Author Archives: Bok
Better than his Advisers
In 2008 President Obama offered this self evaluation.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Anything You Can Do, I Can do Better
Last week The Washington Post said the president doesn’t work well with others in the military. Mark Theissen, also in the Post, said Obama ignored his top general when he pulled all troops out of Iraq – allowing ISIS to move in – and he’s still ignoring him.
NFL vs. NOW
The NFL is in a panic over angry women and angry sportswriters, sometimes one and the same. Commissioner Roger Goodell held a press conference yesterday to announce a crackdown on football players behaving badly. It played to very bad reviews. He apologized and promised a new and more sensitive NFL. But no number of pink ribbons will satisfy the National Organization for Women. President Terry O’Neill immediately renewed calls for Goodell’s head.
Never mind that the arrest rate for NFL players is lower than the rate for adult men in the general population. Here’s a chart from Deadspin.
NFL vs. NOW
So, why the uproar now? Ray Rice was seen last February dragging his unconscious fiancé Janay Palmer out of an Atlantic City casino elevator, caveman style. It was obvious something brutal had happened. Rice was charged with aggravated assault and placed in a one year pre-trial intervention program. The NFL suspended him for two games. With the unpleasantness behind them, Janay and Ray got married and lived happily ever after.
That is until an elevator video surfaced this month on TMZ showing Ray actually dropping Janay with a left hook. Then the NFL took action to punish the victim by taking away her husband’s of income. Rice was suspended indefinitely.
Video footage evidently concentrates the mind, whether it’s of a knockout punch or a beheading. That puts Commissioner Goodell and President Obama in the same boat. Well, not actually, NOW still likes Obama.
Doctors, Farmers, and the JV Team
The Senate just approved a continuing resolution to fund the government and train Syrian rebels to fight against ISIS. President Obama previously dismissed the rebels as “doctors, pharmacists, and farmers”. That’s a positive endorsement considering he called ISIS the “JV team”.
Scotland Yes or NO
The clock is ticking down for a yes or no vote on Scotland’s break with Britain, and things are getting ugly. Hope the clock’s not attached to a bomb. English politicians are pulling out all the stops in Scotland to buy no votes.
Keeping the Scotch in Scotland
Even Bill Clinton got into the act to say a yes vote could be financially risky. Big banks and businesses have threatened to leave Scotland if the yes voters win. On the bright side, that’s not an option for Scotch makers.
How would Braveheart Vote on Scotland?
Actually Mel Gibson, and even William Wallace, were minor figures in Scottish independence. Robert the Bruce (click the WSJ Michael Penman book review) was the real Braveheart in 1320.
Scotland eventually joined the UK in a merger of equals. In fact the Scots ruled England when King James King IV inherited the throne in 1603.
Nial Ferguson was born in Scotland and he doesn’t get the 21st century independence movement. He thinks it will be an economic disaster.
The economic risks are so glaring that even Paul Krugman and I agree it’s a terrible idea. What currency will Scotland use? The pound? The euro? No one knows. What share of North Sea oil revenues will go to Edinburgh? What about Scotland’s share of Britain’s enormous national debt?
American Braveheart
King James wasn’t the only ruler with Scottish breeding. Gordon Brown is a Scotsman and, according to Wesley Pruden, most American presidents have had Scottish blood.
Three-fourths of the presidents, including Washington, Jefferson and Madison, were of Scottish descent. So have been half of the secretaries of the Treasury, a third of the secretaries of State. Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, like Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, were of Scottish blood. So, too, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart and Ambrose Burnside, and later John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton. America would not have a military tradition but for the sons of Scotland the Brave.
