dakota44

I'll raise you: Porn Star Jenna Jameson Backs Mitt

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/elec...icle-1.1128334

RICH

Double D or nothing.

Leslie

Soooooo ......







I did think it was interesting that for the first time EVER Romney (and Ryan for that matter) expressed concern for the poor and marginalized members of society.

The pick shows that Romney is still shoring up the base at a time when he should be working on the middle. I guess he's written Florida off completely.

zargof

I like this article:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106035...ly-risk-averse

It suggests that Romney already knows he's going to lose, but picking Ryan places the blame on conservatives rather than himself. Seems very Romneyesque.

Leslie

It's odd isn't it? Obama's moves to define Romney as the rich guy who's going to tax the poor and reward the rich is obviously working. So, Romney doubles down on the very thing that's sinking him by picking the guy who actually wrote the book. And I simply do not believe that the majority of Americans want to spend more money on defense and less money on Medicare.

zargof

As I've said elsewhere, I believe that people are happy to support spending cuts when it affects benefits for other people, but I don't see that many having the courage of their convictions when it comes to their own benefits.

Leslie

Nope.

As evinced by the Tea Baggers marching around with signs telling the government to keep its hands off their Medicare.

HarryTheSpider

I would sooooooooo love to see pictures of that!!!

Leslie

HarryTheSpider

OK - so Romney brings in somebody with ideas and some level of intellect that hitherto has been somewhat lacking from public view in the Romney camp.

It's about bloody time.

So let's look in detail at where Paul Ryan is coming from... because there could be some good stuff in here, presented more clearly than anything Romney has done so far as he flips & flops.

But I make no bones about it - I'm not a Romney supporter and I'm not a Ryan supporter. I'd like to take a reasoned look at what is likely to be proffered up as a manifesto going forward... before I throw rocks at it

So, from Ryan's Congressional web site...
http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=56750

I agree both parties have made empty promises. I also believe it is disingenuous to suggest the President is refusing to take responsibility for something that began just a few days and 5 years ago as I write this (and arguably long before that) - i.e. before he was President.

Further, it is too early to tell if Obama's policies have taken the US on a path to debt and decline in the longer term. Several bale outs have clearly helped some industries. The record bonuses and profits of Wall Street and the recent allegations of wrong doing by major financial institutions & companies points to a deeper, wider malaise that probably transcends party politics. Why is it too early to tell? Well, when the nation's, nay, the world's economists can't agree on what to do & what the outcomes will be, then we have to wait and see how things pan out. Which may not feel right.

I'm no expert on the process but it seems from what I have seen & heard that this failure is less about the failure of the Senate Democrats to pass a budget and more about their failure to pass a budget the GOP is OK with. Again, disingenuous, but no different in approach than any other politician, GOP or Dem, would do. The reader must simply read between the lines a little...

I applaud the sentiment - I really do. Reminds me of something some other politician was saying in effect during the 2008 race. I believe that other politician currently occupies the Oval Office... Now if Ryan can actually get the GOP to agree through action, and Obama can get the Dems to also fall in to line, we might get somewhere... if only it didn't have to rely on the flaws and fears of Mankind! Ryan may truly believe his budget proposals are right for America. The question is whether enough of his fellow Americans do too. We'll get to the specifics of the Ryan budget in a future post. But let's look at headlines as put forward by Ryan himself:

I can see that cutting government spending would link through to the need for lower tax receipts - i.e. take less from the hardworking tax payers - possibly also from the not so hard working tax payers (but let's not open that can of worms just yet!!).

Government spending is ultimately all going in to jobs - the people in government who administer programmes as well as deliver them, and those in private industry that provide goods and services to government. So some, perhaps too many, of these jobs will go.

So what then happens to these people, now without jobs?

Will this really have an overall positive effect on fear and uncertainty amongst individual citizens, or increase it? Increased sense of fear & uncertainty as jobs that for so many years were seen as safe begin to go is, in my opinion, more likely to ADD to the uncertainty and fear, at least in the short term. So people will shy away from spending more, even perhaps spending less. Lots of us know people in government service...

And what about the services that disappear? Sure, some, perhaps many, should go, or at least should be overhauled... but who & what replaces those programmes and services that are really needed?

Well, private industry can. For a profit, of course. And profit is good - it is certainly not evil. There can be debates about amounts of profit, but we'll save those for another time...

Will private industry do so at a reasonable price? Will it do it more efficiently than government has done? It would have to do so more efficiently, at least better enough to balance out the profits that would be taken by the owners of these private companies for there to be an economic argument for replacing government services with ones provided privately...

And if not regulated - more likely given that regulation is normally done by government... and much of this has been cut... then what protections for the vulnerable, those who are less able to help themselves... the very people government is there to protect? And what about consistencies of service & access across the 50 different states? What complexities and injustices might arise? Would these be any less than those that evidently do arise with the government provided programmes? Possibly, possibly not? But either way, what about recourse? The courts, via expensive lawyers (expensive to those vulnerable people who do not have the money to hire even low cost lawyers)?

Both GOP & Dems voted for this in the last ditch hope that the super committee would find the magic bullet. It didn't. The blame lies with the whole of the government system, not just the Executive - perhaps not even the Executive at all...

I think the vast majority of us would vote for this - but does it mean the same thing to each of us? I don't think it does... For me, economic freedom that means people and companies can pretty much do what they like with little or no oversight or regulation from government, state, local or federal, is not freedom that benefits the average person, USC or not, living in the US. For me it's akin to deregulation, and to see how well that worked, I give you the financial sector... (yup, I know it was Clinton that signed away the protections that used to exist - but we're in 2012 now, not 15 years in the past).

The President has very little if any control over oil prices. Ryan should know that if he has any nouse about him at all. If he does know this, he's being extremely disingenuous. If he doesn't, he should stay well away from budgets & commerce until he learns this...

This will be patients with little knowledge of what is going on, what is truly good for them, being advised by doctors and other professionals who, with the best will in the world, still stand to gain financially from over-helping the patient, who is their source of profit (I deliberately avoided the term 'revenue' here). When the medical industry buys the level of influence in Congress that it does and has been, when such influence is used to guide the determination of reimbursement & fee structures, when individuals are enticed, nay, manipulated by clever advertising, some of which might even be accurate, but all of which tugs at the emotional heart strings, advertising which cannot be countered by government for example, then we clearly have a biased system - the fox is guarding the hen house. Ryan's proposals do nothing to address this - arguably it runs the real risk of adding to the foxes... It is also based on the premise that government bureaucrats are de facto messing things up for patients by being involved. This premise is unproven, as, to be fair, is the opposite premise that only private industry can be best for the patient.

Again many would go with the sentiment. We'd all like to see lower rates, loopholes closed and tax payer interests put ahead of special interests. Would these be the same special interests that provide significant funding to GOP candidates, and in some cases, Dems too? And the premise that lower taxes generate more jobs is also unproven. There are many 'high tax' countries in the world (the US tax rates for business are high on paper, for big business the reality is the opposite) that have done well in generating jobs and prosperity. To cite high tax rates as a barrier to growth is to be overly simplistic. Either Ryan knows this and is being massively disingenuous again, or he doesn't, in which case he should stay out of it until he's done some more learning... (IMHO!)

Again, I laud the expressed intent. It doesn't acknowledge the fact that it is we and our parents that have essentially buggered everything up for our children with our own greed and short sightedness... The conflict here is not the general sentiment, it is the specific 'how'... Time will tell.

In closing... why was I not moved to do something like this with Romney, that it took the VP being announced before I took a closer look? What does the answer to this question say about the chances for Romney in the general election? (No, I know I'm not THAT influential, thankfully!!!)

HarryTheSpider

Great - a question every good journalist should ask about this - where is the proof these are Tea Party activists? Just one link will do!!

HarryTheSpider

Time to lob 1 or 2 of these...


Paul Ryan - only 28% of what comes out of his mouth is true or mostly true. The rest is...
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/paul-ryan/

(No prize, other than bragging rights, for the best 'come back' or defence against the above. Yes, even SADX is invited to play in this one!)

Leslie

The internet is your friend. I honestly don't remember exactly where/when this all went down but there were numerous (pretty widely covered at the time) of these types of protests to The Affordable Care Act.

HarryTheSpider

Here's what the t'Internet dug up...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/20...care_cuts.html
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...e-medicaid.php
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dai...-medicare-cuts

That'll do for starters. Would have liked to have seen more events/polls cited on first page of search results. Still, good enough for me. Time to throw more rocks perhaps?!

Captain Cheesestick

I'm still waiting to see how this fits into the narrative that if Obama is reelected he plans to all kinds of evil to the 2nd Amendment and will force all men into gay marriages. .