My State of the Union Dilemma

I got a totally unnecessary text from Buzzard this morning reminding me that the speech and the Ohio State-Purdue basketball game both start at 9:00 p.m. eastern tonight. While I responded that “this is why God invented the DVR” I’m not sure yet which one will get the delayed viewing.

On the one hand Buzz went to Purdue and I Ohio State, which presents a unique trash-texting opportunity. The Buckeyes are 20-0 and ranked #1, but Purdue is also highly ranked and 17-3. A game like this would normally have my full focus for the evening.

But the Obama University-Southwest GOP State game is looking pretty interesting too. OU is definitely on a mini-winning streak at the moment, with the latest polls putting him at a 55% approval rating – his highest in months. Expect more easy-listening rhetoric.

And then we have the post-speech SWGOPS rebuttal in which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will call Obama a socialist and promise to balance the budget without mentioning that he will also eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants, the Post Office and the FDA along the way.

We also have the unusual seating arrangements to look forward to, wherein the two teams have decided to have their respective pep squads sitting intermingled like some kind of bi-partisan daisy chain; although I gather Mitch McConnell has decided to scowl his way through the President’s speech apart from any opposing team fans and will instead sit next to and hold hands with Supreme Court Justice Thomas whose wife is out of town stalking Anita Hill.

I think it’s unlikely this new interparty sociability will lead to any sustained political cooperation but I am hoping it cuts down on the standing ovations which are more numerous every year. At Ohio State games we do the standing “O-H-I-O!” cheer but only during time outs; Congress leaps to its feet in response to every innocuous of comment creating time outs which will be especially annoying tonight when each standing O delays the start of the game another 90 seconds.

Washington is second only to Hollywood in gratuitous self-congratulations; they need Ricky Gervais to MC the SOTU speech or at least a Big Ten ref to call a few “delay of game” technicals.

Dem massacre, Olbermann, debt, Notre Dame, Browns

Mitch McConnell said today on Face the Nation that President Obama thinks the Democrats lost in the midterms because he undersold his achievements, but in reality Americans just didn’t like what he was selling. I thought that was just GOP bombast until I got to the "Week in Review" section of the Times. Look at these charts. The Dems lost ground in virtually every single demographic this election, including African-Americans. This was a bigger massacre than I realized.

Naturally, the Democratic response will be to re-elect Nancy Pelosi Minority Leader, which should really turn things around because we know how popular she is all across the country.

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I never imagined I’d be defending Keith Olbermann over anything, but this flap over his political donations is ridiculous. First of all, don’t his rights as an American citizen to participate in democracy trump the rules of a corporation, or the arbitrary and unwritten rules of “journalistic impartiality?” And secondly, aren’t his highly-opinionated, one-sided, on-air musings a more powerful expression of his partisanship than his $7000 contributions to a few local races? I say yes to both.

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It’s interesting how little complaining there has been from either Republicans or Tea Baggers over the Feds decision to print an extra $600 billion in cash the day after the elections. This money takes the form of new T-Bills and is a net addition to the deficit. Maybe since it can’t be pinned on Obama it isn’t worth the effort?

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I’ve never been a Notre Dame fan and won’t be one in the future, but the institution earned a lot of respect from me when it stepped up and took full responsibility for the death of a student who was killed last week when the 50’ platform from which he was taping football practice blew over in a 50 mph wind – legal liability be damned. It doesn’t happen often in this modern American “it’s somebody else’s fault” society.

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Browns 34 - Patriots 14. Nuf said.