Author Archives: Bok
It’s a Joke, Get it?
The president reminded us he was making a little Jeopardy joke the other day as he introduced Joe the Plumber Spy, Richard Cordray, as top consumer bureaucrat.
Another joke is the way Obama likes to remind us he’s one of the elite and we’re not – unless, of course, we really are keeping hundreds of thousands of dollars we don’t need. He recently did this by targeting bestselling authors, ahem, like himself, for higher taxes. (Here’s a rude bestseller who doesn’t want to join the club). Other times he likes to try a little upwardly mobile bonding with moneybags like Mark Zuckerberg .
Gregg Easterbrook says if Obama wants to pay more taxes, he should just do it.
Slapstick Scandal
Mrs. Murdoch slapped silly her husband’s Parliament pie assailant yesterday. No word on whether the guy smuggled the fully assembled shaving creme concoction in his pants or if he assembled it on site. In any case he managed to achieve the impossible – not by outsmarting security – but by turning Murdoch into a victim, for a moment.
David Cameron is now calling for more media regulation. Here’s an LA Times editorial.
World Cup
Is soccer the new tennis? This from USA Today: The women’s World Cup outdrew any ESPN soccer broadcast ever with 13.5 million viewers for a 7.4 national rating. Last year’s U.S. Algeria men’s game drew a 4.0 rating. The most watched game on any network was the 1999 women’s final with a 11.4 rating.
Bluff
The president admitted that he’s bluffing on the debt ceiling by ordering Eric Cantor not to call him on it. Mitch McConnell acknowledged he doesn’t have the votes for the cuts Republicans want, so he offered a complicated “fallback” plan. McConnell’s plan let’s Obama have his way with Congress but Republicans get to vote against it. Theoretically, that would be useful next election, provided voters can figure what the hell he’s talking about.
Furious
Operation Fast and Furious should make you furious. Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms ran a gun running program into Mexico. They expected the guns to lead them to Mexican drug kingpins. One of those guns was used to murder border agent Brian Terry in Arizona.
Ten million dollars for Project Gun Runner, the parent of Fast and Furious, was included in the stimulus bill. Guess you really do need to read the bill to find out what’s in it.
For an additional amount for ‘State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance’, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’ for the ATF Project Gunrunner.
Media Matters, which is to Fox News as Hamas is to Israel, disputes this. They claim the money wasn’t spent in Arizona so it’s all a Fox Fib.
