Afternoon Coffee

++Former Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie has declared he is running for the Senate in Virginia against Democrat Mark Warner. You may remember that in 2010, Gillespie created a parallel RNC to undercut Michael Steele. Ed took off his pro-immegration reform message from his website prior to announcing his run.

++The second most powerful woman in the world Christine Legarde warns of deflation crippling economic growth. Why this is important is that the "austerity freaks" have warned about inflation for the last 7 years. Paul Krugman had to be put in a straightjacket trying to correct them.

++The GOP now has focused on Obamacare's greatest flaw--The Oregon Exchange, which never managed to get up and running despite the state accepting paper applications.

++The health insurance industry held their annual meeting and they actually liked ACA. What they don't like is that states who opted not to have state exchanges never bothered to change their rules into accordance to the ACA and never respond to their phone calls. The actual sabotage of the ACA by the Republicans has been noted by Josh Marshall's writing at TPM. The insurance official who wrote Marshall said that the Republican states really truly believed ACA would be repealed and simply did not prepare for it. 

++The new Right-wing meme is that Obamacare is a bailout to the health industry. Alot of progressives agree. I noted on this blog when this was being debated that the health insurance industry had an summit of their own geeks in Washington as they were spending billions to kill the healthcare bill. The geeks concluded that the whole industry would be in catastrophic trouble if reform wasn't passed. It would have to continue to raise premiums 10-15% per year and the number of insured would shrink to the point the industry itself would not be viable. This event never got covered by the media or written about by the Beltway Pundits. So bailout--sort of like the car industry. It goes back to my basic point of the Obama economic policies--he first had to save the FIRE economy--Finance Insurance Real Estate--before we can make the change into the next century.

++But if you buy that bridge, I have another one to sell you--the George Washington Bridge. The Christie scandal is exploding. The number of his close aides involved in the Fort Lee incident keeps expanding. The New Jersey Assembly has hired the former Special Investigator in the corruption case of Illinois Governor Blago's case. Christie this morning hired a former Federal Investigator close to Mayor Guiliani to investigate his own administration. The Chairman of the Port Authority may resign early. The U.S. Senate investigation received its answers yesterday from the Port of Authority and Jay Rockefeller has commented that the PA said there was no evidence there was any traffic study proposed for the Fort Lee area.

++Kudos to Rachel Maddow and her staff for their diligence in reporting the details of this obscure scandal. To her credit, she has used the reporting of the local New Jersey papers, who have been absolute stars in the whole process--The Bergen Record, The Newark Star Ledger,the Wall Street Journal's New Jersey reporter. And my hometown paper, the Asbury Park Press. Maddow hasn't yet reported on the Press investigation, which is about the misuse of Hurricane Sandy Funds for Chris Christie's re-election campaign.

++There are other rumors out there that there may be a mistress showing up soon in the story.

++The point that should be made about this scandal is that state politics in America can be totally corrupt and as Rachel Maddow's op-ed in the Post said today press watchdogs are needed. In this case,you have a state with vibrant papers and a bridge that is the most traveled in the world. But in other states, that isn't true. If a governor has presidential aspirations, it is vital to know how he ran his state because there are serious implications for the nation should that person become President. In Christie's case, he made the bonehead mistake of screwing around with the one bridge all of America's media uses to go to work. 

++The Christie people are in total damage control. Christie himself has to assure the national Republican establishment that he still can run the Governor's Association during a vital election year and he pleaded with the big donors to preserve his meeting in Florida where he was supposed to make his pitch for the 2016 Presidential campaign. 

++GOP pundits like Karl Rove have glowed about Christie's press conference, which Bruce Springsteen quipped went longer than some of his concerts. Rove's instructions to the base were to talk about Benghazi and the IRS.

++So how's that working out? In the latest NBC/Marist poll, Hillary Clinton beats Christie 50-37. The importance of this is that Christie's strength always to show he could win against Clinton. Once that vanishes,his campaign is jeopardized. 

++Tomorrow, President Obama announces his proposed reforms to the NSA data collection. Whatever he proposes, he will face fierce opposition from the National Security State and its allies on the Hill.