This SOTU Shall Pass

Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - The Day's Most Fascinating News from Dave Pell

Wednesday, January 31, 2018 1 THIS SOTU SHALL PASS Dicky Durbin, Pocahontas, Sneaky Dianne Feinstein, Jeff Flakey, Liddle Bob Corker, Little Marco, Lyin' Ted, Crazy Bernie, and Crying Chuck were all in attendance as President Trump used his first State of the Union address to call for more unity. These speeches are wildly over-covered and soon forgotten. In the end, the biggest news of the night may have been that the president didn't tweet for at least 90 minutes. + Here are five big moments from the address. + SOTU Faced? The tone was different, the content was familiar. And the truthfulness? Check out the fact-checks from WaPo and AP. + WaPo: "The speech offered a window into what might have been, if he had stuck to script and shown more self-discipline during his first year." + Here are some winners and losers and here are some more. + Linguists might enjoy this list of the words Trump used in his State of the Union that had never been used before. + Speak softly and carry a big Chapstick. Meanwhile, Joe Kennedy held his own delivering the Democratic response (and more than held his own when applying the lip balm.) + "There's infighting, early-morning Twitter rants, and the looming, if far-fetched, threat of early cancellation." Buzzfeed's Tarini Parti gets us warmed up for season two of Potus. (The show sort of sucks without Omarosa...)     2 MEMO RISE As President Trump exited the House Chamber, a representative encouraged him to release the memo. Trump responded, "Oh yeah, don't worry, one hundred percent." Meanwhile, the FBI issued an unusual public statement on the matter: "As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy." The fact that this memo is news is the big news.     3 VICTOR NOT WINNING President Trump had tough words for North Korea, but should we really expect to see the use of force? Here's one clue from WaPo: Victor Cha, "the White House's original choice for U.S. ambassador to South Korea is no longer expected to be nominated after he privately expressed disagreement in late December with the Trump administration's North Korea policy ... a risky concept known as a 'bloody nose' strategy. + Victor Cha: Giving North Korea a 'bloody nose' carries a huge risk to Americans.     4 CARTEL BLANCHE "The panel recently sent letters to regional drug wholesalers Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith, asking why the companies increased painkiller shipments and didn't flag suspicious drug orders from pharmacies while overdose deaths were surging across West Virginia." It's going to be a hard question to answer without eliciting both laughter and tears. Why? Those firms "shipped 20.8 million prescription painkillers to two pharmacies four blocks apart in a Southern West Virginia town with 2,900 people."     5 PROFESSOR SNAPE "Thanks to tenure, I have a dream job for life. Personally, I have no reason to lash out at our system of higher education. Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, has convinced me that it is a big waste of time and money." In The Atlantic, Bryan Caplan makes the case that the world might be better off without college for everyone.     6 LOCK, HAWK, AND PERIL "The cabinets were sold by a Canberra furniture shop at a discount price because they were locked and no one could find keys." In Australia, hundreds of top-secret and highly classified cabinet documents have been obtained following an extraordinary breach of national security.     7 LOOK WHAT YOU MADE HER DO "Some 30 percent to 40 percent of tickets to the world's top concerts are resold on secondary websites such as StubHub and SeatGeek. Many of those sales are by scalpers who believe people are willing to pay far more than the initial price to see stars of Swift's magnitude; they double and sometimes triple the ticket price. Thousands of Swift's die-hard fans, Swifties, spent huge sums the singer never saw. That didn't sit well with Swift, who is as much an entrepreneur as she is an artist." BusinessWeek: Taylor Swift Wants Her Money Back. (This is not a battle to save you money. It's a battle over who gets the money when you pay more.)     8 LIKE WATER FOR CAROB "In his new book, The TB12 Method, the quarterback recommends a hydration routine that's more than a little unusual. Brady reportedly drinks over 37 glasses of water per day, enough water to hydrate a healthy person for five days." Tom Brady's water habit could kill an ordinary person. (So could playing tackle football at 40.) + "He reckoned that if he could persuade his fellow Japanese to increase their daily steps from 4,000 to around 10,000 then they would burn off approximately 500 extra calories a day and remain slim." Who came up with the idea of walking 10,000 steps a day? + The New Yorker: How Carob Traumatized a Generation.     9 LINER NOTES "Imagine having no talent. Imagine being no good at all at something and doing it anyway. Then, after nine years, failing at it and giving it up in disgust and moving to Englewood, N.J., and selling aluminum siding. And then, years later, trying the thing again, though it wrecks your marriage, and failing again. And eventually making a meticulous study of the thing and figuring out that, by eliminating every extraneous element, you could isolate what makes it work and just do that." NYT Magazine: Letter of Recommendation: Rodney Dangerfield. "I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician, I'd be honest."     10 BOTTOM OF THE NEWS When I apply to the state for my liquor and tobacco licenses each year, they send them to the secretary of the village, which is me. So, I get them as the secretary, sign them as the clerk and give them to myself as the bar owner." Welcome to Monowi, Nebraska: population 1. + "Any moment now the New Kids on the Block are going to appear, and then they're not going to leave for the next four days." My days at sea with New Kids on the Block and 3,000 everlasting fans. + "The drivers claimed they were 'coming from very far away and had been stopping and collecting oranges along the way.'"     Thanks, Dave Pell Managing Editor, Internet Liked this issue? Pass it along: Twitter Facebook Email NextDraft 600 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 You are receiving this because you signed up for Dave Pell's Next Draft newsletter. If you'd like to stop receiving these emails, simply unsubscribe. No hard feelings. If this email isn't looking quite right, you can view it in your browser. Did some awesome person forward this issue to you? Subscribe at NextDraft and get it in your own inbox.