Its “National Prosperity Action Day.” Tea Partiers, Republican volunteers and conservative activists are being summoned by Americans for Prosperity—the group founded and financed by several large corporations, and led by the billionaire Koch brothers—to begin mobilizing to defeat President Obama and Congressional Democrats...

...Its the beginning of an extremely well-planned get-out-the-vote effort that duplicates what an entire national party would attempt. And its been four years in the making.

...Koch’s unique, outside-the-GOP voter mobilizing system is called Themis, named after the Greek god of divine order. It carries a similar name to the Themis project by the US Chamber of Commerce’s partners exposed for planning to hack and sabatoge liberals and some union groups, but it is not related.

...Too much attention is given to the television ads. The Koch network, which is actively training Tea Partiers, via a partnership with True the Vote, to harass and intimidate voters, may tip the scales in this election. And you won’t see their work on television, or through FEC disclosures (they refuse to register their grassroots electioneering as independent expenditures). Like Wisconsin, liberals might see the ground shifting beneath them, and wonder what happened.

President Barack Obama attacked the Republican party on Saturday, for scrapping a bill that would have established a $1bn scheme to help military veterans get jobs.

In his weekly radio address, Obama attacked GOP politicians for failing to pass the planned law before Congress ended its session last week and lawmakers returned to their own states and districts ahead of the 6 November elections.

"These men and women have made incredible sacrifices for our country. They shouldn't have to worry about finding a job when they get home. But last week, Republicans in Congress voted it down. And then they left," Obama said.

The bill, which had some bipartisan support, would have given job priority to post-9/11 veterans, aiming to put them back to work as firefighters and police officers and in public work projects.

...This past July, 38 American soldiers committed suicide, the highest rate since the Army began keeping count. A veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. If you have ever known someone who lost a family member to suicide, you've had a glimpse of the devastation suicide leaves in its wake.

...On Aug. 31, President Obama signaled that the government is making the mental health of our service members and veterans a top priority. Obama issued an executive order called "Improving Access to Mental Health Services for Veterans, Service Members, and Military Families" that mandates several essential concrete measures. And while each and every one of these measures is laudable and critical, one component is missing from the order: funding.

...While the executive order says all the right things, on closer inspection these statements are meaningless without providing for funding. For the order to be more than rhetoric, uttered during a campaign, the administration must forcefully present the case to Congress: You voted for these wars, wars for which you allocated no money.

The time has come to pay the price.