Friday, Feb 15, 2013
1. CLASS WARFARE: OBAMA'S STATE-OF-THE-UNION ADDRESS.
"It is our unfinished task," the president said, "to restore the basic
bargain that built this country, the idea that if you work hard and meet
your responsibilities you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, no
matter what you look like or who you love." Equal opportunity was Obamas
clear theme. "Tonight let's declare that, in the wealthiest nation on
Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty -- and
raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour." Obama and Romney agreed a
year ago that the minimum wage should be linked to the cost of living so
worker's income is not always left lagging behind the economy. Even
liberal politicians usually stop there. However, with families to support,
workers can't take an unpaid sabbatical to prepare for the next level.
That option is open only to the wealthy. So Obama proposed an emphasis on
making high-quality preschool programs available to middle-class parents.
As Gail Collins points out in Thursday's New York Times, this goes back to
Walter Mondales Comprehensive Child Development Act. Obama proposed
working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child
in America.
Unnoticed unless it was being watched through a telescope, a 150-foot
asteroid hurtled by today, missing Earth by only 17,150 miles; it was the
closest known flyby of Earth for an object of its size. In a chilling
coincidence, a much smaller meteor exploded above Russia's Ural Mountains
just hours before the asteroid zoomed by.
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