"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers"

[scott]

This is what politics has devolved to in 2012.

Yay.

[Bartleby]

But we're also going to cite those same fact checkers in our attack ads

L6b9F9IiAZw

[boutons_deux]

This "make up any old shit" goes back nearly 10 years.

It's probably why batshit crazy Bible-thumpers, creationists, AGW deniers, who make up shit as they go along, vote the Repugs.

"We're An Empire Now...We Create Our Own Reality"

The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove[1]):

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ...

"That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

[baseline bum]

Enough with the spamming; you're like a 9-11 truther.

[RandomGuy]

Enough with the spamming; you're like a 9-11 truther.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/romney-camp-bets-welfare-attack


Mitt Romney's aides explained with unusual political bluntness today why they are spending heavily — and ignoring media criticism — to air an add accusing President Barack Obama of "gutting" the work requirement for welfare, a marginal political issue since the mid-1990s that Romney pushed back to center stage.

"Our most effective ad is our welfare ad," a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O'Connor, said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. "It's new information."

The welfare ad has been the center of intense dispute, with Democrats accusing Romney of unearthing old racial ghosts and Romney pointing out that the Obama Administration has offered states waivers that could, in fact, lighten work requirements in welfare, a central issue in Bill Clinton's 1996 revamping of public assistance.

The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" awarded Romney's ad "four Pinocchios," a measure Romney pollster Neil Newhouse dismissed.

"Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers," he said. The fact-checkers — whose institutional rise has been a feature of the cycle — have "jumped the shark," he added after the panel.


wow....

"we are going to lie through our teeth, facts be damned, because winning at all costs is what we are all about".

there is a reason this year has left me pissed off and cynical about the right wing in this country... and that pretty much is it in a nutshell.

[ElNono]

Boutons and Yoni do it all the time...

[RandomGuy]

President Obama Quotes Romney Pollster Dismissing Fact-checkers


CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA - President Obama today seized upon a remark by a pollster for his rival's campaign to paint Mitt Romney as determined to "not let the truth get in the way" of his campaign.

Speaking to a crowd of roughly seven thousand supporters, many of them students at the nearby University of Virginia, the president said, " you can prove the cynics wrong one more time. But the other side will spend the next two months spending more money than we have ever seen in our lives - an avalanche of attack ads and insults, distractions - and sometimes they just make things up. But they've got a bunch of folks who can write $10 million checks. And they'll just keep on running them. "

The president continued: "somebody was challenging one of their ads, they just - they made it up about work and welfare…Every outlet said, 'this is just not true.' And they were asked about it and they said - one of their campaign people says: We won't have the fact checkers dictate our campaign. We will not let the truth get in the way."

About time he has come out swinging.

http://news.yahoo.com/president-obama-quotes-romney-pollster-dismissing-fact-checkers-204642708--abc-news-politics.html

[RandomGuy]

Earlier this month, Romney expressed shock that a pro-Obama super-PAC with ties to the White House would continue running an ad in which a steelworker tied Romney to his wife's death. (The ad has run twice.)

"You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad," Romney told Bill Bennett on his radio show. "They were embarrassed. Today, they just blast ahead. You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they're wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them."


What a fucking hypocritical sack of shit.

[Clipper Nation]

What, you're expecting someone whose cronies openly rig a nomination process to give two shits about honesty or integrity? Please, those are small-time ideals that only You People are held to in Willard's world.....

[MannyIsGod]

Threre is virtually no accountability for politicians and the things they say in modern America.

[Winehole23]

political campaigns are about getting independent voters to support your guy or, failing that, turning them off on the other guy. whatever works, works. (http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/against-the-grain/it-s-the-ideology-stupid-20120828)

[boutons_deux]

That's the problem, like the financial sector and BigPharma, politicians, esp Repugs and tea baggers, can say and do ANYTHING and the media doesn't challenge them, or even point it out.

In the face of some horrible Repug LIE, the "we must be balanced" media simply says, in false equivalence, "on the other hand", the Dems ...

And they almost never pay any penalty, or any penalty is so small compared to the reward or profits, that the penalty is useless as dissuasion, is rolled into the cost of doing business.

I read an article that said the history goes back to Repugs ESPECIALLY being emboldened when Johnson didn't go public with the Repugs screwing the VN Paris peace talks. He let them get away with it.

This screwing of international diplomacy by the Repugs was repeated when they told the Khomeini revolution they would get a better deal after Carter was out and St Ronnie the Diseased was in. So the Iranians held embassy captives months longer. The Repugs didn't care, no more than than they cared about prolonging the slaughter of the VN war for their own political gain.

Because federal govt has been compromised and corrupted by the corporations and the 1%, govt has become completely ineffective as the only possible countervailing power.

America is SO FUCKED and UNFUCKABLE.

If Repug voter suppression (and election stealing like OH 04) succeeds and C-U/Rove/1% buys the WH for Gecko, some of you naive assholes will finally get the totally black picture.

And there's NOTHING Human-Americans can do to "take our country back" from the kleptocratic plutocracy that owns and operates USA for its own power and wealth. Vote for better candidates? the system doesn't produce better candidates.

[Winehole23]

If Repug voter suppression (and election stealing like OH 04) succeeds and C-U/Rove/1% buys the WH for Gecko, some of you naive assholes will finally get the totally black picture.you're the naive asshole. if Repug voter suppression, black money and disinformation fail to unseat the corporatist, war mongering 1%er currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the picture will be about equally bleak.

[coyotes_geek]

Fact checking gets in the way of pageantry, thus there's no place for it in 21st century American politics.

[boutons_deux]

you're the naive asshole. if Repug voter suppression, black money and disinformation fail to unseat the corporatist, war mongering 1%er currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the picture will be about equally bleak.

naive amnesiac, forgetting 2001-2008 of Repug misrule. If gecko/ryan get in with Congress, too, you ain't see nothing, yet.

[Winehole23]

I forgot nothing. I bitched and screamed the whole way. I don't see Obama as being any improvement on the Bush years. Continuity, not change,

[coyotes_geek]

If gecko/ryan get in with Congress, too, you ain't see nothing, yet.

No worries. Republicans won't have 60 seats in the senate and according to you that kills any and all chance for a president to do anything. At least that's the excuse you make for Obama & Co.

[Winehole23]

@boutons: if you think things changed just because Repugs got thumped in 2006 and 2008, you're awfully naive.

[RandomGuy]

you're the naive asshole. if Repug voter suppression, black money and disinformation fail to unseat the corporatist, war mongering 1%er currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the picture will be about equally bleak.

The problem isn't the jerk in the oval office.

The problem, as the Bush administration ooh so aptly demonstrated, is the kinds of people that person will populate the goverment with.

Sorry, the extreme right wing in this country will scream for, and get, a lot of the reins of power in a Romney administration.

If you don't see that happening, you need to keep reading, mr. floater.

[Creepn]

Threre is virtually no accountability for politicians and the things they say in modern America.

Yeah. Back in the day, you'll get challenged to a duel or beaten with a cane.

[DarrinS]

The problem isn't the jerk in the oval office.

The problem, as the Bush administration ooh so aptly demonstrated, is the kinds of people that person will populate the goverment with.


What kind of people did Obama populate his administration with?

[boutons_deux]

The problem isn't the jerk in the oval office.

The problem, as the Bush administration ooh so aptly demonstrated, is the kinds of people that person will populate the goverment with.

Sorry, the extreme right wing in this country will scream for, and get, a lot of the reins of power in a Romney administration.

If you don't see that happening, you need to keep reading, mr. floater.

The Exec's appointments are defined by the President and his APPOINTED staff. The jerk in the WH IS the problem. dubya's WH was rotten with grads from ideological, doctrinaire, Bible-thumping "Christian" scams like Liberty University.

[DarrinS]

The Exec's appointments are defined by the President and his APPOINTED staff. The jerk in the WH IS the problem. dubya's WH was rotten with grads from ideological, doctrinaire, Bible-thumping "Christian" scams like Liberty University.

What kind of people did Obama populate his administration with?

[Winehole23]

The problem isn't the jerk in the oval office.

The problem, as the Bush administration ooh so aptly demonstrated, is the kinds of people that person will populate the goverment with.

Sorry, the extreme right wing in this country will scream for, and get, a lot of the reins of power in a Romney administration.elections have consequences, sure. but so does overreach. if the extreme right wing gets too extreme, once in power, voters will punish them for it. like in 2006 and 2008.

and like 2008, whoever succeeds them will campaign on changing it and end up normalizing most of it. maybe even pioneer a few new abuses. Obama sure has.

[Winehole23]

it's my fond hope that the Republican populism based on hate and the Democratic one based on fear will both eventually be replaced by something else. I'm not holding my breath, but if there's one constant in politics, it's change.

[Koolaid_Man]

No worries. Republicans won't have 60 seats in the senate and according to you that kills any and all chance for a president to do anything. At least that's the excuse you make for Obama & Co.


^ which is exactly why we don't need a change in Presidency at the moment. I'd rather continue with the devil I know vs. the devil (Romney) I don't know. If Obama and Axelrod are really smart they''d hammer this point home.

Since Obama's taken office there's been steady job growth in every month of his presidency... (just compare how the economy was shrinking and job losses just prior to Obama being sworn in). Sure the numbers aren't where we want them to be but it's steady progress...Obama's stimulus prevented an all-out depression so YES we ARE better off than we were 3 yrs ago in every way imaginable.

Obama's team need to hammer this point home to the independents that changing tickets during an economic recovery period would be disastrous for America... this is clearly where team Obama need to focus and concentrate their message to the independents. Independents seem to be level headed and reasonable and I see this basic common sense resonating with their intelligence.

Obama has already struggled against an Obstructionist, treasonous, and semi-violent tea-party mob style republican party...Mitt Romney will only roll back progress pushing us further to a great depression.

Leave well enough alone....I'm actually communicating with members of the democratic and progressive base to ensure we push this message in some form or fashion a theme at the DNC. :toast

Obama/Biden Forever

[boutons_deux]

@boutons: if you think things changed just because Repugs got thumped in 2006 and 2008, you're awfully naive.

nope, not much changed.

iow, America is fucked and unfuckable.

There simply can't be any change from the 1% and corps owning and operating the country. They'll never give up power, and won't even be challenged.

the poverty rate will continue to increase, the good jobs are gone, the 1% will be incredibly richer while the 99% stagnates, at best, while most will decrease in income and wealth. inequality will continue to increase.

[CosmicCowboy]

:lol @ Obama running on his economic record.

[RandomGuy]

What kind of people did Obama populate his administration with?

Fuck you, asshole. Don't ask me questions, because I am tired of talking to people like you. You are too dumb to waste effort talking to.

You have long ago forfeited and used up your "randomguy time", since you have repeatedly proven you do not care what the truth is.

[TeyshaBlue]

The problem isn't the jerk in the oval office.
Ok.


The problem, as the Bush administration ooh so aptly demonstrated, is the kinds of people that person will populate the goverment with.
Ok, so it is the jerk in the oval office. Pick a lane.


Sorry, the extreme right wing in this country will scream for, and get, a lot of the reins of power in a Romney administration.

If you don't see that happening, you need to keep reading, mr. floater.

Please provide a list of extreme right wing posts. Be specific.
/ChumpDumper:lol

[Yonivore]

From Kathleen Sebelius's directive (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/policy/im-ofa/2012/im201203/im201203.html) (not an Obama Executive Order) on July 12, 2012:


While the TANF work participation requirements are contained in section 407, section 402(a)(1)(A)(iii) requires that the state plan “[e]nsure that parents and caretakers receiving assistance under the program engage in work activities in accordance with section 407.” Thus, HHS has authority to waive compliance with this 402 requirement and authorize a state to test approaches and methods other than those set forth in section 407, including definitions of work activities and engagement, specified limitations, verification procedures, and the calculation of participation rates. As described below, however, HHS will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals of TANF.
That's the torturous explanation of the law by which the Obama administration claims the authority to waive the work requirement.

If they didn't intend for the waivers to include waiving the work requirement why did Sebelius find it necessary to explain how her interpretation of how the authority to waive the reporting requirements in Section 402 includes the authority to waive the work requirements in Section 407 and allow States to define alternatives to that section other than the work requirements in Section 407.

If you waive the reporting requirements in 402 and specifically allow States to experiment with alternatives to the provisions of Section 407, who's going to keep up with what alternatives the States are employing. In effect you've ripped the work requirement from the Welfare Law and that's to what conservatives and the Romney campaign are referring when they say Obama is gutting the work requirement from Welfare Reform.

And, before you argue about Sebelius's later, clarifying memorandum, saying that's not what her directive does, keep in mind these are the people who were schizophrenic over whether the individual mandate is a tax or a penalty. Honesty and integrity in their application of the laws isn't exactly a hallmark of this administration.

And, not allowing yourself to be led around by "fact checkers" is pretty smart when the "fact checkers" can't identify the facts.

[Winehole23]

There simply can't be any change from the 1% and corps owning and operating the country. They'll never give up power, and won't even be challenged.then why do you give a rat's ass who wins in November?

fucked/unfuckable, right?

[TeyshaBlue]

then why do you give a rat's ass who wins in November?

fucked/unfuckable, right?

call back to the lazy Nihilist?:lol

[Winehole23]

the tension between that and being a kneejerk partisan is striking

[coyotes_geek]

Fuck you, asshole. Don't ask me questions, because I am tired of talking to people like you. You are too dumb to waste effort talking to.

You have long ago forfeited and used up your "randomguy time", since you have repeatedly proven you do not care what the truth is.

It's a fair question. What kind of people did Obama populate his administration with?

[TeyshaBlue]

It's a fair question. What kind of people did Obama populate his administration with?


The problem isn't the jerk in the oval office.


Except for when it is.

[ElNono]

And, not allowing yourself to be led around by "fact checkers" is pretty smart when the "fact checkers" can't identify the facts.

It's pretty transparent too. When you talk out of your ass, you can simply say, "hey, I said I wasn't going to restrict my campaign to facts"...

[Yonivore]

It's pretty transparent too. When you talk out of your ass, you can simply say, "hey, I said I wasn't going to restrict my campaign to facts"...
It's the fact checkers that aren't restricting themselves to facts.

[Winehole23]

both are true. fact checkers and the politicians they check are both pretty facile wrt to the facts. just because two parties, or three parties or a thousand parties, are in dispute about the facts, doesn't mean one of them has to be right.

that said, telling fact checkers to go to hell discloses a bit of a political tin ear.

[ElNono]

It's the fact checkers that aren't restricting themselves to facts.

If there are disagreements with different fact checkers out there, they can point them out. Setting the bar to unapologetic outright bullshit is a different matter altogether.

[Winehole23]

in this crazy postmodern world all value is relative. there is no truth. any dispute about what it is merely conceals a crude struggle for power.

[scott]

It's the fact checkers that aren't restricting themselves to facts.

Yep, that is clearly the real problem here.

[ElNono]

in this crazy postmodern world all value is relative. there is no truth. any dispute about what it is merely conceals a crude struggle for power.

:lol pretty much

It's not a turd! It's a soil-enriching substance!

[boutons_deux]

then why do you give a rat's ass who wins in November?

fucked/unfuckable, right?

because we are today mainly suffering from conservative/Repug/VRWC policies and esp Repug fuckups in 2001-2008.

Those fuckups (like financial deregulation, financial bubble aftermath, union busting, war on employees) are VERY HARD to turn around, next to impossible, in the best of times, but when the opposing party is bloody-minded obstructionist.

iow, Obama or anybody would have a hard time undoing the Repug fuckups.

But as we can see in the gecko/ryan budget and social plans, they don't intend to fix any Repug fuckups, but make them much worse which includes repealing ACA, undoing financial deregulation, cutting taxes on the 1% and coprs, kiling EPA/OSHA, killing NOAA storm watch funding, killing medicare/SS/medicaid, etc, etc, ACA being about the only positive that Obama/Dems achieved, and that was fucking miraculous.

fucked/unfuckable, right? right, you're finally catching on, congrats.

[RandomGuy]

Ok.


Ok, so it is the jerk in the oval office. Pick a lane.



Please provide a list of extreme right wing posts. Be specific.
/ChumpDumper:lol

Presidents tend to govern from the middle and are restricted by Congress. As such, Obama or Romney themselves aren't going to matter.

In that regard, the problem isn't one or the other.

What does matter is who is going to start inhabiting the appointed and hired positions that the president and his staff *do* place.

I would call Ryan fairly firmly in the extreme right wing of his party, but by "posts" what exactly are you talking about?

In case you haven't noticed, Romney isnt the president yet, but has the tea party slobbering all over the chance to get their brand of nutballs into goverment.

Do you need any more explanation, or do you understand this yet?

[Yonivore]

Yep, that is clearly the real problem here.
Well, does or does not Sebelius explain, in her directive, how a waiver of Section 402 allows States to explore alternative to Section 407 work requirements?

Note, her explanation doesn't say "in addition to" or "including," it says, "other than."

A fair reading of that paragraph can be construed to mean they're willing to allow States to forego the work requirements of Section 407.

[Yonivore]

Presidents tend to govern from the middle and are restricted by Congress. As such, Obama or Romney themselves aren't going to matter.
Obama wasn't restricted by Congress in 2009 or 2010, he got everything he asked for. And, what he can't get Congress to pass in 2011 or 2012, he's simply directed by Executive Order or some other manipulation of the law.

[RandomGuy]

It's the fact checkers that aren't restricting themselves to facts.

Translation:

"Only facts that I agree with, actually count as facts, so when someone points out things I don't agree with, they obviously are not, by definition, facts. ipso facto."



Anything or anybody that isn't rabidly right-wing or that might show that any cherished right wing idea is wrong, is obviously a plot.

Duck, dodge, obfuscate.

WTG, you have now become the conservative Cosmored.

Got any links you want to spam while you are at it?

[LnGrrrR]

Obama wasn't restricted by Congress in 2009 or 2010, he got everything he asked for. And, what he can't get Congress to pass in 2011 or 2012, he's simply directed by Executive Order or some other manipulation of the law.

What world do you live in? :lol

[boutons_deux]

"Obama wasn't restricted by Congress in 2009 or 2010, he got everything he asked for"

Penalty for Yoni lying: he's fucking fool and shill for ideological extremists.

[RandomGuy]

I am only going to respond to the things I think I can score points on, and ignore any valid points anybody might make about anything.


Meh. I can see why you might get frustrated with political forums from time to time.

It must take an awful lot of mental gymnastics to avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes from thinking your side is infallible.

The only time I have ever seen you admit Republicans or right wingers fuck up, is when something so obviously fucktarded like Aiken comes down the pike, and you see some poltical advantage from throwing them under the bus.

It would take a helluva lot more courage to admit fault when there isn't any political advantage to be had.

[RandomGuy]

It's the fact checkers that aren't restricting themselves to facts.

Yes, yes, Democrats didn't land on the moon, we know.

All those stinkin' liberal facts are just obfuscating from the real questions. :rolleyes

[Winehole23]

you have to see your own fault, to have the courage to face it. I tend to doubt Yoni's that far long yet.

[ElNono]

Note, her explanation doesn't say "in addition to" or "including," it says, "other than."

:lol

Is that the only 'issue' in play this election?

[ElNono]

What world do you live in? :lol

:lol

[Yonivore]

:lol

Is that the only 'issue' in play this election?
No, this is the issue raised by RandomGuy in this post (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6093928&postcount=5), very early in this thread, and I was pointing out that fact checkers didn't know the facts.

[Yonivore]

What world do you live in? :lol
The one where Obama had a Democrat-controlled Congress from April 2009 to January 2011, when he got an unpopular health care law and an 800 billion dollar stimulus through. And, the one where, since, he's issued executive orders or allowed his administration to fiddle with the rules in order to bypass sections of the law he doesn't like.

That world.

[Yonivore]

Meh. I can see why you might get frustrated with political forums from time to time.

It must take an awful lot of mental gymnastics to avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes from thinking your side is infallible.

The only time I have ever seen you admit Republicans or right wingers fuck up, is when something so obviously fucktarded like Aiken comes down the pike, and you see some poltical advantage from throwing them under the bus.

It would take a helluva lot more courage to admit fault when there isn't any political advantage to be had.
When have I ever suggested "my side" is infallible?

[RandomGuy]

you have to see your own fault, to have the courage to face it. I tend to doubt Yoni's that far long yet.

My fault is that I have gotten royally pissed off, as I am sure has been noticed.

The right wing propaganda machine has just about won the battle, and it is frustrating as all get out to see so many independents sucking up the suble lies and manipulations as truth.

Democrats to be sure have some bullshit moments, but at this point how people can think that both parties are somehow equally fucked up boggles my mind.

[LnGrrrR]

The one where Obama had a Democrat-controlled Congress from April 2009 to January 2011, when he got an unpopular health care law and an 800 billion dollar stimulus through. And, the one where, since, he's issued executive orders or allowed his administration to fiddle with the rules in order to bypass sections of the law he doesn't like.

That world.

The one with Lieberman as the 60th voter, right? Is that the one you're talking about?

And considering that the Republicans passed the first stimulus, I'm not quite sure how Obama rammed that down Congress throats.

[RandomGuy]

When have I ever suggested "my side" is infallible?

That is certainly an interesting question you have asked me.

Now let me talk about how much I think that spaghetti is so much better than ravioli.

Becauase that is what I really want to talk about here, your question might force me to admit fault, or appear to be wrong about something.

[Yonivore]

My fault is that I have gotten royally pissed off, as I am sure has been noticed.

The right wing propaganda machine has just about won the battle, and it is frustrating as all get out to see so many independents sucking up the suble lies and manipulations as truth.

Democrats to be sure have some bullshit moments, but at this point how people can think that both parties are somehow equally fucked up boggles my mind.
What subtle lies and manipulations?

As I just pointed out, that Obama is gutting the work requirements from Welfare Reform isn't a lie.

Are you going to suggest he isn't taking $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare?

Are you also going to suggest he has failed to turn the economy around after making promises to do just that? And, if you're going to further suggest that, well, he just didn't know how bad it was -- are you going to suggest he didn't have ability to go before the American people and say, I can't fix this in four years -- it's just too fucked up, instead of what he did do, which is to keep telling Americans to hand on; 2011 was going to be the recovery summer. Nope. Then they tried to sell this summer as the recovery summer. They tell us GM is a government success even though they've once again suspended production of the Obamamobile and GM is on the ropes again.

What lies are being told about this fucked up administration?

[Yonivore]

The one with Lieberman as the 60th voter, right? Is that the one you're talking about?

And considering that the Republicans passed the first stimulus, I'm not quite sure how Obama rammed that down Congress throats.
Did I say he rammed it? I said he got everything he asked for, including Obamacare. What did Republicans stop him from getting, that would have improved the economy, those first two years?

[ElNono]

No, this is the issue raised by RandomGuy in this post (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6093928&postcount=5), very early in this thread, and I was pointing out that fact checkers didn't know the facts.

:lol the only thing you pointed out is that the interpretation of the law is debatable, not that the ad claim is factual or not.

A blanket statement like "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers" speaks about the whole campaign, not specific claims. As I said, it sets the bar to unapologetic outright bullshitting.

[Yonivore]

That is certainly an interesting question you have asked me.

Now let me talk about how much I think that spaghetti is so much better than ravioli.

Becauase that is what I really want to talk about here, your question might force me to admit fault, or appear to be wrong about something.
Your point wasn't even germane to the conversation.

What does my pointing out Obama's faults have to do with your notion that I refuse to admit the infallibility of "my side?"

What does my pointing out the "fact checkers" were wrong about Obama gutting the work requirement from Welfare have to do with your notion that I refuse to admit the infallibility of "my side?"

Nothing, that's what.

[RandomGuy]

When have I ever suggested "my side" is infallible?

Seriously though, to actually address your question directly:

You suggest it by dint of the never ending torrent of "look at the bad Democrats" threads that you post any time you are active. While an exact "infallible" is never expressly stated, the overall intent is fairly clear.


The suggestion is an indirect, but clearly palpable one, propaganda man.


Let's see if you can answer a direct critical thinking question:

If someone presents 100 news articles, all about how bad Democrats are, is it a reasonable assumption that the underlying message is:

"Democrats are bad, so Republicans, their political opposites, are much better".

Once again, a simple yes or no is all I really ask for, not that I expect one.

[RandomGuy]

the "fact checkers" were wrong about Obama gutting the work requirement from Welfare.


:lmao

[RandomGuy]

You seriously believe your own bullshit. In-fucking-credible.

[Winehole23]

Democrats to be sure have some bullshit moments, but at this point how people can think that both parties are somehow equally fucked up boggles my mind.I'm turned off by the whole ball of wax. The last guy campaigned against the outrages of the other party then institutionalized about all of em. Has even copied their style of campaign advertising this time around.

Fuck the Dems and the GOP and the vaporware they rode in on.

[101A]

My fault is that I have gotten royally pissed off, as I am sure has been noticed.

The right wing propaganda machine has just about won the battle, and it is frustrating as all get out to see so many independents sucking up the suble lies and manipulations as truth.

Democrats to be sure have some bullshit moments, but at this point how people can think that both parties are somehow equally fucked up boggles my mind.


Seriously, RG; you're a smart guy.

Republicans suck. Democrats Suck. Everything else is details. Back away from the debate; stop trying to get either of these parties elected. "The lesser of two evils" is still fucking evil!

Intelligent people can agree to disagree - and they can compromise; from the first Constitutional Convention that has been a great strength of our nation - but these parties, what they have become; the people pulling the strings HAVE ALREADY FULLY COMPROMISED!! They agree on the important stuff; the stuff that enriches and empowers them and their friends - they maintain that power by keeping us distracted and arguing amongst ourselves about bullshit. It's why nothing ever really changes (From Compassionate Conservative to Hope and Change; wtf is different????)

Seriously, we STILL have the power to kick all the sumbitches out; to start over with a fresh slate of reasonable people. If we're too busy calling each other names; we'll never get to any type of a solution. They great tragedy of the past four years is we had TWO grass roots movements rise to shake up the Apple Cart; if they ever could have realized how much common ground there was between them, something could have be happening RIGHT NOW....unfortunately both movements were successfully co-opted by one of the big parties; and now they're just talking points on mailings soliciting donations.

Fuck them all.

[Yonivore]

:lol the only thing you pointed out is that the interpretation of the law is debatable, not that the ad claim is factual or not.

A blanket statement like "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers" speaks about the whole campaign, not specific claims. As I said, it sets the bar to unapologetic outright bullshitting.
What's the context of that statement?

From an Atlantic article (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/were-not-going-to-let-our-campaign-be-dictated-by-fact-checkers/261674/):


As Ben Smith of BuzzFeed has pointed out, the Romney campaign is simply swatting aside the media's objections to its welfare ad: "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," said Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster.
In other words, the fact checkers are wrong and we stand by our ad. He could have added, "...we're going to let our campaign be dictated by facts."

And, as I just demonstrated, it's entirely possible the Obama administration and Kathleen Sebelius intend to do just that. Otherwise, and you have yet to address this, why would Sebelius specifically point out, in her directive, that a waiver of Section 402 allows them to authorize States to explore alternatives to the work requirement in Section 407?

I'd stand by the ad, as well.

One more thing, since when does the media "object" to campaign ads? Why don't they just report?

[Yonivore]

You seriously believe your own bullshit. In-fucking-credible.
I don't see anything not factual about characterizing Sebelius's language as an intent to waive the work requirements from Welfare.

[Fabbs]

^^Your heros continue to not let facts get in the way. :lol

FACT CHECK: Ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech

http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-ryan-takes-factual-shortcuts-speech-070905927.html

[RandomGuy]

One more thing, since when does the media "object" to campaign ads? Why don't they just report?


No context. No analysis. Just mindless aping of the preferred narrative.

That is the only way the right wants its propaganda disseminated.

Critical thinking about your ideas is not allowed, and is obviously indicative of some hidden agenda.

I think your bitching about someone having the nuts to call your bullshit for what it is, says volumes about your values.

[TeyshaBlue]

Presidents tend to govern from the middle and are restricted by Congress. As such, Obama or Romney themselves aren't going to matter.

In that regard, the problem isn't one or the other.

What does matter is who is going to start inhabiting the appointed and hired positions that the president and his staff *do* place.

I would call Ryan fairly firmly in the extreme right wing of his party, but by "posts" what exactly are you talking about?

In case you haven't noticed, Romney isnt the president yet, but has the tea party slobbering all over the chance to get their brand of nutballs into goverment.

Do you need any more explanation, or do you understand this yet?

Actually, I understood the concept before your explanation. And, I was shocked that Romney is not actually the President. Thanks for the newsflash. http://homerecording.com/bbs/images/smilies/facepalm.gif
" ....president and his staff *do* place." So yes, the jerk in the oval office matters in the end analysis.

[RandomGuy]

Seriously, RG; you're a smart guy.

Republicans suck. Democrats Suck. Everything else is details. Back away from the debate; stop trying to get either of these parties elected. "The lesser of two evils" is still fucking evil!

Intelligent people can agree to disagree - and they can compromise; from the first Constitutional Convention that has been a great strength of our nation - but these parties, what they have become; the people pulling the strings HAVE ALREADY FULLY COMPROMISED!! They agree on the important stuff; the stuff that enriches and empowers them and their friends - they maintain that power by keeping us distracted and arguing amongst ourselves about bullshit. It's why nothing ever really changes (From Compassionate Conservative to Hope and Change; wtf is different????)

Seriously, we STILL have the power to kick all the sumbitches out; to start over with a fresh slate of reasonable people. If we're too busy calling each other names; we'll never get to any type of a solution. They great tragedy of the past four years is we had TWO grass roots movements rise to shake up the Apple Cart; if they ever could have realized how much common ground there was between them, something could have be happening RIGHT NOW....unfortunately both movements were successfully co-opted by one of the big parties; and now they're just talking points on mailings soliciting donations.

Fuck them all.

The problem here is that both sides are not equal in the suckness department.

I have yet to see Democrats demonizing the moderates in their party and actively seeking to marginalize them the way the GOP has.

Sorry. I don't buy the "they are both equally sucky" narrative.

[RandomGuy]

Actually, I understood the concept before your explanation. And, I was shocked that Romney is not actually the President. Thanks for the newsflash. http://homerecording.com/bbs/images/smilies/facepalm.gif
" ....president and his staff *do* place." So yes, the jerk in the oval office matters in the end analysis.

At this point we are both saying about the same thing, we are just getting at the same concept from different angles. No need for a facepalm. :lol

[TeyshaBlue]

At this point we are both saying about the same thing, we are just getting at the same concept from different angles. No need for a facepalm. :lol

Don't make me use the nuclear facepalm!:lol

[Yonivore]

No context. No analysis. Just mindless aping of the preferred narrative.

That is the only way the right wants its propaganda disseminated.

Critical thinking about your ideas is not allowed, and is obviously indicative of some hidden agenda.

I think your bitching about someone having the nuts to call your bullshit for what it is, says volumes about your values.
I knew I shouldn't have added that last line, you ignored the rest of the post.

What I meant is, saying the media objected, indicates the media has a side. I have no objection to the media being critical of something a campaign puts out but, instead of parroting the opposing point of view, I'd prefer they force the campaign to explain theirs.

For instance, if the media, in this case, would ask the Republicans to explain how the Sebelius directive is gutting the Welfare work requirement instead of just saying nuh uh, fact checkers say your wrong, you might get a better response than, "we're not going to be lead around by fact checkers."

That's all I meant and it was a last minute addition to the post, after I saw the word object in the article. Sheesh!

[hitmanyr2k]

I actually wouldn't mind Republicans winning this time around. I know no matter who's in office I'm going to be just fine. I just want to see if the Republican party can finish the job off of killing this country once and for all :lol I thought 2008 would have been the wake up call but I guess Americans just haven't been kicked in the teeth enough by the GOP to feel that real pain yet. If they're going to fall for this trickle down, deregulation nonsense AGAIN I say the American people deserve the ass kicking that's eventually coming.

[Yonivore]

^^Your heros continue to not let facts get in the way. :lol

FACT CHECK: Ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech

http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-ryan-takes-factual-shortcuts-speech-070905927.html
Let's look at the first checked fact...


RYAN: "And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. ... So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama."

THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee, using the money for deficit reduction. And the cuts do not affect Medicare recipients directly, but rather reduce payments to hospitals, health insurance plans and other service providers.
In addition, Ryan's own plan to remake Medicare would squeeze the program's spending even more than the changes Obama made, shifting future retirees into a system in which they would get a fixed payment to shop for coverage among private insurance plans. Critics charge that would expose the elderly to more out-of-pocket costs.
The fact-checker's "THE FACTS" doesn't even address what Ryan said. It bitches about Ryan's plan which, by the way, isn't the Romney/Ryan plan.

Where does it say that Ryan's statement Obama is going to cut $716 billion from Medicare is not factual?

Not to mention, this fact-check comes from the organization and bureau whose chief was fired for saying, Republicans "are happy to party with black people drowning."

With fact-checking like this, I can see why the Republican Campaign would say what they said.

[coyotes_geek]

Went to lunch and fell behind on this thread. Can someone bring me up to speed with regards to whether or not yoni and rg have reached a consensus on which party is drowning closer to the surface yet?

[Th'Pusher]

Let's look at the first checked fact...


The fact-checker's "THE FACTS" doesn't even address what Ryan said. It bitches about Ryan's plan which, by the way, isn't the Romney/Ryan plan.

Where does it say that Ryan's statement Obama is going to cut $716 billion from Medicare is not factual?

Not to mention, this fact-check comes from the organization and bureau whose chief was fired for saying, Republicans "are happy to party with black people drowning."

With fact-checking like this, I can see why the Republican Campaign would say what they said.

You can attempt to parse the words as if some sort of armchair lawyer all you want, but the bottom line is that Mr Ryan's speech was deceptive in what he didn't say, not necessarily in what he did say.

[Yonivore]

You can attempt to parse the words as if some sort of armchair lawyer all you want, but the bottom line is that Mr Ryan's speech was deceptive in what he didn't say, not necessarily in what he did say.
:lmao Okay, I'll bite, what didn't he say?

[Th'Pusher]

:lmao Okay, I'll bite, what didn't he say?

He didn't say that his budget also included the 716B cuts in Medicare.

He didn't say the GM plant closed down before Obama took office.

He didn't say he voted against Bowles Simpson.

He didn't say that he asked for stimulus for his backyard.

When you are attacking your opponent for these exact policy decisions it is intellectually dishonest to leave out these facts.

[Yonivore]

He didn't say that his budget also included the 716B cuts in Medicare.
The Romney plan doesn't include the cuts, why would he talk about a plan his boss rejected?


He didn't say the GM plant closed down before Obama took office.
You're right and wrong; the plant actually ceased production in 2009 but, that wasn't his point. Obama stood at that plant in 2008 and promised those people if they elected him, his policies would ensure they would remain open for another 100 years.


He didn't say he voted against Bowles Simpson.
So?


He didn't say that he asked for stimulus for his backyard.
Debatable and, since many Republicans voted for the stimulus, I'm not sure who would care.


When you are attacking your opponent for these exact policy decisions it is intellectually dishonest to leave out these facts.
Except that he represents a Romney/Ryan ticket with policies that purport to be fundamentally different from what Congressman Ryan was proposing, even less than a year ago. In other words, he had no obligation to talk about his plans that aren't being incorporated by the candidate.

Glad I could help.

[ElNono]

What's the context of that statement?

The context of the statement is "we're not going to deal with criticism of fact checkers, whoever those might be"...

I'm not even sure why you're carrying water on this matter, tbh. The fact that the GOP strategists openly admit they're rolling along with bullshit because it's working for them is much more transparent than trying to spin the same bullshit, like Barry does.

[DarrinS]

I'll fact check that Ryan speech

http://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/debbie-wasserman-schultz1.jpg

[101A]

Sorry. I don't buy the "they are both equally sucky" narrative.

Neither do I, re-read the post.

Years ago you were a reasonable guy; would actually listen to arguments. More and more you've become as much a mouthpiece for the Democrats as ANY poster in here is for the Republicans.

Sad.

[Th'Pusher]

The Romney plan doesn't include the cuts, why would he talk about a plan his boss rejected?


You're right and wrong; the plant actually ceased production in 2009 but, that wasn't his point. Obama stood at that plant in 2008 and promised those people if they elected him, his policies would ensure they would remain open for another 100 years.


So?


Debatable and, since many Republicans voted for the stimulus, I'm not sure who would care.


Except that he represents a Romney/Ryan ticket with policies that purport to be fundamentally different from what Congressman Ryan was proposing, even less than a year ago. In other words, he had no obligation to talk about his plans that aren't being incorporated by the candidate.

Glad I could help.

Look, I thought it was a well crafted and potentially effective speech for the reasons you noted above. Now, it's up to the Obama political machine to go out and lay out the facts that I noted above. When the people hear these facts, I think they'll view Mr Ryan as a hypocrite. Hopefully that will help them make a more informed decision in November.

[CosmicCowboy]

Look, I thought it was a well crafted and potentially effective speech for the reasons you noted above. Now, it's up to the Obama political machine to go out and lay out the facts that I noted above. When the people hear these facts, I think they'll view Mr Ryan as a hypocrite. Hopefully that will help them make a more informed decision in November.

Oh, I think O's minions are going to be too busy spinning their own bullshit to address Ryans speech.

[Yonivore]

The context of the statement is "we're not going to deal with criticism of fact checkers, whoever those might be"...
And, considering the type of fact-checking going on, I can see why he would make that statement.


I'm not even sure why you're carrying water on this matter, tbh. The fact that the GOP strategists openly admit they're rolling along with bullshit because it's working for them is much more transparent than trying to spin the same bullshit, like Barry does.
They said the ad is effective. That's not admitting it's not factual.

And, again, I've already demonstrated where Sebelius own words validate the position.

[Yonivore]

Look, I thought it was a well crafted and potentially effective speech for the reasons you noted above. Now, it's up to the Obama political machine to go out and lay out the facts that I noted above. When the people hear these facts, I think they'll view Mr Ryan as a hypocrite. Hopefully that will help them make a more informed decision in November.
How so? Is the Presidential candidate supposed to adopt every idea his Vice-Presidential pick has ever endorsed?

[Th'Pusher]

Oh, I think O's minions are going to be too busy spinning their own bullshit to address Ryans speech.

I disagree. The dems are now losing on the medicare issue. You will be seeing the facts that I pointed out above in ads and incorporated into their stump speeches and their rebuttals at the DNC next week...as they should be. They would be fools to not go after Ryan and his record as a congressman.

[Th'Pusher]

How so? Is the Presidential candidate supposed to adopt every idea his Vice-Presidential pick has ever endorsed?

Nope. But that does not mean they cannot use his congressional voting record against him.

[ElNono]

And, considering the type of fact-checking going on, I can see why he would make that statement.

:lol the problem you have with 'fact-checking' is well known. As long as it carries water for you team, you're ok with it. Otherwise, it's bullshit. Very boutons-esque...

Everybody doesn't live in your fantasy world though. There's plenty of fact checkers out there, and for a plethora of topics, there's not a lot to debate. If I post "Yoni told me he rapes little children", that's patently false, not a matter of opinion or degrees of truth...



They said the ad is effective. That's not admitting it's not factual.

I don't expect them to admit anything. After all, their statement is saying basically that: facts are overrated.

[Th'Pusher]

That didn't take long: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/30/new-obama-video-drafts-media-against-paul-ryan/

[Th'Pusher]

:lol www.wrongforthemiddleclass.com

[FromWayDowntown]

It depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" is.

Parse away!

[Yonivore]

I disagree. The dems are now losing on the medicare issue. You will be seeing the facts that I pointed out above in ads and incorporated into their stump speeches and their rebuttals at the DNC next week...as they should be. They would be fools to not go after Ryan and his record as a congressman.
I hope we see those "facts" in Democrats ads; they're stupid rebuttals.

[Th'Pusher]

I hope we see those "facts" in Democrats ads; they're stupid rebuttals.

Your wish has been granted. We'll see how effective they are.

[DarrinS]

All fact-checking websites should just redirect to

http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team

[LnGrrrR]

He didn't say he voted against Bowles Simpson.


So?

Really Yoni? You don't think it's a bit disgenuous to demonize a person for doing something that you did yourself?

If you can't see why this statement was misleading, then you certainly have red blinders on. There's a reason that Ryan didn't add that HE also voted against that regulation... because he wants people to believe that Obama was a bad person for torpedoing it. It wouldn't have done much good to point out that he was involved in killing it as well.

The same goes for Medicare. Sure, they're using "Romney's" budget plan now, but if so, why did he nominate Ryan for Veep? And what are we to think of a veep candidate who disparates Obama for "cutting" Medicare/Medicaid when his plan was willing to do the same thing?

[LnGrrrR]

All fact-checking websites should just redirect to

http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team

:cry :cry Facts have a liberal bias! :cry :cry

It's too bad the Republicans have no fact-checking sites of their own. :(

[Yonivore]

Really Yoni? You don't think it's a bit disgenuous to demonize a person for doing something that you did yourself?

If you can't see why this statement was misleading, then you certainly have red blinders on. There's a reason that Ryan didn't add that HE also voted against that regulation... because he wants people to believe that Obama was a bad person for torpedoing it. It wouldn't have done much good to point out that he was involved in killing it as well.

The same goes for Medicare. Sure, they're using "Romney's" budget plan now, but if so, why did he nominate Ryan for Veep? And what are we to think of a veep candidate who disparates Obama for "cutting" Medicare/Medicaid when his plan was willing to do the same thing?
You're going to have to be specific because I'm confused about to which statements you're referring, Ryan made and which non-statements Th'Pusher says Ryan didn't make, that prove some deception.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Ryan was for cutting medicare before he was against it

[Wild Cobra]

The same goes for Medicare. Sure, they're using "Romney's" budget plan now, but if so, why did he nominate Ryan for Veep? And what are we to think of a veep candidate who disparates Obama for "cutting" Medicare/Medicaid when his plan was willing to do the same thing?
Why are you being single minded?

Are you suggesting Ryan has no other qualities?

[Yonivore]

:cry :cry Facts have a liberal bias! :cry :cry

It's too bad the Republicans have no fact-checking sites of their own. :(
Most sites I visit contain analysis of the actual point being considered. I don't go to "fact-checking" sites because of the biases already demonstrated in this thread.

[LnGrrrR]

Why are you being single minded?

Are you suggesting Ryan has no other qualities?

He might, but he's most well known for his budget. And I think it's a negative that he's pretty much running away from his biggest accomplishment up-to-date, which was his bill proposal.

Look at the bills he's authored... they're not very impressive.

[Wild Cobra]

He might, but he's most well known for his budget. And I think it's a negative that he's pretty much running away from his biggest accomplishment up-to-date, which was his bill proposal.

Look at the bills he's authored... they're not very impressive.

Yes, Yes, Yes..

I understand. The stuff the M$M's put out for their lemmings.

Are you one of their lemmings?

[Yonivore]

Ryan was for cutting medicare before he was against it
Ryan still hasn't said he's opposed to his plan; he's just said he supports the Romney plan and, since he's second on the ticket, that's the way it's going to go.

Nothing says he couldn't have come around and realized his cuts might have been too drastic. But, that's not even the point. He could still hold the view that medicare should be cut (and what were the amounts he proposed - I don't know) but that it should not be cut to fund another government health care program without being hypocritical.

[ElNono]

All fact-checking websites should just redirect to

http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team

I wonder what they think about your light bulbs thread... crofl

[ElNono]

Most sites I visit contain analysis of the actual point being considered.

Like what sites?

[ElNono]

Yes, Yes, Yes..

I understand. The stuff the M$M's put out for their lemmings.

Are you one of their lemmings?

:lol more Vitamin I

[LnGrrrR]

You're going to have to be specific because I'm confused about to which statements you're referring, Ryan made and which non-statements Th'Pusher says Ryan didn't make, that prove some deception.

When Ryan blasts Obama for not getting Bowles-Simpson passed, when he himself voted against it, there's misdirection there. Sure, it's technically true, but the reason he's blasting Obama is to make it sound like he's wrong for doing so. Let's put it this way... if he had blasted Obama, then said right afterwards, "Of course, I voted against the bill too...", he'd sound like an idiot. That's why it's misdirection.

If I said to you, "GTMO is a stain on America, and Obama broke his promise by keeping GTMO open! We shouldn't vote for him!", that message would be severely undercut if, say, I voted on a bill to keep GTMO open, or funded people who were lobbying to keep GTMO open, etc etc.

[ElNono]

When Ryan blasts Obama for not getting Bowles-Simpson passed, when he himself voted against it, there's misdirection there. Sure, it's technically true, but the reason he's blasting Obama is to make it sound like he's wrong for doing so. Let's put it this way... if he had blasted Obama, then said right afterwards, "Of course, I voted against the bill too...", he'd sound like an idiot. That's why it's misdirection.

If I said to you, "GTMO is a stain on America, and Obama broke his promise by keeping GTMO open! We shouldn't vote for him!", that message would be severely undercut if, say, I voted on a bill to keep GTMO open, or funded people who were lobbying to keep GTMO open, etc etc.

You need to understand that dishonest people have a hard time recognizing dishonesty... it's their "normal"...

[LnGrrrR]

Ryan still hasn't said he's opposed to his plan; he's just said he supports the Romney plan and, since he's second on the ticket, that's the way it's going to go.

Considering that he's demonizing Obama for cuts that he proposed, one would think he's now against that part of the plan.


Nothing says he couldn't have come around and realized his cuts might have been too drastic. But, that's not even the point. He could still hold the view that medicare should be cut (and what were the amounts he proposed - I don't know) but that it should not be cut to fund another government health care program without being hypocritical.

He should then make THAT argument. He should say, "These programs should not be cut to fund X project, they should be cut to fund our deficit!"

But he doesn't say that, because old people like Medicaid, and the Republicans will lose a bunch of old people's votes if they mess with Medicaid. It's pretty obvious pandering.

[z0sa]

IMHO it should surprise no one that Ryan was for cutting medicare. The dude is supposed to be the ultimate fiscal Neo-con, decreasing spending across the board except for the military. That's what he is known for to the date and a big part of why he was picked up for the VP. Obviously there are those who agree or don't with some of his far fetched ideas. At the same time I think it's being intellectually dishonest to immediately associate his entire plan with Mitt Romney. Romney is simply much more of a moderate; shit, we all know about RomneyCare.

[LnGrrrR]

You need to understand that dishonest people have a hard time recognizing dishonesty... it's their "normal"...

It'd be almost like saying how important the sanctity of marriage is, after your third marriage.

Or saying how it's important to fund the poor when the budget you proposed cuts programs to those poor.

Or saying that we can only maintain peace through war.

Etc etc...

[Yonivore]

He might, but he's most well known for his budget. And I think it's a negative that he's pretty much running away from his biggest accomplishment up-to-date, which was his bill proposal.

Look at the bills he's authored... they're not very impressive.
Actually, he's most well know for being a serious Congressman on budget issues. He's impressed Republicans and Democrats, alike and, he's worked for solutions, across the aisle.

He's not most well known for his budget. Until he was selected for Vice President, he was most well know for taking Obama to school on the fiscal mess created by Obamacare.

Want to see the video again?

[Th'Pusher]

Ryan still hasn't said he's opposed to his plan; he's just said he supports the Romney plan and, since he's second on the ticket, that's the way it's going to go.

Nothing says he couldn't have come around and realized his cuts might have been too drastic. But, that's not even the point. He could still hold the view that medicare should be cut (and what were the amounts he proposed - I don't know) but that it should not be cut to fund another government health care program without being hypocritical.

More parsing. As I pointed out, the Obama political machine is already running with this. The DNC will be soaking in it (and whatever Romney says tonight) next week.

From a purely political point of view, I give the republicans credit as they seem to have effectively marginalized Ryan's biggest issues - his medicare proposals and his budget. Now we get to see the democrat's rebuttal.

Fuck it. I'll just enjoy the political theater.

[ElNono]

IMHO it should surprise no one that Ryan was for cutting medicare. The dude is supposed to be the ultimate fiscal Neo-con, decreasing spending across the board except for the military. That's what he is known for to the date and a big part of why he was picked up for the VP. Obviously there are those who agree or don't with some of his far fetched ideas. At the same time I think it's being intellectually dishonest to immediately associate his entire plan with Mitt Romney. Romney is simply much more of a moderate; shit, we all know about RomneyCare.

To be fair, he was fucked if he did and fucked if he didn't attach to Romney platform...

If he decides to go maverick, well, you know what happened with the last republican VP nominee going that route...

If he instead plays the established party minion, he then looks 'DC as usual' as you point out.

[Yonivore]

You need to understand that dishonest people have a hard time recognizing dishonesty... it's their "normal"...
Boy, you got that right.

[ElNono]

It'd be almost like saying how important the sanctity of marriage is, after your third marriage.

Or saying how it's important to fund the poor when the budget you proposed cuts programs to those poor.

Or saying that we can only maintain peace through war.

Etc etc...

Or bitching about mothers having kids they can't afford while mandating they have those same kids...

[ElNono]

Boy, you got that right.

:lol no doubt

[George Gervin's Afro]

Boy, you got that right.

he's talking to you

[LnGrrrR]

Actually, he's most well know for being a serious Congressman on budget issues. He's impressed Republicans and Democrats, alike and, he's worked for solutions, across the aisle.

He's not most well known for his budget. Until he was selected for Vice President, he was most well know for taking Obama to school on the fiscal mess created by Obamacare.

Want to see the video again?

And then he created his OWN budget, important parts of which he's running against. Is he going to smackdown himself?

[Wild Cobra]

Well LnGrrrR...

You act as if that is the only importance Ryan brings. What about his views on Education (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9972), Agriculture (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9975), Veterans and the military (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=12226), Immigration (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9970), Energy (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9977), Jobs and the Economy (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9973), Environment (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9976), War on Terror (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=12229), Homeland Security (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9971), Taxes (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=12228)?

Again...

Are you one of the M$M's lemmings?

[ElNono]

^ Ryan himself already admitted that's not his platform...

His ideas are now to be found here: http://mittromney.com

[Clipper Nation]

Actually, he's most well know for being a serious Congressman on budget issues.
"Serious" is pretty much the last word that comes to mind when I think of Ryan's budget "plan," tbh..... any plan that makes no significant spending cuts, funnels MORE money to our out-of-control foreign policy, and doesn't balance the budget in a reasonable timeframe is a non-starter, tbh...

[Clipper Nation]

His ideas are now to be found here: http://mittromney.com
Come on now, you know better than that, B... NO ideas are to be found at that website, only vague neocon platitudes...

[Yonivore]

And then he created his OWN budget, important parts of which he's running against. Is he going to smackdown himself?
Why would he? Do you think the Obama campaign won't?

If he's running against them it's because they agree with Obama ideas with which his boss finds issue. Or, if he's not bringing them up it's because they're not an idea the campaign is pitching. He hasn't made a secret of his budget plan or his and Ron Wyden's plan to bring fiscal sanity to the federal government. I think he's probably proud of both.

I don't understand the suggestion a candidate should self-flaggellate simply because he held views with which his new boss doesn't agree or won't carry forward into his policy objectives. I've disagreed with my bosses on a number of issues and, at the end of the day, if I'm unable to persuade them to my way of thinking, I take direction and champion the boss's plan. If someone points out that my actions don't agree with my previous statements, I simply say, I'm not the boss -- which, by the way, is pretty much what Ryan has said when the issue has been brought up. They aren't running on the Ryan plan, they're running on the Romney plan.

When has Obama done the same over any of his promises? Never. His only regret is that he hasn't communicated his greatness well enough for the American people to fall at his feet and buy into every cockamamie idea he proposes.

[Drachen]

I'll fact check that Ryan speech

http://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/debbie-wasserman-schultz1.jpg

If it is worth anything to you, I agree that wassermann-schultz is just as dirty and I have no qualifiers either. Anderson Cooper had her on the other night to call her out about some things that she put into that letter to democratic donors and how they were out and out lies. She looked like Yoni trying to defend them, it was ridiculous.

[Clipper Nation]

He hasn't made a secret of his budget plan or his and Ron Wyden's plan to bring fiscal sanity to the federal government.
Soooo, when's he coming out with the actual "fiscal sanity" plan? So far, he's failed to do so, tbh....

[Yonivore]

"Serious" is pretty much the last word that comes to mind when I think of Ryan's budget "plan," tbh..... any plan that makes no significant spending cuts, funnels MORE money to our out-of-control foreign policy, and doesn't balance the budget in a reasonable timeframe is a non-starter, tbh...
I tell you what's a non-starter...no budget for the past three years.

[LnGrrrR]

Well LnGrrrR...

You act as if that is the only importance Ryan brings. What about his views on Education (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9972), Agriculture (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9975), Veterans and the military (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=12226), Immigration (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9970), Energy (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9977), Jobs and the Economy (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9973), Environment (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9976), War on Terror (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=12229), Homeland Security (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9971), Taxes (http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=12228)?

Again...

Are you one of the M$M's lemmings?

Oh, be quiet with that. When Obama ran, did any Republican care about his views?

Of course not. It was all about how he had never held a "real" job, and had no experience. But what "real" job did Ryan hold? *shrug* I guess since he's a veep and not running for pres, it doesn't matter.

He's been in Congress since 1998 (14 years and counting), he's sponsored 71 bills, and ultimately 2 of them were voted into law. (Renaming a post office, and lowering an excise tax on arrow shafts, real controversial stuff).

He wants to reduce deficit supposedly, but he voted for the wars, voted for TARP, voted for Medicare Part D, and voted for the auto industry bailout. How exactly are we supposed to reduce the deficit paying for all this stuff again?

Oh, and the CBo analyzed the plan, and it wouldn't even begin to balance the budget until 2040. Real serious plan there.

[Clipper Nation]

I tell you what's a non-starter...no budget for the past three years.
Too bad that the ONE Republican with an actual budget plan was marginalized and screwed over during the entire nomination process, tbh...

http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/

[ElNono]

If it is worth anything to you, I agree that wassermann-schultz is just as dirty and I have no qualifiers either. Anderson Cooper had her on the other night to call her out about some things that she put into that letter to democratic donors and how they were out and out lies. She looked like Yoni trying to defend them, it was ridiculous.

:lol

[Yonivore]

If it is worth anything to you, I agree that wassermann-schultz is just as dirty and I have no qualifiers either. Anderson Cooper had her on the other night to call her out about some things that she put into that letter to democratic donors and how they were out and out lies. She looked like Yoni trying to defend them, it was ridiculous.
She should be in jail. But, are you saying she's just as dirty as Ryan or just as dirty as Reince Priebus?

Because you're going to have to back that up with example of when either Ryan or Priebus have suggested Obama was responsible for the death of a woman or that he was a felon. Both of which Wasserman-Schultz has done when talking about Mitt Romney.

She's a dirt bag.

[RandomGuy]

I knew I shouldn't have added that last line, you ignored the rest of the post.

What I meant is, saying the media objected, indicates the media has a side. I have no objection to the media being critical of something a campaign puts out but, instead of parroting the opposing point of view, I'd prefer they force the campaign to explain theirs.

For instance, if the media, in this case, would ask the Republicans to explain how the Sebelius directive is gutting the Welfare work requirement instead of just saying nuh uh, fact checkers say your wrong, you might get a better response than, "we're not going to be lead around by fact checkers."

That's all I meant and it was a last minute addition to the post, after I saw the word object in the article. Sheesh!

Sheesh indeed.

You wouldn't be happy unless "the media" simply became Fox clones endlesslly parroting Replublican talking points, anything else is a liberal plot. You know it, I know it, and anybody with any intelligence knows that is exactly the aim of conservatives in creating the bie lie of a "liberal media", and that their ideas don't get a fair shake.

I do not buy for a nanosecond that people like you are concerned with fairness or getting things explained correctly, with enough context to get at a reasonable truth. Please stop crying the crocodile tears.

[Th'Pusher]

Oh, be quiet with that. When Obama ran, did any Republican care about his views?

Of course not. It was all about how he had never held a "real" job, and had no experience. But what "real" job did Ryan hold? *shrug* I guess since he's a veep and not running for pres, it doesn't matter.

He's been in Congress since 1998 (14 years and counting), he's sponsored 71 bills, and ultimately 2 of them were voted into law. (Renaming a post office, and lowering an excise tax on arrow shafts, real controversial stuff).

He wants to reduce deficit supposedly, but he voted for the wars, voted for TARP, voted for Medicare Part D, and voted for the auto industry bailout. How exactly are we supposed to reduce the deficit paying for all this stuff again?

Oh, and the CBo analyzed the plan, and it wouldn't even begin to balance the budget until 2040. Real serious plan there.

Don't forget the tax cuts he voted for and the additional ones he proposed. He's a real serious fiscal hawk.:lol

[Yonivore]

he's talking to you
Not from where I stand.

[Clipper Nation]

Because you're going to have to back that up with example of when either Ryan or Priebus have suggested Obama was responsible for the death of a woman or that he was a felon.
No, but at the RNC, Reince Priebus did just help disenfranchise an entire state, change the plurality rules at the last second right as Ron Paul became eligible, change rules for 2016 to squash any grassroots dissent in the Republican Party, and prevent Ron Paul from having the time to speak he was legally entitled to.... that's some pretty bad shit, tbh.....

[RandomGuy]

I tell you what's a non-starter...no budget for the past three years.

Yeah, the dipshits in the tea party making it impossible to do anything sensible had nothing to do with that, and it was all the fault of the Democrat president.



Or are you going to criticize people who won't raise taxes under any circumstances?

That *would* be shocking.

[ElNono]

Yoni backing up my point :lmao

[LnGrrrR]

If he's running against them it's because they agree with Obama ideas with which his boss finds issue. Or, if he's not bringing them up it's because they're not an idea the campaign is pitching. He hasn't made a secret of his budget plan or his and Ron Wyden's plan to bring fiscal sanity to the federal government. I think he's probably proud of both.

So he's proud of his plan, but he's still going to bash Obama over something he agrees with. Or maybe he doesn't anymore. Who knows?

And it seems silly for Romney to pick a veep whose most well known for his budget, only to have his "big accomplishment" be marginalized in such a way.


I don't understand the suggestion a candidate should self-flaggellate simply because he held views with which his new boss doesn't agree or won't carry forward into his policy objectives. I've disagreed with my bosses on a number of issues and, at the end of the day, if I'm unable to persuade them to my way of thinking, I take direction and champion the boss's plan. If someone points out that my actions don't agree with my previous statements, I simply say, I'm not the boss -- which, by the way, is pretty much what Ryan has said when the issue has been brought up. They aren't running on the Ryan plan, they're running on the Romney plan.

Fair enough, but then it's only fair to point out that Ryan agreed with Obama just a year ago. It undercuts his message greatly. Also, it undermines Romney picking him. If Romney picked him for his budget/fiscal expertise, why isn't he using his plan?

[Clipper Nation]

Or are you going to criticize people who won't raise taxes under any circumstances?

That *would* be shocking.
To be fair, at this point, raising taxes only serves to embolden our corrupt government to waste more money on inefficient social programs and undeclared wars that we can't afford, tbh.....

[RandomGuy]

If it is worth anything to you, I agree that wassermann-schultz is just as dirty and I have no qualifiers either. Anderson Cooper had her on the other night to call her out about some things that she put into that letter to democratic donors and how they were out and out lies. She looked like Yoni trying to defend them, it was ridiculous.

But, but, but CNN is a liberal media outlet, it is therefore patently ridiculous that you would suggest they would go after a Democrat.


That just doesn't happen in the "liberal media".


Isn't that right, Yoni?

[clambake]

i had some nice salmon for lunch.

[Yonivore]

Sheesh indeed.

You wouldn't be happy unless "the media" simply became Fox clones endlesslly parroting Replublican talking points, anything else is a liberal plot. You know it, I know it, and anybody with any intelligence knows that is exactly the aim of conservatives in creating the bie lie of a "liberal media", and that their ideas don't get a fair shake.

I do not buy for a nanosecond that people like you are concerned with fairness or getting things explained correctly, with enough context to get at a reasonable truth. Please stop crying the crocodile tears.
Why do you keep talking past the issue?

Did or did not Kathleen Sebelius make a point of saying that since the government could waive reporting requirements in Section 402, that meant they had the authority to allow States to employ alternatives to the work requirements in Section 407.

It's a simple question. That's the statement on which Conservatives base their claim Obama is gutting the Welfare work requirements. That's the statement no one in here is willing to tackle. You just keep barking about partisan media bullshit.

I took a quote from the Sebelius directive to which I linked.

[clambake]

just the right amount of seasoning with capers and lemon.

[coyotes_geek]

He's been in Congress since 1998 (14 years and counting), he's sponsored 71 bills, and ultimately 2 of them were voted into law. (Renaming a post office, and lowering an excise tax on arrow shafts, real controversial stuff).

Screw you, hippie, that shit was important! :ihit

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5052/5537788411_49f674002e.jpg

[boutons_deux]

"Conservatives base their claim Obama is gutting the Welfare work requirements."

IT'S A LIE

MA Governor Gecko and several other Repug governors asked dubya for EXACTLY the same flexibility at state level for trying new ways to get people into the workforce. EX FUCKING ACTLY

Nothing gutted by Obama OR by dubya, just giving STATEs the RIGHT to handle their unemployed legions back into the workforce.

[Drachen]

Screw you, hippie, that shit was important! :ihit

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5052/5537788411_49f674002e.jpg

I am at work, so I got a red X where that picture should be... I am going to take a wild flying guess and say that it is a picture of ted nugent.

[Yonivore]

But, but, but CNN is a liberal media outlet, it is therefore patently ridiculous that you would suggest they would go after a Democrat.

That just doesn't happen in the "liberal media".

Isn't that right, Yoni?
Not very often.

[RandomGuy]

To be fair, at this point, raising taxes only serves to embolden our corrupt government to waste more money on inefficient social programs and undeclared wars that we can't afford, tbh.....

No it doesn't, and that isn't fair. Not by a long shot.

That is simply more mindlessly regurgitated cynicism masquerading as "fact".

If you want to go a few rounds on what constitutes "wasting money on inefficient social programs" I don't mind, but if you can't, or won't, bother supporting that with anythign other than hand-waving let me know now, so I can figure out if you are just going to mindlessly spout talking points, or really care about what actual data shows.

[TeyshaBlue]

I am at work, so I got a red X where that picture should be... I am going to take a wild flying guess and say that it is a picture of ted nugent.

Word!

[coyotes_geek]

I am at work, so I got a red X where that picture should be... I am going to take a wild flying guess and say that it is a picture of ted nugent.

:lol

had to be done. :tu

[z0sa]

IMHO CNN is easily the most balanced coverage around, just throwing that out there. Everyone is full of shit after ratings for money but I go to CNN first for my news. Of course growing up wanting to be a journalist and idolizing the network and the "CNN effect" makes me pretty biased :)

[elbamba]

just the right amount of seasoning with capers and lemon.

I had fish oil made entirely from salmon. Kind of the same thing right?

[clambake]

it was on a bed of arugula with evoo and balsamic vinegret.

[z0sa]

To be fair, he was fucked if he did and fucked if he didn't attach to Romney platform...

If he decides to go maverick, well, you know what happened with the last republican VP nominee going that route...

If he instead plays the established party minion, he then looks 'DC as usual' as you point out.

I'm firmly on the boutons fucked/unfuckable bus, tbh. Neither side is worth a damn and only wants to propagate their own power. Magical mystery tour with boutons driving, anyone?

[RandomGuy]

Not very often.

It happens a fuckuva lot more than you think it does, and waaay more than right-wing press EVER goes after corrupt Republicans in the same way.

But, hey, don't let me deter you from any cherished mythology. By all means, carry on. :toast

[RandomGuy]

Too bad that the ONE Republican with an actual budget plan was marginalized and screwed over during the entire nomination process, tbh...

http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/

That isn't a budget. That is a fairy tale.

Pauls budget is an emotionally appealing amalgamation of what feels good to believe in, if one doens't mind the very real expense of morality and decency.

[Wild Cobra]

Oh, be quiet with that.
LOL...

Be quite?

I questioned you because you appear as a single minded M$M lemming for the election. We have too many people voting like that. Deciding from soundbites, union propaganda, etc. When will you stop listening to what the media masters say and start seeking information out for yourself?

When Obama ran, did any Republican care about his views?

Absolutely, and attacked several. Not just one they could laugh at.


Of course not. It was all about how he had never held a "real" job, and had no experience. But what "real" job did Ryan hold? *shrug* I guess since he's a veep and not running for pres, it doesn't matter.

Changing the subject I see. Besides not liking any of Obama's policies, if you recall, it wasn't about not having a real job as much as it was having zero experience in any executive type position.


He's been in Congress since 1998 (14 years and counting), he's sponsored 71 bills, and ultimately 2 of them were voted into law. (Renaming a post office, and lowering an excise tax on arrow shafts, real controversial stuff).

So?

How many bills did Obama sponsor and how many made it through the process?

Obama sponsored 16 in his short time, none of which went anywhere. Only one made it past committee to a Judiciary review before going no where else.


He wants to reduce deficit supposedly, but he voted for the wars, voted for TARP, voted for Medicare Part D, and voted for the auto industry bailout. How exactly are we supposed to reduce the deficit paying for all this stuff again?

He feels as I do maybe. You should always pay off the debt unless you are in recession or war.


Oh, and the CBo analyzed the plan, and it wouldn't even begin to balance the budget until 2040. Real serious plan there.

And you trust the CBO?

[Yonivore]

So he's proud of his plan, but he's still going to bash Obama over something he agrees with.
This is where we differ and I'm really trying to have a reasonable debate with you here. That both Ryan and Obama proposed cutting Medicare doesn't mean their plans agreed with one another. I'm not that familiar with Ryan's plan to know if he also mitigated those cuts in other areas of his plan.

We do know how Obama planned to mitigate his cuts, by cutting fraud and waste (something on which the government has a stellar record) and by impaneling a 15-member unelected panel to ration care. I would venture a guess and suggest Ryan's plan didn't include either of these idea.


Or maybe he doesn't anymore. Who knows?
I would suggest it's not that important now that he's on board with the Republican nominee that has his own plan.


And it seems silly for Romney to pick a veep whose most well known for his budget, only to have his "big accomplishment" be marginalized in such a way.
It's only being marginalized by people who weren't going to vote for him anyway. I'm not sure how you can look at the statements of people such as Erskine Bowles and Ron Wyden and, even if they disagree with Ryan, think that he's unserious, unintelligent, and unsuited for the task.


Fair enough, but then it's only fair to point out that Ryan agreed with Obama just a year ago. It undercuts his message greatly. Also, it undermines Romney picking him. If Romney picked him for his budget/fiscal expertise, why isn't he using his plan?
I don't know that he agreed beyond the mere fact cuts were involved. We do know Ryan was opposed to what Obama wanted to do with the cuts -- apply them to Obamacare. We also know Obama has no serious plan for saving Medicare -- he accelerated it's insolvency by raiding $716 billion dollars and did nothing to mitigate that damage.

Is the same true with the Ryan plan? I don't know -- maybe I'll get around to reading it some day -- but, right now, in this election, it's irrelevant.

[RandomGuy]

When will you stop listening to what the media masters say and start seeking information out for yourself?

:lmao

Like how teen pregnancy rates have fallen over the last twenty years?

Sorry man, you are funny when you start talking about shit like that, because you have oooh so litle moral authority when it comes to lecturing others about digging into actual data before talking out one's ass.

[Wild Cobra]

:lmao

Like how teen pregnancy rates have fallen over the last twenty years?

Sorry man, you are funny when you start talking about shit like that, because you have oooh so litle moral authority when it comes to lecturing others about digging into actual data before talking out one's ass.
Yes, I know that you believe such things. If I recall, we were talking about two different things on that topic. Unplanned vs. planned.

[ElNono]

I'm firmly on the boutons fucked/unfuckable bus, tbh. Neither side is worth a damn and only wants to propagate their own power. Magical mystery tour with boutons driving, anyone?

http://vwkombi.com/photos/vanfest-2005/Images/4.jpg

[ElNono]

Oh, be quiet with that.


Be quite?

:lol

What's the other word, 'strait'? :lol

[TeyshaBlue]

I'm firmly on the boutons fucked/unfuckable bus, tbh. Neither side is worth a damn and only wants to propagate their own power. Magical mystery tour with boutons driving, anyone?

I've gone insane now.:depressed

[RandomGuy]

Yes, I know that you believe such things. If I recall, we were talking about two different things on that topic. Unplanned vs. planned.

Yeah, you tried to weasel your way out of that by splitting hairs.

Didn't work then, won't work now, and it still makes you look like the idiot you are (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96217&page=4).

[Wild Cobra]

Yeah, you tried to weasel your way out of that by splitting hairs.

Didn't work then, won't work now, and it still makes you look like the idiot you are.
I'll tell you what.

If it's that important to you, bump the thread. I'll prove you wrong. Put up or shut up.

[Yonivore]

I'll tell you what.

If it's that important to you, bump the thread. I'll prove you wrong. Put up or shut up.
To be fair, if Wild Cobra was born before 1950, he has seen teen pregnancy rates shoot up in his lifetime -- twice. I peeked at the thread and that's what he said that he had witnessed a "dramatic rise in teen pregnancies in his lifetime."

But, WC, if you think teen pregnancy is more prevalent now than when you were younger, you're wrong. It's decreased about 30% since 1950 with a slight bump during the "blow-jobs-aren't-sex" presidency.

[z0sa]

I've gone insane now.:depressed

Judging from Nono's scouting report, we couldn't even get a real flying bus.

there *will* be plenty of scooby snacks though, hopefully, FWIW.

ps how the hell are you not bolded yet man? :P

[ElNono]

Judging from Nono's scouting report, we couldn't even get a real flying bus.

there *will* be plenty of scooby snacks though, hopefully, FWIW.

<puts Cheech voice> Lots of flowers, man...

[LnGrrrR]

LOL...

Be quite?

I questioned you because you appear as a single minded M$M lemming for the election. We have too many people voting like that. Deciding from soundbites, union propaganda, etc. When will you stop listening to what the media masters say and start seeking information out for yourself?


Changing the subject I see. Besides not liking any of Obama's policies, if you recall, it wasn't about not having a real job as much as it was having zero experience in any executive type position.

One could say Ryan also has no executive experience, but that doesn't matter as much since he's the Veep.

My point was that if you want to say that "experience matters" for a job, I look at Ryan's experience and don't see a whole lot there.


Obama sponsored 16 in his short time, none of which went anywhere. Only one made it past committee to a Judiciary review before going no where else.

Technically, Wikipedia notes that Obama was the primary sponsor for two bills (Congo relief and corporate jet policy), and a few amendments, but your overall point is valid. However, I don't think Obama ran as any sort of policy wonk. Ryan's claim to fame is being the Republican's budget guru.


He feels as I do maybe. You should always pay off the debt unless you are in recession or war.

If he wanted to pay off the debt, then he should probably allow the tax cuts to expire, or cut Medicaid.


And you trust the CBO?

If you've got another think tank saying the budget would be balanced earlier, feel free to share.

[TeyshaBlue]

ps how the hell are you not bolded yet man? :P

I don't even know what that means, Jenny.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64/teyshablue/Forrest_Gump_22.jpg

[Yonivore]

Technically, Wikipedia notes that Obama was the primary sponsor for two bills (Congo relief and corporate jet policy), and a few amendments, but your overall point is valid. However, I don't think Obama ran as any sort of policy wonk. Ryan's claim to fame is being the Republican's budget guru.
That's not just Ryan's claim, I've heard it said the Republican Party and more than a few Democrats claim he's the most knowledgeable person on the federal budget in either house of Congress.


If he wanted to pay off the debt, then he should probably allow the tax cuts to expire, or cut Medicaid.
Well there's reasonable disagreement over whether or not allowing the tax rate to revert to 2002 levels will raise revenue.

Conservative believe cutting the debt and deficit involved reducing federal spending and advancing pro-growth policies, including cutting taxes, reducing oppressive regulation, and encouraging entrepreneurship.

I hope they get to try their hand at it next year. Obama's plan isn't working and doesn't appear likely to work.

[ElNono]

Conservative believe cutting the debt and deficit involved reducing federal spending and advancing pro-growth policies, including cutting taxes, reducing oppressive regulation, and encouraging entrepreneurship.

What does Ryan believe? Because his actual voting record doesn't express that at all.

[LnGrrrR]

I would suggest it's not that important now that he's on board with the Republican nominee that has his own plan.

I respectfully disagree. Ryan is known for his fiscal policy moreso than anything else; if you're discarding that, I don't see a good reason for picking him for veep.

[LnGrrrR]

That's not just Ryan's claim, I've heard it said the Republican Party and more than a few Democrats claim he's the most knowledgeable person on the federal budget in either house of Congress.

It would seem to be a false claim then. You would think a fiscal policy wonk wouldn't come up with a budget and then reject certain parts a year later.

[Koolaid_Man]

I respectfully disagree. Ryan is known for his fiscal policy moreso than anything else; if you're discarding that, I don't see a good reason for picking him for veep.


whenever I'm not posting I delegate authority for you to be my political spokesman...(as long as it's nothing but Obama love) :lol

Nice job you're successfully leveraging my thoughts...

Obama / Biden Forever :toast

[z0sa]

obama biden forever :lmao

[Th'Pusher]

Conservative believe cutting the debt and deficit involved reducing federal spending and advancing pro-growth policies, including cutting taxes, reducing oppressive regulation, and encouraging entrepreneurship.



Dear Paul,
I don’t want to see you anymore.
Two weeks ago, I declared my love for you. I said you would focus the election on fiscal responsibility. I envisioned you leading a movement of young people to control runaway spending.

My friends said I was crazy. They said you weren’t who I thought you were. Paul Krugman said you were a fake fiscal conservative. Scott Lemieux called you a standard-issue right-winger. Jim Surowiecki compared you to Barry Goldwater. I didn’t believe the naysayers. Sometimes they said you were too extreme. Sometimes they said you were a squishy hypocrite for supporting TARP and the auto bailout. It seemed like they just wanted to make you look bad one way or the other. I thought they were just playing politics.

I knew you weren’t perfect. I didn’t like your vote against the Simpson-Bowles debt reduction plan. I worried that your weakness for tax cuts would squander the savings from your budget cuts. But I should have studied your record more carefully. I didn’t understand how pivotal you were in sinking the budget deal between President Obama and Speaker Boehner. I paid too much attention to what you said about cutting the defense budget and not enough attention to what you did. You accused the military of requesting too little money—a concern that makes no sense to anyone familiar with the acquisitive habits of government agencies. You also objected to setting financial savings targets and forcing the Pentagon to meet them, even though that’s how you proposed to control domestic spending.

I tried to stand by you, Paul. I didn’t care that you grabbed federal money for your district. Every congressman does that. I gave you credit, not blame, for supporting TARP. I saw that vote as evidence that you, unlike many of your conservative colleagues, cared more about economic consequences than about making a statement. I winced every time you talked about your hard-line position on abortion, but I told my friends that voting records are misleading, that what a politician chooses to work on is more important, that social issues aren’t your thing, that your real interest is the budget. I even apologized for your dogmatism on climate change. I was willing to believe that you were skeptical of regulation but that you hadn’t really studied the science and that when you did, you’d come around. Jonah Goldberg poked fun at me for sometimes being so open-minded that my brains fall out. And you know what? (Drum roll, please ...) He’s right.

I hate to admit it, but Krugman nailed me on this one. I was looking for Mr. Right—a fact-based, sensible fiscal conservative—and I tried to shoehorn you into that role.

That’s where you let me down, Paul. Since Mitt Romney tapped you as his running mate, you haven’t stood for fiscal restraint. You’ve attacked it. You warned voters in North Carolina and Virginia that cuts in the defense budget would take away their tax-supported jobs. And I cringe when I recall what I said about you and Medicare. “Ryan destroys Romney’s ability to continue making the dishonest, anti-conservative argument that Obamacare is evil because it cuts Medicare,” I wrote. “Now Romney will have to defend the honest conservative argument, which is that Medicare spending should be controlled.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Four days after Romney put you on the ticket, you began parroting his Medicare shtick. You protested that Obama’s $700 billion savings in the future growth of Medicare payments to providers—a spending reduction that any sensible conservative president would have sought, and that you had previously included in your budget plan—would “lead to fewer services for seniors.” You depicted a horror scenario: “a $3,600 cut in benefits for current seniors. Nearly one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business.” You assured seniors that the Romney-Ryan agenda for Medicare “does not affect your benefits.” And you promised future retirees “guaranteed affordability” of health care.

In short, you adopted every tactic in the liberal playbook. You framed a reduced rate of growth as a draconian cut. You inflated the likely impact of the reduction. You denounced any loss of services as unacceptable. You promised not to touch seniors’ benefits. And you reaffirmed a fiscally unsustainable guarantee. By my count, you’ve now done this in at least six speeches and rallies. Every day, you’re reinforcing the culture of entitlement and making it harder to rein in retirement programs.

Oh, Paul. And I thought you were so rugged.

You even embraced the delusion that government is a threat to Medicare, when in fact government is the funder of Medicare. This misconception used to be a joke, an illustration of popular ignorance. But now you’re peddling it. “Mitt Romney and I are going to stop that raid on Medicare,” you told voters in New Hampshire a week ago. “We're going to restore this program, and we'll get these bureaucrats out of the way of standing between our senior citizens and their Medicare.”

I still see promise in you, Paul. I love it when you challenge the rhetoric of public “investment.” I admire your fixation on the Grim Reaper of debt. I’m sympathetic to your argument that student loans and insurance subsidies distort markets. I swoon when you crusade against the generational greed and fiscally hollow promises of the state. But if you won’t stand by your principles when it counts, Paul—if you’re just going to demagogue Medicare like an old-style liberal—then you’re useless to this country. I want my love letter back.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2012/08/paul_ryan_s_medicare_flip_flop_is_a_betrayal_of_co nservatism_.html

[Wild Cobra]

To be fair, if Wild Cobra was born before 1950, he has seen teen pregnancy rates shoot up in his lifetime -- twice. I peeked at the thread and that's what he said that he had witnessed a "dramatic rise in teen pregnancies in his lifetime."

But, WC, if you think teen pregnancy is more prevalent now than when you were younger, you're wrong. It's decreased about 30% since 1950 with a slight bump during the "blow-jobs-aren't-sex" presidency.
Yes, and abortion has dramatically increased. I have seen many studies looking for the information, and the information is so convoluted. I haven't found any that are just unplanned pregnancies for teens that go back to the 60's or 70's. Birth rates... Yes. How many pregnancies were aborted though?

[Winehole23]

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158758

[boutons_deux]

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158758

"increase the “reputational costs” of peddling bad info"

Obviously, politicians' brazen lying has NO REPUTATIONAL costs.

[Winehole23]

nope.

when journalists leave the fact checking to the fact checkers (which raises the question: WTF are journalists for anymore?) and the readers leave the thinking to the so-called fact-checkers, the electorate remains essentially supine to whatever gets thrown out there by propagandists and special interest lobbies.

[Winehole23]

as well as to "myside" bias, of course

[boutons_deux]

paper and TV journalist are to deliver the corporate-approved (advertisers approved) (dis)information in tiny sound bites to people who think they are getting "news". TV/paper news is above a business whose main revenues are advertisers NOT to be alienated.

[Winehole23]

whereas as you cut and paste ideologically vetted information in tiny sound bites, in hopes that SpursTalk posters will receive it as "news"

resemble what you hate, much?

[TeyshaBlue]

^^^^^^It's raining logic up in here.

[boutons_deux]

whereas as you cut and paste ideologically vetted information in tiny sound bites, in hopes that SpursTalk posters will receive it as "news"

resemble what you hate, much?

and your perfectly "original" ideas always astonish me

and TB :lol piles on like the little chickenshit he is.

[TeyshaBlue]

lol @ getting bitchslapped by a chickenshit.

[Yonivore]

Yes, and abortion has dramatically increased. I have seen many studies looking for the information, and the information is so convoluted. I haven't found any that are just unplanned pregnancies for teens that go back to the 60's or 70's. Birth rates... Yes. How many pregnancies were aborted though?
I suspect the same thing but, it's hard to find a study that correlates abortion with teen pregnancy. Also, with HIPA and teens no longer having to notify their parents (in some states), it's hard to even know what is the teen pregnancy or abortion rate.

[Yonivore]

It would seem to be a false claim then. You would think a fiscal policy wonk wouldn't come up with a budget and then reject certain parts a year later.
Maybe his boss is rejecting certain parts. He's a team player; just ask Wyden and Bowles.

But, if you're going to get hung up on this, should we look at Obama's diversion from his voting record?

[Yonivore]

I respectfully disagree. Ryan is known for his fiscal policy moreso than anything else; if you're discarding that, I don't see a good reason for picking him for veep.
Who's discarding it? Why would it even have to be binary? I've already suggested there may have been nuances regarding his plan to cut Medicare with Obama's plan to cut Medicare...and, we certainly know there were nuances to Obama's plan with which Ryan disagreed early on; for instance, raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare and establishing the death panel to cut costs.

You're simply being disingenuous to suggest that just because both Obama and Ryan proposed cuts that they're plans were similar. Further, the plan -- well, at least the cutting part of the plan -- is off the table. It appears Romney is going with a hybrid that leaves Medicare alone for senior and those over 55 and establishing an option for those under.

You can disagree with the plan but, part of Ryan's original plan is there, it's just that Romney -- no fiscal or economic slouch himself -- made modifications and improvements. And, since he's not in the Legislature, Ryan can still be the top dog fiscal policy wonk in Congress. Certainly no one else in that body has stepped up to the plate like Ryan.

[LnGrrrR]

Maybe his boss is rejecting certain parts. He's a team player; just ask Wyden and Bowles.

But, if you're going to get hung up on this, should we look at Obama's diversion from his voting record?

Trust me, I pretty much despise how he's gone against everything he said re: civil liberties/transparency/etc etc

[Yonivore]

Trust me, I pretty much despise how he's gone against everything he said re: civil liberties/transparency/etc etc
Why do I care? We're not talking about you.

On the topic of the thread, the "fact checkers" are wrong or misleading. Of the checked facts in that Yahoo article, for instance, Ryan said nothing demonstrably false...they simply either said "yeah, well, Ryan did it too (meaning Ryan's statements about Obama are true) or they simply changed the intent of Ryan's statement (i.e. the GM Plant closing being about when it closed -- and even they got that wrong -- instead of about Obama's promise that his policies would keep it open for another 100 years if only they'd elect him.)

But, if you want to talk about how positions have changed, I'd stack Ryan up against Obama (or Biden) any day.

[scott]

When Fox News calls a Republican out for dishonesty, you know they must be really full of shit.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/

[elbamba]

The Media's 'Fact Check' Smokescreen
Journalism: If media "fact checkers" are just impartial guardians of the truth, how come they got their own facts wrong about Paul Ryan's speech, and did so in a way that helped President Obama's re-election effort?

Case in point was the rush of "fact check" stories claiming Ryan misled when he talked about a shuttered auto plant in his home state.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler posted a piece — "Ryan misleads on GM plant closing in hometown" — saying Ryan "appeared to suggest" that Obama was responsible for the closure of a GM plant in Janesville, Wis.

"That's not true," Kessler said. "The plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in."

What's not true are Kessler's "facts." Ryan didn't suggest Obama was responsible for shuttering the plant. Instead, he correctly noted that Obama promised during the campaign that the troubled plant "will be here for another hundred years" if his policies were enacted.

Also, the plant didn't close in December 2008. It was still producing cars until April 2009.

An AP "fact check" also claimed that "the plant halted production in December 2008" even though the AP itself reported in April 2009 that the plant was only then "closing for good."

CNN's John King made the same claim about that plant closure. But when CNN looked more carefully at the evidence, it — to its credit — concluded that what Ryan said was "true."

Media fact-checkers also complained about Ryan's charge that Obama is cutting $716 billion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare. Not true, they said. Medicare's growth is just being slowed.

But Obama achieves that slower growth by making real cuts in provider payments. And in any case, the media always and everywhere call a reduction in the rate of federal spending growth a "cut." So why suddenly charge Ryan with being misleading for using that same term?

In any case, Obama himself admitted that he's doing what Ryan says. In a November 2009 interview with ABC News, reporter Jake Tapper said to Obama that "one-third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare," to which Obama's response was: "Right."

The rest of Ryan's alleged factual errors aren't errors at all; it's just that the media didn't like how he said it. But since when is it a fact-checker's job to decide how a politician should construct his arguments?

This isn't to say that journalists shouldn't check facts. Of course they should.

The problem is that the mainstream press is now abusing the "fact check" label, using it to more aggressively push a liberal agenda without feeling the need to provide any balance whatsoever. And, as the reaction to the Ryan speech shows, they are now blatantly using it to provide air support for Obama.

Is it any wonder that soon after Ryan's speech ended, the Obama campaign rushed out an ad using the media's "fact check" stories as its source?

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/083012-624188-so-called-fact-checks-disguise-media-liberal-agenda.htm?src=HPLNews

[elbamba]

Fact-checking the factcheckers on Ryan’s speech; Update: “As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville"

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/30/fact-checking-the-factcheckers-on-ryans-speech/

[Homeland Security]

When Fox News calls a Republican out for dishonesty, you know they must be really full of shit.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/

Fox News employs several left-liberal columnists, I suppose, in order to provide plausible deniability about their rightward slant. The linked column would be an example of such; it repeats basically the same talking points as most left-liberal columnists did following the Ryan speech. The author is an unapologetic liberal Democrat.

I've seen this "even Fox News" talking point six or seven places.

Clearly you're a free thinker; you would never parrot whatever your tribal leaders tell you to like those obscurantist right-wingers do.

[Agloco]

Fox News employs several left-liberal columnists, I suppose, in order to provide plausible deniability about their rightward slant. The linked column would be an example of such; it repeats basically the same talking points as most left-liberal columnists did following the Ryan speech. The author is an unapologetic liberal Democrat.

I've seen this "even Fox News" talking point six or seven places.

Clearly you're a free thinker; you would never parrot whatever your tribal leaders tell you to like those obscurantist right-wingers do.

How bout this one?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/fact-check-paul-ryan-convention-address/

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Fox News employs several left-liberal columnists, I suppose, in order to provide plausible deniability about their rightward slant. The linked column would be an example of such; it repeats basically the same talking points as most left-liberal columnists did following the Ryan speech. The author is an unapologetic liberal Democrat.

I've seen this "even Fox News" talking point six or seven places.

Clearly you're a free thinker; you would never parrot whatever your tribal leaders tell you to like those obscurantist right-wingers do.
:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao

Fox News is leading a liberal conspiracy to slander Paul Ryan!

[Th'Pusher]

Just because Ryan's speech was written by professional speechwriters and heavily edited by lawyers to make sure he could score political points with his message without lying does not mean he is guiltless of attempting to deceive. The reason the media outlets and fact checkers picked up on it is not because they are liberal, but because anyone who has been paying attention found his omissions to be deceptive or hypocritical or both.

Have Romney/Ryan come out to defend their position? If they truly thought the message was being misinterpreted, it seems they'd come out and defend the position. That of course would bring more scrutiny to Ryan's actual positions, which is not really what they want. Just call it what it is, muddying up the water and scoring political points in a political speech.

[Homeland Security]

:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao:lmao

Fox News is leading a liberal conspiracy to slander Paul Ryan!
See, here's an example of why the extermination of secular Jews is necessary.

[Homeland Security]

How bout this one?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/fact-check-paul-ryan-convention-address/
Did you actually read that article? I don't think you would have posted it if you had read it.

[spursncowboys]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/romney-camp-bets-welfare-attack




wow....

"we are going to lie through our teeth, facts be damned, because winning at all costs is what we are all about".

there is a reason this year has left me pissed off and cynical about the right wing in this country... and that pretty much is it in a nutshell.

:lmao 'romney murdering a woman' ad can't even keep a straight face from that one.

[Homeland Security]

Just because Ryan's speech was written by professional speechwriters and heavily edited by lawyers to make sure he could score political points with his message without lying does not mean he is guiltless of attempting to deceive. The reason the media outlets and fact checkers picked up on it is not because they are liberal, but because anyone who has been paying attention found his omissions to be deceptive or hypocritical or both.

Have Romney/Ryan come out to defend their position? If they truly thought the message was being misinterpreted, it seems they'd come out and defend the position. That of course would bring more scrutiny to Ryan's actual positions, which is not really what they want. Just call it what it is, muddying up the water and scoring political points in a political speech.
The things the liberal "fact-checkers" made up were basically what they could think of given short notice. They weren't really inaccuracies. They come up with the "gotchas," get them on the blogs and broadcasts, and everyone on the blue tribe parrots them within hours.

Whether or not they're factual is less important than getting the talking points out quick. If they had to wait 24 hours to do a thoughtful analysis, impressions of the speech already would have set in.

You will see the same thing next week from the other side.

A counterfactual that increases your power is true.

[Homeland Security]

It really is amazing to see how easy people are to control once the tribal mentality sets it. Hotair or Daily Kos could post literally anything as a "fact-check" and the respective tribes would parrot it as unassailable truth.

I don't know why I bother bringing it up. I've already made up my mind on which side I control the marionette strings and which side gets killed.

[Homeland Security]

I guess I do it so at the end of the day I know you deserve what's coming.

[Th'Pusher]

The things the liberal "fact-checkers" made up were basically what they could think of given short notice. They weren't really inaccuracies. They come up with the "gotchas," get them on the blogs and broadcasts, and everyone on the blue tribe parrots them within hours.

Whether or not they're factual is less important than getting the talking points out quick. If they had to wait 24 hours to do a thoughtful analysis, impressions of the speech already would have set in.

You will see the same thing next week from the other side.

A counterfactual that increases your power is true.

I guess we can quibble over the title 'fact checkers', but I don't think the media or the Obama campaign would be doing their job well if they didn't point out Ryan's omissions in the speech and how blatantly disingenuous and hypocritical they were.

Not everybody has to parse like Yoni. There are shades of grey.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

See, here's an example of why the extermination of secular Jews is necessary.
Cool comeback!


Those god damn liberal fact-checkers at Fox News!

[Yonivore]

When Fox News calls a Republican out for dishonesty, you know they must be really full of shit.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/


Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.
I don't recall his wording on this but, have we been upgraded? Didn't the debt ceiling get raised? And, if so, shouldn't the downgrade have been temporary or could there be something else -- such as a screwed up economy and no budget for 4 years?


Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing.
He didn't blame Obama for the plant closing and, contrary to what is being reported the plant closed in April, 2009 but, that's not even germane to the point Ryan was making. He was criticizing Obama for standing at the plant in Janesville and, as a candidate, suggesting the plant would stay open for another 100 years if he were elected and implemented his policies.


Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period.
It pretty much is. Period. This president, as evidenced by his "Julia" nonsense believes government is the answer. in his "You didn't build it" comment, he principally mentions government functions of teachers, roads, bridges, etc... And, it wasn't the "You Didn't Build It" statement that created the meme -- That's just easier to say than, ""I'm always struck by people who think, `Well, it must be because I was just so smart.' There are a lot of smart people out there. `It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.' Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."

That was the real insult. It offended everyone who ever spent years worrying about whether or not the risk they've taken by investing their entire life savings into a small business is going to pan out. It offended everyone who ever had an original idea and turned it into a thriving business. It offended anyone who every worked 20 hour days for months or years on end to make a business successful. And, it offended people who took little revenue from their business -- for years eating beans and rice -- so that they could plunk as much of their money into the business as possible.

With the exception of friends and family, there is no one that helps a business get started without an expectation of something in return. Teacher teach for money, government provides roads and bridges for tax dollars (also paid by businesses and their owners), employees works for wages and benefits, investors invest for dividends, and customers shop because you offer the best value.

A successful business owner had the idea, secured the money, invested the time and persuaded the investors, employees, and customers to engage the enterprise. There is no kind of help Obama mentioned that weren't available to unsuccessful businesses. None. So, whatever the fuck he was talking about, it wasn't what made a successful business successful.

scott, you're a businessman and you should know this better than anyone. Government costs you money. You pay fees and taxes to do business...government help isn't free and it particularly isn't free to small business


Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan.
Ryan didn't embrace the cuts to pay for Obamacare and, besides, Ryan's cuts aren't in the Romney plan. Fact remains, Obama was going to reduce Medicare spending by $716 billion in order to put it towards his health care plan.

Fox is wrong.

[boutons_deux]

Romney’s RNC Speech Spent 202 Words On Foreign Policy, Made False And Misleading Claims

1. Obama and America: “I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour. President Obama began with an apology tour. America, he said, had dictated to other nations. No Mr. President, America has freed other nations from dictators.”

THE FACTS: The notion that Obama went on an “apology tour” has been repeatedly and conclusively debunked, though it remains a staple of Romney’s post-truth campaign. The “dictated” line is likely of a similar provenance, but there’s an irony to the second half of that sentence — Obama has “freed other nations from dictators,” as he helped form and lead an international coalition that toppled Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Romney’s position on the Libya intervention, by contrast, was something of an incoherent muddle.

2. Iran: “Every American was relieved the day President Obama gave the order, and Seal Team Six took out Osama bin Laden. But on another front, every American is less secure today because he has failed to slow Iran’s nuclear threat. In his first TV interview as president, he said we should talk to Iran. We’re still talking, and Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning.”

THE FACTS: There’s a reason the President decided to talk to Iran — the Obama administration is quite aware of the consequences of a nuclear weapons-equipped Iran, if its leaders decide to go that route, and has determined that diplomacy presents the “best and most permanent” means of resolving the crisis. Moreover, the diplomatic approach has produced concrete dividends. While Iran hasn’t capitulated, signalling that America was willing to talk to Iran helped build international support for significantly stepped-up sanctions. Contra Romney, the new sanctions imposed by Obama’s coalition have unequivocally slowed Iran’s nuclear progress by limiting its ability to acquire critical materiel, according to the U.N. and the Pentagon. Perhaps that’s why, when they’re not hinting at starting a devastating war, Romney advisers and surrogates have been unable to differentiate their candidate’s policy from the status quo.

3. Israel and Cuba: “President Obama has thrown allies like Israel under the bus, even as he has relaxed sanctions on Castro’s Cuba.”

THE FACTS: The claim about Israel is utterly false; both stepped-up U.S. defense assistance and the statements of Israel’s own leaders testify to Obama’s record. As for Cuba, it’s true that Obama has relaxed restrictions on travel to Cuba, but that’s a good thing. The Cuba embargo is is an obviously failed policy with serious human costs, giving the Castro regime an excuse for the failures of communism while immiserating ordinary Cubans.

4. Russia and Poland: “[Obama] abandoned our friends in Poland by walking away from our missile defense commitments, but is eager to give Russia’s President Putin the flexibility he desires, after the election. Under my administration, our friends will see more loyalty, and Mr. Putin will see a little less flexibility and more backbone.”

THE FACTS: Romney conveniently ignores that Obama’s new missile defense plan provided Poland with a system it was “ready to participate” in, perhaps because Polish officials preferred it to the previous arrangement. Obama’s “flexibility” comment to Putin didn’t really worry Eastern European governments, but Romney’s hostile rhetoric about Russia is alienating a country whose cooperation is important on U.S. priorities like the Iranian nuclear program.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/08/31/783761/romney-rnc-speech-foreign-policy/

[boutons_deux]

Ryan didn't embrace the cuts to pay for Obamacare and, besides, Ryan's cuts aren't in the Romney plan. Fact remains, Obama was going to reduce Medicare spending by $716 billion in order to put it towards his health care plan.

Fox is wrong.

Yoni LIES

Ryan said he included Obama's $716B cuts in Medicare because Obama already had them! :lol

Obama cuts money sent to Medicare Advantage and other for-profit gougers

Ryan cuts medicare spending by increasing seniors co-payments and deductibles, increasing seniors outlays by $5K+ per year.

Paul Ryan's Medicare Doublespeak

Ryan presents the $716 billion figure as an all-out attack by Obama against seniors. But what Ryan elides is that his own budget plan, which was passed by the House in 2011 and again in March of this year, contains the same exact cuts to Medicare. Ryan's speech also makes it sound as though Obama's cuts to Medicare have already taken place; in fact, the savings are to be spread out over 10 years. That's an important detail, because Ryan's and Obama's plans both take a similar approach to managing Medicare's budget down the road: They each cap the program's annual rate of increase at half a percentage point above the economy's rate of growth. By blasting Obama over Medicare, Ryan is attacking parts of his very own plan.

There's more. Ryan's speech implies that Obama's cuts to Medicare will directly harm seniors. That's not the case. Obama's cost savings come at the expense of health-care providers -- they're not aimed at beneficiaries.

In fact, Ryan's critics say his is the more damaging proposal, as an important part of his plan uses a mathematical trick as a way to cut costs. Here's how. The Ryan plan makes Medicare a voucher program; seniors would receive a check for health care that they can spend however they like. But because the voucher's value would grow more slowly than the pace of health-care costs, analysts project that the benefit would actually become worth less and less over time. Here's how the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts it:

Since under the Ryan budget, Medicare would no longer make payments to health care providers such as doctors and hospitals, the only way to keep Medicare cost growth within the GDP plus one-half percentage point target would be to limit the annual increase in the amount of the premium-support vouchers. As a result, the vouchers would purchase less coverage with each passing year, pushing more costs on to beneficiaries. Over time, seniors would have to pay more to keep the health plans and the doctors they like, or they would get fewer benefits.

Although Mitt Romney has distanced himself from Ryan's Medicare cuts, Ryan's historical role as his party's agenda-setter is a good reason to take the vice-presidential candidate's ideas seriously. And part of that means pointing out when he's dissembling.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/paul-ryans-medicare-doublespeak/261779/

[Agloco]

Did you actually read that article?

Yes.


I don't think you would have posted it if you had read it.

Ok.

[scott]

I don't recall his wording on this but, have we been upgraded? Didn't the debt ceiling get raised? And, if so, shouldn't the downgrade have been temporary or could there be something else -- such as a screwed up economy and no budget for 4 years?

The card has been played. The world market now knows that the American government is willing to let it's creditworthiness be held hostage. That threat hasn't gone away - why would they upgrade us now?

With that said, the lack of a budget (but not the slowly growing economy, because it hasn't demonstrated to impact our ability to pay) should also play into the credit worthiness of the United States government (and it does - and both the Legislative and Executive branch deserve blame for that).



He didn't blame Obama for the plant closing and, contrary to what is being reported the plant closed in April, 2009 but, that's not even germane to the point Ryan was making. He was criticizing Obama for standing at the plant in Janesville and, as a candidate, suggesting the plant would stay open for another 100 years if he were elected and implemented his policies.

Hence why it's being called deceiving.

Paraphrasing Ryan: "Obama promised it wouldn't closed if he was elected and his policies were implemented. Well, the plant is closed, Obama is president, and his policies were implemented."

The above is all factual, but it's still non-sequitous and deceiving.

PS: GM announced it was closing the plant in June 2008. While it had continuing operations beyond that, the announcement date is generally accepted nomenclature for "closed" in business circles.



It pretty much is. Period. This president, as evidenced by his "Julia" nonsense believes government is the answer. in his "You didn't build it" comment, he principally mentions government functions of teachers, roads, bridges, etc... And, it wasn't the "You Didn't Build It" statement that created the meme -- That's just easier to say than, ""I'm always struck by people who think, `Well, it must be because I was just so smart.' There are a lot of smart people out there. `It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.' Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."

That was the real insult. It offended everyone who ever spent years worrying about whether or not the risk they've taken by investing their entire life savings into a small business is going to pan out. It offended everyone who ever had an original idea and turned it into a thriving business. It offended anyone who every worked 20 hour days for months or years on end to make a business successful. And, it offended people who took little revenue from their business -- for years eating beans and rice -- so that they could plunk as much of their money into the business as possible.

With the exception of friends and family, there is no one that helps a business get started without an expectation of something in return. Teacher teach for money, government provides roads and bridges for tax dollars (also paid by businesses and their owners), employees works for wages and benefits, investors invest for dividends, and customers shop because you offer the best value.

A successful business owner had the idea, secured the money, invested the time and persuaded the investors, employees, and customers to engage the enterprise. There is no kind of help Obama mentioned that weren't available to unsuccessful businesses. None. So, whatever the fuck he was talking about, it wasn't what made a successful business successful.

scott, you're a businessman and you should know this better than anyone. Government costs you money. You pay fees and taxes to do business...government help isn't free and it particularly isn't free to small business



Yawn, more of the "let me twist myself in pretzels to argue a point no one except for the most ardent red and blue teamers care about".

The only people truly upset by his comment are those who sport the Red-Team starter jacket and, like yourself, seem hell-bent on rigging the game in favor of people like me. I don't even want the game rigged in favor of me, so why are you so concerned with it?

Guess what? Those of us who are successful are so because we're smart enough to see the benefits of individual ambition & accomplishment AND community resources and spending. A business destination with no roads leading in has no customers.

And your argument that "government isn't free" so "taxpayers build that" ignores fundamental economics and the fact that some enterprises can increase the marginal value of their output by being a monopoly (natural monopolies, we call these).

What makes America great isn't that it is a completely laissez-faire system and it's not a complete centralized-control system. The hybrid model is, in fact, what has allowed the US to thrive relative to the rest of the world. Every economist will tell you that the free-market isn't perfect, and it fails. The role of government for some (including me) is to improve market outcomes in the event of those failures.



Ryan didn't embrace the cuts to pay for Obamacare and, besides, Ryan's cuts aren't in the Romney plan. Fact remains, Obama was going to reduce Medicare spending by $716 billion in order to put it towards his health care plan.

Actually, the fact remains that Obamacare purports to reduce Medicare expenditures by $716 billion, because they won't be necessary. There is a huge difference between that and your statement above. And fact remains that this is the same kind of savings the Ryan plan proposes.

Whether or not Obamacare (or RyanCare, or anything else you want to plug in) actually accomplishes that is another matter.


Fox is wrong.

As is the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and everyone else who's covered this issue, apparently. How can they all be some pathetically mistaken? They must not read the same blogs as you, written and read by America's only truly enlighten citizenry.

When the explanation of "why it's not deceiving" is longer than the original statement... it's probably deceiving.

Don't peek out from behind your blinders though - the obvious is bright, causes eye damage.

[Yonivore]

The card has been played. The world market now knows that the American government is willing to let it's creditworthiness be held hostage. That threat hasn't gone away - why would they upgrade us now?

With that said, the lack of a budget (but not the slowly growing economy, because it hasn't demonstrated to impact our ability to pay) should also play into the credit worthiness of the United States government (and it does - and both the Legislative and Executive branch deserve blame for that).
And Ryan put that blame on the Executive.


Hence why it's being called deceiving.

Paraphrasing Ryan: "Obama promised it wouldn't closed if he was elected and his policies were implemented. Well, the plant is closed, Obama is president, and his policies were implemented."

The above is all factual, but it's still non-sequitous and deceiving.

PS: GM announced it was closing the plant in June 2008. While it had continuing operations beyond that, the announcement date is generally accepted nomenclature for "closed" in business circles.
I see your point so maybe, Obama shouldn't have used such promising rhetoric.


Yawn, more of the "let me twist myself in pretzels to argue a point no one except for the most ardent red and blue teamers care about".

The only people truly upset by his comment are those who sport the Red-Team starter jacket and, like yourself, seem hell-bent on rigging the game in favor of people like me. I don't even want the game rigged in favor of me, so why are you so concerned with it?

Guess what? Those of us who are successful are so because we're smart enough to see the benefits of individual ambition & accomplishment AND community resources and spending. A business destination with no roads leading in has no customers.

And your argument that "government isn't free" so "taxpayers build that" ignores fundamental economics and the fact that some enterprises can increase the marginal value of their output by being a monopoly (natural monopolies, we call these).

What makes America great isn't that it is a completely laissez-faire system and it's not a complete centralized-control system. The hybrid model is, in fact, what has allowed the US to thrive relative to the rest of the world. Every economist will tell you that the free-market isn't perfect, and it fails. The role of government for some (including me) is to improve market outcomes in the event of those failures.
Having said all that, what's the difference between your successful business and the unsuccessful business on the same roads, across the same bridges, and whose owners were taught by the same teachers? Could it be that you are just "so smart" and and that you "worked harder" than the unsuccessful business owner?

Whatever excuse you come up with, it all falls back on the ingenuity, drive, and business acumen of the owner.

You succeed, where others fail, because of your effort not because of the resources available to everyone.


Actually, the fact remains that Obamacare purports to reduce Medicare expenditures by $716 billion, because they won't be necessary. There is a huge difference between that and your statement above. And fact remains that this is the same kind of savings the Ryan plan proposes.

Whether or not Obamacare (or RyanCare, or anything else you want to plug in) actually accomplishes that is another matter.
Well the Romney Plan doesn't propose cutting it at all and I'm not sure how $716 billion isn't necessary in a program that is near insolvency.


As is the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and everyone else who's covered this issue, apparently. How can they all be some pathetically mistaken? They must not read the same blogs as you, written and read by America's only truly enlighten citizenry.
I've not seen one of them ask those saying these things (Romney or Ryan) to fully explain how what they're saying is true. The media isn't what it once was.

[Wild Cobra]

Fox News employs several left-liberal columnists, I suppose, in order to provide plausible deniability about their rightward slant. The linked column would be an example of such; it repeats basically the same talking points as most left-liberal columnists did following the Ryan speech. The author is an unapologetic liberal Democrat.

I've seen this "even Fox News" talking point six or seven places.

Clearly you're a free thinker; you would never parrot whatever your tribal leaders tell you to like those obscurantist right-wingers do.
Yes, this woman is one of Fox's leftist employees. They allow her opinion published just like the conservatives get their material published. There are holes in her analysis if you follow through with them.

[Th'Pusher]

Taibbi's take is always fun. Don't worry red team, he doesn't call them liars and mentions nothing of facts


I didn't watch Mitt Romney's acceptance speech last night. I can't do it: even under normal circumstances, watching politicians of any stripe talk about anything at all makes me unable to sleep. And a convention speech, which is almost always a deeply schizoid address authored by 38 different infighting political consultants and amplified by the heaviest possible doses of network TV's goofball effects and nuclear-powered stagecraft, is generally the most unwatchable of all political performances. So I try always to watch such speeches the next morning, and am just now taking in the Romney address.

The Republican convention in general has been a strange affair. The vibe around Republican politics in general was much happier in the days before the Bush presidency cratered. Republican politics before Bush imploded was a confident brew of guns, Jesus, and Freedom.

A Republican politician's job back then was, if not easy, pretty clear: you bashed welfare queens and free-riders, told tearful stories of fetuses composing operas in the womb, and promised to bomb America's enemies back to the Stone Age. You didn't have to split hairs or hedge bets: you got up on stage, took a baseball bat to liberals and terrorists and other such perverts, and let the momentum of the crowd carry you to victory. You were like Slim Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove, riding high with a nuke between your legs, waving your ten-gallon hat at and going out in a blaze of yeeee-hah!!!s.



Republican politics used to be fun. Even I sort of got into it. When I was undercover working for George W. Bush in a campaign office in Orlando back in 2004, it was a much easier acting job than I expected it to be. You went into the campaign office, sat with the other volunteers, and talked about all the Hollywood actors you wished would keep their damned mouths shut. Any liberal who claims there isn't lots of fun to be had making fun of liberals is a goddmaned liar. Anyway, one of my fellow volunteers back then gave me a copy of Shut Up and Sing – not the Dixie Chicks documentary, the Laura Ingraham book – and that quickly replaced Lawrence Taylor's Over the Edge as my go-to bathroom reader. It was crazy, paranoid stuff, but that sort of politics had a reassuringly simple quality to it; it was dependable, like a rock.

But today's Republican politics are totally confused. The Romney-Ryan speeches were a bizarre exercise in tightroping and hair-splitting. Ryan's speech weirdly went after the Democrats for a plan to cut Medicare that he himself had rejected for not cutting enough – and then in the same speech went after the Obama vision of society that is a "dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us."

The Ryan VP pick was clearly a calculated gamble. Like the Palin pick, it was intended to fire up the base by bringing in a young, fresh-faced politician with hardcore conservative credentials. That would help bring out the red-state die-hard vote for Romney, a onetime pro-choice creator of a state-run health care program who struggled with exactly those voters in his primary battles against the likes of newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

But Ryan's conservative cred derives almost entirely from his strike-hard-strike-first-no-mercy-sir reputation as a ruthless chainsawer of all government-funded "waste," including sacred-cow entitlements like Medicare. If he was coming on board, surely it was to preach the gospel of budget bloodbaths.

So what does Ryan the Vice-Presidential candidate do? He goes to Tampa and spends half his speech doing a Ted Kennedy impersonation, talking about the "obligation we have to our parents and grandparents," pitching his party as the defender of a beloved government entitlement program! "The greatest threat to Medicare," he said, "is Obamacare, and we're going to stop it."

Then, like the Unknown Comic, who used to switch bag-faces mid-routine, he moved right back into his young-Barry Goldwater act, bashing entitlements and the "supervision and sanctimony of the central planners."

Are you confused yet? I was. Is the move here dog-whistling an unspoken promise to the base to slash "entitlements," while somehow retaining Medicare? Or is it dog-whistling an unspoken promise to the base to slash "entitlements," including Medicare?

I couldn't tell. Ultimately I think the answer was actually behind door number three, as in:

My fellow Americans, whatever Barack Obama is doing with Medicare, it's bad, and we promise to reverse it!

(APPLAUSE)

And not only that, we'll go even further in cutting wasteful entitlements from our bloated government budget!

(APPLAUSE)

Does that make logical sense? No. Does it make political sense? Sort of – if your voters either have extremely short attention spans, or they are themselves comfortable with certain minor rhetorical contradictions.

If they're like the Tea Partiers whom I watched in Kentucky lustily cheering Sarah Palin from their Medicare-funded wheelchairs as she railed against government entitlement programs, then a speech like Ryan's works well enough. It just doesn't work quite as well as a speech that doesn't have any contradictions at all – like George Bush's 2004 acceptance speech, cleverly set in post-9/11 New York, in which he promised that electing anyone but himself would result in terrorists running free down the smoldering wreckage of Your Town, U.S.A., followed by prancing sets of gay married actors from Hollywood.

Anyway, when Ryan had the Goldwater side of his paper bag turned to the audience, he railed against Obama's health care program, calling it "two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country."

That line drew genuine cheers from the crowd, especially since it coincided with the ejection of much-despised Code Pink demonstrators from the stadium. But I could swear the cheers were tempered just a little bit at the end when the audience members – even these audience members, even that ridiculous lady wearing the red-white-and-blue "America" vest – slowly remembered that Ryan's running mate had not only proposed but implemented an extremely similar health care program in Massachusetts.

Which brings us to Romney's speech. Romney spent a lot of time talking about his various successes as a businessman. But the only reference to his government experience – his most relevant qualification for this office, remember – came in a moment where he reminded the audience that as governor, he "chose a woman lieutenant governor, a woman chief of staff."

He left out the part where he ran for governor of Massachusetts as a pro-choice centrist who supported the teaching of evolution and the banning of assault rifles. He completely omitted any mention of his own health care program and in fact said exactly two things about health care in the entire speech: he repeated Ryan's line about Medicare, and then promised to repeal "Obamacare."

On the other hand, he mentioned all the women he hired as governor, and in general spent an enormous amount of time talking about women's issues. Which would be great, if it were not for the fact that the reasoning behind this rhetorical decision is so transparent – Romney added to the traditional Republican weakness among female voters when he chose Ryan, whose other major claim to fame as a hardcore conservative is his uncompromising stance on abortion. Ryan's history here is similar to his history on budget cuts: he made himself famous by going further than other pols were willing to go.

He co-sponsored legislation with Todd Akin (who is about as popular with women right now as flesh-eating streptococcus) called the "Sanctity of Human Life Act," which would have given a human fertilized egg "all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood." (I imagine that before Akin's gaffe, the next planned bill would have stripped those same fertilized eggs of Miranda rights). Moreover, Ryan supported the notorious "Let Women Die Act," which would have refused women access to abortion even if her life is in danger.

So to recap: the candidate himself used to be pro-choice, spoke glowingly of his mother's support of abortion rights in his 1994 Senate race against Ted Kennedy, then suddenly became anti-choice in 2006. The VP candidate has been firmly anti-choice his whole career. Yet neither candidate went anywhere near the abortion issue in his speech.

In fact, you could build a walking bridge across the Bering Strait with all the major stuff the two candidates didn't bring up in their speeches. Romney's signature achievement as a politician was his health-care program. Ryan's claim to fame was his budget. But they spent most of their time in their speeches slithering, Catherine-Zeta-Jones-in-Entrapment style, around their own records.



So what did they talk about? The line that astonished me most from Mitt's speech was this one, where he talked about the changes Americans "deserved" and should have gotten during Obama's presidency:

You deserved it because you worked harder than ever before during these years. You deserved it because, when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out moving lights, and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour, benefits, you took two jobs at $9 an hour…

Are you kidding? Mitt Romney was the guy that fired you from that $22.50 an hour job, and helped you replace it with two $9 an hour jobs! He was a pioneer in the area of eliminating the well-paying job with benefits and replacing it with the McJob that offered no benefits at all. One of the things that killed him in the Senate race against Ted Kennedy were Kennedy ads that reminded voters that Mitt's takeovers resulted in slashed wages and lost benefits. He was exactly the guy that eliminated that classic $22.50 manufacturing job, like in the case of GST Steel, where Bain took over with an initial investment of $8 million, paid itself a $36 million dividend, ended up walking away with $50 million, and left GST saddled with over $500 million in debt. 750 of those well-paying jobs were lost.

What kinds of jobs were left for those fired workers to look for? Well, in the best-case scenario, you might have found one at Ampad, another Bain takeover target, where workers had their pay slashed from $10.22 to $7.88 an hour, tripled co-pays, and eliminated the retirement plan.

So a guy who eliminated hundreds of $22 an hour jobs and slashed hundreds more jobs to below $9 an hour blasts Barack Obama for not giving you the better life you deserved, after you lost your $22/hour job and had to take two $9/hour jobs. Are we all high or something? Did that really just happen?

Just a lame pair of speeches, overall. They made me miss George Bush. At least the Bush/Cheney/Rove era offered a clear ideological choice – and some pretty passionate, ingeniously-delivered political theater, comparatively. Where's the blood and guts, the bomb-‘em-till-they're-crispy war calls? Where are the screw-the-poor tirades, the "you can pry it from my cold dead hand" guns-and-liberty crescendos? This stuff is pretty weak beer compared to those days.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mitt-romney-paul-ryan-speeches-make-me-miss-george-bush-20120831#ixzz25AxP1QSA

[Th'Pusher]

How bout this one?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/fact-check-paul-ryan-convention-address/

Redditor discovers Fox News removes trending list from front page because Anti-Ryan article is on top.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/z5vke/fox_news_removes_trending_list_from_front_page/

[Winehole23]

Original story by Scott Douglas, 11:59 am


In an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt last week, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said he's run a sub-3:00 marathon.


In the interview, after Ryan told Hewitt that he ran in high school, Hewitt asked if Ryan still runs. Ryan replied, "Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don't run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or less." When Hewitt asked Ryan what his personal best is, Ryan replied, "Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something."


Runner's World has been unable to find any marathon results by Ryan. Requests for more information from Ryan's Washington and Wisconsin offices, and from the Romney-Ryan campaign, have so far gone unanswered.
If Ryan has broken 3:00, he'd be the fastest marathoner to be on a national ticket. John Edwards has run 3:30 (http://www.runnersworld.com/article/1,7120,s6-243-297--12356-0,00.html); George W. Bush has run 3:44; Sarah Palin has run 3:59 (http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-243-544--13221-0,00.html); and Al Gore has run 4:58.


Ryan isn't the first aspirant for national office to make a hard-to-verify claim about having run a marathon. John Kerry came under scrutiny when he ran for president in 2004 for saying that he'd run the Boston Marathon (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1235989/posts).
The November 2004 issue of Runner's World reported that Kerry had run Boston in the 1970s but gave no supporting details. ESPN looked into the claim and wound up concluding "there's no official record of his feat, and his campaign did not provide further details despite repeated inquiries."
In an e-mail to Runner's World last night, Tom Derderian, author of Boston Marathon (http://www.amazon.com/Boston-Marathon-Centennial-Race-Tom-Derderian/dp/0880114797/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346422214&sr=1-1&keywords=tom+derderian), said, "It is very hard to prove a negative, but in doing my research I read every account in every newspaper about the Boston Marathon. I would have seen and noted that a US Senator ran."


If you have information on Ryan's marathon past, write to Newswire editor Scott Douglas ([email protected]).
http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/

[Winehole23]

Updated 7:20 pm
We have some new information on Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's claim in a radio interview of a sub-3:00 marathon (http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/3229320e-2c55-4122-93f1-2ebe4fbc8663).


A spokesman for the Romney-Ryan campaign e-mailed Runner's World today to say Ryan ran Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, while a college student in 1991.
When asked about Ryan’s finishing time, the spokesman said, "His comments on the [radio] show were the best of his recollection."


Ryan's name does not show up in the 1991 race results provided by Grandma's. Runner's World checked 11 years of results for Grandma's Marathon, from 1988 through 1998, and found a finisher in the 1990 race by the name of Paul D. Ryan, 20, of Minneapolis.
Ryan's middle name is Davis, and he was 20 in 1990. The finishing time listed was 4 hours, 1 minute and 25 seconds.


We are awaiting confirmation from the Ryan camp that the vice presidential nominee is the Paul D. Ryan listed in the race results – and, if he is, whether he ran any other marathons faster than 4:01:25.
http://news.runnersworld.com/files/2012/08/grandmas-results-3-300x285.jpg (http://news.runnersworld.com/files/2012/08/grandmas-results-3.jpg)

Page 33 of the 1990 Grandma's Marathon results, showing a Paul D. Ryan running a 4:01:25. Click to enlarge.

http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08...-300-marathon/ (http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/)

[Winehole23]

verdict from the cynical, highly partisan fact checkers at Runner's World:


Updated 12:29 am


It turns out Paul Ryan has not run a marathon in less than three hours—or even less than four hours.


A spokesman confirmed late Friday that the Republican vice presidential candidate has run one marathon. That was the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, where Ryan, then 20, is listed as having finished in 4 hours, 1 minute, and 25 seconds.

Ryan had said in a radio interview last week (http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/3229320e-2c55-4122-93f1-2ebe4fbc8663) that his personal best was "Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something."


In a statement issued to Runner's World by a spokesman Friday night, Ryan said of his marathon experience:


"The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three. If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight."
http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08...-300-marathon/ (http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/)

[Winehole23]

the relevant dialogue from the Hugh Hewitt show:


HH: Are you still running?
PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don't run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can't do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I've just gotta ask, what's your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes.
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

[Winehole23]

spin away, Red Team

[Winehole23]

:downspin:

[boutons_deux]

More "Repug Facts" as they go after the straw man HUSSEIN.


The Real Obama Needs to Fight Five GOP Myths About the Imaginary Obama


1) The “gutting welfare” myth.

The Romney camp says these ads have produced tremendous responses from focus groups, and it’s easy to see why—the black president giving free stuff to the black moocher class, as they see it. It’s been pretty much universally nailed as a lie. But it’s still a safe bet that a majority of voters don’t yet know it’s a lie. It has the potential to do enormous damage. Obama, and especially trustworthy surrogates, starting with Bill Clinton, need to let people know forcefully next week that it’s false.

2) The Medicare lies.

As I’ve noted many times, what Romney and Paul Ryan are doing here is disingenuous but clever and difficult to rebut. Any senior who’s been paying attention has probably been more or less sold on the idea that people over 55 have nothing to worry about. That isn’t so, as I have written, but the explanation for why is fairly complicated. The lower-hanging fruit is not the Ryan plan but the Romney plan, and Romney, after all, is the nominee. As I explained Thursday, if Romney is going to keep the four big promises he’s made, Medicare is going to get whacked. Not in the 2030s, but during President Romney’s first term. That needn’t be too hard to explain. And Obama should throw in that Real Obama, as opposed to Imaginary Obama, has already saved today’s seniors money by closing the doughnut hole and making certain key preventive-care services for seniors in traditional Medicare free (yes, free).

That’s a word most people grasp pretty easily, I should think.

3) Obama believes that jobs come from government.

This myth is potentially really harmful to Obama, as it fits into various preconceived notions and a lot of claptrap people have been hearing for the last four years. The Real Obama chart, based on statistics, rebuts all that pretty instantly. The public sector grew 4 percent under George W. Bush and has shrunk by 3 percent under Obama, and private-sector hiring under Obama is stronger than under Bush. Again, such information may be better coming from Clinton, or even Charlie Crist, than Obama himself, but the narrative that Obama wants us all to suckle at the public teat all our lives can’t go unanswered.

4) The stimulus was a failure.

Now we’re getting into more controversial territory, and the Obama team probably won’t have the guts to take this on. It should. We can assume that Chicago has been reading The New New Deal, Michael Grunwald’s excellent book arguing that the stimulus largely worked. Grunwald offers a synopsis of the book in a Foreign Policy piece. The big mistake Obama and his people made at the time was promising more than the stimulus delivered. But it did deliver. The claims here must be specific and precise and true, so that when reporters go out to see the new alternative-energy facility in Colorado built with stimulus funds, they’ll report that by gum it exists.
President Barack Obama Debarks Air Force One

President Barack Obama walks down the stairs during his arrival on Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2012. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo)

5) Obama is a nice kid in over his head.

Smacking this down may be the most important of all. This is the famous “permission” line, that is, giving 2008 Obama supporters permission to walk away without feeling guilty. It’s aimed straight at undecided voters, whereas most of the Republicans’ other nonsense is directed to their base. Obama needs a strong troika here: “I don’t think I was in over my head when I announced my support for marriage equality, which my advisers told me was a risky thing to do and I shouldn’t go there. I don’t think I was in over my head when we passed the most meaningful legislation to protect consumers since the New Deal. And I humbly suggest that I wasn’t in over my head on May 1, 2011, when I ordered the mission on which our brave SEALs got Osama bin Laden.” He’ll bring down the house, and the line would be replayed a thousand times.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/02/the-real-obama-needs-to-fight-five-gop-myths-about-the-imaginary-obama.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet

[Wild Cobra]

http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08...-300-marathon/ (http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/)
Cellular One was around in 1990?

[scott]

Cellular One was around in 1990?


In 1977, the American Radio Telephone Service and Motorola formed Cellular One to offer service to the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., area. In 1984, cellular service began in the Baltimore/DC area.
The Baltimore/DC service, and the rights to the name Cellular One, were sold from Metromedia to Southwestern Bell in 1987. In 1989, Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems and McCaw Communications formed a partnership called Cellular One Group. In 1992, Vanguard Cellular Systems joined the group. In 1995, Cellular One opened up membership in the partnership to all A-side providers. Under the U.S. AMPS allocation, A-side providers were independent wireless operators, while B-side providers were usually affiliates of the local landline telephone company. A new slogan was also developed, "Cellular One: Clear Across America", recognizing cellular's national reach, although there were very few national plans at this time. In 1995, Cellular One affiliates had over 5 million customers and affiliates' towers served approximately 69% of the U.S. population.[1] Also in 1995, SNET joined the partnership. Not all A-side carriers participated: most notably, L.A. Cellular, in the nation's second largest market, Los Angeles, never participated in Cellular One, and did not have agreements with Cellular One for some time. AT&T purchased McCaw Cellular in 1994; shortly thereafter, AT&T renamed the former McCaw providers "AT&T Wireless" and dropped out of the partnership. Western Wireless joined the partnership in 1999.
When SBC Communications (which purchased SNET in 1998) and BellSouth merged their wireless operations into Cingular Wireless in 2001, the Cellular One group name became the sole property of Western Wireless. In 2004 Cingular merged with AT&T Wireless, which had acquired Vanguard in 1999, formally reuniting the original Cellular One partnership into a single company.

[boutons_deux]

http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/

Ryan admits he lied about his marathon time. Repugs think they are "entitled" to make up shit and spew it as fact. How naive.

[Winehole23]

The Dutch have a system intended to avoid the sort of fact-free insult-hurling that has plagued America's presidential race this year. The discussion in America over the rival candidates' budget plans has taken place in a vague and undefined discursive space, largely because the Romney-Ryan campaign does not actually have a budget plan. Mr Romney says he will keep the Bush tax cuts, slash income tax rates across the board by 20%, eliminate capital-gains tax for income under $100,000 per year, maintain defence spending, restore the $716 billion over ten years which the Obama (and Ryan) budget would have cut from Medicare outlays, and shrink the budget deficit by closing tax preferences, none of which he specifies. This doesn't add up, as the Center for Tax Policy (http://taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/romney-plan.cfm) found last month, but it's hard to say just how it will fail to add up, because Mr Romney has no item-by-item budget plan; we really have no idea how much he proposes to spend if he's elected.


In the Dutch electoral system, this can't happen. Two months before the elections, every political party is expected to submit a detailed budget plan to a non-partisan agency called the Central Plan Bureau (CPB), which plays a role similar to the Congressional Budget Office in America. The CPB produces an analysis of the economic consequences of those budget plans. The effects are assessed in detail for 2013-2017, and there's also a prognosis for 2040 to discourage parties from larding up their budgets with short-term candy that leads to negative long-term consequences. The CPB's report came out Monday, and most parties had their strong and weak points. Of the two parties most likely to win the elections, the Liberals did well on deficit-cutting and long-term job creation but hiked income inequality and hurt household purchasing power; the Socialists did well on purchasing power and jobs in the short run but had low employment growth in the long run.


The Socialists, however, were angry about a separate point: the CPB found their plans to reduce free-market competition in the health sector would lead to waiting lists. The Socialists say this isn't true, that it depends how much you're willing to spend on the sector, and they say that question doesn't fall within the CPB's remit; they're not health-care experts, they're economic experts, and they're expected to simply report what the economic effects would be. That disagreement came on top of Socialist anger over another health-care clash during a candidate debate last Sunday. In the debate, the Socialist candidate, Emile Roemer, started to lay into the Liberal candidate and current premiere, Mark Rutte, for proposing to increase out-of-pocket expenses in health-insurance plans. Mr Rutte immediately denied that he had proposed to do so. Mr Roemer, like most political observers who believed the Liberals' plans to raise the out-of-pocket limit were public knowledge, was flummoxed. It turned out after the debate that Mr Rutte had worked out a complicated theory that his party's plans constituted a transfer of some types of expenses from one category to another, rather than a hike in out-of-pocket expenses as such; but fact-checkers ruled this claim was false, and that the Liberal proposal was basically a hike in the out-of-pocket limit. In the meantime, however, Mr Rutte had effectively shut down Mr Roemer's attack in front of prime-time viewers. Mr Roemer was widely agreed to have lost the debate, and the Socialists have declined in the polls this week.


The upshot is that, just as in America (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/politics/ryans-speech-contained-a-litany-of-falsehoods.html), the Dutch media are tossing around the question of whether neutral evaluations in the political campaign are worth anything. Some question the usefulness of the economic models the CPB uses, which (like all economic models) have never successfully predicted what the economy will do several years down the road. Others wonder whether the Dutch public pays any attention to fact-checkers, or whether a politician is better off scoring a telling point even if it turns out not to be true. Hence the headline of the Volkskrant article, which refers to the controversy over the Republican campaign in America but might as well be talking about the Dutch one: "The results count, not the truth".


What the comparison with the American example points out, though, is that, for all the current media scepticism, the mechanism of the CPB evaluation dramatically raises the caliber of the electoral debate in the Netherlands. Obviously such assessments are to a large extent artificial: the actual budget of the Dutch government will look nothing like any of the proposals submitted by the parties, because the government will be a coalition of several parties, and the budget will be the result of a negotiating process. The same thing happens in America, where the president's proposed budget bears only a vague relationship to what ultimately emerges from Congress. Nonetheless, by forcing each party to commit to hard numbers in its budget proposals, the CPB evaluation tethers the Dutch political debate to fiscal reality. Even the Socialists, the party most often accused of fiscal irresponsibility, have presented a plan full of cuts and tax hikes that eliminates the budget deficit by 2017. Arguably, this bias towards austerity is pro-cyclical and a bad thing in a liquidity trap; perhaps the Dutch system encourages too much probity, but that's a separate subject. The point is, it is simply impossible, in the Netherlands, for a political party to end up systematically ignoring math and accounting the way the Republicans have at least since George Bush's campaign in 2000.


Could we institute something like this in America? No. We can't. The reason is that in America, there are only two significant political parties. It's impossible for a neutral arbiter to preserve its public legitimacy when ruling on subjects of partisan dispute in an election if there are only two disputing parties. Neither side will accept the referee's judgments. The reason it works, for the moment, in the Netherlands is that there are currently ten parties represented in parliament, four to six of which are major contenders. That spreads the political polarities out in different directions and creates more space for neutrality.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/08/fact-checkers

[coyotes_geek]

Love the concept, but there would only be me and about 8 other people in the country who would actually interested in it.

[Winehole23]

and, as pointed out in the piece, the two party system pretty much precludes any verdict of neutral referees being widely accepted.

[coyotes_geek]

Yep. The problem goes even beyond that though. The way campaigns are run these days the worst thing you can do if you're trying to get elected is go public with an actual plan. Heaven forbid you put out a real plan and risk the possibility of a swing voter finding something they don't like in there.

[Winehole23]

yep

[Winehole23]

political commitment in our system is pretty much faith-based, but in a way, it almost has to be. rational evaluation before the election is more or less impossible because both parties hide the ball. ideological pietism has replaced rational self-interest. I'm very doubtful this situation is reversible.

[EVAY]

The problem isn't the jerk in the oval office.

The problem, as the Bush administration ooh so aptly demonstrated, is the kinds of people that person will populate the goverment with.

Sorry, the extreme right wing in this country will scream for, and get, a lot of the reins of power in a Romney administration.

If you don't see that happening, you need to keep reading, mr. floater.

This.

In a nutshell, this is EXACTLY the problem.

[Winehole23]

so, the jerk in the Oval office is the problem, because he can appoint odious bastards.

[TeyshaBlue]

Yeah, I was there on page 2.:lol

[Winehole23]

needed reiterating

[Winehole23]

a fanatical and extreme minority continues to wage a pitiless jihad against false distinctions . . .

[EVAY]

so, the jerk in the Oval office is the problem, because he can appoint odious bastards.

Well, WH, I read the comment from RG to mean that the personage of the guy in the WhiteHouse is not so much the problem as the people of his party (whichever party) who populate the executive branch departments responsible for interpreting the laws and directives of the executive branch.

In my opinion, it is not only the FEMA or Defense Department (Rumsfeld) or the
Justice Dep't. (Holder) or the HHS Dep't (Sibelius) per se, but the fact that the party's big guns have so much say about who gets in those jobs.

This may indeed be a distinction without a difference in the elevated view of you and TB, but I think it one worth making.

And it is one that leaves people like me not having a clue who to vote for in the upcoming election...Obama who has already made some truly boneheaded
appointments and will be in a position of not being beholden to the voters the next time he makes such appointments (if he gets reelected), or Romney, who will undeniably be beholden to the Sheldon Adelsons and the Koch brothers and the Perry Homes of this election.

I know that you advocate a third party vote...but for those of us who TRY to pick between one or another candidate who is actually going to be in a position of governing, there has to be a reason somewhere.

Yourall's condescension is really showing this morning.

[TeyshaBlue]

Yourall's condescension is really showing this morning.

STFU. I was on my hands and knees for 3 straight days installing flooring.:ihit
I'll damned sure be cranky and condescending when I wanna.:nope

:p:

[Winehole23]

apologies, then. no offense meant, but the distinction does seem artificial. understood that people have to pick out good guys and bad guys or at least, the less worse alternative. I prefer neither, but would foist that preference on nobody . . .

[EVAY]

STFU. I was on my hands and knees for 3 straight days installing flooring.:ihit
I'll damned sure be cranky and condescending when I wanna.:nope

:p:

How tempting it is to quote one of Bouton's favorite directives to you at this moment.

[EVAY]

I'll damned sure be cranky and condescending when I wanna.:nope

:p:

Then you should have no problem having it noticed.