In Zero Hedge tradition we provide the thinking man's (unfortunately The State of the Union has just got dumber and dumber over the years) and drinking man's (for those who need libation to persevere through the populism) guide to tonight's imperial leader's prognostications of wealth redistribution. Last year's SOTU saw the most uses of the word "folks" and we are betting (figuratively of course) that tonight's speech will top that for "Peak Folks". Obama has used "love" more than Clinton and "Energy" more than Bush...
President Obama's speeches have lasted 51 to 69 minutes... (via @CSPAN)
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Trumping all but Clinton in the last few decades...
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Too little too late for The Middle Class American? (via @DKThomp)
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Comparing Clinton to Bush to Obama... (via @DomenicoPBS)
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We have reached Peak "Folks"...
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And "Fair" is surging again...
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As The State Of The Union Speech is getting dumbererer... [9]
Since James Madison's 1815 Address, the 'linguistic standard' of the State of the Union speech has plunged. As The Guardian noted last year [10], the lowest on record was George H.W. Bush's 1992 address - only just beating Obama's 2011 address for 'dumbest' speech ever. Whether this is representative of the American people as a whole or the lowest common denominator is unclear... Dumb and dumber indeed...
Using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test [11] the Guardian has tracked the reading level of every state of the union
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and the Top 20 (or Bottom 20 we guess) Lowest average readability test scores for the Presidents...
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Probably because the audience is getting drunkerer...
The Simple (but effective) Plan... (via Heavy.com) [14]
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And straight up Bingo... (via CNN) [16]
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Drink Responsibly...
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Of course, it's not just Obama that has broken promises. Here is Bloomberg Businessweek's annotated version of 35 years of State Of The Union promises... [18]
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