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Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Jan 20, 2015
January 20, 2015
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The President at play:
PRESIDENT OBAMA delivers his sixth State of the Union Address tonight before a joint session of Congress, his Cabinet members, the U.S. Supreme Court, various military officials and other invited guests. The White House announced over the weekend that the president will highlight a number of new tax proposals, many targeting the richest Americans through eliminating IRS loopholes, raising some rates on investment income and adding a fee to certain Wall Street transactions.
Mr. Obama will propose taking that extra revenue and using it to offset new tax incentives aimed at middle income Americans.
Analysis: Many of those tax ideas stand little, if any chance, of getting through a Republican-controlled Congress, and the president knows that. Instead, tonight's address will essentially start the 2016 White House campaign.
With a far more favorable Senate map, and the "star power" of a presidential race, Democrats will try and use the theme of "income inequality" to keep control of the White House, by again painting Republicans as the party of the rich. Just as the "Occupy Wall Street" movement was used to introduce the "One Percent" mantra that was used successfully against MITT ROMNEY in 2012, Democrats and the president will use tonight's tax proposals to get some early "body shots" in against the GOP, hoping to rally women, minority and low-income voters for 2016. That task is now even more important, considering the Democrats' struggling numbers with white voters. (Pacelli)Bid'ness is Bid'ness:
Yikes! Big developments at the London Sun newspaper, which has apparently dropped the pictures of a topless model which has appeared every day on the paper's Page Three.
The BBC reports in the future, models will appear wearing swimwear but not topless; however, no comment from the tabloid.
Both of the UK's daily tabloids --the Sun and the Daily Star-- have featured topless women in every issue --the "Page 3 girls" in the Sun and "Star Babes" in the Daily Star.
The practice began in 1970 when the editor sitting in for the vacationing RUPERT MURDOCH decided the girls would go topless. After the sales of the paper soared by 40 percent in the first year after the decision, it became a standard feature for the paper.
However, as you might imagine, it was never a popular feature for feminists.Ratings:
That Lifetime movie about WHITNEY HOUSTON on Saturday night pulled in 4.5 million total viewers, making it Lifetime's most watched show since "Flowers in the Attic" a year ago.
However, not everybody liked the movie, judging from the comments about it on the internet afterward and Whitney's family was against the film from the beginning, with PAT HOUSTON, her sister-in-law and president of the Whitney Houston Estate writing "This made for TV movie is certainly not a trailer to Whitney's life story."
Part of the problem may have been that the biopic had no singing by Whitney, who was portrayed by former "America's Next Top Model" runner-up YAYA DaCOSTA. ARLEN ESCARPETA played her husband and ex-NEW EDITION member BOBBY BROWN.
Nevertheless, the hour-long "Bobby Brown: Remembering Whitney" interview also did well, keeping 4.1 million total viewers, or around 90 percent of the original movie's audience.Grace notes from Vinny Marino:
It's been kept kinda quiet, but JIMMY PAGE is currently dating a woman who is 46-years younger than he is! Jimmy is 71 and poet SCARLETT SABET is just 25. That means she was born 10 years after LED ZEPPELIN split up. The UK's Daily Mail says the guitarist has always been quiet about his personal life. No one knew that he left wife number two until three years after they split. Scarlett is also half the age of Jimmy's oldest daughter, who is also named Scarlett. This actually isn't something new for Jimmy. Back in the Led Zeppelin days, he was with a 14-year-old girl when he was in his late 20's. (Marino)
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