Lazy Caturday Reads: Skydancing Cats

Posted: March 9, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Cats, caturday, just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments
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Pepper, my brother’s sweet cat.

Happy Caturday!!

I overslept today, and I’m just getting going a 1PM Eastern. Today, I’m going to look at fallout from the strange and embarrassing Republican response to Biden’s SOTU by Alabama Senator Katie Britt.

The photos are of cats who live with my brother John (I don’t have cats of my own anymore, sadly), Dakinikat and JJ–Skydancing cats!

About Katie Britt:

Martin Pengelly at The Guardian: Republicans baffled by Katie Britt’s State of the Union response: ‘One of our biggest disasters.’

Katie Britt’s Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address drew reactions ranging from the baffled to the satirical to the appalled, even among fellow rightwingers.

“What the hell am I watching right now?” an unnamed Trump adviser told Rolling Stone.

“It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” another unnamed Republican strategist told the Daily Beast.

Delivering the official State of the Union response can be a thankless task, as the former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and the Florida senator Marco Rubio, deliverers of previously panned speeches, would ruefully attest.

Nonetheless, the 42-year-old Alabama senator is a rising Republican star, widely respected on Capitol Hill and her selection to respond to Biden was a golden opportunity to introduce herself to the wider American electorate.

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Another view of Pepper.

In his address Biden used his bully pulpit effectively, attacking Republicans in a fiery speech and inviting a strong response. But Britt’s speech, delivered with overt theatricality, oscillating in tone between the wholesome and the wholly horrific, did not land well even in her own party.

Charlie Kirk, founder of the far-right Turning Point USA youth group, said: “I’m sure Katie Britt is a sweet mom and person, but this speech is not what we need. Joe Biden just declared war on the American right and Katie Britt is talking like she’s hosting a cooking show, whispering about how Democrats ‘dont get it’.”

That pointed to widespread confusion over the setting for such a figure to give such an important speech: a kitchen.

As a Gallup poll showed 57% of American voters think the US would be better off if more women were in elected office, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump aide turned never-Trumper, said: “Senator Katie Britt is a very impressive person … I do not understand the decision to put her in a KITCHEN for one of the most important speeches she’s ever given.”

Speaking to CNN, Griffin added: “The staging of this was bizarre to me. Women can be both wives and mothers and also stateswomen, so to put her in a kitchen, not at a podium or in the Senate chamber where she was elected after running a hard-fought race, I think fell very flat and was completely confusing to some women watching it.”

More GOP reactions at the link.

From Alabama.com: Whitmire: Is Katie Britt for real?

Don’t adjust your television. What we saw wasn’t an AI deepfake. That was Katie Britt. That speech happened.

But don’t call it real.

The junior Senator from Alabama gave up being genuine a while back, and on Thursday night, her phoniness rose to the surface in full view of millions of Americans.

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One of Dakinikat’s three cats, Cristal.

There’s nothing I can quote from Britt’s speech that can convey the strangeness of it — the mismatched emotions, the smiles in the wrong places, the jaw clenched when it shouldn’t have been — just the indescribable weirdness. It was something that had to be seen, but even then, couldn’t be understood — like postmodernism, avant-garde performance art or an involuntary behavioral science experiment.

It was supposed to be a rebuttal to the State of the Union, but the best argument for Britt’s success was that, after it was over, no one was talking about Joe Biden’s speech.

Katie Britt glitched out on national television and left millions of Americans asking what the heck they just watched….

All she had to do was look into the camera and read, but she tried to do more. Too much more. Her handlers attempted to brand this political newcomer as “America’s mom,” but instead, she came off as the aunt who’s been spending too much time on Facebook, and if you don’t change the subject soon, she’s going to tell you about sex dungeons beneath the pizza parlor.

Click the link to read the rest.

New Jersey.com: Was Trump supporter Katie Britt caught in whopping lie about graphic sex trafficking story?

During her widely panned Republican response to the State of the Union Address on Thursday night, Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama told a graphic sex-trafficking story about a woman who was sexually abused “over and over” by members of Mexican drug cartels on the United States side of the Rio Grande.

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Baby Cristal was adorable.

Britt implied also that the woman had confided the story to her and that the events had occurred during President Biden’s administration.

But reporter Jonathan Katz, in a lengthy video posted to social media, connects the dots on the story, and it appears Britt lied: The woman has told her story many times publicly, including to Congress; the events didn’t occur in the United States; and they happened during George W. Bush’s presidency.

“When I first took office, I did something different,” Britt said. “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.”

She added: “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.”

WordPress won’t let me post Tweets but you can watch the video at the link above. It’s long but important.

Alexandra Petrii’s take on Britt from The Washington Post: Don’t go in the kitchen. I’m delivering a State of the Union response.

SWEETIE, please DON’T go in the KITCHEN. I am delivering my State of the Union response!

Fellow MOMS, if you are like me, you lie awake at 2 a.m., wondering how you can BE in three places at once: this KITCHEN, the Senate and the opening monologue of a Purge movie. But you see, we CAN do it, by WHISPERING slowly with an intensity usually reserved for WASP moms trying to prevent their daughters from making a SCENE in the J. Crew fitting rooms. (We’re not LEAVING yet PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER.) I am delivering these remarks in a WAY that makes you think this isn’t ACTUALLY my kitchen and I’m not SUPPOSED to BE here, but no one has dared REMOVE me because I am SPEAKING in a TONE that makes the PROSPECT of interrupting me TOO FRIGHTENING!

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Two of JJ’s cats. She will have to supply their names. Aren’t they cute?

JOE BIDEN is DITHERING and DIMINISHED! I am striking a CLEAR contrast by delivering my RESPONSE at a speed at which I cannot speak NORMALLY but must ENUNCIATE each WORD with the intensity of someone reading a PRAGER U text aloud at an OPEN CALL AUDITION. Usually WORDS delivered in this TONE are delivered at a VOLUME that makes them impossible to HEAR, and you have to GUESS them from the expression on the SLOWLY FALLING face of the customer service EMPLOYEE at whom they are DIRECTED!

NO you CANNOT access the fridge right now SWEETIE! I am GRAPHICALLY RECOUNTING A HORRIFIC ACCOUNT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT in a HUSHED WHISPER to spread FEAR about IMMIGRATION, which will hopefully prove that I am more REAGANESQUE yet also more MATERNAL than JOE BIDEN, a set of COMBINED characteristics I GUESS some FOCUS GROUP was looking FOR. Y’ALL!

I REPRESENT the state of ALABAMA in the SENATE, and you might have heard some SCARY things about in vitro fertilization, but I’m PROUD to tell you with a TWINKLE in my EYE that it is STILL LEGAL despite the BEST EFFORTS of my colleagues to TAKE IT FROM YOU. SOON, it will be the ONLY thing we MOMS can do with our BODIES that IS definitely LEGAL! Here is a SMILE! I am in a KITCHEN. “WE want to help LOVING MOMS AND DADS bring PRECIOUS LIFE into this world.” I have not stopped SMILING. This isn’t CHILLING! It’s FOLKSY! I am bringing WARMTH and also VERGE OF TEARS energy.

Read the rest at the WaPo.

Salon’s Amanda Marcotte explains the right wing concept of “tradwives,” of which Katie Britt is apparently an example: Biden said Republicans oppose women’s rights — Katie Britt’s “tradwife” response proved him right.

Politicians love to talk about their families, but in her Thursday night response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala. went even further, portraying her powerful position as little more than the hobby of a housewife. While allowing that it’s an “honor” to be a senator, Britt argued, “that’s not the job that matters most.” Instead, she said her real job is to be “a proud wife and mom of two school-aged kids.”

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Dinah lives with Dakinikat.

Britt seemed to want viewers to imagine her in an apron, gazing lovingly upon her family and realizing she must sacrifice some measure of domesticity for “the future of children.” It’s all nonsense, of course. She is exactly the “permanent politician” she accused Biden of being, as any perusal of her resume will show. Britt holds a political science degree and law degree from the University of Alabama. She went straight from graduation to work on the staff of her predecessor, Sen. Richard Shelby. She worked in private practice and government, but never as a full-time stay-at-home mother.

And yet, even as her colleagues were in D.C. for the speech, Britt framed herself as a hausfrau, talking about how “my husband, Wesley, and I just watched President Biden’s State of the Union Address from our living room.” Her address was filmed from her kitchen with an aesthetic that former White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri mocked as “‘tradwife,” which is internet slang for “traditional wife.” As feminist writer Jill Filipovic wrote, Britt’s was a message of who women should be: “Afraid, valued only for being mothers, and in the kitchen.” Republicans didn’t even bother to hide the sexist nostalgia they were angling for. As the New York Times reported, talking points circulated before the speech suggested Republicans call her “America’s mom.”

Just last week, the GOP nominated Donald Trump to be president, despite a New York judge recently finding that “Trump sexually abused — indeed, raped” journalist E. Jean Carroll. In his State of the Union speech, Biden blew off the long-standing lie that Republicans oppose abortion because of “life,” instead accusing Republicans of broadly opposing “reproductive freedom” and adding, “those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America.” The “pro-life” mask is fully off, proving feminists were right all along: Republicans just want to make women second-class citizens.

Read more at Salon.

Also by Amanda Marcotte at Salon: “Tradwives” offer an alluring vision of right-wing Christianity — online warriors are fighting back.

As social media stunts go, it’s hard to top this one: Give birth to your eighth child at age 33. Then, just two weeks later, compete in a beauty pageant, complete with a swimsuit competition. Hannah Neeleman, a “momfluencer” who has nearly 9 million followers for her Instagram account “Ballerina Farm,” did just that in January, strutting in the Mrs. World pageant after winning the Mrs. America pageant last year. “I don’t think there’s any shame in showing I just had a baby,” Neeleman told the New York Times. “Like, I’m not going to have a perfectly flat stomach.”

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JJ’s cat Cletus looks a little bit like Pepper.

Her videos and photos of the event suggest that whatever tummy imperfections she was confessing to were not visible to the naked eye.

This combination of faux humility and orchestrated perfection is intoxicating to some, infuriating to others and confusing to many. But what’s indisputable is that it’s hard to look away. It’s how this Utah resident built an online following of millions for a social media account that purports to portray the humble life of a former ballerina turned farm wife. (It’s fair to note that her family’s financial security has other sources: Her father-in-law founded JetBlue.)

Neeleman, with her bucolic images of grazing cattle and her sourdough recipes, is an especially successful example of the growing industry of social media influencers often described as “trad” (for “traditional”), or as “momfluencers” and “beige moms,” for the minimalist aesthetic that dominates this online universe. Some of these influencers are married couples and some are just women, but they all sell variations of the same fantasy: a simple-but-luxurious life with a loving husband and charming children, all for the low, low price of abandoning one’s ambitions of a career outside the home.

Read the rest at the Salon link above. This sounds like a throwback to what happened when I was a kid back in the 1950s and early 1960s, when society urged women to return to being housewives after many women held jobs during WWII.

But guess who loved Katie Britt’s speech? Igor Bobic at HuffPost: Tommy Tuberville Says ‘Housewife’ Katie Britt Gave A Good State Of The Union Speech.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville tried to praise fellow Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt for her response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union on Thursday, but landed himself in hot water in the process.

Asked if he had concerns with the setting of Britt’s speech ― she delivered it in her home kitchen in Alabama, which some on the left and right found in poor taste ― Tuberville said he didn’t, because “she was picked as a housewife, not just a senator.”

He added: “Somebody who sees it from a different perspective, you know ― education, family, all those things. … I mean, she did what she was asked to do. I thought she did a good job. And it’s hard when you’ve never done anything like that.”

Tuberville said he disagreed with critics of Britt’s delivery, panned by pundits on both sides of the aisle as being overly dramatic, and told HuffPost she did a good job.

“I thought the delivery was good. People were going to make fun of anybody. Some people like it, some people don’t,” Tuberville said.

Mostly people didn’t like it though.

More interesting stories:

Tori Otten at The New Republic: What Idiot Backed Trump’s Bond in E. Jean Carroll Trial? This One.

Donald Trump raised a lot of eyebrows on Friday when he finally posted bond for E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, amid reports that the former president is broke.

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Keely also lives with Daknikat. She’s so little and dainty.

Trump posted a $91.6 million bond, which covers the $83.3 million he was ordered to pay in damages for defaming Carroll and interest for putting off payment for so long. He had repeatedly tried to get the deadline to pay delayed or get the total ruling amount reduced, but the presiding judge struck him down every time.

But the question on everyone’s mind is, how did Trump get that money together? He appears to be struggling to post bond in his multiple lawsuits and reportedly only has about $413 million in liquid assets. That’s not nearly enough to cover everything he owes in legal fines.

It turns out that Trump may have called in a major favor: Court records filed Friday show that the bond was guaranteed by the Chubb Corporation, an insurance group. In 2018, Trump appointed Chubb’s CEO Evan Greenberg to a White House advisory committee for trade policy and negotiations.

Trump only just managed to make his deadline to post bond. He had to post and then appeal by March 11, or Carroll’s lawyers could start collecting on damages. But his financial woes are far from over.

[Emphasis added.]

Newsweek: Donald Trump’s $92M E. Jean Carroll Bond Raises Questions.

Donald Trump on Friday posted a $91.6 million bond as he appealed the verdict reached by a jury in January, which ordered the former president to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in compensation after he repeatedly defamed her.

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Veronica lives with J.J.

In 2023, a separate court concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll during the 1990s, then defamed her when she spoke out; the court instructed him to pay $5 million in damages.

The $91.6 million bond consisted of the $83.3 million judgment, along with 9 percent statutory interest added by the State of New York. It was guaranteed by the Federal Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Swiss-headquartered insurance company Chubb Group LLC.

This has sparked speculation on social media about why the Federal Insurance Company decided to guarantee Trump’s bond and who within the company made the decision. Chubb President and CEO Evan Greenberg has history with Trump, having served on his Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations from 2018 to 2022. The Washington Post reported it is “not clear from court records what collateral Trump presented to obtain the bond from Chubb.”

In a statement sent to Newsweek, Chubb Group said: “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on client-specific information. Our surety division provides appeal bonds in the normal course of business. These bonds are an ordinary and important part of the American justice system, protecting the rights of both defendants and plaintiffs. For defendants, appeal bonds ensure the opportunity to exercise the right to appeal an adverse judgment, which might otherwise be lost in the absence of a bond.

Hmmm.

One more scary piece from Josh Kovensky at Talking Points Memo: Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’

A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a “national divorce.”

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Like most cats, Pepper likes to squeeze into small spaces.

It sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s real. The group is called the Society for American Civic Renewal (the acronym is pronounced “sacker” by its members). It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a “trinitarian” Christian, heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to “secure a future for Christian families.”

It’s an uncanny mimicry of the clandestine engine that, in the right-wing’s furthest imaginings, has driven recent social changes and left them feeling isolated and under siege: a shadowy network occupying the commanding heights of business, politics, and culture, open only to a select, elite few, committed to reshaping the United States to align it with the group’s radical values.

The men TPM has identified as behind this group — and they are all men — have a few things in common. They’re all a certain kind of devout Christian traditionalist. They are white. They have means, financial and social, and are engaged in politics.

Until TPM began reporting this story several weeks ago, the membership of the group had remained largely secret. Its existence was known and has been previously reported on by The Guardian, but the details of the group’s mission, membership criteria, board, and internal communications remained outside of public view. Beginning late Thursday, some of the leading members of the group identified by TPM through our reporting came forward publicly to acknowledge their memberships in the organization and published an internal document that TPM had already obtained. They said they were doing so in anticipation of another story by The Guardian.

Read the rest at TPM.

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The late great Miles, friend of Dakninkat.

That’s my offering for today. I hope you all are enjoying the weekend!!