The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[N.E. Brigand]

Wow. That was as high energy a State of the Union address as I've ever seen. And super aggressive too, which I think was the right approach.

[Frelga]

Is it my imagination or does Mike Johnson look like Ellen DeGeneres?

He definitely looks like he is not allowed to smile.

20240307_195732.jpg (71.81 KiB) Viewed 951 times

[N.E. Brigand]

And Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama opts for a quietly emotional kitchen speech. She lives in a world where "the American dream has turned into a nightmare" and dwells on the details of cartels raping women at the border.* But of course Britt loves rapists. We know that because she supports Donald Trump. And it's bold of her to criticize Biden for Putin's aggression. Anyway, Jonathan Swan got a copy of the talking points Republicans will be pushing:

Calling her "America's mom"
Comparing her to Reagan -- his Berlin speech + shining city on a hill
Contrasting her with Biden on age and "relatability"

She did defend in vitro fertilization in the state whose court banned it.

*Rachel Maddow just pointed out that Britt was one of the senators who helped write the bipartisan border bill ... which she then voted against.

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. James Lankford was the top Republican negotiating that bill:



Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut just pointed out that Sen. Britt said very little about what Republicans would do.

[N.E. Brigand]

And Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama opts for a quietly emotional kitchen speech.

Josh Marshall has a different characterization:



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Meanwhile President Biden took so long talking with members of Congress afterward that they started dimming the Giyaw House lights to get him to leave.

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And CNN just aired results of a flash poll of responses of viewers' reaction to the speech:
35% -- very positive
29% -- somewhat positive
35% -- negative

Viewers were also asked what direction President Biden's stated policies would move the country:
62% -- right direction -- and this was up 15% 17% from what viewers said before the speech
38% -- wrong direction

To be fair, the makeup of respondents 8% more Democratic than the general population.

(Edited to fix qwerty typo.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Oh this is great. Dave Weigel noticed something during President Biden's long, long exit:

JERRY NADLER: "Nobody's gonna talk about cognitive impairment now!"

BIDEN: "I kinda wish sometimes I was cognitively impaired."

And there's video:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yet another higher-than-expected job report.

US added 275,000 jobs in February as labor market stays hot

ETA:

[Frelga]

The Katie Britt speech is widely derided even by conservatives.

Twitter is having a field day with it, with one video combining her speech with the background music from the SPCA ads.

And really, a female Senator from Alabama making an important speech from the kitchen? As the internet used to say, OMGWTFBBQ

[N.E. Brigand]

Yet another higher-than-expected job report.

US added 275,000 jobs in February as labor market stays hot

The rate did go up to 3.9%, though, which is the highest it's been in those 25 straight months under 4%. (Can the streak extend another two months and tie for second place?) And both the December and January numbers were revised significantly downward. Still, a very good report!

[N.E. Brigand]

There's no pleasing some people:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Remember last year when MTG yelled "liar" at Biden's SOTU speech? This is the opposite of that.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Katie Britt speech is widely derided even by conservatives. Twitter is having a field day with it, with one video combining her speech with the background music from the SPCA ads. And really, a female Senator from Alabama making an important speech from the kitchen? As the internet used to say, OMGWTFBBQ.

Another indication of Republicans' concerns about the rebuttal is that they're sharing still images and text quotes today rather than video of the speech itself.

James Surowiecki notes that Britt doesn't normally sound that way:



(Alabama's other U.S. Senator is the former football coach, Tommy Tuberville.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Britt was lying, or at least very misleading, in the most dramatic part of her speech last night.

Here's what she said:

We know that President Biden didn't just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive orders in his first 100 days.

When I first took office, I did something different. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 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 shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on end.

We wouldn't be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it's past time we start acting like it.

President Biden's border crisis is a disgrace. It's despicable. And it's almost entirely preventable.

As you listened to that last night, or as you read it now, wouldn't you understand Britt to be saying that his woman was repeatedly raped in the U.S. at some point since Joe Biden became president in January 2021?

To be clear: what happened to that poor woman is horrible. But it happened in Mexico between 2004 and 2008.

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Britt was lying, or at least very misleading, in the most dramatic part of her speech last night. Here's what she said:

We know that President Biden didn't just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive orders in his first 100 days. When I first took office, I did something different. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 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 shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on end. We wouldn't be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it's past time we start acting like it.President Biden's border crisis is a disgrace. It's despicable. And it's almost entirely preventable.

As you listened to that last night, or as you read it now, wouldn't you understand Britt to be saying that his woman was repeatedly raped in the U.S. at some point since Joe Biden became president in January 2021? To be clear: what happened to that poor woman is horrible. But it happened in Mexico between 2004 and 2008.

In fact, the cartel victim, Karla Jacinto Romero, testified about her experience to Congress nine years ago!

Taken logically, the story that Sen. Britt re-shared on Thursday supports the idea that the U.S. should admit more refugees.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Remarkably, despite admitting that Britt was speaking about Romero, her Communications Director, Sean Ross, claimed that there was nothing misleading about her story.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... afficking/

[N.E. Brigand]

Remarkably, despite admitting that Britt was speaking about Romero, her Communications Director, Sean Ross, claimed that there was nothing misleading about her story.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... afficking/

Saturday Night Live opened tonight with a skit about the State of the Union and Sen. Britt's response. Britt was played by Scarlet Johannson, who successfully captured the vibe, I think. What I appreciated most is when she said that the horrific story she would be relating was true except for the year, location, and president.

And Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama opts for a quietly emotional kitchen speech. She lives in a world where "the American dream has turned into a nightmare" and dwells on the details of cartels raping women at the border.* But of course Britt loves rapists. We know that because she supports Donald Trump.

Timothy Snyder points out that it's even worse than I wrote Thursday.



Oh, and apprently Donald Trump's policies made it harder for such victims to get the help they need.

[N.E. Brigand]

A useful comparison:

[N.E. Brigand]

The Katie Britt speech is widely derided even by conservatives.

Here's video of some aghast right-wing commentators as Britt's speech ended:



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Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. says "the MAGA movement is the new Republican Party"; what existed before is gone.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That might be the most true thing Donald Trump, Jr. has ever said.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Britt has now been criticized by Romero herself, and it turns out that several other details of Britt's version of the story were either misleading or flat out wrong. Contrary to what Britt implied (though she did not direct say), she did not meet one on one with Romero; they met at anti-trafficking meeting at which a number of other politicians and anti-trafficking activists were present. That was misleading, but another detail that she explicitly stated was flat out wrong. She claimed that Romero "had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12." Romero was not sex-trafficked by the cartels, she was trafficked by a pimp who operated as part of a family that entrapped vulnerable girls to force them into prostitution who had nothing to do with the cartels.

Sex trafficking victim says Sen. Katie Britt telling her story during SOTU rebuttal is ‘not fair’