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New Indiana Poll has Mourdock up 48-38 over Lugar in Indian Senate primary.  The Tea Pary supported Mourdock has a very good chance of retiring long time Rino to the Zululand Rhino Reserve.

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion has the details. This is a race that Prof. Jacobson has been watching as part of Operation Counterweight.

In what is likely to be the final live-caller public poll ahead of Tuesday’s Indiana Senate Republican primary, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock has opened up a ten point lead over Sen. Richard Lugar, whose 35-year Senate career is in serious jeopardy. A Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll conducted by Democratic and Republican pollsters on Monday and Tuesday of this week shows Mourdock leading Lugar 48 percent to 38 percent.

Creepy.  Just Creepy.  Doesn’t the preezy have advisors to tell him that this kind of narcissism is very off-putting?

Obama Tweets: No Red or Blue States…Barack States!

…there are no red or blue states … just the Obama States. You have to love the narcissism of a president who posts a picture of himself at the center of America, presenting himself as greater than the country, all of which is united under his hopey-changey administration.

This is 1984-type stuff. This is the most polarizing president in American history, and he’s busy telling us that we’re all united under his auspices. War is peace. Poverty is wealth. Polarization is unity. United States is Barack States.

Obama admin to use $8.3 billion “slush fund” to fake out seniors? Update: GAO auditors demand end to slush fund « Hot Air

How does Barack Obama keep from getting ousted by seniors who discover that their Medicare Advantage options for 2013 will be greatly reduced, if not eliminated altogether?  After all, ObamaCare’s $500 billion in cuts to the highly successful private-public partnership begin in 2013, assuming that the Supreme Court keeps the law in place this summer. 

Those cuts are necessary to fund the Medicaid expansion that comes in 2014 to provide funding for coverage of many — but not all — of the currently uninsured. 

Unfortunately for Obama, seniors would normally discover how badly ObamaCare has damaged their options in mid-October during the Medicare open-enrollment period for supplemental coverage, just a couple of weeks before voters have to go to the polls to select the new President, House, and one-third of the Senate.  Since seniors are the most reliable voting bloc in the US, this would prove disastrous for Team Obama.

Obama can temporarily prop up Medicare Advantage long enough to get re-elected by exploiting an obscure bit of federal law. Under a 1967 statute, the HHS secretary can spend money without specific approval by Congress on “experiments” directly aimed at “increasing the efficiency and economy of health services.”

The GAO is not amused:

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said it’s not clear that the $8.3 billion Medicare Advantage bonus program will improve quality because most of the money is going to plans just rated average. The auditors did find, however, that the bonuses would temporarily ease the pain of unpopular cuts to insurance plans under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law.

Ahead of presidential and congressional elections in which seniors are a key group of swing voters, the administration has been working hard to portray itself as a good steward of Medicare, by cracking down on waste and fraud, improving benefits, and keeping costs under control. The GAO report could become a blemish on its record.