Author Archives: Bok
Tom Steyer Campaign Spending
The Koch brothers got a nice return on their big spending ways in Tuesday’s wave election. Tom Steyer, not so much.
Steyer is a billionaire hedge fund guy. He wants to save the climate from change. The Koch brothers are billionaire energy tycoons.They spend millions promoting a conservative/libertarian agenda and irritating Harry Reid. Harry thinks that’s un-American.
Tom Steyer
Steyer spent $74 million on this election. Climate change rated dead last among voter concerns in the Gallup poll. Tom Steyer’s candidates didn’t rate much higher with them.
Not About Him
Well, it’s finally not about him. That was President Obama’s reaction to the Republican wave that swept Democratic governors and senators out to sea.
He said the voters’ message is that they want to “get stuff done” and “make Washington work”.
Daniel Henninger sees it differently. He thinks the “labor force participation rate” killed the Dems:
Read between the lines of this paragraph in the federal government’s October employment report, on the eve of the election:
“In September, 2.2 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.”
Henninger says the average economic growth rate since WWII is 3.3%:
Here are the growth rates for each year of the Obama presidency (World Bank data):
2009: -2.8%; 2010: 2.5%; 2011: 1.8%; 2012: 2.8%; 2013: 1.9%
You preside over that performance, you lose. The 2014 growth uptick arrived too late to save the Democrats.
About Him
Before the election Obama said it would be about him, his policies, actually. Now he says it was about Republicans working with him. My friend Steve Kelly nailed the Obamian Attitude with this cartoon. Click the thumbnail.
Obama Policies Lose Senate
Hog-castrator, and Taylor Swift-look-alike, Joni Earnst put Republicans in control of the U.S. Senate with her victory in Iowa last night.
Six years ago first term senator Barack Obama accepted his party’s presidential nomination in front of fake Greek columns and 70,000 true believers in Denver. Two weeks ago he said that he’s not on the ballot in this election but his policies are. And so they were.
Obama Policies
The Washington Post said yesterday this election was all about Obama.
Even the president’s Illinois home state governor, Pat Quinn, went down in flames. (By the way that’s Valerie Jarrett in the picture, not Joni Ernst.)
Panic Attack
Even hysteria is politically polarizing these days. Ann Coulter has a column claiming the media, usually purveyors of panic , now want everyone to chill about Ebola. It doesn’t appear that an epidemic is imminent. “The Science” is predicting an additional 1-130 new Ebola cases in the U.S. by the end of the year.
Russian Bombers
NATO fighter jets scrambled last week as Russian bombers probed European airspace. US officials think President Putin is making a “show of force”:
“It’s concerning because it’s moving in the wrong direction,” said one U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the air activity publicly. “It’s not helping to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine. It’s not helping to improve relations between NATO and Russia. It’s not helping anybody.”
Also last week a NASA resupply rocket for the International Space Station suffered a “catastrophic anomaly“. Normal people say it blew up. The rocket used a 40 year old Russian engine. The U.S. relies on Russia.com for all manned space travel needs.
Update: It was a bad week for private sector space flight says, National Post. The Russian engine powered an Antares rocket designed by Orbital Sciences. NASA hopes to outsource payload flights to private companies like Orbital Sciences.
A Virgin Galactic rocket also blew up last week killing the co-pilot. Virgin is planning to offer sub-orbital flights to private paying customers.
