Yes, it looks like 2014 will be bad for Democrats

(My new American Thinker post)

On one hand, I hate thinking that something is in the bag because it often isn't. Don't you remember the one about Romney winning in 2012 and that Senate majority?  

So let's get the "27 outs" before we celebrate. 

Nevertheless, the landscape looks bad for Democrats in 2014, as Ed Rogers posted:

"We take fleeting comfort in the occasional economic indicator that isn't awful, but the reality is that growth is stagnant, at best, with gross domestic product growth likely to remain between only 2 percent and 2.5 percent. And more than 23 million American households - 20 percent - rely on food stamps. The Washington Examiner published part of a memo by Wall Street adviser David John Marotta, who reminds us that, "officially reported unemployment numbers decrease when enough time passes to discourage the unemployed from looking for work." And "discouraged" seems to describe how many Americans feel. Marotta also calculated that the misery index - today's true unemployment rate plus the true inflation figure - is 14.7 percent, the worst in 40 years.  

And Obamacare is not making things better. There are plenty of commentators on the left who want to declare that Obamacare has taken root, is working and is here to stay. But so far, the data the administration has released about Obamacare enrollments suggest that people are signing up because their insurance policies - the ones they liked and were told by the president they could keep - were canceled because of Obamacare. Yesterday, in what seems to be a growing trend, we learned that Target no longer will offer health insurance to its part-time workers. This is just another example of how Obamacare is not only failing in its goal of providing health insurance to the estimated 45 million Americans who don't have it, but is, for the time being, increasing the number of uninsured Americans."

The problem of the economy can not be underestimated, especially following the last jobs report.   I would add a couple of sleeper issues, such as "foreign policy" and the whole question of incompetence in the Obama administration.  

P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.

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Our consumption of illegal drugs is financing mansions and violence in Mexico

(My new American Thinker post)

The rebellion in Michoacan, Mexico, has farmers and peasants ("vigilantes") at war with cartels. They want to drive the cartels out of their state. It has put President Pena-Nieto in a very tough place. 
In other words, how do you criticize citizens who are defending themselves against criminal and ruthless elements terrorizing the country? How do you stop local priests from preaching sermons about the inhumanity of cartels?

This is from a recent news report:

"Armed vigilante groups who have risen up to combat the vicious Knights Templar drug cartel in the Mexican state of Michoacan were surrounding the city of Apatzingan, a main cartel stronghold, Monday morning and were threatening to invade the city, as Mexican government officials scrambled to defuse the situation.   
"We have already circled Apatzingan," one of the self-defense leaders, Hipolito Mora, said in a radio interview Monday morning. "I don't know if we have the capacity [to take it] or not, but we are obligated to do it, and we are going to do it." 
The security cabinet of President Enrique Peña Nieto was meeting with state officials, including Gov. Fausto Vallejo, late Monday morning. 
The federal government has sent troops and police to the region in recent days as the self-defense groups have essentially gone on the offensive, seizing control of a number of towns surrounding Apatzingan. Federal officials have given a kind of tenuous, de facto approval to some of the groups, in some cases allowing troops and police to work alongside the armed peasant groups at checkpoints in the region."

Just recently, they found the home of a cartel leader.  It reminds some of us of one of Saddam's mansions:

"Vigilante "self-defense" groups in the southern Mexican state of Michoacan have in recent days stepped up their campaign to seize control of small towns and cities in the area known as Tierra Caliente, or Hot Land. Their goal is to rid the area of the Knights Templar drug cartel.  
But last week, just as the vigilantes were poised to bring their battle to the Knights Templars' most important regional stronghold, the city of Apatzingan, the Mexican government flooded the state with troops and federal police, averting what could have been a bloody battle for the city of more than 90,000 residents.  
As of Saturday, an uneasy peace reigned in much of Michoacan. But the vigilantes had not ceded any of the territory they had gained, including the smaller city of Nueva Italia, which fell to them after a gun battle last weekend. Though cartel allies were believed to be lying low in the town, the vigilantes' control gave them the opportunity to see how at least one top cartel leader lives. 
These photos, taken in the Nueva Italia home of Enrique "El Kike" Plancarte Solis, offer a glimpse of luxury that most of the vigilantes -- many of them are small farmers or agricultural workers -- would have seen only on television. Plancarte, a key Knights Templar boss, remains at large."   (Here are the pictures from The LA Times.)

As we've posted before, our consumption of illegal drugs, recreation or otherwise, is driving these dollars south. These "narco dolares" build these mansions and finance all of this massive killing.

P. S. You can hear my chat with Allan Wall about Mexico & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.

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The California Tea Party with Leslie Eastman & Dawn Wildman

THURSDAY: California Tea Party update with Leslie Eastman & Dawn Wildman...Listen in now at http://t.co/dekbDjE715. #BlogTalkRadio

— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) January 24, 2014

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