Linda Chavez: Ignoring the Voters

Linda Chavez

Members of Congress have now returned home to try to save their own jobs, never mind helping the millions of Americans who have lost theirs. "When we come back this fall, the election will be over," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Washington Post. "I hope that it also means that Republicans will finally be able to put the American people ahead of their short-term political interests and ambitions." Reid's comments to the Post are one of the most outrageous examples of double-speak in recent political history. Reid wasn't really talking about Republicans. He was talking about members of his own party. What Reid and his counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are hoping is that Democrats who lose their seats in the election will be willing to pass legislation in a lame duck session that they know the voting public doesn't support. In Reid's logic, they will be free to vote their liberal ideology. And it won't matter because they will have already lost their jobs. But it is precisely this kind of arrogance that has Democrats in such poor shape heading into the mid-term elections. Read more here:

Linda Chavez: Ignoring the Voters

All the President's Guarantees

President Obama on Golf Course

From Townhall.com by Hugh Hewitt - Two audio clips have received more air time on my radio show this year than any others. The first is Barbara Boxer demanding Army General Michael Walsh call her "senator," not "ma'am." The second is President Obama telling America: "Here's a guarantee that I have made. If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you've got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor." 3M announced this week it is getting out of the business of insuring its retirees. Within a couple of years, all of those former employees will be pushed into Medicare or given a payment towards the cost of insurance obtained from the new exchanges established under Obamacare. There is no guarantee that their coverage will be as good as what they have now, and of course no guarantee that they will have the same doctor. This follows the announcement from The Principal Financial Group that it is exiting the health insurance business, waiving goodbye to its 840,000 covered insureds. Those insureds will not by definition have the same insurance next year, and the impact on their doctor choice is yet to be seen. Read more here:

All the President's Guarantees

Larry Elder - Obamalism

Larry Elder

Obamalism: a political/social/economic philosophy that combines socialism, collectivism and redistributionism wrapped around a killer smile. Welcome, Mr. President, to your new reality. The Republicans need not "take over" Congress to slow the march of the most left-wing president ever elected. To clip President Barack Obama's wings, the GOP simply needs to carve into the once filibuster-proof Democratic Senate. The new 1994 Republican majorities in the House and Senate forced then-President Bill Clinton to smell the center-right coffee. He then signed a more modest domestic budget, welfare reform (after two vetos) and capital gains tax cuts. Despite Obama's defiant assertion that he would rather be a "really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president," he already reluctantly recognizes the reality of a Clinton-like post-midterm pivot. Consider the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article based on interviews with shellshocked White House personnel: "Obama Likely to Scale Back Legislative Plans: In New Political Landscape, Incremental Approach Is in Works to Get Support for Some Proposals on Energy, Immigration." "Hope and change" has been replaced with "hopeless and small change." Read more here:

Larry Elder - Obamalism

Democrat Talking Heads Privately Diss Obama

No one would mistake Brad Blakeman for a Democrat. He is a former Bush White House aide who appears regularly on Fox News and other outlets as a Republican strategist. Yet Democrats are so disgusted with President Obama that when they shmooze with Blakeman in the green room before TV appearances, they diss the president. “They say how arrogant and disconnected Obama and his staff are,” Blakeman tells Newsmax. “They say that he refuses to take advice and basically demands that they toe his line no matter what.” If Democratic talking heads are disgusted with Obama, so are voters. “People aren’t buying the sales pitches,” Blakeman says. “They don’t like what he is selling. They have been burned by the product, and now they are looking elsewhere.”

Ironically, “The most dejected people are Democrats because they feel that they have been let down by the guy whom they thought was going to solve all of the problems,” Blakeman says. “The people who’ve supported this guy the most are the ones hurting the most — young people and the inner city urban population, where unemployment is 20 percent.” Obama’s solution to the widespread disenchantment with him has been to demonize rich people, the tea party movement, the Bush administration, and Fox News. Yet, in a Politico/George Washington University poll, 42 percent of respondents said Fox News is their main source of information about the upcoming election, compared with 30 percent who cited CNN and 12 percent who rely on MSNBC. Read more here:

Democrat Talking Heads Privately Diss Obama

Progressive and Rolling Stone Define Tea Party

From progressive.org - In a great piece this week for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi defines the whole Tea Party movement with a few deft keystrokes: "millions of pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the handful of banks and investment firms who advertise on Fox and CNBC." Taibbi spent months interviewing Tea Partiers, attending rallies, and researching the whole organization before he came to this conclusion.

Matt Taibbi

Among his findings: many of the most fervent Tea Party critics of government spending on stimulus and health care programs are themselves recipients of government largess--including retirees on Medicare; and Tea Party poster boy Rand Paul attacks Medicare and Medicaid spending but defends doctors like himself taking payments from these programs because they need them to "make a comfortable living. "It is impolitic to attack American voters' intelligence, of course--particularly for Democrats afraid of being labeled elitist and out of touch. But the deception that the Tea Party's creators are pulling off really leaves you scratching your head. read more here:

Progressive and Rolling Stone Define Tea Party

Apaches Join Sunland Park in Opposing Jemez Off Reservation Casino

MESCALERO — The Mescalero Apache Tribe and the Sunland Park racetrack and casino are opposing Jemez Pueblo's proposal to build a casino and hotel near Anthony, which is nearly 300 miles from the northern New Mexico pueblo. The Mescaleros and the Sunland Park track issued a statement on Wednesday saying the Jemez casino could hurt their businesses in southern New Mexico. The Mescaleros also object that the casino is proposed within their ancestral homelands. Jemez is partnering with Santa Fe art dealer Gerald Peters. Read more here:

Apaches Join Sunland Park in Opposing Jemez Off Reservation Casino

Third Party Rising

From the New York Times - by Thomas Friedman - A friend in the U.S. military sent me an e-mail last week with a quote from historian Lewis Mumford’s book, “The Condition of Man,” about the development of civilization. Mumford was describing Rome’s decline: “Everyone aimed at security: no one accepted responsibility. What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was an inner go. Security was the watchword as if life knew any other stability than through constant change, or any form of security except through a constant willingness to take risks.” “We basically have two bankrupt parties bankrupting the country,” said the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond. We have to rip open this two-party duopoly and have it challenged by a serious third party that will talk about education reform, without worrying about offending unions; financial reform, without worrying about losing donations from Wall Street; corporate tax reductions to stimulate jobs, without worrying about offending the far left; energy and climate reform, without worrying about offending the far right and coal-state Democrats; and proper health care reform, without worrying about offending insurers and drug companies. “If competition is good for our economy,” asks Diamond, “why isn’t it good for our politics?” We need a third party on the stage of the next presidential debate to look Americans in the eye and say: “These two parties are lying to you. They can’t tell you the truth because they are each trapped in decades of special interests. I am not going to tell you what you want to hear. I am going to tell you what you need to hear if we want to be the world’s leaders, not the new Romans.” Read column

Third Party Rising

Geithner: Throwing Rocks at Foreign Currency Policies From the U.S. Fiscal Policy Glass House

Tim Geithner

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said a “damaging dynamic” of large economies keeping their currencies undervalued can cause inflation and asset bubbles, and called on countries to coordinate their policies. “More and more countries face stronger pressure to lean against the market forces pushing up the value of their currencies,” Geithner said in a speech today at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He said currencies are “inherently a multilateral issue. It’s much easier to solve if countries come together and do things to complement each other.”

Tim Geithner's House

Global exchange-rate policies are a source of contention ahead of this week’s meeting in Washington of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Group of 20 officials. Brazil’s Finance Minister Guido Mantega last week warned of a “currency war.” Read more here:

Geithner: Throwing Rocks at Foreign Currency Policies From the U.S. Fiscal Policy Glass House

Stiglitz: U.S. Exporting Imbalances

Joseph Stiglitz

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said the Federal Reserve’s policy of cutting interest rates to a record low has had repercussions worldwide, including currency misalignments and the risk of asset price bubbles. “Fed policy was supposed to reignite the American economy, but it’s not doing that,” Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York since 2001, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. “The flood of liquidity is going abroad and causing problems all over the world.” Japan sold the yen last month for the first time in six years to spur exports and economic growth, joining countries across Asia and Latin America that have sought to temper gains in their currencies against the dollar. Tensions over exchange rate policies prompted Brazil’s Finance Minister Guido Mantega to warn Sept. 27 of a “currency war.” “The worry is that the flood of liquidity is going to cause what is sometimes being referred to as an emerging-market bubble,” Stiglitz said. “Money is going in, and the worry is it will cause a real estate bubble in one developing country or another.” The dollar fell to a 15-year low against the yen today after a private report showed U.S. companies unexpectedly cut jobs last month, fueling speculation the Fed will buy assets to spur a slowing economy. Read more here:

Stiglitz: U.S. Exporting Imbalances

Herrera: Attempting to Deflect Multiple Allegations

Mary Herrera

From NMPolitics.net - Mary Herrera wants people to know that she has worked hard to clean up a mess she inherited when she became secretary of state in 2007. That has caused some employees to become disgruntled, Herrera claimed in a recent interview in Las Cruces. She said that’s the primary cause of much of the scandal that has plagued her tenure in office. “I inherited a $3 million deficit,” Herrera said. “I inherited employees that weren’t working 8-5. They were coming and going.” Herrera’s predecessor was former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, who was indicted last year on 50 counts including money laundering, fraud, soliciting or receiving kickbacks and tax evasion in the alleged theft of millions of dollars from the office. Trial in that case is pending. Vigil-Giron and her co-defendants have pleaded not guilty. Read more here:

Herrera: Attempting to Deflect Multiple Allegations