Until we learn more, I don’t want to say anything about the shooting in Colorado, except that it makes me very sad.
So let’s go on to better news. Campaigning in Florida yeterday, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney for his support of Paul Ryan’s budget and his plan to cut taxes for the rich even more than they’ve been cut already. Greg Sargent writes,
Ed Kilgore and Jonathan Chait note that this is the start of a new and important phase in the campaign, i.e., the battle over the Paul Ryan budget, which has become the blueprint for the GOP economic agenda and the larger set of values and priorities Republicans would bring to tax reform, entitlements, and balancing the budget.
Keep in mind: A focus group convened by the pro-Obama Priorities U.S.A. found that voters simply refused to believe that Romney or Ryan would really transform Medicare into a quasi-voucher program while also cutting taxes for the rich. This is what the assault on Romney’s Bain years is really about. It’s an effort to establish an image of Romney that will make it easier for voters to accept that this is indeed the agenda Romney has embraced and would carry out as president.
President O is a man who can play a long game, which is why I’m calling this good news. He is capable of tying the Mittens crew into so many knots they won’t be recognizable by the time they get to the convention.
But be sure to read “Nobody Takes Conservative Wingnuttery at Face Value” by Kevin Drum. Mittens can pile one lie on top of another and be believed — and news media usually gives him a pass — but the truth is so outrageous many won’t believe it.
The part about cutting marginal tax rates to benefit the wealthy is right on Mitt’s official web site. The socialists at CNNMoney explain that Mitt’s plan would add $3.4 trillion to the deficit. Mittens says vaguely that the cuts would be paid for by “curbs on personal tax deductions, exemptions and credits,” but he refuses to say what those would be and who would be hurt by the “curbs.”
Mitt’s plan for replacing “Obamacare” on his website are the usual little ineffective tweaks righties have been promoting for years — high-risk pools, reinsurance, risk adjustment, tort reform, etc. Basically, this approach could result in lower health insurance premiums for healthy people — for a while, anyway — but make it financially ruinous to get sick.
As for Paul Ryan’s absurd Medicare plan — again, it’s right on Mitt’s website — this is a quote —
Medicare is reformed as a premium support system, meaning that existing spending is repackaged as a fixed-amount benefit to each senior that he or she can use to purchase an insurance plan.
A voucher, in other words.
Eat it, Mittens.
I kind of thought that this is where the Obama team was headed.
First, paint Mitt as a rich, out of touch, Gordon Gekko clone, who fires people, outsources their jobs, and has shell-companies and off-shore accounts to avoid paying his full share of taxes, and also to hide his asset’s, so no one knows how much he’s really worth.
And then, show voters that Mitt will do everything he can for people like himself, to have them pay even less in taxes, be less accountable, and have more assets – at the expense of everyone else – and also rack-up trillions of dollars in debt doing so.
And that he’ll pay for all of that by using “Privatizing Ryan’s” plan to “Throw Mama Form the Train!”
If Mitt has a secret lair on an island somewhere, he’d be a pretty damn good Bond Supervillain: Bain Hedgefinger.
Oh, and my thoughts and condolences to all of the people affected by this tragedy.
What a horrible, awful, and truly evil, thing to do!
You have to assume that there are ways to reach people. So, OK, people have a hard time believing how outrageous Republican policies are, but you don’t just throw up your hands. You figure out how to show them.
I imagine this has something to do with the incipient spinal growth the Democrats are showing on the question of the Bush tax cuts. The way Obama is framing this is that he’s pushing for a slight tax increase on the highest earners. This message is slightly muddled by the fact that everyone’s tax cuts are set to expire, so it help Obama immeasurably to have Romney out there calling for even yet still more tax cuts.
Instead of, “Shall we let everyone’s tax cuts expire, or just the top earners?” the question becomes, “Shall we raise taxes slightly on millionaires and billionaires, or shall we cut them even further? Oh, and by the way, we’re going to have to gut the Pentagon if we do cut them.”
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be surprised if Romney tries to weasel out of having any debates, but he’s not going to get away with it if he does. At some point he’s going to have to say himself, one way or another, whether he supports the Ryan budget. People might not believe you or me if we tell them Romney wants to scrap Medicare, but what if he’s put in a position where he has to tell them himself?
This is exactly my experience talking with my mother-in-law, a long time republican, about what the Walker election would do to her children and grand-children. We kept saying he would end collective bargaining, cut funding to schools which would end up meaning cuts in salary on a large scale for the kids and larger class sizes and less motivated teachers for the grand kids. She kept saying, “He won’t do that”, or, “He can’t do that”. He, obviously, did. She no longer supports Walker, but why don’t people believe that politicians will attempt to do what they said they would do. Obama said he would do something about health care, and he did. People seemed shocked that he would do this. But I believe you’re right, otherwise why would so many old people continue to vote for politicians that have baldly claimed (like Romney), that they are going to cap Medicare payments and curb Social Security spending? All while giving millionaires tax cuts. Why would you vote for these people?
As for Romney blurb on what he would do to Medicare; that’s some bigtime, jujitsu, English language malfeasance. In other words, how to write a sentence so that the majority of people who read it will have no idea what you just said. They come away thinking, “He’s going to do something with Medicare, I think.”
bucekyblue,
“Why would you vote for these people?”
C’mon!
You know!
“N*GGER’s, Sp*C’S, GOD, GUNS, AND GAYS!”
It’s really THAT simple.
I am a senior on medicare. Often I blog where Republicans comment. I say that when Ryan ends medicare and gives me a $6000 coupon, my lifespan will be short. I end saying “free to die”. They seem to not believe me. At first I thought they did not care (they may not). Glad Obama is taking this educational step now on the Ryan Budget. Romney owns Clear Channel and Rush. He understands the media game and how he can spin it to his base.
My deepest sympathy to those dealing with the Colorado shooting.No matter what we find out in the days to come about the shooter it will never undo this for those it took and those it left behind.
It appears at this time they are saying this shooter had stockpiled Ammo. If this turns out to be the case when all the facts are on the table and the larger picture is painted, it will be yet another event that makes the case for what I have said before. I will agree to ones right to bare arms. Guns don’t kill many people BULLETS do. There is no constitutional right what so ever to bullets, let alone stock piles of them and there is NOTHING that prohibits the right to regulate their sale. There should be a regulation that every bullet is numbered and sold to a person so that they can trace a bullet back to a person and there could also be regulation how many a person can buy to avoid these “stockpile” situations. Are you comfortable that your neighbor in the next apartment may have a house filled with Ammo? what if there was a fire for heaven sake? If the government kept track of such things a stock piling of this nature would arouse a second look and perhaps this could have been prevented.
Think of it this way: If bullets with out ID numbers were outlawed tomorrow then good law abiding gun people would replace them with NEW bullets – thus the manufactures would score big time and all they would have to do is add numbers to those already made.
But personally I think outlaw bullets all together. Nope it wont solve the problem tomorrow but people will run out of Ammo some day then the problem would at least be solved someday!- it would never be ended any other way and if it is not going to end, it’s all just lip service to say how sad these events are when we do nothing with any direction of EVER stopping it- why say a collective sorry when we really are not?That is just as sad as the event it self. How many more zimmermans have to tell us “it was Gods will” ? No kidding even if only one bullet was taken away a day in the whole country wouldn’t it be worth the life it could potentially save?