Media Search:



The limits of a secret tape

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Louisville, Kentucky (CNN) -- A secret audio recording of their biggest election year target -- Sen. Mitch McConnell -- talking to a donor summit arranged by the Koch brothers, the Democrats' 2014 bogeymen.

Democrats pushed "The Nation" story around online with frenetic glee.

McConnell's Democratic challenger for his Kentucky seat, Alison Lundergan Grimes, couldn't wait to whack him on it, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that "Mitch McConnell got caught in his 47% Mitt Romney moment."

"I think it shows the extent and the lengths he will go to to pander to his party millionaires and billionaires at the expense of hurting Kentuckians," Grimes told CNN.

The problem with the Democrats' argument is that Romney's 47% moment was only a moment because he was saying to donors in private something he would never have dared to utter in public:

"Forty-seven percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement," Romney said behind closed doors about President Obama's supporters in 2012.

But unlike Romney, what McConnell said to the Koch brothers are things he has said in public, and more importantly, his comments mirror positions he has publicly backed with actual Senate votes: opposition to Democrats' plans to increase the minimum wage, extend unemployment insurance and make student loans more affordable through the tax system.

If Republicans are in charge, he said, those won't be coming back to the Senate floor.

"We're not going to be debating all these gosh-darn proposals," McConnell told the Koch brothers and the rest of the room full of billionaire donors.

Excerpt from:
The limits of a secret tape

The Fix: Democrats have a depth problem

The implosion of Ed FitzGerald's gubernatorial campaignis painful forOhio Democratsbecause he was supposed to be their Next Big Thing.

It's particularly devastating, though, because he's basically all they had. Behind him, the cupboard is pretty bare when it comes to recruiting capable Democrats into big-time statewide campaigns.

But how is that possible? How could Ohio, one of the nation's premier swing states and a political mecca if there ever was one, have such a thin Democratic bench?

It's actually pretty simple: They have very little farm system (to borrow a baseball term). And that's because Republicans, as they have done in several key states, have taken it away from them.

As I noted Tuesday, Ohio Democrats control just one-quarter of the state's 16 congressional seats, less than one-third of the state Senate, less than 40 percent of the state House and none of the state's five statewide constitutional offices. None of these numbers are coincidences. Republicans snapped upa lot of territory in the 2010 wave election and gave themselves the right to redraw Ohio's congressional, state House and state Senate maps. The gerrymandering that ensued madeit very hard for Democrats to compete on any of these mapsfor the next decade.

It's not hard to follow the logic from there. A GOP-friendly map = fewerDemocrats = a much smaller Democratic farm system. The fact that Democrats have just four members of the U.S. House-- to the GOP's 12 -- and none of the five statewide constitutional officers means they don't have manyobvious recruits-in-waiting for Senate or governor. (These are the positions, after all, that tend to take that next step. About75 percent ofthe non-incumbents running in key Senate races come from these two recruiting bays.)

And when it comes to recruiting for Congress and these statewide offices, Democratshave problems there, too. The fact that there are five GOP state legislators for every three Democrats means Republicans have a massively bigger pool of potential recruits to pull from for those more intermediate statewide offices and congressional seats. It's a problem that really runs from the statehouse up.

Unfortunately for Democrats, it's not a problem just in Ohio. This is an emerging issuefor themin as many as eight key swing and blue-leaning states which comprise basically one-fourth ofthe American political map.

In theseeight states --Florida, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin -- the average percentage of Democrats is:

That's right, acrossthese eight states -- seven of which President Obama won in 2008 and six of which he carried in 2012 -- Democrats can't crack 40 percent in any of the key farm systems. They don't even control a state House or state Senate in oneof them.

See original here:
The Fix: Democrats have a depth problem

Fund We Do Need Comprehensive Immigration Reform, But Not In The Way Congress Wants It – Video


Fund We Do Need Comprehensive Immigration Reform, But Not In The Way Congress Wants It

By: alex jones

See the original post here:
Fund We Do Need Comprehensive Immigration Reform, But Not In The Way Congress Wants It - Video

Talking about the economy with Austan Goolsbee – Video


Talking about the economy with Austan Goolsbee
Watch Austan Goolsbee, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, discuss the ways Congress should help build economic opportunitysuch as passing immigration reform, investing in...

By: Organizing for Action

Read more:
Talking about the economy with Austan Goolsbee - Video

INFOWARS Nightly News: with David Knight Tuesday August 26 2014: Plus Special Reports – Video


INFOWARS Nightly News: with David Knight Tuesday August 26 2014: Plus Special Reports
Tuesday: The Infowars Nightly News. Propaganda Alert: Without National ID Card, You May Be Banned From Boarding Airplanes in 2016. Plus, Mexican President Calls for Immigration Reform in the...

By: Ron Gibson

Continue reading here:
INFOWARS Nightly News: with David Knight Tuesday August 26 2014: Plus Special Reports - Video