So again, the transformative agenda, the president was knowledgeable. I mean, he knows chapter [inaudible 00:04:20] because he wrote this, he campaigned on this. He spoke to this in his state of the union address. I told him last night, on phone last night, but today in front of our colleagues, that when he gave that state of the union address, we were sitting behind him, the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, and the speaker of the House, me. And people said, “How did it feel? How did it feel? The two women.” I said, “Well, that was exciting and historic.” What was really exciting is the speech the president made about women, not about two women, but America’s women, and what would happen with this progressive agenda that he was putting forth. At the same time, we’re moving forward with BIF, a once in a century chance to rebuild the infrastructure that past the Senate a while back. The BIF has good things and it has missing things. And of course, the fact that we have the reconciliation… Let me not call it that anymore, let’s call it the Build Back Better legislation is essential because that’s where we have the major investment in climate. Although there is some in the BIF. Roads, bridges, water systems, crumbling. Some water systems are over 100 years made of, and our colleagues talked about their own experiences in their own communities, some made of bricks and wood. That’s a nice water system, right?
I'll just say it myself so I don't get 100 comments in moderation all saying this: If Trump spoke with that level of coherence, he would have been derided as a blithering idiot.
I'll add that I pretty much always could understand Trump, and I can understand Pelosi there too. It's a kind of stream of consciousness that people are feeling okay doing in public these days. It's like wearing casual clothes. It feels more like direct thoughts, and I think people more or less like it when it comes from someone they like, and they enjoy the easy mockery they can do when it's someone they don't like.
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Nancy’s speechifying is annoying not for her elliptical obfuscatory stylings so much as the fact it is usually, as in this case, one-hundred per cent bullshit. Neither of these bills have any more than a tiny portion that addresses infrastructure. It’s crazy social engineering schemes that are now not even funded in order to give the appearance of being “revenue neutral,” which as appearances go are as honest as that “first four-star female” crap Joe was peddling last week.
It's a bit free-form, but her point is easily understandable.
The problem is not the rhetorical drifting, but the conflating of climate mitigation efforts with infrastructure. Climate mitigation is a vague, touchy-feely black hole where unlimited graft and corruption can fit nicely. Whereas infrastructure is necessary upkeep of the literal foundations of our society.
An infrastructure bill that does not keep these two things separate will ultimately do far more damage to infrastructure than would be done by mere inaction. At least doing nothing does not impoverish us, leaving us unable to fix tomorrow what we did not fix today.
Okay, here's my moderated comment, "If Trump spoke with [Nancy's] level of coherence, he would have been derided as a blithering idiot."
Trump was throwing sand in the gears of the media. One politically incorrect truth per line.
Trump's medium is the one-liner.
OK, so you have the pre-emptive attack on your commenters.
But what other point was there to posting Pelosi's remarks? Because all that YOU do is use her remarks to TALK ABOUT TRUMP.
Actually, most folks here would NOT have brought up Trump -- just one particular person and now apparently you.
They might have focused on things like the fact that NO ONE REALLY CARED that there were two women standing behind Biden. And the fact that no one cares is real progress. Or they might note that Pelosi relying on a MAN to give benefits to women is a step backward.
The video is much worse than the transcription. What a joke she is. The two most powerful Democrats in the U.S., neither can talk without slurping.
This is the best we can do?
In a well functioning country, both of these people would have ceded control to the next generation long ago. Let the young 65 year old whipper snappers take it from here.
Neither Pelosi or Biden are mentally capable of doing their jobs.
We are in BIG trouble.
I'll just say it myself so I don't get 100 comments in moderation all saying this: If Trump spoke with that level of coherence, he would have been derided as a blithering idiot.
Thank you.
Please do this more. It allows your comment section to do better work.
“…It’s like wearing casual clothes.” Well, IMHO if Trump was wearing khaki slacks and a polo shirt, Pelosi is standing naked with fecal slurry down her leg.
The difference between Trump and Pelosi is that Trump was actually trying to help Americans and Pelosi is a corrupt grifter that is selling Americans out.
The difference between the country with Trump in charge and Pelosi's masters in charge is obvious and striking.
Even a solid number of democrats, despite their limitations mentally, are noticing.
Order=5
What was really exciting is the speaker of the House, me. And people said, “Well, that was really exciting is the speech the president made about women, and what was really exciting is the speech the president of the United States, Kamala Harris, and the speaker of the union address, we were sitting behind him, the vice president made about their own experiences in his state of the United States, Kamala Harris, and the United States, Kamala Harris, and the speech the president was knowledgeable.“
I must be missing something. It doesn't read that badly.
Compared to Biden, however, it's Shakespeare.
I'll go with this format for now on: If Althouse states what I'm thinking, I'll just back off.
Nancy has always been a terrible retail speaker. The fine art of saying a lot while saying nothing at all.
The bigger problem for me is the obvious corruption she and her husband have had for a long time, combined with her emphasis on big spending with minimal insight into what is being spent.
Pelosi is afflicted with a lack of self-awareness, ill-fitting dentures and diarrhea of the mouth. An ambulatory bag of vomit.
Most people don't actually talk like this when acting in an official or professional capacity, not as a general rule, and it's a little sad that we now have to pretend that this is normal and fun because Democrat politicians are doing it.
It would be interesting to go back 20 years and see if Nancy was talking like this back then.
"I must be missing something. It doesn't read that badly."
That's, in part, because whoever transcribed it left out a lot of things she said.
At the same time, we’re moving forward with BIF, a once in a century chance to rebuild the infrastructure that past the Senate a while back. The BIF has good things and it has missing things.
"Past" or passed?
tim maguire said...
"Climate mitigation is a vague, touchy-feely black hole"
Opportunities for graft combined with social control. This is what gives socialists an orgasm.
Pelosi could be the worst thing to happen to the Democrats since the Civil War. She is so "unrelatable" and unrepresentative of most Americans, and aging has only made it worse. I suppose if one agrees with her and is one of the few who actually like her, her speech patterns won't be a problem, but her voice and mannerisms grate on the rest of us like no other politician out there.
For any politician there are certain places one has to go -- themes one has to touch on == so Pelosi makes a mandatory stop at empowering women, when her subject is supposed to be infrastructure. I suppose that's similar to Trump, except the stop would be at something like "CNN is Fake News." That's very different from Biden's excursions into his own past which have no connection to any current concerns. But if you like, you can find Biden's palaver "grandfatherly." If your grandmother was anything like Pelosi, she must have been quite a psychological burden for subsequent generations to bear.
"Thank you. Please do this more. It allows your comment section to do better work."
That may be sarcasm. (Who can tell anymore?) But I am going to do this more. I like the idea of imagining what commenters are about to say, nailing it down myself (so you don't talk down to me and act like I didn't think of that), and have that as a basic standard that you want to top.
Especially with moderation on, there is a danger that the post so obviously triggers a particular response that lots of people will feel they need to say it, and that's wasting your energy (and letting you undervalue what I've written (it's vaguely annoying to see people assume I didn't understand that there's an obvious response)).
On the other hand, I value brevity, but this is a situation where there will be more overall brevity if I don't create this feeling that you must say X and then 20 people write X before any comments are posted. You don't know you're being repetitious, so I'm going to (sometimes) rescue you from this fate.
The late Mort Sahl got his start mocking the rhetorical stylings of Dwight Eisenhower.
"I'll go with this format for now on: If Althouse states what I'm thinking, I'll just back off."
An alternative is to see it as a boost to get to the next thing.
How the hell can you understand anything she says with her hands flailing around like a drunken heathen??
She’s clueless that the BBB bill is exactly what people do not want! The poll numbers are abysmal for these “reconciliation” policies, with most people thinking these expenditures are way over the line given the state of the economy. There is no focus on things we do care about - none on the supply chain, none on inflation, none on energy independence, none on getting people back to work.
How do these major policy changes get into a reconciliation bill anyway? Free pre-K is just a budget item? A climate corp to wander around the country with our tax dollars spying on our businesses and residences is just a budget item? Installing 500,000 EV charging stations to service 2% of the automobiles in our country - when we taxpayers never paid for the installation of gas stations - is just a budget item?
Pelosi deserves this sort of treatment, which is the best I’ve seen: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/featured/armstrong-and-getty/content/2021-11-01-watch-listen-lgb-the-lets-go-brandon-song/
The next thing is, why is an octogenarian Speaker of the House? Why does America, unique among developed countries, have all these superannuated politicians in positions of power? Fifteen Senators in their 80s, 44 percent of the Senate over the age of 70? In other countries almost all of these people are on the golf course, in the hot tub, taking cruises, playing with their grandchildren ... why do these people cling to power?
Answer: It's the corruption. They are amassing generational wealth. It's not that the system is corrupted, it's that corruption is the system. You can't understand their reaction to Trump unless you understand this.
"It's a kind of stream of consciousness that people are feeling okay doing in public these days. It's like wearing casual clothes."
True dat. But, with Biden and Pelosi, its more like your your crazy aunt's bathrobe, opening up sights no one needs to see.
She has been having her own cognitive issues for the past few years now.
Maybe (just like airline pilots to tie into recent themes) have a maximum age for public office.
Nobody can be elected after their 75th birthday.
In the case of the Supreme Court, you must retire on your 80th birthday when the term ends.
The problem with Pelosi's speech is not the form, but the content (or lack of ut).
"...I think people more or less like it when it comes from someone they like, and they enjoy the easy mockery they can do when it's someone they don't like."
The same people who gave Bush and Trump a pass on verbal gaffes like to point out Biden's clumsy speech. Proves your point.
'We have to pass it to find out what is in it.' Everything Nancy says can be distilled down to that.
+ shoplifting in CA is a nice gift from Nancy.
“The bigger problem for me is the obvious corruption she and her husband have had for a long time, combined with her emphasis on big spending with minimal insight into what is being spent.”
And that is because they don’t really care either what is being spent. What is important to them is that it is being spent. It’s the graft that is important, and that depends, go a very great extent on the quantity of money being spent. She would be just as happy pushing a 750 ship Navy, if that were what her caucus wanted.
Part of what is scary right now about Pelosi is that she and her husband are no longer pretending to be honest. They are no longer bothering to hide their graft and corruption. Her gloating over her subzero freezer and gourmet ice cream was bad. But her husband was caught at least three times, already, this year by conservative media, front running company announcements based on inside information given Congress under oath and guarantees of confidentiality. It was very blatant insider trading, that would be highly illegal if we did it (Martha Stewart went to prison for much less), but then we wouldn’t have the inside information that Paul Pelosi did, thanks to his wife’s job as Speaker, and Congress has conveniently exempted itself from those laws, and she controls the House ethics panel that these matters were referred to, and, she controls DOJ funding. The Pelosi’s used to hide this sort of thing. They don’t any more, and that is scary.
Really doesn't matter how they speak, any of them. what matters is what they do.
Any american city with a long time Dem ruler, is all the proof I need.
Politicians love propaganda. words are just tools to make us look elsewhere, while they muck up their current interest.
Go back 10-15-20 years and watch talks by Pelosi or Biden or Feinstein or Grassley or Inhofe. Watch and then compare them in front of a microphone today. The cognitive decline is noticable.
Well we have Mr. Magoo, the laughing clown, and an aging harlot. What a great assembly to lead this country. Oh, I forgot, Bernie Commie with 3 homes.
seems to me that if your local community's water system needs an upgrade that your local community should pay for it.
You have become the Chuck of your own post.
"How the hell can you understand anything she says with her hands flailing around like a drunken heathen??"
LOL. I thought you were talking about me.
If you want a real challenge, Althouse, go watch Chris Wallace's interview with Buttuvwxyz from yesterday and try to make it make any logical sense whatsoever.
Joe T. says: "The same people who gave Bush and Trump a pass on verbal gaffes like to point out Biden's clumsy speech. Proves your point."
I think that misses the point. Speaking for myself, I'm more than willing to forgive lack of clarity in spoken English. The only reason I'd think of mocking Pelosi here is the way the left behaved towards Bush, Bush, and Trump.
The target is not always the one that is immediately apparent. Those who did this to every R in recent memory deserve to have it shoved back at them -- it's really *them* I'm mocking. Same with "Let's Go Brandon" -- for me, anyway, that's aimed much more at the ludicrously biased press who tries to cover for the feeble old man than it is at the feeble old man himself.
She called the Vice President Kamala Harrison.
Does anyone else object every time Democrats call redistribution of money to their voters an “investment”? The only investment is in future votes. In fact, most such spending lures recipients into dependency on the government and robs them of the dignity of making their own way. Kind of like a drug dealer who gives away drugs in exchange for one service every election.
Where’s that doofus what took his morning constitutional on Pelosi’s driveway when he’s needed!?!?
Pelosi talks the way she talks because there isn't anyone around to correct her. The media isn't going to make a big deal about it. Her staff certainly won't say anything. And her fellow representatives will pretend not to notice. So there is no reason for her not to just do a stream of consciousness thing. That it's total bull shit is just icing on the cake.
Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. Nancy really went nuts after Trump denied her the use of a military plane for one of her overseas jaunts. She was on the bus heading for the airport when she learned the news and had to turn back. That was when she lost her mind and could no longer think straight. Her hatred of Trump took over. Therefore, we had an upheaval in this country because Nancy wanted payback.
Pelosi talks the way she talks because there isn't anyone around to correct her. The media isn't going to make a big deal about it. Her staff certainly won't say anything. And her fellow representatives will pretend not to notice. So there is no reason for her not to just do a stream of consciousness thing. That it's total bull shit is just icing on the cake.
Remember when someone took several paragraphs of Obama's book "Dreams from my Father" and told students Sarah Palin wrote it ? The derision was hilarious.
Ann Althouse said...
"How the hell can you understand anything she says with her hands flailing around like a drunken heathen??"
LOL. I thought you were talking about me.
11/1/21, 11:24 AM
NEVER...I thought you gave it up!! I would say it about me lately, before I would say it about you...but it does fit Nasty Nancy to a tee.
"How the hell can you understand anything she says with her hands flailing around like a drunken heathen??"
LOL. I thought you were talking about me.
Heh. I've always pictured Althouse doing this while Mead reads her selected posts!
Pelosi talks the way she talks because there isn't anyone around to correct her.
You can see this when she's asked a question and has no idea how to answer it. She has so little practice framing issues and giving concise answers that she just prattles on until she smiles and says it's over.
Trump used to give more specific answers until he realized every question was a "gotcha" and the fewer gotchas he faced the less likely he was to get tripped up.
So he watched Pelosi just keep talking and captured her style. In a friendly audience or when giving his speeches he can go back to one-liners, but that's not the optimal way for him to interact with the press.
I like the idea of imagining what commenters are about to say, nailing it down myself (so you don't talk down to me and act like I didn't think of that), and have that as a basic standard that you want to top.
OK, talk down to others before they talk down to you. So I'll talk up to you and grant you the omniscience you claim.
What am I about to say in my next comment?
One of the things you learn as a young lawyer taking depositions is that people generally do not speak in complete sentences--much less complete paragraphs. And dagnab, when you read those first transcripts, you realize that you don't do it either.
Now Winston Churchill could do it. But his little secret was that he wrote out what he wanted to say--and practiced it and edited it until he got it right. I admire good public speakers who take the time to first think about what they want to say--and then take the time to practice it until they get it right. It shows respect for their audience.
But our political class--in general--thinks it just fine to open their mouth (without first even engaging the brain) and spew whatever comes out. Nancy, Chuck, Donald, Barack, Joe, Hillary, AOC I'm looking at you--and not liking it all that much. In Joe's case he gets a bit of a pass since there's so little brain to engage.
"he knows chapter [inaudible 00:04:20] because he wrote this, he campaigned on this"
Bless your heart, Nancy Pelosi. Nobody believes that a politician knows anything about the issues they campaigned on, or the bills they "wrote".
"I think people more or less like it when it comes from someone they like, and they enjoy the easy mockery they can do when it's someone they don't like."
Yes, but that also means it's essentially a politician just offering happy talk while addressing her base. There's nothing there for anyone not already on board. Like, say, Manchin or Sinema -- and, in terms of moving it forward, they are the only audience that counts. She's hardly the only power-player in DC doing that, but she does do it a lot. And beginning with a statement that Biden "was knowledgeable" is unhelpful -- no one even on Team Dem is likely to be persuaded on that score, as they all dread the likelihood that in an unscripted moment he'll embarrass himself or the country while in Scotland.
I can understand Trump when he talks and I can understand Pelosi. Usually I find Trump more entertaining to listen to, but I laughed at, "I told him last night, on phone last night..." as if she wants to make certain no one suspects it was pillow talk.
Well we have Mr. Magoo, the laughing clown, and an aging harlot.
If Kamala is the laughing clown, you give her more respect than a lot of people do.
I'm wondering if Nancy's language is so loose and rambling because she knows the media will never question or criticize her, but that's already been said.
CJ- absolutely.
Corruption and dirt on e/other.
Building roads and bridges is gonna encourage more travel, which will make the climate worse. So we have to spend even more to mitigate climate change.
When I was a kid the joke was that gov't programs paid someone to dig holes, then paid someone else to fill them back in. Fifty years later they're still doing the same thing.
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