Okay, there is a lot going on and I thought I would post an update of sorts to the Wednesday Reads. There is a big storm on the way to the Northeast, the Olbermann has landed on his own FOK News Channel, and more…
On the SOTU front, more reactions to last nights feature: The Three Stooges meet A Teleprompter
Rep. Weiner: ‘I just needed a drink’ after GOP response – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room
One Democratic congressman says he was ready to hit the bottle after hearing the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union Tuesday night.
This is for Dak: It is written by Ross Douthat. The Politics of Evasion at the State of the Union – NYTimes.com
If you were a visitor from Mars, watching tonight’s State of the Union address and Paul Ryan’s Republican response, you would have no reason to think that the looming insolvency of our entitlement system lies at the heart of the economic challenges facing the United States over the next two decades. From President Obama, we heard a reasonably eloquent case for center-left technocracy and industrial policy, punctuated by a few bipartisan flourishes, in which the entitlement issue felt like an afterthought: He took note of the problem, thanked his own fiscal commission for their work without endorsing any of their recommendations, made general, detail-free pledges to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent (but “without slashing benefits for future generations”), and then moved swiftly on to the case for tax reform. Tax reform is important, of course, and so are education and technological innovation and infrastructure and all the other issues that the president touched on in this speech. But it was still striking that in an address organized around the theme of American competitiveness, which ran to almost 7,000 words and lasted for an hour, the president spent almost as much time talking about solar power as he did about the roots of the nation’s fiscal crisis.
This bit about the US deficit:
CBO: U.S. budget deficit to reach $1.5 trillion in 2011, highest ever
The weak economy and fresh tax cuts approved last month will help drive the federal budget deficit to nearly $1.5 trillion this year, the biggest budget gap in history and one of the largest as a share of the economy since World War II, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday.
Well, we all knew that he would be back:
Keith Olbermann | FOK News Channel | Deviltry And Mayhem | Mediaite
Maybe you remember Keith Olbermann from the show Countdown, which ran for several years on cable news’ MSNBC? These days, of course, Olbermann’s perhaps best known as the “The Proprietor” of a new Twitter-based news organization called the “FOK News Channel. At least, he’s been billing himself that way since, well, yesterday.
Olbermann, boasting a loyal group of over 208,000 Twitter followers, is clearly showing every sign of leveraging his tweets.
The sidelined star added a second Twitter account ahead of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, dubbing it “FOKNewsChannel” and quickly attracting more than 18,000 followers (or “Friends of Keith,” hence FOK). According to the account’s bio line, FOKNews can be described this way: “Smokestacks Belching News On Twitter Since January 2011.”
Ah, more proof on Obama’s continued MO, copy crap from someone else and add your own cliches as an added touch.
Obama Cribs David Brooks and Thomas Friedman in State of the Union Speech | Firedoglake
If I were President Obama’s English professor, I would take points off for not footnoting his sources. These are guys Obama most certainly reads regularly.
Oh, and it looks like Egypt is becoming more intense:
Pictures: Anger in Egypt – Middle East – Al Jazeera English
Clinton urges calm, reform in Egypt amid protests | ajc.com
Sharpening the U.S. response to massive demonstrations in the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that Egypt must adopt broad reforms and not crack down on the crowds demanding the end of the American-backed authoritarian government.
BBC News – Egypt denies clampdown on Twitter and Facebook
And here we go again, the weather channel is calling this a category 1 hurricane…with snow…is it another snowicane?
Active Watch/Warnings – NOAA’s National Weather Service
I know it is mostly links, and not much commentary, but I wanted to get this posted as quick as possible.
This is an open thread, have at it!
