Joni Ernst's Fact-Free Response to the SOTU Speech

Jesus, you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Joni "Nutcutter" Ernst, the earnest junior senator from Iowa, had the hearts thumping and the dicks jumping over at Faux News after her maiden speech (full text here) to the nation following Obama's State of the Union address last night (which, as an aside, William Rivers Pitt described as twenty pounds of shit in a ten pound bag. But never mind that; we kind of expect that in our SOTU speeches. Dubya was famous for it.).

She kinda-sorta-but-not-really pissed and moaned about her hardscrabble life on the farm, where she had to plow the fields (in an air-conditioned tractor, no doubt, but never mind those nitpicky kind of details), her family couldn't afford but one pair of shoes for her, and her mother had to wrap her little farmer-girl tootsies in bread bags to keep her feet dry. No word as to whether she actually had to use a privy for her personal ablutions, or walk to school ten miles in the snow, uphill -- both ways! and we were glad to do it! -- because in those deep dark years of her childhood, when Ronald Reagan was president from the time when was 10, life was hard. And it's still all hard and stuff, and Obama just doesn't get it. So there.

But there was no indication from her that the "hardscrabble farmers" who comprised Ernst's family actually received over $460,000 in Federal farm subsidies over a ten-year period. You also won't find out that fact from the major media. Not Faux News, of course, but none of the others are seeing fit to talk about it.

Oh, and she never used the accepted term "Islamic terrorism" in her speech, either. But still, Faux News loves them some Joni Ernst -- she is a Republican, she is a rare female Republican, and especially she's proud of the fact that she cut her some hog nuts once upon a time. That in itself was enough to make Faux News totally fall in love with her.

Oh, that and her shoes.