Thursday Reads
Posted: February 9, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Good Morning!!
This is the week that the GOP crazies are really coming out of the woodwork. On Tuesday, we saw them heckle the President Biden during his State of the Union Address. Then yesterday the House Oversight Committee held an insane hearing on supposed Twitter persecution of Republicans. And today the subcommittee on the “weaponization of government” will meet for the first time. I can’t watch these GOP clown shows, but fortunately, Aaron Rupar does watch post video clips of them on Twitter.
Reactions to the SOTU
I really liked this piece by Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost: The Best Part Of Joe Biden’s SOTU Address Happened After It Was Over.
On Tuesday night, millions of people tuned in to watch President Joe Biden deliver his State of the Union address to the nation.
But the best part of the night happened right after Biden’s speech was over, when most (but not all) networks weren’t airing his comments anymore and he made his way through the crowd. It was here, where the president could actually talk to all the dignitaries, members of Congress and other people in the room, that he was truly in his element.
After formally addressing the country for about an hour and 10 minutes, Biden spent another 20 minutes cracking jokes with Supreme Court justices, telling stories, taking countless selfies, talking to people’s kids on cell phones, listening to Democratic and Republican lawmakers’ requests for help, and offering comfort to people who needed it.
“Hey, big Jon!” Biden shouted at Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), hand outstretched, barely a minute after he’d stepped down from the dais. Immediately surrounded by about a dozen senators and House members eager to shake his hand, the president took the time to talk to all of them before drifting over to Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who solemnly stood nearby with some other high-ranking military leaders.
Motioning to his own shoulders, Biden jokingly called out to a four-star general in uniform, “Aren’t those stars heavy?”
When Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and John Roberts passed by, the president stopped them to apologize for making them listen to his speech.
“Sorry. Sorry you guys had to sit there,” he said, as Kagan looked briefly confused and started laughing. “I apologize.”
It was like watching a pinball bounce around the game board. Biden jumped from one group of people to the next, to the next, to the next, in absolutely no rush to leave and seemingly energized by every minute of being able to engage with real live people. And here he was back in the building he’d spent decades of his life working in ― a second home of sorts. Why ever leave?
Biden certainly seems energized. What a contrast to whiny old man Trump! I think Republicans should be worried about 2024.
This is an interesting take from Josh Barro: Biden’s State of the Union Was a Feisty Return to ’90s Politics. Republicans Should Be Afraid.
One of the implicit promises of the Biden presidential campaign was to turn back the political clock to a more normal time, before Donald Trump made everything weird. COVID delayed that process, but I think we’re finally getting there, and last night’s State of the Union address was a demonstration of that. What I did not anticipate was how far back we would go.
Biden’s speech was right out of the ‘90s in a way that I think was very politically savvy for the president and his team, and it previews how they are likely to run a re-election campaign against Gov. Ron DeSantis, if he is the Republican nominee.
Here’s what was so ‘90s about Biden’s speech.
After Clinton stepped on a rake with his health care plan and lost both houses of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections, he got himself to an eight-point re-election victory 1996 by running on two key themes:
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Republicans are right-wing lunatics who want to cut your Social Security and Medicare, and I will never let them do that.
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Here’s a bunch of popular, small-bore ideas that I can work to implement on a bipartisan basis with those Republican lunatics.
Biden’s speech yesterday had a lot from column 1 and a lot from column 2. I’m going to save the bipartisanship talk for tomorrow’s newsletter. Today, let’s talk about entitlements, and Biden’s effective and Clintonesque sowing of fear, uncertainty and doubt about Republicans’ stewardship of popular benefit programs.
Biden noted that while many Republicans say they are officially committed to protecting Social Security and Medicare, there are some who have been talking about undermining the programs. Republicans booed and jeered that this was a lie — ensuring that the accusation would be at the center of today’s news coverage of the speech.
And today, as Biden has been out campaigning, he read from a brochure from last cycle’s NRSC chair, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, about Scott’s plan to sunset all government programs — including Social Security and Medicare — every five years.
Barro goes on to discuss Ron De Santis’s arguments against Social Security. Read it at the link.
The Washington Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf has another take on the Social Security issue: GOP hopefuls’ past positions on Social Security loom over 2024 primary.
Donald Trump is going on the attack against potential rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination over Social Security and Medicare, seizing on the same GOP divisions over federal spending that President Biden is seeking to exploit.
Trump moved to wield the issue as a wedge in the primary, particularly against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with a video message last month urging Republicans to use negotiations over raising the debt ceiling to cut spending but not “a single penny” from Social Security or Medicare. He also posted a short video clip of a younger DeSantis praising Paul D. Ryan, the former House budget chairman from Wisconsin who famously proposed replacing Medicare with giving seniors money for private health insurance.
The emphasis reflects potential vulnerability for Republican rivals who were elected to powerful posts in the pre-Trump tea party era, embracing austerity in the last showdown over raising the federal debt limit. As Trump’s campaign has signaled an interest in stoking debate over entitlements, Biden used his State of the Union address on Tuesday to similarly bait Republicans, producing a rowdy spectacle in which they booed his accusation that they want to cut Social Security and Medicare.
“President Trump has been clear where he stands on the issue,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “Others will have to decide which side they’re on. And others will have to answer to past positions they’ve taken.”
Not that anyone should trust Trump, but at least he recognizes this as a problem for Republicans. Read more examples of statements Republican presidential hopefuls have made against Social Security and Medicare at the WaPo link.
GOP heckling at the SOTU
Republicans who have clearly opposed Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs were outraged that President Biden had the nerve to call them out. Hence the unprofessional heckling that Biden used to his advantage.
The Hill: GOP divided over whether heckling Biden hurts them.
House Republicans are divided on whether the raucous heckling of President Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night was inappropriate — or whether it helped them effectively communicate their position to the American public.
Many Republicans thought the uproar in response to Biden’s comment accusing Republicans of wanting to sunset Social Security and Medicare was justified, blaming the president for “instigating” a desired reaction that would put Republicans in a bad light. But some expressed doubts about the rowdiness that followed.
The claim about Social Security was the first to draw such an audible reaction from Republicans, who are fighting for spending cuts as a condition of raising the debt ceiling and seeking to sell those cuts to the American public.
“He started off, I thought, wonderfully. … But then you can’t stand up there and blatantly lie,” Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) said. “So as much as I wish we had had more decorum, OK, you are instigating that behavior. So it starts with the leader.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also put the blame on Biden.
“The president was trying to goad the members, and the members are passionate about it,” McCarthy said on Fox News Wednesday morning. “But the one thing that the president was saying was something that he knew was not true.”
Though Republicans have sought for decades to privatize Social Security and cut Medicare — and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) released a proposal last year to sunset all federal programs after five years — McCarthy has repeatedly said that cuts to entitlement programs are “off the table” in debt ceiling talks, which he launched with Biden last week.
Is this hate speech? I hesitated to post it but…. HuffPost: James Carville Attacks GOP, Marjorie Taylor Greene As ‘White Trash’
Democratic political consultant James Carville on Wednesday described Republican lawmakers who heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union speech as “white trash.”
“I tell people I have the equivalent of a PhD in white trashology, and we saw real white trash on display,” Carville told MSNBC anchor Ari Melber.
Carville singled out far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), saying she “dresses like white trash” and should take fashion advice from serial liar Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), in a video shared by Mediaite.
“The level of white trashdom in the Republican Party is staggering,” Carville added. “I mean, for somebody that has observed it for a long time like I have, I’ve never seen it manifest itself on a level that it’s manifesting itself.”
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Carville slammed the GOP for fielding “very low-quality candidates” and suggested the reason:
“They have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries. They really do. I’m not really supposed to say that, but it’s obvious fact. And you know, when stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people.”
Then there was the GOP rebuttal:
I have to wrap up this post, because I have a virtual doctor’s appointment soon. But here are some interesting reads on the wacky House hearing yesterday on how Twitter supposedly allowed the FBI to control their treatment of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the one coming up today about “weaponization of the government.”
Rolling Stone: Twitter Kept Entire ‘Database’ of Republican Requests to Censor Posts.
The Guardian: Ex-Twitter exec details ‘homophobic and antisemitic’ abuse over handling of Hunter Biden story.
The Washington Post: GOP lawmakers allege Big Tech conspiracy, even as ex-Twitter employees rebut them.
NBC News: New House committee on ‘weaponization’ of government to hold first hearing.
Roll Call: House ‘Weaponization’ hearing to take aim at Justice Department.
Have a great Thursday, Sky Dancers!!
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Carville is right. And, no, it’s not hate speech. The essence of hate speech is wanting to hurt. It’s not trying to communicate, it’s trying to use language as a weapon. Carville is saying something true: they _are_ white trash. He’s trying to wake people up to what he knows. Just because the truth can hurt doesn’t mean he’s using it as a weapon.
And it’s about bloody time the country faced the truth about these bozos. This business of getting the vapors every time somebody points out they’re deplorable is just delivering us into their hands!
(PS, Luna, can you check email again? First msg bounced back. I sent another around the 7th.)
Replied last night! You should have gotten it by now.
Re-sent just now with different subject line. Also noticed that your prior email got thru but had a message saying it was put into spam because it was similar to other messages that it though were spam. Its thinking is quite unhinged. I haven’t gotten anything like your message which was spam.
Damn google algorithms.
jeebus. all’s well that ends well. Thanks for persevering!
Here’s what these racist , misogynist, white christian supremacists have brought to neighborhoods everywhere:
This is horrible. Thanks for posting it.
WTH?????
Florida Holds Books “Under Review” Including Pirates Legend Roberto Clemente And Other Baseball Historical Figures
https://rumbunter.com/posts/florida-holds-books-under-review-including-pirates-legend-roberto-clemente-and-other-baseball-historical-figures-01grpx0h09vk
Book about Hank Aaron under review by Duval Public Schools, along with 25 others
A children’s book that focuses on Hank Aaron overcoming segregation as a teenaged baseball player in Jacksonville is under review to be rejected by Duval Schools.
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/duval-schools-reviewing-henry-aarons-dream-for-inclusion-in-school-libraries/77-4652081f-d30d-44f1-afd1-d247e430ec24
Florida is a Fascist state
The serious side of ‘mansplaining’ has been lost. That’s where the harm begins
Rebecca Solnit
The key context of the word inspired by my 2008 essay is that mansplaining is one part of a huge problem – of who gets listened to, and who gets believed
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/09/mansplaining-word-problem-rebecca-solnit
Heaven help us if ‘mansplaining’ describes men’s behavior, instead of being intersectional.
Thanks! I’m wanted to hear what everyone thought and was beginning to think it wouldn’t be found here. I was about to transfer it up to today’s thread.