House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (AP photo/Elaine Thompson)

Whether it was Gallup, Rasmussen, Pew, or Quinnipiac, the poll results were the same last week: anti-incumbent sentiment in this country is approaching the critical mass required to just “throw the bums out”.

The latest Pew Research Center poll shows that the popularity of incumbents with the voting public at levels not seen since they gave Democrats control of Congress in '06 and their historical removing them of that control in the '94 Republican revolution. Barely half, 52%, currently want to see even their own representative re-elected, a number that is even lower than the 55 and 58 percent for the '06 and '94 cycles respectively.

Even more troubling for Democrat incumbents is the revelation that self described Independents who plan to vote Republican next fall are 24% more enthusiastic (56 to 32) about voting than their Democrat leaning counterparts. (Perhaps not ALL those Tea Party attendees were astro-turf, Nazi nut jobs after all?)

Qunnipiac University's polls show trouble in both Ohio and Connecticut as Republican challengers made alarming inroads against Democratic incumbents.

Rasmussen's Presidential Approval Index has Obama still at a miserable negative 10% with overall approval/disapproval stuck at 50/49. In a possible predictive national mood for 2010, 60% of the voters in New Jersey felt that most of Republican Chris Christie's support came from those voting AGAINST the incumbent Corzine rather than FOR Christie.

Adding to the prospect of a voter revolt next year is the new Gallup poll showing Congressional approval among independents at a 2009 low with those same independents stating (at least for now) they are leaning Republican by a whopping 52 to 30 percent.

None of the numbers from last week bode well for the President and his party. But Republicans should not become overconfident. It was Independent voters that gave Barack Obama his historic victory last year, it will be those very same voters deciding his fate next year.

As both parties prove themselves more concerned about their own political power than the wishes of the voters that gave them that power, anti-incumbent sentiment will continue to grow and anger will continue to seethe. Anger that if not addressed will result in a tsunami of voter resentment washing onto the shores of Congress come next November.

A glimpse into that resentment comes from a friend's response to a recent National Republican Senatorial Committee's mailing requesting he donate to the cause. This is his reply:

“Why should I send you my hard earned money? With all your perks, wages, and benefits, you can spend your own money!
I spent 21 years in the U.S. Navy and now work full time to support my family. Both parties spend more time on “fact finding vacations” and squabbling with each other and too busy adding pork to bills to read them.
NEITHER party deserves my money or support!
You have to earn it – What have you done to earn it – NOTHING!

It is exactly that sentiment reflected in the polls today and the sentiment that will manifest itself in the voting booth next fall.

Message to Obama, Pelosi, Reid, McConnell and Boehner: Ignore at your own political peril.

Obama and Pelosi at DNC fundraiser (AP photo/Gerald Herbert)

The 2008 election solidified President Obama's place in political fundraising history. As President he is on pace to continue making history.

On Tuesday's Morning Joe, Mika Brezinnski pointed out that the President has attended 22 fund raisers to date compared to President Bush just 6 in the same time frame.

And there was another one Tuesday night in New York. You know, New York, the home of Wall Street? That same Wall Street that the White House has used as its personal whipping boy for all things evil in this country.

NBC's Savannah Guthrie tried Monday to get some perspective from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs but instead got this:

{i}Q Yes, I know. I might do the two questions routine, too. Tomorrow's fundraiser in New York, are you expecting Wall Street executives to be in attendance?

MR. GIBBS: I would point you to the DNC to -- it's a DNC fundraiser and they probably have better attendance figures.

Q Assuming they are, there are some present, will the President -- would he use the opportunity to make the same kind of remarks the officials are making?

MR. GIBBS: Look, the President won't hesitate whether or not they're there to reiterate the responsibility that Wall Street and everybody in the financial industry has to ensure that the type of behavior that got us into the problems that we faced a year -- little more than a year ago are never repeated.

Q Assuming then that these Wall Street executives are present, and I think there's some reporting that they may be, is there anything unseemly about the President going to a $30,000 --

MR. GIBBS: I don't have a roster as to who is going to be there and, again, I'd point you to DNC.
(Source www.whitehouse.gov )

Notice how quickly Gibbs cut off Guthrie when the $30,000 amount came up. (Technically it's $30,400 per couple but who's counting?)

I guess when you're more worried about waging war against Fox News than you are about winning a real war in Afghanistan, pesky questions about the appropriateness of a President hopping Air Force One to attend a fund raiser for DNC fat cats doesn't exactly fit Anita Dunn's "we control the media" scenario.

Bush was pilloried by the press for his New Orleans flyover and press conference post Katrina. Yet Obama does a four hour fly in on his way to a San Francisco fundraiser and nary a word said.

Alan Blinder in the University of Alabama's "The Crimson White", points out that it wasn't just the shortness of the President's visit to New Orleans, but also the fact that he totally ignored the entire state of Mississippi. He highlights that the President was 22 paragraphs into his New Orleans speech before even mentioning the state that lost 235 of its citizens to Katrina and suffered $125 billion in damages.

Ben Feller in his AP story , points out that San Francisco and New York were only the beginning. By the end of this week, Obama will travel to New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virgina. All for the benefit of Democratic candidates in those states.

Gibbs and the White House spin machine can attempt to divert the message all they want but the fact remains that Obama made changing the political landscape in Washington a mantra of his campaign.

Yet his trip to New York tonight illustrates that as long as there is so much "$change$" to be had, the promised political change will be slow coming if it arrives at all.

And if that's not bad enough, the White House makes sure there is at least one "official" event so we, the American taxpayer, get to pick up the majority of the tab for the political pandering.

Budget deficits larger than ever in American history, no end in sight, but the White House has the money to send the President off fundraising. (Conventional wisdom is $60 grand an hour minimum just for operating Air Force One)

Gotta love that "hope" and "change". Or wait, was it really just Obama "hoping for more campaign $change$"?

President's weekly address fromwww.whitehouse.gov

President Obama used his weekly address once again to bash the health care insurance industry and decry ads that he calls "deceptive and dishonest", all the while filling that very same weekly address with "deceptive and dishonest" statements of his own.

While it is true that the health insurance lobby commissioned its own study that shows insurance premium costs will likely increase under the Baucus bill it is less than truthful (deceitful) to tout that they did so only to "marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo."

Yes, it is true when Obama references a Business Roundtable report and states that "without significant reform, health care costs for these employers and their employees will well more than double again over the next decade." But, no it is not true (deceitful) when he states the industry is "making this last-ditch effort to stop reform." No industry is going to sit idly by as Congress passes legislation that will hamper it's ability to control costs and implement crippling long term constraints.

Is this the same President that previously praised the industry for it's "historic" step to cut up to $2 trillion dollars in expenses over the next decade? The same President who said before a joint session of Congress that slowing the growth of health-care costs was a major component of reform?

Recalling the election last November, Obama states:

..."the American people went to the polls in historic numbers and demanded change. They wanted a change in our policies; but they also sought a change in our politics: a politics that too often has fallen prey to the lobbyists and the special interests; that has fostered division and sustained the status quo."

The words as Obama speaks them are definitively true, the American people are fed up with the status quo, but it is he, himself who has entrenched the partisanship currently crippling real reform. (In a recent Rasmussen poll over half the country feel Obama and Congressional Democrats are acting as "partisan Democrats", not exactly the "change" Obama promised.)

It is factually dishonest (deceitful) for the President to claim he is anything other than that very same status quo. His own record of rewarding HIS preferred "lobbyists and special interests" over the past nine months speaks louder than any words in yet another speech. (Guantanomo closing, stimulus bill for public employee unions, investigating CIA officers, not releasing the names of participants in behind doors meetings on health care reform, refusing to denounce funding for A..C.O.R.N., sitting on his commanding general's request for more troops in Afghanistan, etc..etc...etc..)

Obama continues in the weekly address that he

.."will not abide are those who would bend the truth – or break it – to score political points and stop our progress as a country."

Yet in the very preceding paragraph, he pounces on legitimate concerns over insurance costs by calling it nothing but "smoke and mirrors" and "bogus".

The only thing truly "bogus" Mr. President is when you say you "welcome a good debate", but then consistently just go on the attack against anyone who disagrees with you or proposes other ideas.

Perhaps if you'd quit blowing so much of your own smoke and actually just go to work you could find the true health-care reform and bipartisanship you say you want.

After all, it's staring you right in the face..........in the mirror.

The Republican response to the President's Weekly Address is below:

The numbers are in. The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO)analysis of yet another "latest" Senate Finance Committee's health-care reform bill will cost the treasury $829 billion over ten years.

With the help of more assumptions and estimates than Carter's has pills, the same analysis states that the bill in its current form would also reduce the federal deficit by $83 billion over the same time period.

According to the report, the largest budget savings come from:

$162 billion from permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare's payment rates for most services in the fee for service sector (other than physicians' services)
$117 billion from changing the payment rates in the Medicare Advantage program
$45 billion saved by reducing Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals that serve a large number of low-income patients

The analysis also points out that projections assume that the proposals outlined in the bill are "enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation."

THAT is the understatement of the century. To assume that any legislation of this magnitude would not be subjected to constant meddling from politicians of all political sides is the epitome of making an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

One of the most glaring examples of a proposal that most certainly would not "remain unchanged" is the fact that although physicians' payment rates increase for 2010, they are then REDUCED by 25 percent in 2011 and then remain at lower rates. In addition increases in many other payment rates would be held below the rate of inflation. (There goes your $81 billion in deficit "reduction".)

Any politician who looks the American public in the eye and says he actually believes the above can be achieved needs to not only have his head examined, he needs to be indicted for perjury.

The report cites that after all the exchanges, co-ops, mandates, exemptions and what not are implemented the country should see approximately 29 million newly covered Americans, but the roles of the uninsured would STILL be approximately 25 million.

Divide that 29 million increase in the insured into the price tag of $829 billion and it's just a measly $28, 586 PER PERSON. (A bargain by government standards, wouldn't you agree?)

It has been written in this column numerous times , that if the true goal of health-care reform is to lower the cost and increase competition and access, there are five common sense approaches that could be implemented immediately that would NOT cost the treasury a dime.

But then again considering the parties involved is it any wonder that truth and common sense are the two main ingredients lacking in the entire debate? Or that yet another motion to require any final health-care reform bill to be posted 72 hours before Congress votes was defeated but once again?

To view the entire CBO analysis (27 page pdf) click here . If problems downloading try the CBO homepage .

Photo Ross D. Franklin (AP)

In a bow to political correctness, Department of Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano has sided with illegal immigrants and their supporters by stripping Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe_ArpaioJoe Arpaio and his deputies of the power to perform street level enforcement of immigration laws.

Arpaio's department had been conducting the street level enforcement and subsequent "field arrests" since 2007 under an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement known as the 287g program that allowed local and state officers to make immigration arrests.

Immigrant rights groups, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the American Civil Liberties Union have been pressuring Napolitano and the Obama administration to end the program due to what they assert is racial profiling and abuse of immigrants civil rights.

Arpaio has consistently defended his actions and in a news conference yesterday stated he would continue street level enforcement under state law and then attempt to turn them (illegals) over to ICE. While only a small number (approximately 300 according to Randal Archibold's story in the NY Times) of arrests have come from the street sweeps Arpaio deems them important for both public perception and as a deterrent factor. (Read the Sheriff's press release .)

The fact that Napolitano is a Democrat and former governor of Arizona and Arpaio is a Republican also raises the question of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security being used for political purposes rather than focusing on immigration law enforcement.

In related news, Napolitano and ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton, released a statement Tuesday announcing a complete overhaul of the agency's detention system. The reform initiatives are broad in scope and calls for such things as enhancing detainee medical care and advancing the use of "Alternatives To Detention". (Can you say amnesty?)

Additional information:

Click here for video of the news conference and here for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department.