The story of Romney claiming bipartisan cred for Paul Ryan over the fact that he once wrote a policy paper with Ron Wyden is strange on a few levels. First, what? It’s not a bipartisan accomplishment to write a paper. A bipartisan accomplishment would be turning that paper into actual legislation. And Wyden handled that pretty well.
Governor Romney is talking nonsense. Bipartisanship requires that you not make up the facts.
I did not “co-lead a piece of legislation.” I wrote a policy paper on options for Medicare. Several months after the paper came out I spoke and voted against the Medicare provisions in the Ryan budget.
I mean Romney had to know that Wyden would respond. And that he’d do it in a partisan manner. It’s sloppy campaigning.
The other thing is he didn’t pick him as the VP nominee for his bipartisanship. Ryan is a partisan ideologue on budget issues and on social issues. He fires up the base. He gives them something to vote for instead of just against Obama.
I’m starting to feel sorry for Mittens.
Carl – your post seems to have been truncated mid-sentence.
@ 1
Why? Mittens is an imbecile. All he has ever been during the entire course of his adult career is a greedy thug, and everyone knows this. He will not be the nominee at the convention, there is far too much dirt, far too many felonies and not enough personality for anyone serious about the subject to take his candidacy seriously.
Now that it is coming out that Ryan ran to his broker as soon as he heard the news about the Bank bailouts and has been taking massively short positions on United States Treasuries for the last 15 years, that pair is as unelectable as an exterminator at a cockroach convention.
Carl – and Senator Wyden – are correct when they point out that the policy paper was not legislation. Whether Romney misspoke accidentally or on purpose is a matter of debate.
However, Wyden WAS deeply involved in a policy paper in which substantial changes to Medicare were proposed, including an option of non-Medicare coverage paid partly by, essentially, vouchers (which I equate to ‘premium support’).
Since Wyden routinely votes against GOP budgets, a vote against a GOP budget bill that included the nuts-and-bolts of a Wyden/Ryan proposal is not a surprise. It also isn’t necessarily a vote against the Medicare components of the bill.
Democrats are already reprising one of their familiar lines, saying Ryan’s budget plan would “end Medicare as we know it.” That exact phrase appeared in separate statements issued Saturday by Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.).
The mere fact that Wyden was at one point involved in Ryan’s Medicare proposals could undermine that Democratic message – and Wyden seems to know it.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/R.....838-1.html
A number of Democrats once believed—and some still do—that a well-crafted version of premium support is part of a balanced and sustainable long-term fix for Medicare. If the effect of the Ryan choice is to take not only the Ryan budget’s version of premium support off the table, but also the kinds of approaches that Alice Rivlin and Ron Wyden have proposed, then we’ll be left with far less appealing options for stabilizing Medicare.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/106142.....-democrats
In current desperation to discredit Ryan’s efforts, Dems risk discrediting efforts of others – notably including their own members – who understand that Medicare as we know it is unsustainable and that something needs to be done to create some stability to the program.
It is unfortunate to current Dem political prospects that prominent Democrats such as Erskine Bowles and Ron Wyden liked what Ryan did when he worked with them.
It’s much more unfortunate to the country’s prospects if in the effort to discredit Ryan the Dems end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
@ 5
The only real solution is to take the Corporations out of the system entirely. Make it 100% government operated, fix physicians salaries at something reasonable and take the profit motive out of the system.
Much of Medicares issues stem from the fact that hospitals can charge pretty much anything they want to against it when treating Medicare patients. They regularly charge $10 for an aspirin. They charge $1000 for wheelchair rental when they wheel the patient out of the building. They charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for procedures that aren’t even necessary but they do simply because they know that they will be reimbursed for them, then they charge the highest amount they can get away with.
The Catholic Church owns something like 70% of all the major surgical hospitals in the country. They are flat out ripping us off and they know it. Its massive theft on an industrial scale. Time for that to end. Take the profit motive out of the system entirely.
@ 6
And you thought this up all by yourself, while you’ve been sitting unemployed for the past three years, getting checks from the government?
That we should just socialize one-sixth of the nation’s economy, and dictate what things will cost and what people earn?
Maybe we should make all pharmaceutical firms wholly owned subsidiaries of the US government as well. Although we have to do it in a manner in which the trial attorneys won’t lose the ability to file class-action suits and reap hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. ’cause that money is necessary to re-election of Democrats.
Goodbye Amgen. Hello US Government Genetic Engineering.
Republican House leader Paul Voucher-ize Your Medicare Ryan, has no record of “bi-partisan” accomplishment. None. Zero. Zilch.
House Republican leader Paul, Privatize your Social Security Ryan does have a record of being extremely partisan such that compromise is prevented from being achieved.
@2, Not sure what’s up with that. WordPress has been eating my posts recently, and I went back to a saved version and somehow missed that. Thanks for noticing, it’s fixed now.
@ 8
You run with that.
Compromise is not always good.
Remind me again of Barack Obama’s bipartisan accomplishments while in the US Senate?
Actually,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGeu_4Ekx-o
maybe you could name a single legislative accomplishment by Senator Obama?
@5 “who understand that Medicare as we know it is unsustainable”
Medicare is part of a larger picture. The same thing is happening to Medicare that’s happening to private health insurance and the uninsured: Medical costs are rising faster than inflation.
There are several reasons for this. The baby boomer cohort reaching retirement age; the aging of our population (older people consume more medical care); treatments becoming available for formerly untreatable illnesses; more sophisticated and more expensive medical technology; higher standards of care and treatment, etc.
The bottom line is we’re all consuming more health care, and the health care we’re consuming is more complex and expensive, plus changing population demographics. There’s no clear way out of this; health care will consume a larger share of GDP no matter what we do.
There are some obvious targets for reform: The private insurance industry that skims off 28% of our health care dollars for performing the same administrative tasks that Medicare accomplishes for under 1%; fraudulent billings to Medicare and private insurers by dishonest doctors and hospitals in the private sector (all Medicare fraud is committed actors in the private sector); the costs of defensive medicine and unnecessary treatments; and, at some point, we may have to ask ourselves whether we as a society, or as taxpayers, should pay $500,000 or more for a heart transplant for a 71-year-old with a long history of cardiovascular illness.
My point is, the financial problems afflicting Medicare are not unique to Medicare but involve the entire system of financing health care; and restructuring Medicare to shift costs from the government to individuals doesn’t provide any collective benefit to us as citizens, it simply makes elderly Medicare recipients pay more so young taxpayers can pay less, without creating any efficiencies or lowering overall costs.
Thus, Ryan’s proposed Medicare revisions are a remaking of the social contract between our senior citizens and the rest of society, not true health care reform.
@ 11
Speaking of “remaking of the social contract between our senior citizens and the rest of society”:
we may have to ask ourselves whether we as a society, or as taxpayers, should pay $500,000 or more for a heart transplant for a 71-year-old with a long history of cardiovascular illness.
So, RR, did you ignorantly criticize Ryan for making significant revisions to Medicare while suggesting such revisions yourself, or did you do so with hypocritical intent?
@10 “Remind me again of Barack Obama’s bipartisan accomplishments while in the US Senate?”
So your argument is that Obama should be criticized for lack of bipartisan successes because the Republican leadership in Congress put the failure of his presidency ahead of the country’s interests and obstructed everything he tried to do?
I think that’s an argument for throwing the Republicans out of Congress.
@ 7
Ah, resorting to the strawman fallacy. Go figure.
Considering the fact that the medical care industry is 20% of the economy, and the corporations control that exclusively, and it is now at the point where almost half the population cannot afford to access that critical aspect of our modern society without pooling their resources with those same corporations, I would think that it is time to realize that everyone deserves medical care, and everyone should have access to it when they need it. Corporate models for critical resources do not work.
My cousin is looking at almost $200,000 in student loans she’s going to have to repay when she graduates medical school. That should be totally forgiven as soon as she completes her residency so that debt burden does not exist. Doing this for everyone who can prove their acumen for any profession would go a long way to reducing the debt burden on the Nation as a whole. Either that, or make a higher education as free to the individual as possible so new graduates are not saddles with a lifetime of debt, with interest, that is controlled by private institutions like banks.
The Constitution does not say “We the Corporations”, it says “We the People”. It is time the corporations were slapped down, hard. Executed if need be. Too many of them are flat out criminal in their efforts to consolidate wealth for themselves. Corruption is the entirety of their game.
Hospitals are huge cash cows for the companies that own them, they do everything they can, every legal trick, every tax writeoff, and every reduction in service that they can get away with to increase their profits including flat out denying medical care. Doctors themselves do not make huge amounts of money, most of the money they generate goes to the corporations that employ them.
When an “insurance” company regularly generates a quarterly 15% INCREASE in profit, and their patients are required to file lawsuits to get the contracts they paid for enforced, there is a serious problem. Especially when those insurance companies can delay process in court for years until someone dies. They’d rather employ an army of Lawyers than actually fulfill their contractual obligations.
And where the hell did you get the idea that I’m getting any money from the government? I’m living on student loans, that I will have to pay back. You fascists sure do make a lot of assumptions about people. I’m fucking BROKE Jack.
You Fascists won’t be happy until a third of the country is homeless, starving and living in tin roof shanties. The stated goal of Paul Ryan and his Randroid ilk is a sustained rate of 20% unemployment, elimination of the minimum wage, the child labor laws and constant, continuous warfare. Alan Greenspan said this flat out in the early 1990s.
@ 13
I’m saying that If Obama was stymied by the other side at some point, and his efforts did not become law, the same thing happened to Ryan – his efforts were stymied in the Senate.
Obama, as a Senator, was noteworthy primarily for his NO votes on both Bush Supreme Court justice nominations and for his presidential run, for which planning and trip-making began in the first half of his term.
If Obama’s record makes him good enough for President, Ryan’s makes him good enough for Vice President.
@8 Serially Wrong and Very Dim,
Remind me again of Barack Obama’s bipartisan accomplishments while in the US Senate?
How about I remind you of a bipartisan accomplishment Obama achieved as president?
You are probably incapable of remembering, but when Barrack Husein Obama was inaugurated in Januay 2009 the country, indeed the world, was suffering from the worst economic depression in 60 years.
Despite open and vocal criticism and a GD Republican plan to let all of us fail to make Obama fail, President Obama worked with those few Republicans who would work with him and in less than 30 days from assuming office got the bipartisan American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 passed.
One of the effects of the stimulus which was achieved by the compromise led by President Obama was that it facilitated the end of the recession by June 2009 (less than 6 months in office!), when our economy stopped contracting and began expanding again.
For those of you who can stream, President and Mrs. Obama can be found live at
http://www.ustream.tv/cbsnews
@12 You’re deluding yourself if you think million-dollar heart transplants are available to the average 70-something Medicare recipient, so my comment doesn’t advocate a change to existing policies, therefore you don’t have a point.
Medicare didn’t pay for Cheney’s heart transplant, nor did Cheney; his taxpayer-funded gold-plater government insurance did; and some quick internet research reveals it cost $1 million, not $500,000 as I said.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke.....-who-dies/
I’m a hypocrite sometimes, and I admit it, but on this subject your arrow not only missed the target it missed the whole goddam archery range.
@ 14
Funny. You claim your cousin’s professional school debt should be wiped away after graduation.
My daughter is starting pharmacy school. We have purposefully structured her support so that she WILL have debt when she graduates.
We WANT her to have debt. Debt is a good thing. It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning to go to work.
This is a nice example of the difference in our philosophies. You want others to keep giving you stuff. I want my child to produce, and to produce for others, so that she doesn’t have to be given stuff.
Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be able to claim that my daughter doesn’t pay her fair share in taxes, either.
@ 16
Off-point response. He didn’t get to be president without being Senator first.
Name Obama’s bipartisan Senatorial accomplishments. That failing, name ANY of his accomplishments while in the Senate.
I could list Ryan’s accomplishments while VP, but it would be a silly as you listing Obama’s accomplishments as president when I asked you to name some before he got there.
@ 19
And what if she cannot find work in her profession? What if the only job she can get is cleaning hotel rooms or flipping burgers? You take a lot for granted.
We need to go back to the tax rates we had before that smiling, affable fascist was elected in 1980. Wealth can and should be limited. This is not an oligarchy, this is a republic.
@20 Serially Annoying as well as Dim,
So, when I do, will you own up to the fact that Obama’s 4 years in the Senate accomplished more than Romney or Republican House leader and 14 year congressional incumbent Paul Voucher-ize your Medicare Ryan?
@ 21
The number of people additionally covered under Obamacare grew by around 30 million, remember?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/.....yment.html
Pharmacy and allied disciplines will be hurting for workers, not laying them off.
Now, I recall a guy who lamented he couldn’t put his PhD in Critical Dance Studies to use and he had around $150K in student loan debt. NYT, if I recall.
Hard to feel badly for those who choose poorly.
@ 21
We need to go back to the tax rates we had before that smiling, affable fascist was elected in 1980. Wealth can and should be limited. This is not an oligarchy, this is a republic.
Like I said, you want people to keep giving you free shit. For that to happen, since they’re not likely to give an idiot like you free shit on their own, you want the government to forcibly take it from them and hand it to you instead.
There’s a word for that but it’s not ‘republic’.
@ 22
Depends on what’s in the list, doesn’t it?
@25 No asshole, it does not.
See asswipe, the FACTS are that President Obama has a track record of significant and vital legislative compromise which have improved this nation. Neither Romney’s nor Ryan’s record holds a candle to it.
Ryan has no record, and Slick Willard hides his own.
Now, eat shit and die.
@ 23
Ah, that same old argument. Basket weaving, dance studies etc etc etc. You Fascists are so full of shit your ears are brown. Those “idiot” degrees are extremely rare, What we need is Engineers, metallurgists, forensicists, architects, physicists, mathematicians, biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists. We need surgeons and zoologists and chemists. We need a large part of the population that can understand real science. We need educated, intelligent people who can understand the nuances of law and technology.
What this nation needs to function as a modern, technological society is a high number of highly educated people, and you Fascists flat out oppose all of that. You want to turn the country into Brazil or something like Liberia.
Fuck you.
re 4: Nice bit of blather there, Cereal.
Everyone also knows that $6,000 a year worth of government health insurance vouchers for a 75 year old Alszheimer’s patient with stage 3 cancer is something only a criminally insane sociopath (like Paul Ryan) would see as a solution to medicare problems.
off topic, but Obama is getting up a good head of steam now http://www.ustream.tv/cbsnews
“we may have to ask ourselves whether we as a society, or as taxpayers, should pay $500,000 or more for a heart transplant for a 71-year-old with a long history of cardiovascular illness.”
Actually not. Answering that is a medical problem–certainly not best trusted to politicians. The “long history” part may or may not be a factor. In truth there are people in their 80’s who might benefit from a heart transplant and live to be 100, while there are an increasing number of much younger people who are already so fragile that they’re a lousy surgical risk. The other part of the problem, of course, is the limited supply of transplantable hearts. The increasing popularity of motorcycles (regrettably) might help with that in the short term, but eventually we need to get better at repairing hearts instead of replacing them. The prospects look good for that–we’re awfully close to being able to replace a major portion of a patient’s left ventricle with a sheet of muscle tissue grown in vitro.
@ 26
Um, OK. Noted.
Not sure any of that is ‘vital’ but he wasn’t a do-nothing.
None of that dilutes the aptitude or accomplishments of Romney/Ryan.
Go back to 2004 and look at the knocks against nominee Kerry. I think he had 20 years in the Senate and only 6-7 passed bills, which doesn’t sound like much. The Dems’ defense was that Kerry spent a lot of time in committee and was a foreign policy necessity, and wasn’t the type of Senator who churned bills.
There’s more to being a Congressman than passing legislation. Sometimes keeping a stupid bill from becoming law is an important role, although it doesn’t show up in the bill tally at the end.
Ryan became a leader in the party through effort and recognition of same.
What will you do when a guy with no accomplishments, as you seem to allege, wipes the floor with Biden during a debate?
@27
If you want free shit so bad, why don’t you tell college professors, like darryl, to take a pay cut or to work for free? That way you can get the free college you want.
And fuck you too..who the fuck are you to demand that you(or your relatives) get free stuff or have college debt wiped away? Did she not know going in that it was expensive? Did this debt magicaly foist itself upon her out of nowhere? Its like buying a car, driving it home, and being surprised you owe $50k for the damn thing.
So please, feel free to send in a request darryl asking him to provide his teaching services for free….good luck with that.
@31 Asshole,
14 year Congressional incumbent sucking on the public teat he professes to abhor House Republican leader Paul I voted for every one of GW Bush’s deficit exploding budgets Ryan, became a “leader” of a group which favors inaction and accepts as a cost of political business our national demise.
You say “None of that dilutes the aptitude or accomplishments of Romney/Ryan.“, because you can’t name any accomplishments of Gekko/Galt.
They have none.
Now, go back to masturbating with your Ayn Rand fantasies.
ps. Ryan is not going to wipe any floors with Joe Biden on October 11th. Asshole, I’ve known Joe for over 30 years and he’s much more experienced and ready than Ryan can be. Watch.
@ 32
You missed that he also expects to tell physicians @ 6 what salary they will earn.
That’s what I want – a government-employed physician who has been salary-limited by pay-grade, operating on my heart with one hand and counting days until his/her retirement with the other.
@ 33
I’ve known Joe for over 30 years and he’s much more experienced and ready than Ryan can be. Watch.
Yeah, Biden really took down Palin, didn’t he?
@ 33
If Dems were so confident about their debate prospects they wouldn’t be whining about making some questions off-limits:
http://horsesass.org/?p=45373#comment-1176171
Math is hard.
Pussies.
@35 Thanks for the laugh Asshole.
Yes, Vice President Palin sure destroyed Senator Biden. Joe Biden and his family are off doing reality TV shows while Vice President Palin counsels with President McCain.
ROTFLMAO!
@ 37
This isn’t 2008. Obama’s not running against George W. Bush.
Thought you could use a reminder.
@19 “We WANT her to have debt. Debt is a good thing. It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning to go to work.”
You don’t trust your daughter to work and support herself without creditors breathing down her neck? Well, you know your daughter better than the rest of us do.
As for me, I have neither debts nor job. Don’t need either.
@ 38
No, he’s running against a sociopath who has yet to make a single factual statement in the course of his campaign. He’s running against a corporatist criminal who believes himself to be the fulfillment of the White Horse Prophecy.
Anyone who claims that Ayn Rand is a legitimate economic philosopher, and was anything but a raving psychopath should be automatically dismissed as having a legitimate opinion. She was a deeply psychotic individual.
The entire premise of her philosophy can only be described as that of a spoiled 6 year old. She said nothing that one couldn’t get out of the mouth of any other sociopath.
@38 You’re right, this isn’t 2008. McCain was weighed down by his veep pick; Romney is depending on his to pick him up.
Gimme some fucking free stuff!!! Now!!!
What is so hard about balancing the budget. Bill Clinton did it. It’s not like we have to send a man to mars. Just go back to the Clinton Tax rates for God’s sake. So much bullshit for nothing.
Bottom line is Republicans don’t care about the deficit. They’ve proven it in the past from Ronald Regan to the Monkey Bush Family.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....78429.html
I’m not one for free shit, but I have no problem asking a hedge fund manager who makes $3.0 billion per year pay more in taxes, even if the value adds to $1.0 billion – not too much to ask for when people are strarving and don’t have healhcare and trying to live on $35,000 per year.
If I made $3.0 billion – I’d give over half of it away to charity. Yeah, the charity that Republicans says will solve everything.
@ 43
Just go back to the Clinton Tax rates for God’s sake.
I’m actually OK with that.
Across the board, re-install the Clinton tax rates.
Across the board.
Just hitting the rich won’t do jack shit to the deficit. You want meaningful reduction and to raise revenues to do it, you have to tax EVERYONE at a higher rate.
Your turn.
@ 44
See how easy it is to ask others to make life easier for you?
As long as it’s someone else paying the higher taxes, why stop where you did? Why not take two-thirds, or more?
After all, it’s not your money. It’s just your wish list.
Go for broke. Go on.
You say you’re not for free shit. What I don’t see is you offering to help. You’re just offering for someone else to reduce your share of the federal deficit. For free.
That equates to free shit in my book.
@45 – Ok one thing I can agree with you on…across the board. And restore Capital Gains tax to what it use to be..
And if I can push my luck, have a special tax rate for hedge fund managers who make over a billion dollar salary.
I didn’t want Obama to extend the Bush Tax Cuts…but he had no choice in this economy….well too bad now….we can all live through the fucking pain. Don’t extend the Bush Tax Cuts.
@46 – No I don’t want free shit, never have and never taken it….raise my taxes back to the Clinton era, I don’t care. At lease we had a balanced budget.
Republicans don’t want a balanced budget.
@46 – you act as if everyone wants free shit…I don’t think that is the case, they just want to be able to live. And with the cost of an education or healthcare, housing, etc….living on $35,000 year just won’t cut it…you can’t saddle them down with more (or less).
I make over $100,000….and I still give a shit about the person that makes only $35,000. Because not everyone can make $100,000.. I am blessed to be making it. People aren’t looking for free shit, they are looking to survive in an unsustainable world.
I’ve been arguing with a co-worker since 2003 about the Bush tax cuts….I didn’t wait till today to start speaking up.
@49
Neither party cares about balancing the budget..
Gman, did you know you are part of the “evil rich”, according to your fellow progressives?
@53 – nice try…I don’t think like the evil rich, so therefore I am not part of the evil rich.
Fight for the person or family trying to live on $35,000. It will take all the evil out of you.
Re the Republican plan to end Medicare ABC News has a worthy “Fact-check” out today
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/he.....-overhaul/
@52 – I’d have to disagree with you, I think Democrats are more inclined to support balancing a budget. Clinton did. And Reagan and the Bush’s didn’t. Obama tried to some extent via Simpson-Bowles or whoever that commission was. Cut spending including the Defense Deparment and also raise taxes. Easy and simple, but we have Grover Nordquist and the rest of the lemming Republicans to thank for nothing happening.
@ 55
You so funny.
There are no long-term reviews for this updated Romney-Ryan plan yet — or specific published details – so it appears the 2011 CBO report on Ryan’s original budget proposal is the only thing we have to go on.
So, ABC is comparing Obamacare with a 2011 Ryan plan, which was replaced with a 2012 budget after Ryan revamped his proposal, which will be replaced by something that Romney will propose.
And you treat it as apples-to-apples, with a straight face.
You so funny.
@ 56
So, Obama gets credit for the Simpson-Bowles commission recommendations even though he totally disregarded them?
Where do I buy stock in the company that manufactures Obama kneepads?
Since we seem to be conversing about qualifications to be VP:
President Barack Obama has slightly more than 22 days to drop Vice Presidential Joe Biden from the 2012 Democratic presidential ticket, according to lawyers familiar with the party nominating process. That is, Democrats have until September 6 to formally nominate their presidential ticket which will then be qualified for the 50 state ballots.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/.....50014.html
Today he got the century wrong. Minor lapse, admittedly.
C’mon, guys. Obama’s gotta be thinking about it.
“How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?”
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1c4_1263095953
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (often called Bowles-Simpson/Simpson-Bowles from the names of co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles; or NCFRR) is a Presidential Commission created in 2010 by President Barack Obama to identify “…policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.”[1] The commission first met on April 27, 2010.[2] A report was released on December 1, 2010,[3] but failed a vote on December 3 with 11 of 18 votes in favor, with a supermajority of 14 votes needed to formally endorse the blueprint.[4]The original proposal for a commission came from bipartisan legislation that would have required Congress to vote on its recommendations as presented, without any amendment. In January 2010, that bill failed in the Senate by a vote of 53–46, when six Republicans who had co-sponsored it nevertheless voted against it.[5] Thereafter, Obama established the Commission by Executive Order 13531. Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), after his appointment to co-chair the Commission, criticized the former supporters who had voted against the bill, saying that their purpose “was to stick it to the president.”[6] In the absence of special legislation, the Commission’s proposals are not guaranteed to be considered by Congress in a single up-or-down vote.
From Wikipedia. Republican Obstructionists. Fillibuster.
@58 – you are out of touch with reality.
@57 Serially trying to change the subject because the facts can’t support his position because Reality Has A Well Known Liberal Bias
Yes, ABC’s fact check of the Gekko/Galt plan to end Medicare is flawed because the “new plan” is secret. Slick Willard’s got a lot of secrets.
So, until Slick Willard releases any “new” relevant information evaluators need to use what they’ve got.
Maybe you can write Slick Willard a letter asking him to release his plan? Seems like you’ve got the time.
@59 – who gives two shits about the VP or even the Presidency for that matter?
@ 60
You misunderstand. The fact that there was not a requirement for the Commission’s findings to be voted on by Congress does not preclude the president from initiating some changes in how business is conducted based on the Commission’s recommendations.
The fact that it wasn’t recommended by a supermajority vote doesn’t give Obama a get-out-of-jail free card on the Commission’s recommendations. Look at all of the things he has done unilaterally, some after not getting approval from Congress.
Simpson was unhappy, sure. Ask him how he feels about Obama’s disregard of his work, Gman.
“Where do I buy stock in the company that manufactures Obama kneepads?”
There is no such thing, Bob. It’s a figment of your imagination. That you repeat this again and again reveals nothing about any lefty here, but it does reveal an awful lot about you.
I doubt if there’s a pill yet for what ails the Psych 101 basketcases who show up here, Bob, but for therapy’s sake, if you ask nicely and pay a psychiatrist’s fee, maybe some lefty here will help you out and allow you get on your knees and blow them.
@ 58, 59
Nice talking with you. Every so often you need to pull your head out and breathe. This is one of those times.
Did everyone just see what Serially Dim did @66?
He’s talking to himself in the comment thread.
Yes Cereal, pull your head out.
LMAO.
@ 67
Yup, ya got me. ‘s what can happen when I’m juggling a lot.
Apologies for the inaccuracy. At least I know what century and state I’m in.
“Across the board”
Yeah, we’ve heard it before, Bob. What we haven’t heard out of you is a single reason why those who have done so well even as others have suffered, shouldn’t step to the plate to the tune of a few measly percentage points. Instead, after whining about class warfare, you guys came up with a “plan” that eliminates inheritance, dividends, capital gains and interest income from taxation.
Applied to your presidential candidate’s only available tax return, your present “plan” would result in a freeloader rate of 0.45%. If it wasn’t for speaking fees and a book, his rate would be zero. That doesn’t even get into your “secret” plan, which you hope to reveal to a Republican congress, but for some reason refuse to reveal to the American people prior to the election.
As most of us have come to realize, when it comes to making the case for Obama/Biden 2012 nobody does it better than Obama himself.
Regarding Medicare, it should be the case that the two parties with different visions could come to a bipartisan agreement on how to best improve Lyndon Johnson’s great achievement. But if that is not possible, then leadership demands action alone.
Here’s President Obama earlier today in Iowa
“At least I know what century and state I’m in.”
Yeah, you’re fucking brilliant. Too bad you don’t know what decade it was when American cars had big fins. Here’s a clue, it wasn’t the 1960’s like you so smugly and smarmily stated a few weeks back. Good grief, Bob! No red-blooded, gun totin’ American machismo male would ever get that one wrong. What are you, some type of closeted commie-feminist or something?
@71 Steve,
With such low self standards, Cereal is obviously the child that was left behind.
By the way, news reports say the Japanese government has enacted a 100% tax increase in it’s “value added” (sales) tax to pay down the national debt. That means the sales tax would go from 5% to 10%.
Of course, we should be very careful here not to compare apples and oranges. I haven’t checked into the local or prefecture sales taxes. Also, Japan has an income tax, but there isn’t anywhere near the disparity in earnings between the CEOs and the workers that we see here in the U.S.
Otherwise, I’ve got mixed feelings. The government has worked with opposition parties to form a find a solution to the national debt, which was compounded by the tsunami and nuclear disaster. But a sales tax tends to depress spending and hit the lowest levels the hardest, A previous heavy emergency tax on beer and wine has put the restaurant industry in a serious rescession – workers would often congregate at restaurants after-hours to eat, drink, and socialize outside of the earshot of the boss.
@64 I’m sure you’d like to see Obama unilaterally cut spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps, Pell grants, Medicaid, Medicare, and anything else that helps the non-rich. Fuck you, Bob. We’ll keep obstructing Ryan’s budget schemes until hell freezes over. That one’s non-negotiable.
No, it won’t last.
But:
Nate Silver
✔
@fivethirtyeight
Romney’s Ryan bounce across 11 polls thus far: +5, +5, +2, +2, +2, 0, 0, 0, -2, -2, -2. So, take your pick. +0.9 on average.
@69 It’s always been their plan that only wages will be taxed. The property-owning class wants a free ride. They’d repeal the 13th Amendment if they could.
@75 Rmoney gets a +0.9% bounce from Ryan? Are you kidding me? The stock market hasn’t moved either. Looks like Ryan is a non-event.
Silver still has Obama above 300 EVs. I’ll take that. Silver still gives Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Colorado to Obama. Where’s Mittster’s path to victory?
There isn’t one.
Another good fact-check over at Reuters about the Republican House Ideological Leader, Paul I’ll give you a coupon for your Medicare! Ryan Medicare BULLSHIT.
Top six myths about Medicare
ummm…most of the people in this board…
just a guess.
@19 wrote, “My daughter is starting pharmacy school. We have purposefully structured her support…. so that she doesn’t have to be given stuff.”
Said the clueless parent who argues for the virtue of self-sufficiency–as they’re currently giving their child “stuff”.
Sure, self-sufficiency is great–when mommy and daddy are standing right behind you, ready to give you stuff…so that you can be self-sufficient. It’s a great system…unless you weren’t smart enough to have been born to parents with resources. Then, well, that’s your own fault.