…
“They just perform flawlessly night after night. Uh, I can’t always say the same, but here’s the good news: we’ve got a better vision for our country. We have a better plan for the next four years… We’ve got some work to do. We’ve got an election to win. Everything we fought for in 2008 is on the line here in 2012 and I need your help to finish what we started.” — President Obama (via: kileyrae)
From ABC’s This Week transcript (h/t: politicususa):
STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you make the math work without eliminating the big deductions that middle-class families rely on?
RYAN: Well, first of all, that — those claims have been pretty discredited. There have been five different studies –
STEPHANOPOULOS: How have they been discredited?
RYAN: — that show — that this — that this plan works. So the analysis you’re citing wasn’t even an analysis of the Romney plan.
But here’s the point I am trying to make here, George. We think the secret to economic growth is lower tax rates for families and successful small businesses by plugging loopholes.
Now the question is, not necessarily what loopholes go, but who gets them. High-income earners use most of the loopholes. That means they can shelter their income from taxation. But if you take those loopholes, those tax shelters away from high-income earners, more of their income is subject to taxation. And that allows us to lower tax rates on everybody — small businesses, families, economic growth.
Here’s where the president wants to take the country. He wants to add a job-killing small-business tax increase on top of the current code, add even more loopholes and deductions to the code, more Washington picking winners and losers. That will crush jobs. You have to remember, George, that most of our small businesses, they pay their taxes as individuals. Most of our jobs come from these successful small businesses. So we’ve shown — look, the Princeton study, the Harvard analysis, they have shown that you can lower tax rates, broaden the tax base, and, yes, there is still room left for broad-based policies that the middle class enjoy so that nobody has a tax increase. We just stop picking winners and losers in the tax code.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But, Congressman, as you know –
RYAN: When Reagan did this, it worked –
STEPHANOPOULOS: — many say it’s difficult –
RYAN: Go ahead, George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: — to accept your word if you’re not going to specify which tax loopholes you’re willing to close. Don’t voters have a right to know which loopholes you’re going to go after?
RYAN: So Mitt Romney and I, based on our experience, think the best way to do this is to show the framework, show the outlines of these plans, and then to work with Congress to do this. That’s how you get things done. The other thing, George, is–
STEPHANOPOULOS: Isn’t that a secret plan?
RYAN: — we don’t want to — no, no. No, no. What we don’t want is a secret plan. What we don’t want to do is cut some backroom deal like ObamaCare, and then hatch (ph) it (ph) to the country.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But why not specify the –
RYAN: We want to do this –
STEPHANOPOULOS: — loopholes now?
RYAN: — out in the open –
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not say right now –
RYAN: — because we want to do this –
(CROSSTALK)
RYAN: — we want to have this — George, because we want to have this debate in the public. We want to have this debate with Congress. And we want to do this with the consent of the elected representatives of the people, and figure out what loopholes should stay or go and who should or should not get them.
And our priorities are high-income earners should not get these kinds of loopholes. And we should have broad-based policies that go to middle-class taxpayers, to make sure we can advance things that we care about, like charities. But that is a debate we shouldn’t cut in a back room, shouldn’t hatch a secret plan like ObamaCare. We should do it out in the public view where the public can participate.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, having it in public before the election so voters can have that information before they make up their minds.
RYAN: We think the best way to get — look, I’ve been in Congress a number of years. I’ve been on the Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. And we think the best way to do this is to get this framework in place, and then negotiate, work with Democrats, work with people across the aisle, have these kinds of hearings, have this conversation to get this objective.
There are really only two ways to look at this refusal to specify which loopholes they plan to do away with:
1) they really have no plan, no idea what they’re going to do — they might as well say they want to ride a unicorn over Rainbow Bridge to Ice Cream Sundae Land and if you vote for them, you can go too. Or,
2) Lyin’ Paul Ryan is asking that you trust him and Etch-a-Sketch. Just trust that they’ll be looking out for YOUR best interests if they’re elected. And pay no attention to the fact that their budget doesn’t add up with any arithmetic in the known universe — or that those tax cuts for the rich (which Romney says are not tax cuts for the rich) will have to be paid for somehow.
For the record, yesterday in an interview with Mitt Romney, David Gregory got no information from Romney either, on the Secret-Awesome Romney Plan or the loopholes he plans to shut down.
Here’s the truth of the matter:
image: thepoliticalfreakshow
Just before the Supreme Court issues its ruling this week on the Affordable Care Act, Think Progress reminds us What you would miss about Obamacare – What happens if the Supreme Court strikes whole or parts of Obamacare? These popular provisions would be lost:
- Access to health insurance for 30 million Americans and lower premiums.
- Insurers’ inability to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.
- Affordable health care for lower-income Americans.
- Investments in women’s health.
- Young adults’ ability to stay on their parents’ health care plans.
- Temporary coverage for the sickest Americans.
Read more about what you’d miss at ThinkProgress.
RELATED: An explanation of the Affordable Care Act that’s simple enough for a five-year-old to understand
WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY—————————–—
MITT ROMNEY on the other hand, is proposing the exact opposite. His tax plan would give massive tax cuts to the rich. (The top 0.1% for example, would recieved a $264,000 tax cut.) Meanwhile, in a closed-door fundraiser, Romney revealed he planned to make massive reductions in education spending. He is also proposing cutting funding for infrastructure, including the possible elimination of the Department of Housing and Urban development. – ThinkProgress
THE REPUBLICANS who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization. The House Budget Committee meets Monday to officially act on the measure, the product of six separate House panels. It faces a likely floor vote Thursday. — MiamiHerald
FOX NEWS: Murdoch’s most toxic legacy — My complaint is that Fox pretends very hard to be something it is not, and in the process contributes to the corrosive cynicism that has polarized our public discourse. I doubt that people at Fox News really believe their programming is “fair and balanced” — that’s just a slogan for the suckers — but they probably are convinced that what they have created is the conservative counterweight to a media elite long marinated in liberal bias. They believe that they are doing exactly what other serious news organizations do; they just do it for an audience that had been left out before Fox came along. [...] In the digital era of do-it-yourself news consumption, it is easier than ever to assemble an information diet that simply confirms your prejudices. Traditional news organizations, for all their shortcomings, see it as their mission to provide — and test — the information you need to form intelligent opinions. We aim to challenge lazy assumptions. Fox panders to them. — Bill Keller
MICHELE BACHMANN makes shit up on CBS’ Face the Nation – Bachmann: “Actually, if you look at the 2010 elections, women went Republican. They didn’t go Democrat, and they will this time as well, because women are more concerned about the economy and jobs for themselves, for their husbands, for their children, and that’s not happened because Obama’s broken his promises.”— ThinkProgress
JOHN MCCAIN STILL (hilariously / sadly?) trying to convince us he chose Palin in 2008 because of her ‘qualifications’ — Speaking about presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney selecting of a vice presidential running mate, McCain said on ABC’s “This Week” that the “primary, absolute, most important aspect is if something happened to him, would that person be well qualified to take that place?” “I happen to believe that was the … primary factor on my decision in 2008,” McCain said, “and I know it will be Mitt’s.” – POLITICO | Seriously. Just STFU, McCain. [image: TBogg]
RON PAUL supporters are causing Mitt Romney major headaches in Nevada and Maine.
PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS————————————————————
OBAMA CAMP: You’re damn right we take credit for killing bin Laden – The Obama re-election campaign doesn’t appear fazed by attacks from the right about “politicizing” the killing of Osama bin Laden, and on Sunday remained on offense over what it said was one of the president’s accomplishments. “The president hasn’t been spiking the ball,” said President Obama’s senior campaign adviser David Axelrod on ABC’s This Week. “This was the one-year anniversary. It’s part of his record. And it’s certainly a legitimate part of his record to talk about.” Axelrod said Obama followed through with his promise that catching the al-Qaeda leader would be a top priority. “And then he ordered a mission that was — was, frankly, risky, dangerous,” he said. “Bob Gates said it was one of the most courageous, one of the gutsiest decisions he’s ever seen a president make. And it turned out successfully.” Axelrod was responding to an outside conservative group’s ad — hailed by Karl Rove and widely discussed in the conservative blogosphere — that utilizes ominous music to sharply attack Obama for taking credit for the killing of Bin Laden on the first anniversary last week. “Heroes don’t seek credit,” the ad said. “Heroes don’t politicize their acts of valor.” “Yes, it’s the swift boating of the president,” the leader of the group told Mother Jones. Republicans were particularly peeved that Obama’s campaign commercial about the killing quoted 2007 remarks from his likely opponent Mitt Romney saying it’s “not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars” to catch bin Laden. — TPM
LEARNING FROM THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS?
FRENCH ELECTIONS: “Mr. Normal” defeats “President of the Rich” — The defeat of the most unpopular French president ever to run for re-election was not simply the result of the global financial crisis or eurozone debt turmoil. It was also down to the intense public dislike of the man seen as “President of the Rich” who had swept to victory in 2007 with a huge mandate to change France. Most French people felt he had failed to deliver his promises, and he was criticised for his ostentatious display of wealth, favouring the rich and leaving behind him more than 2.8 million unemployed. Political analysts said anti-Sarkozyism had become a cultural phenomenon in France. The turnout was high, estimated at around 80%. Hollande is the first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand’s re-election in 1988. Thousands of cheering supporters, including many intellectuals and arts figures, massed at Paris’s Place de la Bastille, a flashpoint of the 1789 French revolution, where the left celebrated Mitterrand’s first historic victory in 1981. [...] Hollande’s manifesto is based on scrapping Sarkozy’s tax breaks for the rich and levying more from high earners to finance what he deems essential spending, including creating 60,000 posts in France’s under-performing school system. He has pledged to keep the public deficit capped but for his delicate balancing act to work he needs a swift return to growth in France, despite economists warning of over-optimistic official growth forecasts that need to be trimmed. — Raw Story
THE FRENCH ELECTION offers good and bad news for Obama. “For President Obama, the sight of Nicolas Sarkozy, a fellow member of the Presidential class of 2007-2008, being sent packing by French voters will bring mixed feelings…When the campaign turns to questions of economics, what is happening in Europe should provide Obama with plenty of arguments with which to flay his opponents. Republicans say they want to slash government spending and focus on the deficit regardless of the immediate economic situation. The Europeans have carried out that experiment, and, to say the least, it hasn’t turned out very well. From this side of the Atlantic, the American economic recovery seems pretty impressive. After more than three years of economic stagnation, most Europeans would gladly take G.D.P. growth of two-to-three per cent and an unemployment rate of eight per cent.” — John Cassidy in The New Yorker.
WOMEN ARE the richer sex, if by “richer” you mean “making less money.”
I wrote about this subject on Equal Pay Day, before I came across Bryce Covert’s fabulous Nation post “How to Close the Gender Wage Gap In Just Seven Easy* Steps.” (Do read it for serious policy ideas written with verve.) One of her steps: raise the minimum wage. See? Easy! — Are Women the Richer Sex?
Then the round-table discussed it, as if it were anything but a political hit piece in a campaign season. That’s your liberal media, plebs.
What Everyone Should Know About The Secretive Group Trying To Swift Boat Barack Obama
The group’s leader and sole employee, Joel Arends, told Mother Jones, “Yes, it’s the swift boating of the president.”
…
3. Arends also tried to Swift Boat Obama in 2008. Arends, under the auspices of a similar group called “Vets for Freedom,” ran an ad accusing Obama of refusing to meet with wounded soldiers from Illinois. [NPR,7/5/08] …
4. Arends worked as a consultant for the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Properity. “Though he doesn’t list it on his public resume, around 2006 Arends went to work for Craig Dewey, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy outfit that’s Astroturfed everything from the tea party and the Wisconsin union fight to public-school segregation.” The Koch Brothers and their allies have pledged to spend $100 million to defeat Obama. [Mother Jones, 5/4/12; HuffingtonPost, 2/3/12]
7. Arends helped promote a documentary advocating war with Iran. Arends appeared on a panel in South Dakoa promoting the documentary Iranium, which strongly suggests beginning a war with Iran, in March 2011. [Flier; ThinkProgress, 11/3/11]
8. Veterans for A Strong American is fully endorsed by Karl Rove. The man known as “Bush’s Brain” tweeted his support of their first web ad. [Twitter,5/3/12]
Because, seriously:
image: phroyd
Won’t someone think of Republican white men? Oh, wait…
If you feel like the Sunday morning political talk shows are overrun by Republican politicians, their surrogates and other right-wing spinners, you’re actually right, according to a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group. FAIR’s magazine, Extra! tracked the breakdown of guests featured in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions on the four main Sunday morning talk shows, ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday” from June 2011 to March 2012. The results skewed heavily Republican, white and male, with only token representation by blacks and Latinos, and virtually no appearances by guests outside of one of the two national political parties.
[...] It’s worth noting, also, that the liberals typically presented on these programs are mostly centrists with very few out-and-out progressives, leading FAIR to quip that “corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists.” Women and persons of color were wildly underrepresented in round tables. Women guests made up a mere 29 percent of panelists. Roundtable guests were 85 percent white, with 11 percent of guests being African-American and 3 percent Latino.
In a diverse nation, with women comprising just over 50% of the population, why do Republican white men dominate our national media — still?
If you’re so inclined to contact the conservative white men who host the Sunday shows that celebrate conservative white men and their many opinions about non-white people and women (among other things), here’s contact information:
Sunday morning TV roundup: Middle aged white men who have never been To #Egypt share their insights. — @BorowitzReport
But it’s worse than that.
Only middle aged Republican white men who have never been to Egypt share their insights this morning:
Face the Nation has John McCain giving us informed analysis of the situation in Egypt.
This Week has Ehud Barak, New Gingrich, and Tim Pawlenty giving us informed analysis of the situation in Egypt.
Meet the Press has Boehner, Schilling, and Atlanta’s Mayor Reed giving us informed analysis of the situation in Egypt.
Remarkably, no national Democrats will appear.
Document the atrocities!
When will all this liberal media bias stop?
Regarding Joe Barton’s apology to BP this week, this morning White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told Jake Tapper on ABC’s This Week:
USAToday
“That’s not a political gaffe. Those were prepared remarks. That is a philosophy,” said Emanuel.
“That is an approach — they see the aggrieved party here as BP, not the fishermen. Remember, this is not just one person. Rand Paul running for Senate in Kentucky. What did he say?
He said, the way BP was being treated was un-American. Other members of the Republican leadership have come to the defense of BP and attacked the administration for forcing them to set up an escrow account and fund it to the level of $20 billion. These aren’t political gaffes,” Emanuel continued.
“I think what Joe Barton did is remind the American people, in case they forgot, this is how Republicans would govern,” he said.
*BP 114 = 114 members of the Republican Study Committee opposed to the president’s $20-billion escrow fund for oil spill victims.
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[Rawstory]
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On on ABC Sunday (see VIDEO here):
Conservative columnist George Will seemed to take Maher’s words personally. “Mr. Maher, just said — if i heard him right — that conservatives basically are racists and like government intrusion only against people that aren’t white,” said Will.
“Let me defend myself,” countered Maher. “I would never say and I have never said, because it’s not true that Republicans, all republicans are racists. That would be silly and wrong. But now days, if you are racist, you’re probably a Republican. And that is quite different,” explained Maher.
But that wasn’t a topic that ABC’s Jake Tapper was willing to cover. “That’s a whole other round table conversation,” Tapper said as he quickly changed the subject.
I don’t agree with Maher on many things but on this statement, I can’t disagree. At all.
via Crooks & Liars
• Imagine if the Tea Party was black
Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose…
