QUOTE OF THE DAY – BRILLIANT – AT 9:42 A.M. ET:  The president will have an empty chair in the gallery tonight as he delivers his final State of the Union.  From Andrew Malcolm at IBD: 

You might think the empty seat sympathetically represents the recent victims of domestic terror, like the 14 innocents who perished in an ISIS-inspired attack last month in San Bernardino. Or maybe it's for the nation's dedicated first responders and police officers, like the one wounded the other day by an ISIS-inspired Muslim radical in Philadelphia.

Or perhaps the empty chair represents the 23 U.S. service members who've died fighting in Afghanistan in the bloody months since Obama proclaimed he had ended all combat there.
Or the 1,749 military deaths -- 74% of the total -- that have occurred in Afghanistan during Obama's half of that war.

But you'd be wrong to think any of that.

Obama has decided that tonight's empty seat represents the victims of American gun violence, which just happens to coincide with the Democrat's controversial series of "commonsense" executive gun-control actions.

Not against terrorist gun violence, you understand, because that would require Obama to explain where those murderous folks came from after proclaiming he had sent al-Qaida on the run and decimated the ranks of terrorist leaders.

And not by citing Chicago, the country's murder capital and Obama's adopted hometown, where 470 people fell to bullets in the 365 days of 2015. Because that would require Obama to call out Mayor Rahm Emanuel, his machine pol pal and ex-chief of staff.

COMMENT:   Superbly stated.  The real story tonight will be Obama's alternative universe, and the way he's been allowed to live in it by a compliant press. 

January 12, 2016