What is highly likely in this election is the Republicans are going to keep the house and close the gap or outright win the Senate. A defanged socialist who will keep the closet plutacrats at bay is a far better outcome then going back to Republican rule we saw in the 2000 to 2006 period.Originally Posted by Warfish
This guy is not going to reform our government, he voted for bailouts, his budget is a pander to current and future Medicare benifits and guts the social safety net for the poor.
This senior thinks he's just fine. Perhaps some of the deadbeats in our society will get less of a free ride. I pay taxes. A lot of taxes. 48% or so pay zip. Time that they did.
And BTW, nonoe of Ryan's concepts really affect current seniors to any extent.
More reality: There was no VP pick Romney could have made that was not going to be labelled a disastrous pick within 24 hours of the announcement by an agenda-driven media.
Saying things like Ryan will hurt Romney is just ... fiction.
Right now on Politico there's a 3-page article (3 authors) on what a disaster Ryan is for his ticket.
But look at that article. After a page of vague generalities they finally get to the heart of the matter: The most cutting criticism of Ryan, shared only by a handful of strategists, is that Ryan isn’t ready to be president — or doesn’t come across as ready. A youthful man who looks even younger than his 42 years, Ryan could end up labeled as Sarah Palin with a PowerPoint presentation, several operatives said.
“He just doesn’t seem like he can step into the job on Day One,” said the strategist, who professed himself a Ryan fan.
So then, Ryan's inexperience is his disastrous quality? Seriously, good luck making that sale.
And senior citizens are not idiots. There has been nothing comforting about the last 4 years and they will believe Ryan when he tells them that Medicare stays put for those over 55.
I disagree accross the board.
The Senate will stay (D), the House will stay (R), and nothing will get passed both houses (or more honestly, only things (D) agrees to will get passed).
And a socialist/collectivist in the White House is bad regardless of how "defanged" one thinks he might be. Someone who believes (as I believe he does) in collectivism > individual rights and responsabillities is not someone who should be President, period.
I don't disagree.This guy is not going to reform our government, he voted for bailouts, his budget is a pander to current and future Medicare benifits and guts the social safety net for the poor.
True reform, that works to reduce fraud, increase accountabillity and economic viabillity to governmental programs, will never pass in our current system.
With that said, Rom-Ryan would do more than Obama on that front, even if it wasn't much.
Also, this ticket lacks For Pol experience. We still have a few wars and conflicts that may escalate into full scale wars on the horizon. Neither party has a veteran on the ticket.
We have just witnessed what a disaster Swiss Mitt is when dealing with our allies. I just cannot see either of these two R's standing up to China, Russia and Iran, particularly when they cannot make a good stand with GB, which for the most part is a layup.
Seniors also care about their children. With the 5 year recession now looking more like a life sentence, they want Medicare and SS to stay. Instead of the the focus being on the economy, specifically JOBS, it is now on gutting Medicare.
Just another hurdle for Swiss Mitt to jump over
You certainly seem to hold a great of contempt for those less fortunate. Seniors also have children that they love and care about. How about we if stop legislating funds to other nations first before we gut Medicare.
America and Americans first
He criicized security at the Olympics. Wow. So did the British gov which had to call out the troops.
Israel was a problem? How?
As far as seniors caring about their children. I am a senior, I cared enough to be sure they were educated in HS, got scholarships through athletics and now make 6 figures all. Set. They invest and expect little from our dysfunctional government.
Frankly, every dime I collect from SS (just started) goes into a brokerage account with my children as trust beneficiaries. Not that they will need it. They are functioning CONTRIBUTING citizens in our society.
I have no care for losers who have squandered their lives. There is no excuse for failure. Except laziness.
I have always expressed sympathy and endorsed help for children born with serious infirmaties. And for disabled veterans. I contribute to those charities.
The homeless? Their fault.
And we do have safety nets in place. They tend to be grossly abused.
As for other nations. Agree. No aid. Investing? I don't, but many good companies do. Why? growth and beneficial taxes.
Jetdawg is saying in his post that since the economy is crap seniors like you should vote for more entitlements to take care of their grandkids even though those very programs are what has put our future at risk. Essentially he believes that we should double down on the very actions that caused us to be in the mess we are in. The logic is so backwards and pessimistic that I can't even fathom a response.
The only one gutting Medicare today is Obama. He at least has the guts to transfer funds from wealthy seniors to less fortunate Medicaid patients.
Ryan totally panders to current Medicare patients and future ones up to age 55. He guts Medicare down the road when he no longer will be around.
What I am stating here is that we always have money for wars and bailouts for industries, but we do not have monies for seniors whom have helped to build this nation.
You did not even mention the wars that are not paid for and have gripped this nation with a huge burned of debt.
So these 'losers' caused the banks to fail? These 'losers' caused the unlawful war in Iraq? These 'losers' had us pay for Blackwater vice the US Armed forces in these wars?
Talk about abuse
OK so now your contention is that the 1 trillion dollar total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over 12 years caused the 16 trillion dollar deficit? Or did you just want to spew a talking point without knowing the actual dollar amount?
A chance for you to understand that there is more than the FOX Noise Channel out here again:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...rael-bad-taste
The Israel visit was out of line and some even view it more harshly.
Not everyone in America is as fortunate as we are here. My son just completed college and is also a 'CONTRIBUTING' citizen in our society. He also understands that the scale has been tipped heavily in favor of those who are fortunate.
He is on the fortunate side of things and can see this
And this is just the dollar values to this point:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...75S25320110629The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. (www.costsofwar.org)
I still talk to Marines over there. I live with the wars on a consistent basis. It is not just some arbitrary number that flashes upon the web or my tv's.
It is funny how Ryan voted with Bush on these wars and now wants to act like it is the fault of less fortunate Americans so they need to pay for it.
Add the bailouts, which Ryan voted for. Add the earmarks (http://www.boston.com/politicalintel...L3J/story.html)
and you should be able to view a better perspective of this 'choice'
Those numbers are false. The combined cost of the two wars was around 1 trillion over 10 years. That doesn't come close to accounting for the 5 trillion in deficits over the past three years.
Your excuse making is apparent. We have a choice between two visions. What happened in the past is irrelevant. Do we go with Obama who refuses to acknowledge the problem or put forth a proposal for solutions or do we go with a team that has a vision and a plan for all to see. Do we go with as proven winner and success in everything they've done in Romney or do we go with a proven failure that had never so much as opened a lemonade stand prior to being elected president. It is a clear contrast and a clear choice.
For what we all know, ALL the numbers could be false. They are probably much higher!!!
I am not making ANY excuse for President Obama. His presidency is clearing lacking not only in leadership. His policies have allowed the nation to deteriorate over the past 3+ years.
Clearly he took over a sinking ship from King George. Congress for the past two years has been severely divided. We have had nothing but CR's since 2010. No nation can run that way for a sustainable amount of time.
Compromise has become a bitter, divisive word. The folks in DC no longer work for the people. Ryan and Romney will be no different. They will support the wars that Ryan voted for under Bush.
They will continue the current pace or even accelerate the tax cuts for the rich. The American voters know what is going on here and thus there has been no boost in the polls for Romney.
The choice is between a poor choice and a poorer choice.
Willard was already dead in the water with the evangelical half of the GOP total 40 percent of the electorate for being a member of the Mormon cult.
Now it turns out Ryan is a devout deciple of one Ayn Rand on.record in her writings as claiming Jesus was a fraud.
Great pick Willard
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Ryan is not even credible to Reagan's peeps
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/op...plan.html?_r=2PAUL D. RYAN is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon.
Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.
Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neoconconservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion “defense” budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.
Indeed, adjusted for inflation, today’s national security budget is nearly double Eisenhower’s when he left office in 1961 (about $400 billion in today’s dollars) — a level Ike deemed sufficient to contain the very real Soviet nuclear threat in the era just after Sputnik. By contrast, the Romney-Ryan version of shrinking Big Government is to increase our already outlandish warfare-state budget and risk even more spending by saber-rattling at a benighted but irrelevant Iran.
Similarly, there can be no hope of a return to vibrant capitalism unless there is a sweeping housecleaning at the Federal Reserve and a thorough renunciation of its interest-rate fixing, bond buying and recurring bailouts of Wall Street speculators. The Greenspan-Bernanke campaigns to repress interest rates have crushed savers, mocked thrift and fueled enormous overconsumption and trade deficits.
The greatest regulatory problem — far more urgent that the environmental marginalia Mitt Romney has fumed about — is that the giant Wall Street banks remain dangerous quasi-wards of the state and are inexorably prone to speculative abuse of taxpayer-insured deposits and the Fed’s cheap money. Forget about “too big to fail.” These banks are too big to exist — too big to manage internally and to regulate externally. They need to be broken up by regulatory decree. Instead, the Romney-Ryan ticket attacks the pointless Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, when what’s needed is a restoration of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era legislation that separated commercial and investment banking.
Mr. Ryan showed his conservative mettle in 2008 when he folded like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout. But the greater hypocrisy is his phony “plan” to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade.
A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing. Yet the supposedly courageous Ryan plan would not cut one dime over the next decade from the $1.3 trillion-per-year cost of Social Security and Medicare.
Instead, it shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting more Medicaid costs to the states will be mere make-believe if federal financing is drastically cut.
Likewise, hacking away at the roughly $400 billion domestic discretionary budget (what’s left of the federal budget after defense, Social Security, health and safety-net spending and interest on the national debt) will yield only a rounding error’s worth of savings after popular programs (which Republicans heartily favor) like cancer research, national parks, veterans’ benefits, farm aid, highway subsidies, education grants and small-business loans are accommodated.
Like his new boss, Mr. Ryan has no serious plan to create jobs. America has some of the highest labor costs in the world, and saddles workers and businesses with $1 trillion per year in job-destroying payroll taxes. We need a national sales tax — a consumption tax, like the dreaded but efficient value-added tax — but Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan don’t have the gumption to support it.
The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for “job creators” — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station.
In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn’t pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation’s fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity — just empty sermons.
David A. Stockman, who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy.”
We do?
Name one war the US has had the money for.
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