American Newsreel

From that nasty little hamlet up in Pennsylvania comes word that Punxsutawney Phil, the weather-forecasting rhodent, saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter.

Ironically, the rat that roared saw his shadow on a warm, unwinter-like day and the revelers turned the event into an inpromptu rally in support of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who play in the Super Bowl Sunday.

The Associated Press reports:

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, but it was hard to find a complainer in the crowd on Gobbler’s Knob, where the morning temperature was well above freezing and Thursday’s high was expected to hit 48 degrees.

There were a few boos at the groundhog’s prediction of six more weeks of winter, but most of the hundreds of revelers instead turned the event into an impromptu Pittsburgh Steelers rally.

Fans in football jerseys sang “Here we go Steelers,” and members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s Inner Circle — the top-hat- and tuxedo-wearing businessmen responsible for carrying on the groundhog tradition each year — threw black and gold Steelers “Terrible Towels” as they waited to rouse Phil from his burrow.

The furry forecaster may be popular, but the Pittsburgh Steelers are playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday.

President George W. Bush’s talk of energy independence sure sounds good as a TV sound bite but, as they say, reality bites.

From the Chicago Tribune:

If America is addicted to oil, as President Bush said Tuesday night in his State of the Union speech, the treatment plan he sketched out is likely to be long and costly.

And even if the country achieves the goals Bush set in his speech, the United States would remain heavily dependent on oil imports from volatile regions for years to come.

Bush proposed making ethanol, a corn-based fuel that currently is more expensive and less efficient than gasoline, competitive with gas within six years.

“Six years is really ambitious,” said Mark Edelman, an economist at Iowa State University. “That’s really going to take some ramping up of research and funding.”

Edelman said Bush’s proposed $59 million increase in research funding to $150 million in 2007 is significant but that many of the most promising ethanol technologies “at this point are pretty much in the beginning stages of research,” Edelman said.

If that goal is met, and other breakthroughs are achieved, the United States would cut its reliance on oil from the Mideast by 75 percent by 2025, Bush said in his speech.

That’s a big cut, but not nearly as large as it sounds. The United States gets only 20 percent of its oil from the Middle East, according to the Department of Energy. Far more oil comes from Africa and Venezuela, where governments also are either unstable or unfriendly to the United States.

But while journalists were unimpressed, Americans were downright angry:

Americans reacted with skepticism and anger at President Bush’s fifth State of the Union address Tuesday night, reflecting a national mood that reflects serious reservations about the controversial war in Iraq, revelations about the administration’s secret domestic spying program, and missteps following Hurricane Katrina.

At an Uptown neighborhood bar in New Orleans, both Republicans and Democrats paused to watch with at least one common hope: Rebuilding the Gulf Coast will be a top issue for the federal government.

But neither Tom Short, 75, a Republican and a Korean War veteran, nor attorney Todd Hebert, 38, a Democrat, found much to cheer about in Bush’s address.

After Bush mentioned the Gulf Coast in one or two sentences deep into his speech, Short exclaimed, “Did I miss something? I think that’s a crying shame.”