.

    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.

  32. 32.

    Dexter

    Twitter tells me that Rmoney thinks that Obama SOTU is “disappointing” and “a missed opportunity to lead”.

  36. 36.

    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.

  39. 39.

    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.

  41. 41.

    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.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    @Suzanne:

    SHIFTY.

    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?

  44. 44.

    Corner Stone

    Sorry. She absolutely spooks me right the fuck out.
    Good Christ but she is awful.
    Is she a robot?

  46. 46.

    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.

  47. 47.

    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.

  50. 50.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Elizabelle:

    Iowa! What did we ever do to you?

    Home of Steve Racist King, also too. So, fuck Iowa, mostly. Sorry about that.

    I’m not watching Senator Wonderbread Pigdeballer.

  53. 53.

    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?

  57. 57.

    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… )

  58. 58.

    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.

  61. 61.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Old Dan and Little Ann:

    Keystone will benefit nature.

    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?

  71. 71.

    Elizabelle

    “Just look at my parents and grandparents.”

    And I look at them. And they’re wearing bread bags too!

  74. 74.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Hardee’s?

    anybody seen a live blog from Pierce? I could’ve sworn he said he was gonna

  75. 75.

    SiubhanDuinne

    My grandparents had nothing to call their own except the sweat on their brow and the dirt on their hands.

    Mmmm. Okay.

  76. 76.

    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!

  82. 82.

    slag

    Pfeiffer: “Theoretically, there should be common ground” btwn Dems and Reps. Heavy emphasis on “theoretically”.

  88. 88.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anne Laurie: @Corner Stone: It’s like she didn’t need that castrating tool Lindsey Graham gave her.

    I think people in Vienna heard Freud scratching on the top of his box to get out and comment on that

  90. 90.

    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.

  92. 92.

    jl

    Strike out a few words and that response would be good for the next hundred years. A response for the ages.

  95. 95.

    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….

  96. 96.

    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.

  99. 99.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    How did this women ever get elected to the Senate.

    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.

  106. 106.

    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.

  107. 107.

    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?

  108. 108.

    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.

  109. 109.

    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!

  113. 113.

    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.

  114. 114.

    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

  115. 115.

    TS

    @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.

    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.

  116. 116.

    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.

  117. 117.

    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.

  118. 118.

    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…

  119. 119.

    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.

  120. 120.

    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!

  122. 122.

    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.

  124. 124.

    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

  126. 126.

    GregB

    IF Joni Ernst and the Republicans get their way a lot of Americans will be using bread bags for contraception.

  127. 127.

    Central Planning

    @BD of MN:

    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…

    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.

  128. 128.

    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.

  130. 130.

    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.

  132. 132.

    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.

  133. 133.

    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.

  134. 134.

    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

  135. 135.

    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!!!

  138. 138.

    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.

  140. 140.

    lamh36

    hmmm, so NYT is first up with the butthurt…

    “In much of President Obama’s State of the Union speech, he discussed unifying themes.

    But in one off-script moment, he flashed his notoriously competitive side.

    Mr. Obama likes to remind voters that his days of running for office are over and he did so on Tuesday night, offering, “I have no more campaigns to run.”

    The Republican side of the chamber broke out in cheers and Mr. Obama, cracking a sly smile, responded: “I know because I won them both.”

    After that, it was back to bipartisanship.”

  142. 142.

    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.

  143. 143.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Anne Laurie:

    mostly because slush puddles at the curbs would soak your socks.

    What’s a “slush puddle”?

    ETA: Oh, and while you’re at it, what’s “Freezing Rain”?

  144. 144.

    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?)

  149. 149.

    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!

  150. 150.

    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.

  153. 153.

    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.

  154. 154.

    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.

  155. 155.

    Helen

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    What’s a “slush puddle”?

    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.

  157. 157.

    Elizabelle

    I vaguely remember wearing breadbags maybe once, on a snowy day in Hoosierland.

    Not a successful experiment. My mom desisted.

  158. 158.

    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.

  159. 159.

    Bill Arnold

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Ernst was born in 1970, so maybe wearing bags was new and trendy then.

    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.

  162. 162.

    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?

  163. 163.

    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.

  165. 165.

    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.

  169. 169.

    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!!!!!

  170. 170.

    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.

  173. 173.

    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

  174. 174.

    Violet

    Speaking of the NBC family, how’s Chuckles Toddler’s “Meet the Republicans” going? Ratings got any better?

  175. 175.

    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.

  177. 177.

    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.

  178. 178.

    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.

  180. 180.

    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.

  181. 181.

    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.

  183. 183.

    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

  184. 184.

    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.

  185. 185.

    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.

  186. 186.

    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.

  189. 189.

    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.

  190. 190.

    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.

  191. 191.

    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.

  192. 192.

    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.

  194. 194.

    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…

  195. 195.

    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.

  196. 196.

    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.

  197. 197.

    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?

  198. 198.

    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…

  200. 200.

    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.

  201. 201.

    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?

  202. 202.

    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…

  204. 204.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Lizz Winstead @ lizzwinstead · 1h 1 hour ago
    I also wore kleenex on my fucking head when we went to church because we couldn’t afford chapel veils. Take that Joni Ernst! #SOTU #BNRNews

    I hope she gets some kind of royalty from TDS

    @Cervantes: People in London heard an urn rattle….

  205. 205.

    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.

  206. 206.

    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.

  209. 209.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Jesus, Tweety hasn’t gone to bed yet? I thought Rachel or Hayes would’ve taken over by now.

  210. 210.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @jl:

    I hope King gives the GOP response next year.

    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.

  212. 212.

    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.

  216. 216.

    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.

  217. 217.

    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.

  220. 220.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @tazj: perfect timing for Anne Laurie’s new post above

    Relatives of Ernst (née: Culver), based in Red Oak, Iowa (population: 5,568) have received over $460,000 in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009.

    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?

  222. 222.

    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?

  223. 223.

    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.

  225. 225.

    Roger Moore

    @MomSense:

    I don’t understand how the experience of being poor doesn’t make a person more determined to help those who need help.

    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.

  226. 226.

    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.

  231. 231.

    cckids

    @lamh36:

    In much of President Obama’s State of the Union speech, he discussed unifying themes.

    But in one off-script moment, he flashed his notoriously competitive side.

    Mr. Obama likes to remind voters that his days of running for office are over and he did so on Tuesday night, offering, “I have no more campaigns to run.”

    The Republican side of the chamber broke out in cheers and Mr. Obama, cracking a sly smile, responded: “I know because I won them both.”

    After that, it was back to bipartisanship.”

    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.

  232. 232.

    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.

  233. 233.

    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.

  234. 234.

    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!

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