I wasn't feisty. I was lying down in my sleep position — a complicated arrangement involving 4 down pillows — and planning to more or less listen, listen until I entered the world of dreams — a place not necessarily more pleasant that the House chamber (last night I woke up screaming at nonexistent crocodiles) — but a place where I sojourn for 7 hours rebuilding the strength of a body that naturally rises at 4 a.m., maybe 3.
Despite hit filmed programs such as I Love Lucy, both William S. Paley of CBS and David Sarnoff of NBC were said to be determined to keep most programming on their networks live. Filmed programs were said to be inferior to the spontaneous nature of live television.
Take away the magic of live television, and what is the State of the Union address? We are perfectly free to watch the entire thing on YouTube the next day. Or never. Or in sliced out snippets — a highlight reel or a collection of verbal slips or biggest applause lines. Or we can just read about it. Did anything happen? Did some grieving mother hear her daughter's name said aloud? Was the name precisely correctly pronounced? Did the President hold up a button? Did he recharge his campaign?
Was he feisty?
***
"Feisty," the OED tells us, is based on the familiar word "fist." It's a punch-in-the-nose concept. Fisty. Definition: "Aggressive, excitable, touchy." We're told it's American slang, originally dialect, and the OED has the quotes to prove it:
1913 Feisty means when a feller's allers wigglin' about, wantin' ever'body to see him, like a kid when the preacher comes. H. Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders 94
1926 That-there feisty bay mare jumped straight upwards and broke the tongue outen the plow. E. M. Roberts, Time of Man 152
1965 Luther gets a little feisty after a few drinks, and he began to argue with him. ‘D. Shannon’, Death-bringers (1966) xiii. 162
1968 He couldn't shake her loose—she hung on to his arm, feisty as a terrier. J. Potts, Trash Stealer xiii. 148
***
Post-sunrise opinion: The morning after, it is possible to see that the SOTU was a campaign speech. Every morning, there was a campaign speech yesterday.
In the comments: I'm getting a lot of pushback on the etymology of "feisty." It's not the fist that is the hand in an aggressive clench? It's a dog, you say? Well, let's go back to the OED. I see I made an assumption. What I was seeing at the OED entry "feisty" was:
I had not clicked on the boldface "fist." But if I had, I would not have gone to the entry for the kind of "fist" that is the clenched hand. I'd have gone to a separate entry, with 3 things together: a fart, a puffball fungus, and a dog:
1. A breaking wind, a foul smell, stink. Obsolete....
2. The fungus usually known as puff-ball.... Obsolete....3. U.S. dialect. A small dog....
The etymology pointed us to #3, so — no matter how much we might enjoy thinking "feisty" means farty — we must accept that the comparison is to a small dog. Yappy, hopping around, over-excited. Still farty though. You see the connection. It's always the dog.
Posts
144 comments:
I didn't watch. In bed and asleep by 8:00 PM. Up at 0400, at the gym at 0500, back home at 00630. I'm in my 75th year.
Watched some clips this AM, he wasn't feisty he was amped up on some drug cocktail. He came across to me as unhinged.
God help us if he is re-elected.
An hour later you want more Chinese.
Good morning to “the early to bed, early to rise” people. I disagree about it being an age thing.
I do feel compelled to ask, when do you watch SNL?
Oh, so “feisty” is the word. I’ll need to be sure to use that instead of unnerving, frightful, or borderline psychotic due to drugs.
State of the Union speeches are one small step away from late night informercials.
I sleep next to The Great Wall of Pillows until that hockey commercial stole by bit…
AA : "He gave that speech at age 81 at 10 p.m. at night and went on until midnight, and I see he was feisty...."
What? Didn't Biden start at about 9:15/9:20 Eastern time (I didn't watch either), which makes it 8:15/8:20 Central time. Did AA get her time zones inverted, or am I missing something?
They should drop the speech and just mail it in. The address has become nothing but political speechifying blather.
The worst President ever gave the worst STOU ever.
Joe has got to go.
Fiesty is how you try to sell it when sweet Uncle Joe shouts out insults like lying dog face pony soldier, challenges voters to push-up contests, and does his best Nixonian "I'm not a crook" routine.
I'm still stuck on the nightmare involving crocodiles and a screaming exit. What do you think the crocs represent? Maybe an additional pillow would help?
Great post. I did not have it in me to watch even one minute of the speech. I react to Joe Biden speaking much the same as I do Mike Lindell speaking. I cannot turn off the sound quickly enough when either of them make an appearance, either on the TV or radio. And everyone had to know that this would be a campaign speech, not a 'State of the Union', with the usual long list of hand-outs as an add-on.
Nobody in America except the most faithful True Believers like to hear Joe Biden bark at the moon. His angry old man schtick is the same thing he did as a young man, only now he's old and it looks- and sounds- ridiculous.
There is no reason for the State of the Union speech. It could be a written 4 page itemized recap sent to Congress and released to the press every year. Then the networks and talking heads could spend a week dissecting it. The ridiculous show that has become the State of the Union is like the play "The Fantasticks". It's gone on so long, people cannot even remember when it was actually popular, but it continues...just because.
This one can be put to bed now. It is not needed, not necessary. I hope Trump decides to can it, to just send a 4-pager to Congress and tell them to have a nice day.
PS- I chose to watch "Napoleon" on Apple TV and was greatly disappointed. I guess I wasn't prepared to consider that his obsession with Josephine was the most important aspect of his life. He would suddenly appear on a battlefield, no history leading up to it, and in between battle scenes, we had hours of him mooning over Josephine. Just cannot find many movies these days that I'm told are 'Great!' that turn out to be ever so mediocre. Even the acting seemed...canned.
It was, apparently, a night full of canned acting.
Rush Limbaugh used to do a montage of all of the media shills dutifully repeating the approved phrase of the hour.
How I miss that man.
"The talking points are out!"
Did he really lead with Ukraine? Did he tell us again how the Europeans told him to stay out of it and let sleeping dogs lie, but he was too smart for them, he proved that there were two quarts of strawburry ice cream! He did! He geometrically proved it, and anybody who thinks that threatening a country with a strategic defeat a couple of hundred miles from its capital, when that country has 6,000 nukes is foolhardy and plain old reckless, is just a coward, "A coward I tell you! The Russian nukes probably won't even work, I know this because Russians are an inferior race! Not like us, the master race.. oops, got a little carried away there, now I might be in trouble with them. Not the Russians, but (whispers into the microphone) 'them'"
He also lied when he said that there are no US soldiers in Ukraine, well, I guess it depends on if you exclude spies training saboteurs and assassination squads to operate in Russia and against the forces of the democratically elected government we overthrew, from the category of soldiers. As long as words mean exactly what Joe Biden wants them to mean, it's not a lie.
New York Times
I think the etymological discussion is wrong. “Feisty” is based on “feist,” a small, energetic dog. “Feist,” in turn derives from the same root as “fist”—but not our contemporary word meaning a clenched hand, which has a different source. Instead, the obsolete word “fist” meant breaking wind or generally creating a bad odor. In any event, the American usage you cite involves comparing an individual to a dog that is more aggressive than its size would suggest. “Feist” became, and is still used as, a name applied to several breeds.
At 79, I am too old to watch this piece of political theatre, and also to old to have performed it.
Biden spoke with an energy and vigor unbecoming in a man of his age.
Definitely have him some kind of vitamin B amphetamine mixture. Probably won’t see him again for a week or so. (Just skipped through the YouTube, didn’t watch live. His cadence is trash despite the drugs.)
It was a campaign speech through and through...nothing unifying or particularly uplifting. The only lines that had positivity to them were recycled from speeches he's given many times before and they were towards the end. He was LOUD and boring. He's going to need some time off to recover from being so artificially amped up.
Sleep is good so it's early to bedtime wlbecause zero dark thirty. Deep sleep is when all of the garbage drains from your head. Was Slo Joe feisty? How was the Trump running commentary, silly and nasty?
I am sure both teams of committed lockstep bootlickers will claim Both performances were examples of drug stimulation masking of senile dementia. They will quote doctor's and peer reviewed literature to support these assertions. Both political junkie cohorts will claim victory.
It's less meaningful than a sports rivalry, yet the delusional are driven by algorithm to believing their enemies dwell in Sodom and Gomorrah and we are at the precipice of Armageddon.
Strangers waitin'
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searchin' in the night
Streetlights, people
Livin' just to find emotion
Hidin', somewhere in the night
Don't stop believin'
Hold on to that feelin'
Streetlights, people
Don't stop
Cut to Black
Feisty? Like Feist? “Feist got her start in music when she founded and was the lead vocalist for a Calgary punk band called Placebo.”
Joe Biden, the first placebo President.
I want to marry Marjorie Taylor Greene and have her babies!!!
Since that is unlikely to happen, I'll break my rule and send her some cash. Not Winred, direct to her campaign.
Why?
As Brandon was coming in she, in her messages hat, waylaid him, gave him a Laken Riley pin and told him "say her name"
He told her "I know her name" but didn't say it.
Later in the speech she yelled "say her name" and he got so flustered that his Tarun of thought ran off the bridge and into the canyon where it was swept away by floodwaters.
Not knowing what else to do, he picked up the pin and said "Lincoln Riley" close enough I guess.
He then went on to say that she was killed by an "illegal". Not allegedly but definitely and he didn't tell us an illegal what. Again, it's Brandon and pat his bedtime so close enough.
Most awesomest SOTU ever!
MTG for president 2028.
John Henry
Well apparently the approved word to describe Biden last night is "feisty". Did the WH send out the memo before or after the SOTU?
Second most awesome thing was expelled congressman George Santos showing up in a sequined shirt and sitting in his old aisle seat where Brandon would almost have to brush up against him.
Apparently he had that right as a former congressman.
Before the speech cnn kept zooming in on him but never did say who the guy in sequins was.
Come back, George. All is forgiven.
John Henry
An old man yelling for the Republicans to get off his lawn.
If you believe in a current and future America that is less a nation with principles and values and more an economic zone where everyone is in a mad dash to get what they can before the house of cards collapses, you'll think that it was a great speech presenting a great vision.
If you don't believe in a future America as globalist economic zone version 2.0 what you saw last night further convinced you that we're not voting our way out of this.
Feisty actually comes from fyce or feist, a small dog used in hunting. See Faulkner's great story "The Bear."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_(dog)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fyce
Third most awesome thing was how Brandon spent the whole speech doing nice wet coughs into his right hand. By the end of the speech it was more contaminated than the Love Canal.
First hand he shook with that toxic goo was Harris. Then he went and spent half an hour shaking every Democrat and Rino hand he could get to.
With luck, we'll have a mini pandemic in DC.
John Henry
Like Althouse, I was peacefully slumbering by 9 Central, and am pleased to report I slept all the way 'til 4:30! That doesn't happen often.
Finding an objective report of SOTU is impossible. Feisty could also be reported as "Ill-tempered".
I went to bed before the Republican response, but did watch it this morning on foxnews.com, just seventeen and a half minutes ironically introduced by a TiKTok ad.
The Republicans put up one of their Stepford Wives, Alabama Senator Katie Britt, sporting a robotic grin and equally robotic fake emotion delivery, green shirt, and the cross over cleavage look.
“But you tease, and you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself but somebody's gonna get it“
Ann!
How did you know they were crocodiles and not alligators?
I also think a good question to ask is: "What is Biden's schedule today?" As in, does he have a full schedule planned, or is he off to Camp David or some such to nap?
I didn't watch. It's too late, but also I've found I'm not very good at predicting what will resonate with people. I get a better understanding of what was important by seeing what people react to the next day.
The delusional shilling for Joe on MSNBC is pure Soviet.
Temujin. Yeah I watched it too, but I switched halfway through. Such a waste of a good idea and good actors. My wifes French friends thought it was an abomination. Americans, merde.
Tim. Who do you think are training those Ukrainians to use our technology. They aren't here they're in Ukrain being protected by our contract operators.
bob. Exactly.
I want what Joe was on. Just not all at once. I'm betting we aren't gonna hear a lot from our fiesty national grandpa for at least a month. It's gonna take a least that long to get all his vitals regulated.
"Keep off my grass, you damn Republicans!" says feisty old, senile Democrat who hopes to garner 270 electoral college votes come November.
We are in bed around 9pm every night. I use 5 pillows. I don't do politics after dinner time. My daughter came over and we all watched an episode of Poker Face.
Nice narrative, Althouse. We had no interest in watching it, live or later. Listened to about 40 seconds of "lowlights" and that's enough. If I never hear him shouting and whispering his toxic BS at me again I'll be happy. He should just shuffle off to retirement or Purgatory. I literally have no preference.
Best part is where he confirmed his inability to receive the Sacrament of Communion. Too bad the US Bishops are hooked on that sweet NGO cash. In a less corrupt world Canon 915 would be implemented
Post updated to reflect acceptance of the dog-based etymology.
Slightly OT, apologies:
"Calling an old person "feisty" is like calling an African American person "articulate""
So what? Stereotypical racist or ageist condescension is no prob for Dems. After all, Joe called Barry "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Worked out fine. Progs eat it up. Raaccism is strictly a tool to be used against deplorables.
I never watch a president’s speech whether a Dem or Repub. they make my skin crawl.
This was a barnstormer of a speech by Biden.
It was very reassuring to see. I guess your narrative about Joe Biden isn't working out like you thought. I know that your hero could never have managed to deliver such a powerful and politically savvy address.
Boy, you sure are feisty today!
Oh he was feisty!
Not only does he let illegals murder young women, he won't even say their name right.
Oh and we'll arrest a gold star parent to boot.
That will show those plebs for challenging mine authorit-ay! All hail Dark Brandon the Feisty!
"How did you know they were crocodiles and not alligators?"
Because there was also a hippopotamus, so it must have been outside of the range of an alligator. I wasn't judging the pointiness of the snout.
But more realistically, dreams are full of things that you "know." They're all wrong or all right, depending on how you think about it. You're the master of your dream... or the slave.
Biden is a very horrid dictator. controlled by very bad people.
The fix is in.
Was Biden on drugs? very slurred speech. Angry cliche's. Hollow rhetoric.
Doesn't matter. NBC Rich and his kind wuv their corrupt dictator.
What I'm trying to figure out is how to take control of the dream so I don't resort to screaming.
Biden spews toxic BS.
Indeed - MJB Wolf
I grew up in hardcore GOP rural Illinois.
Defected to the donkey party in the 60s because it was anti-war.
Now, the Dems are the party of screeching warmongering and shameless McCarthyism.
How did that happen?
"I'm still stuck on the nightmare involving crocodiles and a screaming exit. What do you think the crocs represent?"
I think animals in dreams are said to represent people, but I think they could represent something more abstract, such as problems or your own emotions.
My wake-up-screaming dreams usually involve a person breaking into a room where I had felt safe/private.
But in this crocodiles dream, I was in some sort of river.
Blogger Dave Begley said...
How did you know they were crocodiles and not alligators?
It's easy to spot the difference. You just look at them both. After a while one will see you. That's the crocodile. The one that sees you later is the alligator.
John Henry
If Joe Biden’s team of handlers and nurses still thinks that he needs to preach to the choir in a nationally televised speech this close to the election, with his polling among swing voters in the toilet, well, that smell of feistiness coming from his diaper is desperation.
Incidentally, Twitter is full of robotic comments like Rich’s, assuring us that the Emperor’s new clothes are of the finest cloth and cut, and that we should never trust the evidence of our own eyes. It’s almost like the Obama Administration created a government program to train sock puppets to spread DNC talking points… Oh, that’s right, it did!
"What? Didn't Biden start at about 9:15/9:20 Eastern time (I didn't watch either), which makes it 8:15/8:20 Central time."
He started way after the scheduled start time. I was awake until slightly after 9 Central Time. That would have been 10 Eastern Time.
He took something like half an hour walking up the aisle, having conversations with people and doing selfies.
Covid had various aims. To erase voter ID requirements, kill the elderly, kill the economy - so that as we bounce back - the corrupt left can take credit.
He told her "I know her name" but didn't say it.
I misquoted going from memory. It is actually worse on seeing another video this morning and reading a transcript.
He did not say "I know her name", he said "I know how to say the name." Not even giving her the benefit of personhood. Greene repeated "Say her name" and he smirks and goes "heh, heh"
Someone somewhere this morning pointed out that since he mentioned "Lincoln Riley" a football coach, it is entirely possible that he really doesn't know how to say Laken's name.
From the clip subtitle, apparently MSN doesn't know how to say her name either. They have MTG saying "Lincoln"
Video and transcript of the exchange here.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-biden-has-7-word-response-to-marjorie-taylor-greene-at-sotu/ar-BB1jwLly
John Henry
One of the things I could not get over was how white Kamala Harris looked. She was paler than the speaker. Paler too than Brandon though his color, sort of an orangish yellow, was so weird it is hard to compare.
John Henry
NBC Rich -
That energy and vigor came from uppers.
The left and Trump crushed DeSantis.
Now we get 4 more years of Crook Liar Husk-puppet communist Joe - controlled by very bad people.
This president has only two mental states: his brain is either on fire or his brain is sitting in oatmeal.
Citizen Free Press
@CitizenFreePres
Victor Davis Hanson disgusted by Biden's tone:
"I have never seen in general an angrier speech. I think the Left’s happy that he didn’t stumble, but he’s only coherent when he’s full of venom.”
I saw Biden enter and get involved in conversation with somebody as if he were there to try to converse about something he didn't exactly understand but was willing to talk about until a handler grabbed his hand and drew him onward. A situational awareness failure. Then I watched a beaver dam being removed in Latvia or Estonia or somewhere like that.
Biden's "feisty" yelling is of course pathetic "tough guy" schtick, manifesting the fool's abiding fantasy image of himself. It is Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor jive strutting down the jailhouse corridor saying, "That's right, we bad."
Blogger Rich said...
This was a barnstormer of a speech by Biden.
Even a richard can be right once in a while.
I agree, for Brandon this was a barnstormer of a speech. (Do you perhaps mean barnburner? Never mind, close enough for you)
But only because it was by Brandon which is a very, very, very, low bar. He only really glitched once, when my crush MTG got him to sort of say Laken Riley's name. Semi-glitched a couple other times. The speech, as a speech, was pretty incoherent. Mostly a bunch of ramblings on non-sequiters with no particular theme. He needs better writers. Brandon's mumbling, alternatly loud and soft, did not help.
My 8 year old granddaughter could have read it better.
But it was really well done.
For Brandon.
John Henry
Still haven't watched or read the SOTU speech. Of course, lots of commentary and, with the exception of the MTG "say her name" / "Lincoln Riley" moment, all of the comments are about how Biden said things and not what he said. I know less about the State of the Union than I do the status of Biden.
Fine opening monologue Professor. Every time this potus speaks he's like a yappy dog. Maybe it's the meds.
Does Mead appreciate your 4 pillows? :-)
Three pillows. In bed by 10, usually.
Listened to a minute of the speech.
Noted the SHOUTING and shhlurrring of words.
Turned it off, went to sleep.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
He started way after the scheduled start time. I was awake until slightly after 9 Central Time. That would have been 10 Eastern Time.
There was nothing about this on CNN last night before or during the speech. The reason he was late was that insurrectionists/revolutionaries blocked traffic and held up his motorcade for 20-30 minutes.
This gives one a lot of confidence in the resident's security detail, doesn't it? That they can be held up for an official function by people blocking the street? Must have been a lot of people.
And, since they were interfering with an official function, why were they not arrested for insurrection and held for 3-4 years without bail?
John Henry
Feisty? More like wired. Wired like a marionette, wired as in equipped for electronic prompting, and wired as in overdosed on cocaine.
In the Southern dialects, a feist is a small dog with terrier ancestry used for the suppression of rats and other vermin, basically a mutt with a tenacious temperament.
George Santos looking Mahvalous, darling in sequins and Laken Riley pin on the House floor last night
https://thehawk.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/George%20Santos.webp
Some might say he is mocking Brandon, SOTU, Congress and all. I say: Yup. Works for me!
John Henry
I am reminded of the scene in Sleeper when our hero is gifted with his own robo dog, Tiger. Woof Woof!!
Tigre wof wof wof
Our ex-neighbors had a really shitty, amped up dog, who would take running starts at our fence, trying to bash through it to get to us.
Yeah, that was Biden last night.
I learned to wake myself up during a disturbing dream after, I don't know, the fourth or fifth time that I dreamt of taking a leak.
Ann said...
"Calling an old person 'feisty' is like calling an African American person 'articulate'...."
Do you have a sharp crease in your pants, too?
Everyone is saying feisty because if they called him spry 3/4 of the country wouldn't know what that word means and everyone else would associate it with "old". Can't have that.
Re Ann's pillows, it could be worse. They could sleep with a Scottish broadsword down the middle of the bed a la Bobby Darrin and Sandra Dee.
And that thought cost me half an hour of watching clips of "Beyond the Sea" with one of the Kevins. What a great movie that is. But I could not find the clip of the sword.
John Henry
Kamala was up and down during the speech.
Ann and Meade!
Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo has a large collection of reptiles, fish, penguins and other animals. It is world famous. You could spend an entire day there. That I can tell you!
USA Today ranks Omaha's zoo as number one!!!
If that doesn't get you to Omaha, nothing will. Our dinner at The Drover will also be a huge highlight.
"Sebastian said...
Slightly OT, apologies:
"Calling an old person "feisty" is like calling an African American person "articulate""
So what? Stereotypical racist or ageist condescension is no prob for Dems. After all, Joe called Barry "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.""
It was worse that that. Biden said he was "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
Fausty would be a better description. If you don't think old Corpsey Joe has made a deal with the Devil, you ain't looking close enough.
Well, at least no one called him 'spry'. Christallmighty I hate that word. Someone (older!) called me that when I was in my mid-50s and I wanted to hit him with the breaker bar I was then in process of wielding.
So, based on the reports of those who actually watched this political commercial last night:
The State of the Nation: angry
I can buy that.
Well this 72 year old had nap in the afternoon soI watched the SOTU.
Feisty must sound a lot better than angry so the memo was sent out.
The cardinal sin of "illegal" was been watered down. No doubt to keep it fresh to burst forth in full bloom for when an R uses it.
I watched part of the speech. First I was indignant as he pretended he has always supported Ukraine. Why did he sign of on a "combined arms drive" last year in which one arm, air power was missing? Why won't he allow long range missiles that could hit Russian arms dumps? And so on.
Then, he began attacking Republicans and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, "MY Predecessor". Not a hint that we are one people. No attempt to draw us to the Dems. There's Yappy and there's the car he chases. That's what the Dems offer.
Then I began switching away and back so heard Feisty offering to restore "Roe v. Wade" as "the law of the land." He didn't say he'd bring in constitutional protection or statutory protection for abortion. No. He'd "restore Roe v. Wade". With the Supreme Court sitting right in front of him.
Then I switched out and returned to hear that something about the border. Then there was a incredible statement that "Lincoln Riley" was killed by "an illegal." I couldn't work out Biden's thought - whether she would have been killed by the same person but "a legal" or what. But it was The Republicans Fault.
Looking back, I can't really remember the sequence. It was odd shouts on topics; it was like channel surfing sports channels
Althouse chose the better part.
It's all so fake. MTG trying to shame Joe with that poor girl. I would never want my murdered child to be used as a prop like that. There are better ways to use her death for change than handing out pins in a MAGA hat at the SOTU. But then Biden is fake because he acted like he cared. And then he said something truly puzzling that I haven't seen anyone talking about. He said she's was murdered like thousands who have been murdered by an illegal. Apparently he said legal, according to the media, but it didn't sound like it to me.
Yet all anyone can focus on is that he said her name wrong. Dumb and fake. And the Never trumpets and braindead left say he handled it masterfully. Fake.
It's hard to figure out what regular people really think.
If your pillows are green, I pronounce the mystery 'solved'.
I didn’t watch but then I never watch political speeches, not by anyone. If they have something substantive to say, I’ll read the speech later. That rarely is necessary.
My take, though, is that Biden won. All he had to do was not have a senior moment meltdown, staring vacantly and lost into the camera for a while and visibly forgetting where he was or what he was doing. He didn’t do that, so he won. The Republicans will have other chances to portray Biden as senile and incapable but this was their best chance and Biden eluded the snare.
“That energy and vigor came from uppers.”
I think you’re confusing the Biden WH with the previous occupant where Ronny Jackson was running an illegal drug distribution ring.
Jackson’s behavior was entirely consistent with that of a physician with an addiction disorder. When not using/abusing alcohol and/or other drugs, his behavior and professionalism was exemplary. Under the influence of alcohol and/or other drugs and a power-based, rule-breaking culture, his behavior became out of control.
"And then he said something truly puzzling that I haven't seen anyone talking about. He said she's was murdered like thousands who have been murdered by an illegal. Apparently he said legal, according to the media, but it didn't sound like it to me."
He said illegals but meant to say (apparently) legals. But how is that an appropriate response?
I only know two things about 'feist' and 'feisty', but both seem worth repeating:
1. It's been ~55 years since I read Faulkner's "The Bear", but I still vividly recall the use of feists (or 'fice'). Do I recall it rightly? What I remember is that bears are fast and you have to slow them down to catch up and kill them. Fices are incredibly brave, stupid, and cheap, so they run up one at a time and clamp on to the bear's hind leg. The bear has to stop, stand up on its hind legs, turn around, and smash the stupid dog's brains out with one slap of its paw, then get down on all fours to resume running. It may take 3 or 4 fices to slow it down enough to get a good shot and kill it, but fices are cheap and bears (especially their skins?) are valuable, so it's worth it. Can anyone confirm my vivid but possibly inaccurate recollection?
2. It's been ~48 years since I worked in a research library with a recently-arrived Chinese woman married to a grad student. We filed foreign-language newspapers, foreign and domestic, and she deciphered the Asian ones. Our boss once told her she was 'feisty' as a compliment, because she didn't put up with any baloney. She didn't know the word, and did what she always did when that happened: consulted the English-Chinese dictionary she kept with her at all times. It had no entry for 'feisty', but did include 'feist' (a serious defect in a dictionary of contemporary English). For the next week I had to listen to her say "Gene called me a little dog. Why did Gene call me a little dog?". I told her about Faulkner's fices and explained that it was a compliment and that most Americans, including Gene, didn't know the noun, or know that the adjective had anything to do with dogs, but she was not mollified.
I went walking and I'm pretty slow nowadays so by the time I get back and turn on the tv
it was like 11 and this pretty but not too pretty brunette was filling the screen. No sound
but I keep watching. Freckles on the chest? Cross neckless. Some cleavage? But not too much.
Animated but serious then smiling then serious almost verging on feisty. She's on NBC, CBS
and ABC so no weather tonight.
Sure, go to bed early and avoid having to see the demented corrupt piece of shit you voted for. Just read the transcript, don't subject yourself to the horror of his upper fueled stuttering and spitting rants. Ignorance truly is bliss.
NBC Rich - LOL.
Hunter Biden lost his actual cocaine stash inside the actual White House.
and you blame Trump. but of course.
Always get the accusations out there as a spoiling attack on any comments aimed at your own known weaknesses, right Richbot?
“Now we get 4 more years of Crook Liar Husk-puppet communist Joe - controlled by very bad people.”
No no no, we’ll get a few months of Husk-puppet Joe, then the rest of the term with Cackling-puppet Kamala. It’s critical we start to understand what the most likely scenario ahead is if we elect Joe. Joe is not the biggest threat to our country, foreign or domestic. She is.
La Noonan's WSJ op-ed is out, and judging from that, the Biden-approved MSM term is "fiery." Oh, and to no one's surprise, MTG is "stupid and vulgar." In case anyone had any illusions that this election is anything but class warfare.
Four pillow engineered sleep structure
I am not a paid spokesperson.
But every time we sleep away from home, we long to get back to our Sleepnumber, mechanical Bed.
We can set the firmness and orientation independent of each other.
Leaving home is becoming less attractive. Our bed, heated bathroom floor, and bidet.
There's no place like home.
Biden hasn't always slurred his words like he does now, has he?
I didn't watch it, but I saw the highlights. If Biden loses the election, it won't be because of this speech. He looked plausibly forceful and energetic. I'm sure if Trump had remembered George Ford in a speech, the press wouldn't have cared.....Speaker Johnson presented a model of dignified disapproval during the address. I guess it was in keeping with the decorum of the Chamber. Maybe he could have stifled a yawn in a few places, but it was an okay performance. It would have been neat if he had used a whoopee cushion to broadcast a few audible farts during the speech. Everyone always blames the old guy for farts so maybe he could have gotten away with it.. It would be in keeping with our current understanding of feisty. Perhaps Johnson could have also released a harmless but malodorous gas that would cause Kamala to upchuck on President Biden. Well, that might be going a bit too far and not in keeping with the decorum of the Chamber. But the whoopee gag would be really cool.
After about five minutes from the ranter-in-chief, I watched the last part of a documentary about the search for Alexander the Great's tomb, interspersed with the last quarter or so of the scifi movie "Elysium."
The movie was abominably stupid and featured lousy CGI. But it was better than the SOTU.
In German, 'feist' means plump.
As a public service--you all should watch Tucker Carlson asap on the Biden screed. He has Victor Davis Hanson and Alex Jones on the same program analyzing their evil socialist wet dream.
Biden went full Ethel Merman. Never go full Ethel Merman.
I listened to perhaps 35 seconds of him, and just could not bear even a full minute.
This morning, the best report is at PowerLine
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/03/the-sotu-from-hell.php
Rich said...
“That energy and vigor came from uppers.”
I think you’re confusing the Biden WH with the previous occupant where Ronny Jackson was running an illegal drug distribution ring.
Jackson’s behavior was entirely consistent with that of a physician with an addiction disorder. When not using/abusing alcohol and/or other drugs, his behavior and professionalism was exemplary. Under the influence of alcohol and/or other drugs and a power-based, rule-breaking culture, his behavior became out of control.
3/8/24, 9:43 AM
Rich conveniently forgets the cocaine distribution going on in the WH today. Funny, how the FBI can't figure out who owns it, when they can figure out who thousands of seniors who took selfies in the Capitol years later....
Watched a little drunk blogging and then went to bed with my pillow buddies, as I call them. Dreamt of having a virus on my phone that would not stop playing a certain ad. Not only that, the virus attacked any device that was close to it. Pretty transparent.
It seems that one cannot read letters in dreams making electronic control or direction reading impossible. I can always wake myself up from bad dreams. It’s getting back to sleep that’s hard.
What is word-slurring a symptom of? Cognitive decline? Drugs? There's no denying Biden has it bad.
It's hard to figure out what regular people really think.
Because we have lives more interesting than watching that crap. IMO the TV ratings will continual their generally downward slide with a steeper drop this year than most.
As Biden starts saying "my predecessor" over and over again, I started envisioning Sméagol from Lord of the Rings obsessing over the ring and addressing it as 'my precious" in a demented way.
Musk is an articulate African-American, a Person of Color (i.e. not albino), but he is tainted through corruption of blood, as are most Africans.
I went to bed as well. I've got a 5 a.m. spin class, so get up at 4. I did see my browser tab (I have several hundred tabs open at a time) for the Daily Mail also snoozed before the speech and had one of Ann's noteworthy phrases: "Biden, 81, leaves the White House and tells people on balcony 'don't jump' as he prepares for final State of the Union before his Trump rematch to prove to doubters he IS fit for a second term"
Defected to the donkey party in the 60s because it was anti-war.
=================
Q : did not anti-war in 60's push also imply/mean to many pro-vietcong / pro N vietnam ?
prelude to today pro-Hamas?
I tried to watch but Beiden’s high pitched nasal say three words fast and then pause could not be endured.
Well at age 80 I'm glad to see that our host has a relatively bedtime. I've been known to leave Sunday night family dinners announcing "It's bedtime for Bonzo" and head off to bed when things go too long. Hat tip to the chimp who supposedly outacted Ronald Reagan--Bonzo could probably outact Joe Biden--or deliver the speech better.
I watched the first part of a great series on the rebuilding effort of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It's on Curiosity Stream if anyone subscribes or is interested. This is a great example of how modern technology is a real benefit.
The puffball vid was hilarious. I used to find small clusters of them in our yard in summertime and stomp on them just to see whether the spore smoke would explode. Apparently, this is a child's pastime going way back...
https://www.nps.gov/articles/species-spotlight-puffballs.htm#:~:text=Giant%20puffballs%20can%20produce%20a,fail%20to%20produce%20another%20puffball.
Two pillows plus cat, quite comfy.
In bed reading by 8:30; lights out at 9:00. Up at 6:00 in time to feed the cat.
The last SOTU I listened to was LBJ's. Dignified summary of things, ending with a surprise that showed his good clear sense of where the country was going.
Favorite SOTU's to read: Lincoln's first and second.
The point of the SOTU is to inform and by doing so, unify. Not to campaign feistily (going with the dog meaning).
The only President we have ever had who could give a good State of the Union speech was Ronald Reagan. I never listened to another one after Reagan left office. I sure miss him.
After you consciously avoided what was bound to be the ugliness of an angry Biden rant and what it means to have this screaming husk in the White House now and possibly for several more years did your subconscious make a connection with the famous Churchill quote and respond with a dream driven by guilt?
"Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely."
Some run towards the battle, some run away. You're fighting against your instinct, which is the former. The mental conflict leads to a nightmare.
Tim posted an excellent summary of the speech last night:
Captures the moment perfectly
I wonder ifTrump still wants to debate Biden?
Rich. wonder ifTrump still wants to debate Biden?
LOL. After Biden’s triumph last night? That get off my lawn shouting was brilliant to you? Funny. Very.
last night I woke up screaming at nonexistent crocodiles....I did not wake up screaming. I'm well rested and perfectly lucid — I think!
"perfectly" might be overstating it.
"I wonder ifTrump still wants to debate Biden?"
LOL. You think because Biden pretty much read a teleprompter successfully (he actually did stumble in multiple places, but we're giving him a pass, apparently, because the expectations going in were so low), that Trump is afraid of debating him?
Let's just see if Biden and his team are willing to debate. I wouldn't bet on it.
Vote for Crook Joe - and hope an illegal entrant doesn't hurt you or anyone in your family.
the possibility grows with each passing day - as thousands are still entering the nation - each day - illegally.
because of Biden's executive order.
He said Killed by illegals and sounded confused
People who think Biden was helping his cause last night, consider this:
make it Trump giving that speech with the equivalent pablum to the hard-core base and in the same angry, hectoring, sputtering, and slurring delivery. What do you suppose someone like Rich would be writing this morning, what would the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, etc. be saying this morning? Do you think Rich would be saying Trump hit it out of the park? No. Some Trump supporters might say it in an equivalent situation, but they would also be wrong. What Biden did not only preaches only to the choir, but then alienates everyone not in it.
I stand by what I wrote last night- this speech and its delivery were designed to force Biden out of the race by some peoples in his staff. They did him literally no favors with this.
Really, how could have Biden made lukewarm supporters and those indifferent to him hate him more today than they did yesterday?
67 years old. 5 pillows. But I stayed up for it. What really bothers me is the jack in the box action of the audience. Regardless of which president is speaking. The up and down and clapping is just annoying. I've been to countless plays, movies, and lectures (including way too many in school) and never had the uncontrollable urge to jump up and start clapping (until the end that is). Why not just let the president talk and listen to what he says. Oh I suppose they know that the camera pans out to the audience when they all pop up, and they get their picture on TV. But really who cares?
So Biden was mad ... sorry, feisty and didn't shit his pants. During one speech.
By all means, let's give him four, more years.
Althouse "claiming" she didn’t watch Joe's speech is overwhelming evidence that the speech was a huge success. If Joe had stumbled, Althouse would’ve been all over it live.
Interesting that on those 3 or 4 occasions every week when Trump is on bitching about brown people, Althouse is right there lapping it up.
This post is first rate space cadetery .
The Republicans put up one of their Stepford Wives...
Who knew Left Bank was also a sexist pig?
Rich said...
"I wonder ifTrump still wants to debate Biden?"
More than ever.
I just saw Kimmel advertising the Oscars will now start an hour earlier. Unfortunately, Kimmel is still hosting.
I wonder if Trump still wants to debate Biden?
Trump isn't the one looking to avoid debates with Biden, dumas.
But, I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Not one bit.
So, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
Biden comes out swinging a positive review by legal expert moral-walls-are-closing-in-on-Trump go-to channel
As in 2016, we will be voting against the most detested, not for the most popular
I, too, failed to watch the SOTU live last night. In my case, bedtime had nothing to do with the choice not to watch. It was simply that Biden was presenting.
The MSM phrase book:
Biden is Feisty = trump is obnoxious
Biden is forceful = Trump rants
Biden isn't a reader = Trump is dumb
Biden paces himself = trump is lazy
Biden misspeaks = Trump lies
Biden is concerned = Trump is obsessed
Biden loves women = Trump is a sexual harrasser
Biden is cautious = Trump is a coward
Biden has gaffes = Trump is mean and racist
My wife will wake up screaming if she eats the wrong things for Dinner. Usually its something with hot sauce or deep red tomato sauce.
We had lasanga one night and she ended up with nightmares. I had no sympathy. She knews the risks, when she signed up for it.
He's just an asshole like he always has been.
Watched the "Where am I supposed to go?" clip of Biden wandering the floor afterwards. Surrounded by skinhead Generals. Another Rodney Dangerfield type skinhead whispering instructions in Biden's ear.
What is it with Biden and skinheads? Mayorkas in yesterday's clip made Ol' Plugs look positively hirsute.
Rusty said...
"Rich said...
"I wonder ifTrump still wants to debate Biden?"
More than ever."
He did so well the last time.
If Trump merely promised to never give a SOTU speech he'd win in a landslide.
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