August 30th, 2010, Washington, DC–From ALG News’ Capitol Hill Correspondent Derek Baker: 
In the Senate, West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin easily won the Democrat senate primary for Sen. Byrd’s seat over the weekend while businessman John Raese won the Republican Senate nomination in West Virginia. Sen. David Vitter won his Senate primary in Louisiana with 88 percent of the vote, and will face Rep. Charlie Melancon in the general election.
Meanwhile, the bizarre race for the Senate seat in Florida continues to entertain. While the Republican nominee Marco Rubio leads in the polls over independent Charlie Crist and the newly minted Democrat nominee Kendrick Meek, Meek attempted to tamp down rumors that Democrats will support Crist in November by stating “I am the nominee” on Face the Nation yesterday. Meek continued, “I stuck in my primary and fought, and that’s what I’m going to do as a United States senator,” adding that Obama “always said he supported my candidacy for the Senate.” Crist still refuses to say which party he would caucus with should he win.
Bottom Line: Crist actually stated on Friday that he would have voted for ObamaCare, contradicting his previous statement, and his campaign basically issued a retraction within three hours of the incident staying he would not have voted for ObamaCare. He said he would caucus with the “people of Florida,” and that’s really the most likely scenario right now, since he won’t have the opportunity to caucus with Senate Democrats or Republicans when he loses to Rubio in November.
In the House, numerous media sources are reporting that Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson has violated Congressional Black Caucus anti-nepotism rules by awarding 15 different scholarships to family members. The Dallas Morning News apparently broke the story, and Johnson originally dodged questions by DMN, though later stated she “unknowingly” violated the rules and will “rectify the financial situation.”
The NRCC issued a press release this weekend regarding EBJ’s antics and repeated Pelosi’s “drain the swamp” pledge to rid Congress of corruption, and they referred to Johnson’s behavior as “the Democrats’ New Friends and Family Plan.”
Bottom Line: All these Democrat ethics scandals coming to light must be a clear sign that the media is rabidly conservative and are unfairly going after Democrats. What else could explain this phenomenon? It could not be that the national Democratic party’s inherent penchant for largess and taxpayer-provided perks makes them more susceptible to cronyism and corruption, could it?
At the other end of the Avenue, as Obama and family return from their Martha’s Vineyard vacation, he plans an address on both the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the economy in the next week. This comes on the heels of news that the Commerce Department revised its gross domestic product numbers for the 2nd quarter, from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent growth. The New York Times Paul Krugman, a well known liberal columnist, on Friday stated this about Obama’s economy, “this isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.” More bad economic news is expected for Obama when the latest unemployment numbers are released on Friday.
Bottom Line: Every drip of bad economic news increases the odds of Obama proposing something explosive and reckless come September or November. There are ongoing rumors that he’ll propose a massive federal mortgage forgiveness program, or he may call for extending only the “middle class” tax cuts and allowing all the other tax rates to rise to pre-Bush levels. The sad point to all this speculation is that there’s virtually no chance he’ll actually make any move that will actually help the economy and create jobs. Don’t believe me? Just keep watching the monthly economic numbers.
P.S. – Check out America Speaking Out and share your thoughts on how we can return to a limited, constitutional government.
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The “Green” Stimulus Fails in More Ways than One
Washington confuses social policy with economic policy.
TimesCheck.com: Krugman’s Attack on Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap” Perpetuates Entitlement Myths
It is ideology Krugman and the NYT are desperate to preserve.
Augusta Chronicle: Seeds of a revolution
Republican primaries are “the beginning of an uprising.”
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