politics

From the transcript of the speech:

REPRESENTATIVE GREENE: What about Laken Riley?

(Cross-talk.)

AUDIENCE: Booo —

REPRESENTATIVE GREENE: Say her name!

THE PRESIDENT: (The President holds up a pin reading “Say Her Name, Laken Riley.”) Lanken — Lanken (Laken) Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed.

REPRESENTATIVE GREENE: By an illegal!

THE PRESIDENT: By an illegal. That’s right. But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?

I don't see the problem. His response rightly points out that murders happen regardless of the perpetrators legal status.

Ugh, the liberal handwringing over this term is how we make more Republicans. Is that term all that significant in contrast with what the policies will be? No.

Note that in all this, there is not a single word of censure across the board, by anyone, including herself, for Marjorie Taylor Greene, the embarrassment of a representative that originally used the word "illegal" in reference to a human being that Biden repeated as she heckled him from across the chamber floor.

Note also that Biden takes 100% responsibility for what comes out of his own mouth, regardless of the circumstances, doesn't use being led into it by a howler monkey as an excuse, and instead acknowledges that "illegal" is a hurtful term and he used it and wishes he hadn't and that's all that matters.

This, in a nutshell, is where the rubber meets the road between a person with a working conscience and one without.

I mean, I get it, we should hold the president to higher standards and be more inclusive overall. All I'm saying is don't forget that Biden, much like all of us, are products of our environment, and that includes our time. At the end of the day he has been far more cognizant and considerate of the diversity in America than his predacesors and many others currently in government. Look no further than that house inquiry to TikTok and how that representative didn't know the difference between China and Singapore.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

President Joe Biden in a wide-ranging interview with MSNBC on Saturday defended his direct criticism of the Supreme Court for its 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and said that he regrets having referred to an undocumented immigrant as an “illegal.”

In the statement, a campaign spokesperson responded to news about the passage of a fetal personhood bill in the Iowa state House that could have negative implications for patients seeking in vitro fertilization treatments.

Trump’s record speaks for itself: his Supreme Court pick Amy Coney Barrett refused to say if she would oppose criminalizing IVF,” senior campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in the statement.

Biden said Saturday that in his speech to Congress, he was attempting to highlight the differences between rhetoric offered by himself and former President Donald Trump about the border, pledging not to “treat any of these people with disrespect.”

The president added, “I don’t share [Trump’s] view at all,” saying that immigrants “built the country, [are] the reason our economy is growing,” but still, “we have to control the border and more orderly flow.”

Still, Biden was firm that Israel “cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead as a consequence of going after [Hamas],” likely citing figures showing that more than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

The original article contains 759 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I really dislike the newspeak about "undocumented immigrants" vs "illegal immigrants". The problem isn't that they don't have documents. The problem is that they entered the country illegally.

I dislike Biden immeasurably less than Trump, and I plan to vote for him in November, yet:

“It is a red line," Biden said, adding, “but I’m never gonna leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical.”

That sounds to me like there is, in fact, not a red line.

Drawing a line without any consequences for crossing it is worse than not drawing a line at all (source: my pedagogy prof, many, many moons ago).

I realize that Biden did not, in fact, say that there were not going to be any consequences at all - but the other thing with lines is that the consequences need to be known in advance, and they need to be adhered to. From all I'm hearing in interviews, the US government seems very hesitant to commit to any consequences, and if the slaughter keeps going, it may save Netanyahu's political career, but seriously bite Biden in the tush come election day.

For as good as the SOTU address was, I agree that that one line where he used the term "illegal" came off very wrong when I heard it. I thought it was very out of character for him to use the same language that Republicans use to dehumanize people. I'm glad he at least recognizes that it was wrong.