Tag Archives: mid-term elections

Debt Limit ≠ Immigration

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Earlier this week Speaker John Boehner avoided a showdown on the debt limit through the simple maneuver of getting 193 Democrats to join 28 Republicans to pass the legislation taking the debt limit off the table until March of next year.

The Washington Post’s discussion of the whole thing called the 221-201 tally “a narrow vote” forgetting, perhaps, that the infamous vote to approve Obamacare cleared the House by an overwhelming 219-212. Seven votes.

199 Republicans voted against the debt limit bill – although I suspect there were several sitting on the edge of their pew waiting to see if their “Aye” vote would be needed. Continue reading →

302 Days to Go

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Add this to your Outlook calendar right now: Election day is November 4, 2014 – the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. 302 days from today.

All 435 voting U.S. House seats are up for election as are 35 Senate seats. There are 33 seats that would be contested in the normal rotation for the Senate but there are also special elections in Hawaii and South Carolina to fill vacancies.

This election will be the mid-term election in the second term of President Barack Obama’s Presidency. Historically this is not good news for members of the President’s Continue reading →

The Middle Class

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

“U.S. President Barack Obama is using his weekly address to promote a better bargain for the middle class.”

If that were the lead of an Associated Press report we might think it deserves a closer look, but it was the lead of a press release from the Voice of America, an arm of the U.S. State Department.

Let’s look at Politico.com’s lead: “President Barack Obama sharpened his focus on the economy Wednesday, looking to breathe new life into his second-term agenda with a fresh pivot back to the issue a majority of Americans feel most acutely in their daily lives.”

Ok. We can work with that. Continue reading →

L.E.G.A.C.Y.

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

For the next 1,418 days the top issue on the mind of President Barack Obama and his ever-tightening inner circle will involve the six letters: L.E.G.A.C.Y.

Just as years three and four were totally focused on the President’s re-election; so the last two years of his second term will be focused on the legacy he leaves behind.

Will it be Jimmy Carter’s well-intentioned ineptness? Or FDR’s history changing vision?

One thing is for sure: unless the Democrats win control of the House and maintain control of the Senate Obama’s legacy will be an eight-letter word: Gridlock. Continue reading →

Random Thoughts

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Election-Year Distractions

Have you noticed where the focus of the traditional media is just nine weeks ahead of the mid-term elections? While there seem to be only two driving concerns in this election – the economic condition of the country and the role of government in fixing it – the media is fixated on noise. Just look at the news that’s been dominating the front pages of the newspapers and the evening news broadcasts.

The focus of attention is on the anniversaries of Social Security, the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech (partly because of the provocation of infotainer Glen Beck’s Restore America rally that same day). There’s also continued coverage of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, gay marriage and the sexuality of former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman; the politics of race, the religious affiliation of President Obama and, of course, the pack-journalism story of the decade, the development of an Islamic cultural center in Manhattan.

Continue reading →