What’s interesting in the news today?
Lot’s to cover today, and in no particular order…
1. First, some good news. Kim posted it yesterday, but I’m reposting it.
From FoxNews “A number of motorists who had to abandon their vehicles in the snow on Highway 280 outside of Birmingham, Ala. were able to find shelter in the storm thanks to the kindness and generosity of Chick-fil-A restaurant employees and the restaurant’s owner, Mark Meadows.
Once the snow started accumulating, Meadows closed the restaurant and sent his staff home. But a few hours later, many of them returned – unable to get to their homes.”
“Some of the drivers had been stuck in their cars for nearly seven hours without any food or water. So the staff of the Chick-fil-A decided to lend a helping hand.
“We cooked several hundred sandwiches and stood out on both sides of 280 and handed out the sandwiches to anyone we could get to – as long as we had food to give out.”
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2. In other storm news, the blame game has begun. People want to know why this happened and how authorities could be taken by surprise.
From NBCNews “Under fire from Georgia government officials caught flat-footed by the winter storm that socked the South this week, weather forecasters are mad as heck and want them know: They’re not going to take it anymore.
With the capital city, Atlanta, paralyzed by less than 3 inches of snow, Georgia officials complained that they weren’t warned what was on the way Tuesday:”
“In a post on a blog he set up Wednesday specifically to defend the performance of forecasting services this week, Shepherd pointed out that the weather service issued watches and warnings well before the storm arrived, providing plenty of time for Georgia officials to make the right decisions.
“Yet, as soon as I saw what was unfolding with kids being stranded in schools, 6+ hour commutes, and other horror stories, I knew it was coming, I knew it. Some in the public, social medial or decision-making positions would ‘blame’ the meteorologists,” Shepherd wrote in a post titled “An Open Thank You to Meteorologists in Atlanta.”
Officials in Atlanta and the state of Georgia all seem to have come from the Ray Nagin school of government. Don’t do your job, and then blame someone else for your failure to act even though you had plenty of warning the storm was coming. So it’s probably Bush’s fault.
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3. Now that everyone has had time to digest the SofU speech, more reactions are out as well, as the next few will show.
First they blame Bush for everything, now they’re plagiarizing him?
I’ve been waiting for the chance to use that. 🙂
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4. Some folks seemed to really like the speech though. 🙂
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5. Somebody’s gettin’ audited.
From TheHill “Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) said Tuesday night he left President Obama’s State of the Union speech early after “hearing how the president is further abusing his Constitutional powers.”
“Stockman said Obama was promising to “break his oath of office and begin enacting his own brand of law through executive decree.”
“This is a wholesale violation of his oath of office and a disqualifying offense,” the Texas congressman said.
Stockman also criticized Obama for refusing to admit “his policies have failed,” and for advancing a plan for more taxes and spending that is a “blueprint for perpetual poverty.”
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6. With the President’s talk of ruling by executive order, some have questioned where he thinks he gets this authority. Even his own Attorney General can’t answer that question, and he’s the one who would defend those actions in court.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “Attorney General Eric Holder couldn’t explain the constitutional basis for executive orders such as President Obama’s delay of the employer mandate because he hasn’t read the legal analysis — or at least, hasn’t seen it in a long time.
“I’ll be honest with you, I have not seen — I don’t remember looking at or having seen the analysis in some time, so I’m not sure where along the spectrum that would come,” Holder replied when Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, asked him to explain the nature of Obama’s constitutional power to delay the mandate.”
“”When you look at the quality, not just the quantity but the quality, the nature of the executive orders that he has issued, he has usurped an extraordinary amount of authority within the executive branch,” Lee countered. “This is not precedented, and I point to the delay — the unilateral delay, lawless delay, in my opinion — of the employer mandate as an example of this. And so, at a minimum, I think he owes us an explanation as to what his legal analysis was.”
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7. ICE union officials have taken the opportunity to point out the President’s violation of, and failure to enforce other laws, as well as his hypocrisy.
From NationalReview “Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council, the union representing officers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, issued a statement Tuesday ahead of President Obama’s State of the Union address. Crane blasted the president for his repeated refusal to meet with ICE officers at the White House, and asked House Republican leaders to consult with ICE personnel as they work to outline their immigration reform “principles”:
According to news accounts, the President has once again invited illegal immigrants to the State of the Union – and yet the President still refuses to meet with ICE officers. We have a President who will provide those illegally in the US with the seat of honor at one of the most important events of the year, but ICE officers who serve under him are unwelcome in the White House. This is symptomatic of the President’s continued demonstration of contempt for immigration officers and his blatant disregard for Congressionally-enacted law. ICE officers are forced every day to release violent offenders back into the streets; we are prohibited from enforcing immigration violations and document fraud and from cracking down on illegal employment; we are prohibited from enforcing public charge law to protect taxpayers; and we are forced to catch-and-release illegal aliens who are not ‘priorities’ even when officers’ believe there is a threat to public safety.”
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8. I could use a triple face palm for this one. Another Obama admin foreign policy success.
From Reuters “- Syria has given up less than 5 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal and will miss next week’s deadline to send all toxic agents abroad for destruction, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The deliveries, in two shipments this month to the northern Syrian port of Latakia, totaled 4.1 percent of the roughly 1,300 tonnes of toxic agents reported by Damascus to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“It’s not enough and there is no sign of more,” one source briefed on the situation said.
The internationally backed operation, overseen by a joint OPCW-United Nations mission, is now 6-8 weeks behind schedule. Damascus needs to show it is still serious about relinquishing its chemical weapons, the sources told Reuters.”
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9. FINALLY!!!!!! Someone states the obvious. 🙂
From RealClearPolitics “We need more answers there, we need answers about a lot of things. This administration promised to be the most transparent in history, Rachel, and I think if you would stop being a cheerleader and be a journalist, you’d recognize we’re not getting those answers.
MADDOW: Did you just call me a cheerleader?
HUELSKAMP: I don’t know, maybe you had that history. I’m saying —
MADDOW: No, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on.
HUELSKAMP: You’re a cheerleader for the administration; you’re not being a journalist. When you’re not willing to look at the facts. If it was Bush, you would be jumping and screaming.”
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Wandering Views 
I am in Georgia and we were told at least two days before the storm that it was on the way…
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Oh yeah…first!
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That’s the point the forecasters are making. They warned people, but officials still seemed unprepared. Govt officials don’t want to take any responsibility for their horrible response and preparations.
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Here’s another good storm story. A doctor who walks 6 miles to perform life-saving brain surgery.
http://blog.al.com/wire/2014/01/doctor_walks_six_miles_in_snow.html
“Dr. Zenko Hrynkiw was at Brookwood Medical Center Tuesday morning when he was needed for emergency brain surgery at Trinity Medical Center.”
“The cell service was bad so we were fading in and out,” said Steve Davis, charge nurse in the neuro intensive care unit at Trinity. “At one point, I heard him say, ‘I’m walking.'”
“”He finally called me and said where’s the patient? What’s the status?” Davis said. “He spoke to the family and went off to surgery.”
“”This just speaks volumes to the dedication of the man,” Davis said. “When I saw him, all I could say is ‘you are a good man.’ ”
The patient is doing well. 🙂
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Yes, the newscasters warned of the storm and yes, people ignored them. I have been waiting on this to happen. I mostly see it with a hurricane, but I have been saying for years that the Weather Channel was going to be responsible for a lot of deaths one day. They jump up and down with pure giddiness at a “weather condition” and then it turns out to be nothing.
They have done this for years with hurricanes, telling us that it would be a Cat 4 or 5 storm and when it hit land it was nothing more than a good thunderstorm.
Just as I posted on Tuesday about the local news crew who went to film a kindergarten class being told there would be no school the next day and the reason was there “might” be snow. Those children didn’t process “might” and parents the next day were left to explain that sometimes the weather didn’t do what the meteorologists predicted.
What the weather people have done is cry wolf one too many times and people are used to ignoring them so that is what they did.
It snowed in Mobile, AL on December 18. 1996. I don’t recall knowing that it was going to happen or being warned in any way, but when I saw what the weather was doing I went to my boss and asked to go home early, I had to cross the Bay and the bridge may ice. He let me go.
PEOPLE, not anyone else should be responsible.
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#2 A headline in today’s Times-News says “Storm takes WNC, South by surprise.
turns out, it was two hours early. :shock:To quote our Southern Belle,
“PEOPLE, not anyone else should be responsible”.
That is, when the weatherman says there will be bad weather, believe it. You can’t plan this to the minute.
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Chris Matthews comment about the “spark” in the president’s speech because he couldn’t see the crease in his pants.
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Why do we need to blame someone for a NATURAL disaster. Stuff happens.
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More on what happened in Atlanta:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/atlanta-snow-storm-102839.html
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Kim, that just proves that it is an inexact science. Now this sissy country’s demanding we be saved from being inconvenienced by nature, and when we are, heads must roll.
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This going around Facebook. I have to share “Okay, Northerners stop criticizing how we handle snow and ice. It’s rare down here. Kind of like winning a BCS Championship up there.” 🙂
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This is what happens when the President says he’ll stop the seas from rising. Notice these are Red states too. 🙂
Just sayin’…… 😆
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KBells,
Let’s see…..
Kim says the last time was “96…..
The BCS started in “98……
The last, and only northern school to win a BCS title was Ohio State in 2002…….
I’d have to say that statement is accurate KBells. 🙂
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okay, I’m ignorant, what is BCS??
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Jo, it’s the Bowl Championship (Something). What it does is select what teams play in the various bowls and who plays for the championship. It is being replaced, but I don’t know what it will be. It is obviously flawed because an ACC team won this year.
😉
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Series. Bowl Championship Series.
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