Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review rip Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu for suggesting she and President Obama are unpopular in her state due in part to latent racism and sexism in the South. They also slam South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham for joking to an all-male club that white men would do very well if he were elected president. They rip new allegations of government waste, including taxpayers paying for $30,000 in coffee for Homeland Security officials. Jim shares a pair of Ronald Reagan stories from the recent National Review dinner and both reveal how their kids will be dressed for Halloween.
Another Udall in Danger
While Colorado Sen. Mark Udall is on the ropes in his bid for re-election, his cousin, New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, is now trying to fend off the momentum of retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Allen Weh, who is near or within the margin of error in the latest polls.
Just a week ago, Udall led Weh by 16 points. Since then, an Albuquerque Journal survey shows a seven-point race (50-43) while a Vox Populi poll released Monday suggests a 47-43 Udall lead. Weh says another poll has the margin down to two percentage points. Weh says there are good reasons for the eleventh hour momentum.
“We’ve presented a sharp contrast to Tom Udall. It’s been done based on his record. I’ve made no personal attacks on the man and don’t intend to and don’t have to,” said Weh, citing the economy, health care, national security and “other lesser-related issues in New Mexico” as the areas of sharpest difference.
“On every one of those, Tom Udall’s on the wrong side of the issue. He cast the deciding vote for Obamacare that stripped $716 billion out of Medicare and that’s starting to hurt seniors right now as we speak. That was a train wreck. He made it worse,” said Weh.
On the economy, Weh says the two couldn’t be more different because they come at issues like economic growth and job creation from opposite directions.
“He’s been a career politician. He’s never created a job or saved a job in his life. I created a business and I can relate to that and I can relate to helping stimulate our economy and what it needs to have done to do that,” he said.
However, Weh may be most frustrated with Udall’s performance on national security issues. Weh is a retired United States Marine Corps colonel, who was awarded a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts and five Air Medals among other honors for his heroism in combat. The 71-year-old Weh served the nation in uniform in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Somalia and the Iraq War. He is appalled by Udall’s foreign policy and military records both personally and professionally.
“On national security, no contest. He’s never served in uniform a day in his life. In fact in 1970, when he graduated from college, he decided to go to England to avoid service in Vietnam. That may not matter to a lot of people, but I’ll tell you what. It matters to a whole lot of Vietnam veterans,” said Weh.
This is the arena Weh sees himself having the greatest and most immediate impact if elected to the Senate. He believes President Obama needs to get congressional authorization for a long-term military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but first he says we need a real plan to win.
“We don’t have a comprehensive strategy. The national command authority, the president, has not woken up to the fact that this is an existential threat to the United States and acted accordingly. He’s dealing with it almost in a way to just make it go away,” said Weh, who says Udall has been marching in lockstep with Obama.
“Unfortunately, my opponent, Tom Udall, votes with him 94 percent of the time and on matters of national security hasn’t broken with him. So when the president’s failed leadership, or leading from behind at best, Tom Udall’s never had the political courage to step up and say, ‘Hey Mr. President, you’re the commander-in-chief. You’ve got to do what’s right to keep America safe and America’s families safe.” He hasn’t done that,” said Weh.
The 26-year Marine Corps veteran says his voice is badly needed in the Senate.
“That particular part of my life is going to be put to good use. Right now there’s only one combat veteran in the United States Senate (Arizona Sen. John McCain). If I’m elected, I’ll be one of two or three,” said Weh, referring also to Iraq War veteran Tom Cotton who is the GOP nominee in Arkansas.
“That’s not a whole lot of men who’ve had that experience,” he said.
Another national security flash point also happens to be in New Mexico’s backyard as the debate over border security and immigration reform continues in both parties. Weh describes the borders as porous and directly blames the president for allowing it to happen.
“We’ve got to secure the border and that’s the responsibility of the executive. This executive, this president, this administration does not want to secure the border or else it would have or it could have,” said Weh, who sees one decision above all others hindering border security and another instance of Obama and Udall seeing eye to eye on key policy.
“When Barack Obama took office, he suspended construction of the remaining fence that had been authorized in 2006, which by the way, when in the House of Representatives, my opponent Tom Udall voted against,” said Weh.
The colonel says we only need to look to the Middle East to see the impact a fence can make on security.
“The fence is necessary in those built-up urban areas, much like the fence has been very effective in Jerusalem to prevent terrorists from coming into Israel,” he said.
“The border as it is now is essentially porous simply due to the decisions and actions of this administration,” said Weh.
The Udall campaign is returning fire on a number of issues. Like most Democratic candidates this year, Udall is accusing Weh of waging a war against women. In addition, he is hammering the GOP nominee for suggesting he was fine with a four dollar minimum wage and alleging Weh is hostile to working families.
Weh says that line of attack is a clear distortion of the truth. He calls it “gotcha politics” and says he is actually taking an innovative approach to the issue by pushing an increase in the minimum wage for Americans 26 years and older but eliminating it altogether for those younger.
“The traditional party line of Republicans is we’re opposed to the raise. I said I’m not opposed to raising the minimum wage. It hasn’t been raised in 6-7 years. Cost of living has gone up. We ought to raise it. But in exchange for that, I’d want a two-tiered system. We’ve got a terrible youth unemployment problem in this country. It’s particularly bad in New Mexico. Twenty-four percent of Hispanic youths are unemployed. When you have that kind of condition, what you get is a sharp rise in juvenile delinquency and crime,” said Weh.
“So instead of a kid having a job, if he gets involved in juvenile delinquency in a criminal act he’s got a strike against him for life instead of a hand up. In that context, I said, ‘So what if he’s working at Burger King for four bucks an hour? He’s got a job and he’s off the streets and out of trouble and he’s learning something,'” said Weh, who believes this episode raises even more questions about Udall.
“They had a tracker recording me in that group and then they took that little sound bite and they made an ad on it. That’s the problem of politics today. I challenged him yesterday in the debate. He brought that up. I said, ‘Tom, whay don’t you engage in a conversation? Why don’t you be constructive in a dialogue to solve the teen unemployment problem. All you care about it gotcha politics,'” said Weh.
Weh says New Mexico may be a blue state but it’s not a deeply liberal state, stating the Democrats there are blue-collar, gun-owning types who have elected Republicans to the Senate and the governor’s mansion in recent years.
As for a final message, Weh hopes the people of his state relate to him, his story and his vision.
“I’m a normal guy. I came from a middle class background, worked my way up and have enjoyed the American Dream. I want that opportunity for everybody and I’m willing to go to Washington to put common sense to work,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 10/30/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Andrew Johnson of National Review cheer a Washington Post poll showing only 15 percent of Hispanics care if the Democrats keep the majority in the Senate. They also react to a new lawsuit in Maryland alleging illegal immigrants are voting and La Raza openly announcing where people can vote without showing identification. And they get a laugh out of reports that Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke was fired by her own family from their bicycle business years ago.
Muhammad Ali vs. Pee Wee Herman
Middle East expert Dr. Mike Evans is ripping the Obama administration for profanely disparaging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and for constantly misunderstanding who the real troublemakers are in the region.
On Wednesday, an online piece in The Atlantic quoted an unnamed “senior Obama administration official” who labeled Netanyahu as “chickenshit” for only being interested in his own political security rather finding common ground with adversaries in the region.
“The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states,” the unnamed official told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. “The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not (Yitzhak) Rabin, he’s not (Ariel) Sharon, he’s certainly no (Menachem) Begin. He’s got no guts.”
Evans says there is a great deal of frustration with Netanyahu inside the Obama White House and the reasons are pretty simple.
“Obama is wanting Netanyahu to surrender leadership to him and he won’t do that. Those two have never got along. This goes back further than Obama. It goes back to the Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton days. I know. I was there in Washington,” said Evans.
“It’s a problem because of (Netabyahu’s) ideological right leanings. His hero was Ronald Reagan. He’s ideologically right to the core and this is the heart of the problem he said,” said Evans, who also asserts Obama knows he cannot match Netanyahu intellectually.
“Netanyahu is a Muhammad Ali in the ring against a Pee Wee Herman. He’s a heavyweight,” said Evans.
“He’s the smartest leader on the planet IQ-wise. His IQ is 185. He’s absolutely brilliant, one of the most articulate leaders in history. Obama can’t compete with him,” he said.
In addition to the vastly different political ideologies, Evans says a major frustration for the Obama administration is that Netanyahu simply won’t bow to its demands when it comes to the Palestinian question.
“He has told them from the beginning, ‘I will not accept a Palestinian state that has an army, that has treaties and is armed. I’m not going to define a Palestinian state that way.’ He’s never changed. That’s always been his policy. They know that and they don’t like it. (Netanyahu) won’t bend,” said Evans.
According to Evans, the Obama administration is also quietly fuming over Israel’s increasingly close relationship with Saudi Arabia as they both try to prevent a nuclear Iran.
“The Sauds are not friends of Obama. They’re not happy with Obama’s policies on Iran. They’re not happy with Obama’s policies on Syria. And, shockingly, the Sauds are very happy with Netanyahu. So the Sauds have aligned themselves with Netanyahu with plausible deniability. It’s happening behind the scenes and it’s over Iran,” said Evans.
The disparaging comments are not the only source of tension between the U.S. and Israel this week. The State Department is catching heat for sending condolences to the family of Mohammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian with U.S. citizenship who was killed by Israeli Defense Forces as he allegedly prepared to throw Molotov cocktails at cars on an Israeli highway. Abu Khdeir was buried wearing a green Hamas headband.
Nonetheless, State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. did not view Molotov cocktails as an act of terrorism.
Evans is horrified by this mindset, but not surprised.
“They don’t look at them as terrorists. They didn’t look at them as terrorists when they were firing thousands of rockets into Israel. They think that they need education and money. By the way, we’ve given them a lot of it. (Secretary of State John) Kerry did the biggest fundraiser in my knowledge that’s ever happened for the Palestinians and raised billions for Hamas in Gaza. To do what? To reward them,” said Evans.
“This was completely insane. It’s the kind of things that get people killed, appeasement. The more you appease them, the more they think you’re afraid of them and the more they take advantage of you,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 10/29/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Andrew Johnson of National Review cheer the news that millennials are tired of Pres. Obama and the Democrats. They also recoil as the State Department suggests bringing foreign doctors infected with Ebola to the U.S. for treatment. And they laugh as the pro-abortion group NARAL accuses GOP Senate candidate Cory Gardner of wanting to ban birth control and being responsible for a “weirding of the weather.”
Vote Fraud Fact and Fiction
With critical midterm elections just days away, stories have arisen in multiple states suggesting voter fraud may be afoot, but a leading conservative advocate for fair elections says some of these concerns are greatly exaggerated while others are worthy of further scrutiny.
In just the past two weeks, Project Veritas released undercover videos of liberal activists tacitly or openly condoning voter fraud on mail-in ballots. Thousands of non-citizens are feared to be on the voting rolls in North Carolina and reports surfaced of voting machines in Cook County, Illinois, registering votes intended for Republicans on the Democratic side.
True the Vote is an organization dedicated to ensuring integrity in elections through updated voter rolls, requiring photo identification for voters and other measures designed to guarantee only eligible voters are taking part in our political process. It has been very visible in it’s battle with the IRS over unwarranted scrutiny into the group’s application for tax-exempt status.
Of those three controversies, True the Vote Communications Director Logan Churchwell says the Colorado story is the most alarming. The Project Veritas video shows progressive interest groups encouraging undercover reporters to fish mail-in ballots out of trash cans, fill them out and mail them in. One activist even directed Project Veritas to a predominantly black neighborhood where apartment buildings would have many unused ballots in the trash.
“One thing that Project Veritas seems to be very keen at is trying to expose the corruption that could lead to crime. It looks like, yet again, there is that willingness that people are willing to play games in order to tilt the election in their favor. It’s important that we continue to show that that kind of corruption is out there, it could occur and to be vigilant against it,” said Churchwell.
As for the North Carolina story of non-citizens being on the voter rolls, Churchwell says this is a classic example of why state and local officials have a solemn duty to verify that each person on the list is eligible to vote and failing to do that job compromises the system.
“This is what happens if you don’t stay on top of your data and you’re not constantly verifying that. That requires action on the government’s level and the citizens holding it to account,” he said.
However, Churchwell doesn’t necessarily see anything sinister in the Tar Heel State.
“Yes, there were about 150 or so people that are shown to be non-citizens with no legal status in the United States but got their way onto the voter rolls out of a pool of 10,000. They’ve got to figure out if there were more of that 10,000 that fit into that same category,” said Churchwell, who believes there may be a simple explanation for how those non-citizens got added to the rolls.
“In North Carolina, if you’re applying for citizenship and you’re in the normal pipeline, you can get a driver’s license too. What they’ve got to figure out is of those 10,000 potential illegal aliens on the voter rolls, we have to figure out if some of those people were actually in the pipeline for citizenship and had actually been granted it. So the jury is still very much out on the North Carolina issue,” said Churchwell.
In Illinois, Cook County has a long reputation for political corruption, but Churchwell says machines registering votes for the wrong candidate or wrong party is not a sign of corruption and is very easily corrected.
“You’re going to hear many stories about how a machine malfunctioned when someone went to vote. This happens all the time. It probably doesn’t get reported as much as it occurs,” he said.
“All that’s required is that you raise your hand and tell the election judge or whatever they’re called in your community, ‘This machine doesn’t seem to be working right.’ They can do a very quick recalibration, probably right there on the spot and reassign you to a different booth so you can vote correctly the way you intended to,” he said.
In short, stories of malfunctioning machines should not trigger conspiracy theories.
“A lot of people freak out when they see their votes change on them. Then the mind begins to wander on what all could be causing it. You do not need to panic,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 10/28/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching vulnerable Democrats run away from both President Obama and Harry Reid. They also shake their heads as it becomes clear the White House had not considered any sort of quarantine for American troops deployed to fight Ebola. And they get a kick out of the Democrat running for Senate in South Dakota accusing the national Democrats for intentionally sabotaging his campaign.
U.S. Approaches Energy Independence Despite Obama Policies
Those plunging gas prices you see are the result of a stunning oil and natural gas boom in the U.S. that is increasing supply, creating good jobs and making us less dependent upon countries that hate us, and Heritage Foundation Chief Economist Stephen Moore says all of it comes in the face of fierce opposition from the Obama administration.
Over the past several weeks, gas prices have plummeted across the country, falling well below three dollars per gallon in some part of the country. Moore says it’s the result of an oil and gas bonanza across the U.S. that is leaving OPEC no choice but to slash prices to compete. The irony, however, is that it’s an economic windfall the White House wished wasn’t happening.
“This is the biggest story of the American economy overt the last six years. It dwarfs everything else. The United States of America is becoming energy dominant, something nobody would have predicted six years ago and it’s happening under a president who hates this industry,” said Moore, who said the explosion in energy production could be much greater if there was an ally in the White House.
“Barack Obama hates the fossil fuels industry. He hates coal. He hates oil. He hates gas because he’s so tied at the hip with radical environmentalists. So it’s astonishing we’ve been able to produce this much oil and gas with a president who doesn’t like the industry. Imagine how much faster this would grow if we had a president who wanted to nurture the industry and make it grow faster,” he said.
In addition to a number of Environmental Protection Agency regulations aimed at various sectors of the energy industry, the case for Obama as an opponent of this trend has been the stark reduction in permits to explore for energy on federal lands since he took office. The vast majority of the boom, they say, are the result of permits granted for private lands and most of those were approved in the George W. Bush administration.
“The president has been trying to take credit for this but I think most people realize he will not build the Keystone Pipeline. He’s got an EPA that is trying to regulate and strangulate this industry out of business. He will not allow drilling on federal lands. I think it makes it difficult for him to take credit for this boom,” said Moore.
An even greater oddity, according to Moore, is that Obama is hostile to the industry, even though it’s probably the reason he won a second term as president.
“If it weren’t for this energy boom, the president never would have been re-elected in the first place. No way, because the economy would have still been in a recession. So it saved his skin. It’s technology and oil and gas that are really driving our economy right now. I think even the president understands that,” said Moore.
Nonetheless, the growth in the energy sector in recent years has been remarkable. Moore says American progress has radically altered the status quo when it comes to the energy markets.
“This great country of ours has become one of the dominant oil and gas producers in the world. In just the course of the last five or six years, we’ve increased oil and gas output by over 60 percent, which is an enormous increase. We have now surpassed Russia as the number one natural gas producer in the world and we’re about to surpass Saudi Arabia as the number one oil producer in the world,” said Moore
Moore calculates the recent plunge in gas prices is the equivalent of an annual $75 billion tax cut for the nation. And he says those prices may very well go even lower.
“We’ve seen a 25 percent decline already, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw gas prices go as low as maybe $2.50 or $2.60 a gallon, which would be very welcome relief,” he said.
In addition to cheaper energy costs, Moore says there are several other major benefits for the U.S. At the current pace of growth, he says, the U.S. could reach that elusive goal of energy independence rather soon.
“By my calculations, within five or six years, the United States of America could be energy independent. That is we will be exportint oil and natural gas rather than importing it,” said Moore.
By diminishing and possibly eliminating our dependence upon foreign energy, Moore says our enemies will lose a lot of their leverage on the world stage, from Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to many other areas.
“ISIS is getting five to six million dollars a day from petro dollars, so if we can produce more oil and gas here in the United States, it’s a good way to defund the terrorists who are trying to kill us. It’s also a good way to put a nail in the coffin of OPEC, which has controlled the price of oil now for 40 years. No longer does it have that pricing power,” said Moore.
Back at home, he says booming energy production means a lot of good job opportunities for Americans struggling to find work.
“These are good-paying jobs. We’re talking about welders and drillers and people who are pipe-fitters and truckers and construction workers. We’re talking about jobs that are paying $60-$100,000 a year. These are good, blue collar, middle class jobs that we’re producing hundreds as we’re becoming energy independent,” said Moore.
“There’s nothing not to like about this picture,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 10/27/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are actually pleased to see Hillary Clinton hop on the “businesses don’t create jobs” bandwagon since it will make it much harder for her to claim the center in the 2016 campaign. They also groan as a Politico Magazine piece says the Obama national security team a “bumbling” mess, with cabinet secretaries not even consulted before policies are announced and the White House leaping from issue to issue with no cohesive strategy. And they sigh as talk of Jeb Bush running for president ramps up again.
‘This Is Where the Real Story Actually Begins’
A federal judge has dismissed two lawsuits filed against the Internal Revenue Service and Lois Lerner by forty conservative organizations that claim they were harassed by the government over applications for tax-exempt status because of their political leanings, but one leader of this legal fight says the battle is really just beginning and it may not even be fought in a courtroom.
On Thursday, federal District Judge Reggie Walton, a George W. Bush appointee, dismissed suits suing the IRS for improper intrusion into the sensitive donor information and private communications within the groups. Walton also rejected efforts to collect damages from the IRS for all the legal and accounting fees piled up by the organizations as they tried to comply with the unlawful scrutiny. In the end, Walton concluded there was “no harm done” since the groups ultimately received their tax-exempt status.
One of the groups leading the charge against the IRS is True the Vote, an organization dedicated to clean elections through updating voter rolls and tougher voter identification laws. True the Vote Communications Director Logan Churchwell says that logic was new to his group.
“It’s a fascinating sign of the times when you see that because the judge can reason and he can justify that the ultimate remedy that the court could have offered under the law itself would have been our tax status, which they gave us only after we decided to sue them. A question we’ll never know is if we hadn’t filed a lawsuit and we just sat there and took it, would we have actually gotten this tax status?” said Churchwell, who says the fate of the tax-exempt application is not the biggest issue in this case.
“Anyone that’s ever dealt with the IRS or any federal agency knows that the process is worse than the actual outcome. It doesn’t matter whether you have a fine or any kind of penalty at the end. It’s dealing with the process. It’s having to lawyer up, get more accountants, collect all of your receipts, whatever is required of that. That can really cause problems,” said Churchwell.
“In our case, we had trouble fundraising. We had trouble organizing and gathering volunteers because every time we felt like we were getting something going when it came to our actual mission statement, we were having to go and find more Washington attorneys to help us defend ourselves against the IRS,” he said.
Churchwell says as aggravating as the process was for True the Vote, it could muster the resources to fight back while others could not.
“True the Vote was fortunate. We had enough support. We had the wherewithal to actually bring the fight to the IRS and force our application to be approved. There are dozens if not hundreds of other little tea party groups or any other group that decided, ‘Hey, we just want to organize. We want to do so legitimately under the tax code. If we can’t afford to fight this battle to use our first amendment rights, we’re going to mail it in. We’re done,'” Churchwell explained.
True the Vote acknowledges Judge Walton’s decision but strongly disagrees with the logic behind it given the questionable revelations that have unfolded since the story first came to light a year-and-a-half ago. At that time, the IRS apologized for the targeting, blamed low-level staffers in Cincinnati for the improper actions and vowed it would never happen again. Churchwell says a lot has happened since then to throw cold water on that narrative.
“To get from there to where we are today with lost emails and learned to what extent people were targeted and how wide of a scheme this really was, all to find out that you had to have an internal report to force the story into the open. Otherwise it probably never would have seen the light of day and anyone that said otherwise would probably be called a crackpot for even thinking the IRS would do such a thing,” said Churchwell.
“Today, we learned just how wide of a scandal this turned out to be and every avenue that’s been taken to try to seek justice ends in this same place. ‘Well, the IRS admitted their wrongdoing. They’ve said they’ve changed their ways. Let’s just move on,'” he said.
For True the Vote, Thursday was not a good day but it’s far from the end of this saga.
“It’s a setback. Based on how we’ve seen the IRS play out, we’ve come to expect the unexpected. But we continue to look at all of our options. This isn’t where the story ends. You might even say this is where the true story actually begins,” he said.
But what exactly is beginning?
“We’re coming to a breaking point in this country, True the Vote believes, where American citizens just aren’t going to put up with it anymore. Our founder, Catherine Englebrecht, put out a statement that said if citizens really want to make a difference on this, then we need to stop relying on the inspector generals of the bureaucratic departments of the executive branch and we need to start doing some of their work for them,” said Churchwell.
“We need to be building a resource where, if you have a problem with a federal bureaucracy or you feel you were being treated unfairly, then citizens need a resource to call upon and have a variety of options available to them. True the Vote’s founding leadership is more than happy to help see that kind of movement grow up out of this news and offer any insight that it can,” he said.