So Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters are both being charged by the House Ethics Committee for violations that could have them thrown from their lofty Congressional perches.
How egregious must these violations be if the charges are being levied now, when the Democrats have unified control over the House, Senate, and White House, and against senior Democrats, right before a Congressional election in which the Democrats are extremely worried about losing control of the House? I’m stunned, frankly. You’d think they could stall until after November.
Others pooh-poohed the notion when teh cipher recently suggested that Senator Evan Bayh might be in hot water. Turns out, he decided that he would quit his job rather than be pushed out; Bayh announced today that he’s not re-running.
…it is hard to imagine either Bayh or Lugar unwillingly leaving office. I don’t care what the political climate, Evan Bayh is about as popular a figure Indiana has.
Get busy imagining, biznatches, apparently he’s not popular enough. At least he didn’t trot out that old trope about “wanting to spend more time with my family.” This just proves that even a blind squirrel finds the right time twice a day. Or something like that.
This Washington Examiner article explains that Indiana’s junior senator might have quite the difficult time getting re-elected; he’s currently polling behind Republican challenger Mike Pence 44% to Pence’s 47%. Not a big deal? That’s not their analysis:
The pattern is clear. Evan Bayh is running far behind the way he ran once Indiana voters had a chance to observe his performance as governor, significantly behind the way he ran in his first race for governor, significantly behind his father’s winning percentages in three Senate races and close only to the percentage his father won when he was defeated in the heavily Republican year of 1980, when Ronald Reagan was carrying Indiana over Jimmy Carter by a margin of 56%-38%.
This is where the Obama administration programs and the Senate health care bill, for which Evan Bayh voted, have put an attractive and well-known Democrat who has shown time and again his ability to run far ahead of his party….
Evan Bayh did not win five statewide races in Indiana, a state that tends to favor the other party, by being stupid. Now the question is whether he is smart enough to get himself out of the hole Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have dug for him—and which he was willing, when the Senate had 60 Democrats, to jump in himself.
Personally, I find it hard to imagine that Bayh loses this race, but then it was impossible that Martha Coakley would lose in MA to Scott Brown, so stranger things have happened.
“If they can’t administer a program like this, I’d be a little concerned about my health insurance,” car salesman Rob Bojaryn said.
I wonder why Rahm Emmanuel is pressing for a vote before the August recess. Maybe he knows delay may equal death if more people look at the details of the proposed plan.
Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks… They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.
Yeah. So you can see where this is going, right? Well, not so simple. The U.S. is a republic of a different flavor, after all. The article takes the view as a given that nationalization and restructuring the banks is the path to recovery and so frames the discussion around this premise. Still, it provides an interesting look at the overlapping circles of power around Washington and Wall Street. Check your naivete at the door.
The audible portion of Penn and Teller wants to share some wisdom with you. Or at least his intuition about OUR money. Hit the brakes.
Whether it’s fire walking or knowing that the Earth is round, everyone seems to dig counterintuitive thinking. Many dig it when our president explains we’re going to spend our way out of debt. That’s way against all the intuition we’ve developed in our adult lives. Spending our way out of debt doesn’t work often, does it? It’s crazy talk. Didn’t a lot of people try that spending out of debt thing?
I live in Vegas, and I see people by the side of the road with cardboard signs who seem like they might have tried that spending their way out of debt thing. Or maybe they tried the all too intuitive “crack will make me feel healthy again” thing. I don’t know.
Officials said the proposal would seek a broad new role for the Federal Reserve to oversee large companies, including major hedge funds, whose problems could pose risks to the entire financial system…. The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving federal bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Because this is exactly what the framers meant when they said “provide for the common defense”.
