1.) Where’s Rep. Joe Wilson when you need him? — Pres. Obama lied to America’s fat, unemployed face on Tuesday during his budget back-and-forth with Washington’s poor excuse for a press corps. “We will not be adding more to the national debt. It’s — so, to use a — sort of, an analogy that families are familiar with, we’re not going to be running up the credit card anymore,” Obama said, just two days after Office of Management and Budget Pastor Jack Lew told Candy Crowley, “Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we’re not adding to the debt anymore.” Absent Joe Wilson, who is probably not allowed at these things, Politifact stepped in to provide some clarity. “To extend [Obama’s] analogy, this ignores the big credit card debt hanging over you. That debt isn’t shrinking. In fact, the longer you take to pay down that debt, additional interest costs accrue, and the debt grows.” We’ll still be spending money we don’t have, but instead of spending it on things we don’t need, we’ll be using it to pay down interest on the money we shouldn’t have borrowed!
2.) Creepy pundits waste no time politicizing Lara Logan’s sexual assault — Upon hearing the news that CBS correspondent Lara Logan “suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” while reporting in Egypt last week, the entire Internet stopped what it was doing to honor Logan’s commitment to journalism. Everyone, that is, except for New York University research fellow Nir Rosen and pundit Debbie Schlussel. “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal,” Rosen tweeted, referring to Logan’s defense of Gen. Stanley McCrystal in the wake of a Rolling Stone profile that cost the general his job. Rosen, a liberal, followed with: “Yes yes its wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson [Cooper] too.” The conservative Schlussel, meanwhile, captioned a picture of Logan surrounded by Egyptian protestors, “Islam Fan Lara Logan Gets a Taste of Islam,” and concluded her rant by writing, “How fitting that Lara Logan was ‘liberated’ by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the ‘liberation.'”
3.) Obamacare gives birth to a division of pencil pushers — “The Internal Revenue Service says it will need an battalion of 1,054 new auditors and staffers and new facilities at a cost to taxpayers of more than $359 million in fiscal 2012 just to watch over the initial implementation of President Obama’s healthcare reforms,” reports U.S. News and World Report. “Among the new corps will be 81 workers assigned to make sure tanning salons pay a new 10 percent excise tax. Their cost: $11.5 million.”
4.) Darrell Issa was concerned about MMS before being concerned about MMS was cool— It didn’t take a massive explosion, several dead rig workers, and many months of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for Rep. Darrell Issa to turn a critical eye to the way the Minerals Management Service was managed, a point the congressman has already made in light of a report by the GAO alleging poor management by the Interior Department. Issa has “tracked concerns with MMS since leading an investigation into the troubled agency’s affairs as an Oversight subcommittee chairman in 2006,” according to the Washington Post. “Then, in Oct. 2009 — six months before the Gulf Coast oil spill — Issa proposed separating MMS from the Interior Department,” because the agency could “benefit from a divorce” from the Interior Department, “and separating it would force lawmakers to track it more closely.” Issa took a moment to gloat last night on his Twitter feed. We can hardly blame him for crowing, what with the Clinton machine attempting to knee-cap him.
5.) Life for Fannie and Freddie execs about to get worse — “Texas Representative Randy Neugebauer on Tuesday said he would bring Fannie Mae chief executive Michael Williams and Freddie Mac chief executive Ed Haldeman before his House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations” to talk salary, reports Reuters. More specifically, Williams’ and Haldeman’s $6 million salaries. Acting FHFA Director Edward DeMarco borrowed a page out of Wall Street when asked about the two men’s princely pay, claiming “his agency aims to protect taxpayers by making sure the firms have executives with the technical expertise to oversee more than $5 trillion in assets traded in global financial markets.” Such expertise led us into a horrible financial crisis. Perhaps DeMarco thinks it can lead us out? [Cue laugh track.]
6.) Genachowski will explain why he needed to regulate the Internet today— In a House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee hearing on net neutrality today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowksi will “argue the FCC’s net neutrality framework is a ‘light touch’ approach that creates jobs and promotes competition among private firms without stifling innovation,” reports The Hill. The chairman will not, however, “address the question of legal jurisdiction in his remarks.” Reps. Greg Walden and Marsha Blackburn will probably ask Genachowski to give it a go anyway.