Grapes of Wrath

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Fish kills? I was cruising around looking for news this morning, and I kept coming across stories about fish kills. Apparently, in many parts of the country dead fish are washing up on riverbanks and beaches wholesale. Here are just a couple of these stories, one from Texas —

Thousands of dead fish are washing ashore along the Texas coast from the Colorado River to Galveston Island and Parks and Wildlife biologists suspect low oxygen levels off shore may be to blame.

— and here’s the situation in Iowa —

In Iowa, about 58,000 fish died along a 42-mile stretch of the Des Moines River, according to state officials, and the cause of death appeared to be heat. Biologists measured the water at 97 degrees in multiple spots.

If you do a news google for “fish kill” you get recent news stories from all over the country about fish dying in rivers, big and small; ponds, lakes, and oceans. Fish kills are nothing new, but usually they happen more randomly.

OK, one more —

In Illinois, heat and lack of rain has dried up a large swath of Aux Sable Creek, the state’s largest habitat for the endangered greater redhorse, a large bottom-feeding fish, said Dan Stephenson, a biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

“We’re talking hundreds of thousands (killed), maybe millions by now,” Stephenson said. “If you’re only talking about game fish, it’s probably in the thousands. But for all fish, it’s probably in the millions if you look statewide.”

And it struck me that if ever a situation deserved a biblical write-up, America in the Age of Global Climate Change is it. Something like,

“And the LORD saw the children of Columbus fouling their green land with many carbon emissions; and He brought forth scientists to preach to the people to change their ways. And some heeded the scientists and the prophet Al Gore and wished to reduce their carbon footprints and develop alternative energies. But many others were deceived by the Koch demons, and they laughed at the prophecy and chanted, drill baby drill. And, verily, the LORD sent a mighty heat wave, and drought, and boiled the fish in the rivers and burned the corn in the fields, and threatened the children of Columbus with rising food prices. Yet the evil children turned up their air conditioners and refused to notice the signs.”

Stuff like this happens over and over again in the Bible. You’d think people who claim to read the Bible would notice the pattern.

Which $700 Billion?

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Today’s Romney-Ryan-Republican demagoguery is that President Obama cut $700 billion from Medicare. Yesterday when he officially announced that he was adding Paul Ryan to the ticket, Mittens said,

“Unlike the current president, who has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion, we will preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security.”

And Mr. Caterpillar went further —

“This president stole — he didn’t cut Medicare — he stole $700 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “If any person in this entire debate has blood on their hands in regard to Medicare, it’s Barack Obama. He’s the one that’s destroying Medicare.”

The old lie was that Obama had cut $500 billion from Medicare, and I wondered where they got the new number. I saw it attributed to a new revised analysis of the Affordable Care Act by the Congressional Budget Office, done after the recent Supreme Court decision on the ACA. I found the analysis, dated July 2012, but it didn’t seem to say much about Medicare.

But then I found “Letter to the Honorable John Boehner providing an estimate for H.R. 6079, the Repeal of Obamacare Act,” dated July 24, 2012. Boehner had requested a revision on the budget impact of repealing the ACA.

So the CBO wrote back and said, dude, repealing Obamacare will cost us big time. It would add $109 billion to the federal deficit during the period 2013 to 2022. And then it said,

The ACA also includes a number of other provisions related to health care that are estimated to reduce net federal outlays (primarily for Medicare). By repealing those provisions, H.R. 6079 would increase other direct spending in the next decade by an estimated $711 billion.

And that’s where they got the $700 billion. If repealing Obamacare would add $700 billion to Medicare spending, it must be that Obamacare is draining $700 billion out of Medicare spending. Except, it isn’t. No programs are being cut; the the $700 billion represent savings in cost made possible by Obamacare.

For example, when the individual mandate kicks in in 2014, about 30 million more Americans will get health insurance who don’t have it now. That means hospitals won’t be stuck with so many unpaid bills, which will save them much money. The Obama administration used that to negotiate a reduction in Medicare hospital reimbursement rate. That’s a chunk of the $700 billion. Ending the overpayments to Medicare Advantage is another chunk. There are several other such chunks that should make it possible to run Medicare with less money.

The savings are to keep Medicare solvent. No benefits are being cut. The ACA is not taking money away from Medicare and giving it to some other program. Now, it’s possible that when all the pieces are in motion it will not work as planned, but to say that the $700 billion is being cut out of Medicare to fund “Obamacare” is just dishonest.

Paul Ryan’s budget, on the other hand, cuts just as much out of Medicare to help fund tax cuts for the wealthy.

We’re going to be hearing all about the awful $700 billion over the next few days, if not weeks. I just thought we all ought to be clear about what’s being discussed.

Way to Go, Fetus People

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I keep hearing about states like Mississippi and Arizona closing abortion clinics and restricting abortion, and I’ve been wondering why we haven’t heard much about back-alley abortions. And now I know why. Women who can’t get an abortion in the U.S. are going to Mexico, where a miscarriage-inducing drug is available over the counter.

The catch is that abortion is illegal in most of Mexico also, so even though the drug — mifepristone — is available over the counter, and everyone knows taking it can terminate a pregnancy, women who purchase it have to pretend its for their ulcers. And the pharmacy workers, who know good and well why all these women are buying mifepristone, cannot give them directions about the correct dosage. So the women either don’t take enough, and stay pregnant; or they take too much and have to be hospitalized for bleeding.

The Choice

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Ralph Nader must be slowing down. He hasn’t yet issued an open letter declaring there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two tickets. Give him another 72 hours.

Of course, there really is a huge difference between the two tickets. Let’s hope voters notice before November.

Jonathan Chait writes that Paul Ryan’s placement on the ticket signals that “movement conservatism” now is in complete control of the Republican Party. It feels as if they’ve been in control for the past 30 years. However,

What makes Ryan so extraordinary is that he is not just a handsome slickster skilled at conveying sincerity with a winsome heartland affect. Pols like that come along every year. He is also (as Rich Yeselson put it) the chief party theoretician. Far more than even Ronald Reagan, he is deeply grounded is the ideological precepts of the conservative movement — a longtime Ayn Rand devotee who imbibed deeply from the lunatic supply-side tracts of Jude Wanniski and George Gilder. He has not merely formed an alliance with the movement, he is a product of it.

In this sense, Ryan’s nomination represents an important historical marker and the completion of a 50-year struggle. Starting in the early sixties, conservative activists set out to seize control of the Republican Party. At the time the party was firmly in the hands of Establishmentarians who had made their peace with the New Deal, but the activists regarded the entire development of the modern regulatory and welfare states as a horrific assault on freedom bound to lead to imminent societal collapse. In fits and starts, the conservatives slowly advanced – nominating Goldwater, retreating under Nixon, nominating Reagan, retreating as Reagan sought to govern, and on and on through Gingrich, Bush, and his successors.

Over time the movement and the party have grown synonymous, and Ryan’s nominations represents a moment when the conservative movement ceased to control the politicians from behind the scenes and openly assumed the mantle of power.

Romney, meanwhile, is still pretending to be his own man and says he will not run on Mr. Ryan’s infamous budget, but will produce his own budget. Don’t hold your breath waiting for details until you enjoy passing out. It’s plain that, if elected, Mittens will be hostage to the Ryan Republicans. And we’ll all be screwed.

Wild, Wild East

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Watching the equestrian section of the men’s modern pentathlon on live stream. Quelle une hoot. The contestants have to ride a horse they’ve just met for the first time around a jumping course. The horsies have their own plans, however. I think they’re planning to give a gold medal to the horse that causes the most trouble. One poor South Korean rider was not only bucked off, he was rolled on. He and the horse were both OK.

No Guts, No Glory: More Commentary on the Ryan Pick

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Statement from the Obama campaign:

“In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy. The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid. His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes.”

My thoughts: I don’t think Paul Ryan is the new Sarah Palin. He’s not going to self-destruct the way Palin did. However, I think the Obama campaign is smart enough and aggressive enough to take the fight to the RR campaign, and keep them on defense. And recently Dem leadership has gotten much, much better at message discipline.

Ryan’s presence on the ticket helps the Obama campaign focus on what a Romney administration might actually do, which ought to scare the stuffing out of most Americans. So far, Romney’s arguments for himself are all warm and fuzzy and soft-focused promises about how he’s going to make it all better, with the unspoken subtext that we’re supposed to just trust him on how he’s going to do that, because he’s not going to tell us. He’s not going to be able to get away with that any more, with Mr. Cat Food standing next to him on the podium.

I doubt very much that Ryan was Mittens’s original choice, even though he and Ryan appear to think very much alike. But the GOP establishment appears to have put him on notice that it would be Ryan or else. They probably want to run Ryan for president in 2016, and which they could reverse the ticket now.

Steve Kornacki:

The most important thing to know about Mitt Romney’s running-mate choice is this: It’s not the move he would have made if the campaign was going the way he hoped it would.

Until now, the Romney strategy has been relentlessly single-minded. He’s had no interest in articulating or embracing specific policy proposals and has generally shied away from saying or doing anything that anyone might find at all unsettling. More than any other candidate in recent history, he’s strained to be generic, someone positioned to serve as a protest vehicle for swing voters who are inclined to vote President Obama out….

…But the generic strategy isn’t working for Romney, or at least it doesn’t seem to be. The Ryan pick represents a new approach: Make the campaign about a Big Idea – in this case, the radical reimagining of tax policy and spending priorities that Ryan has proposed in the name of deficit reduction. Whether Romney now runs specifically on Ryan’s budget blueprint or some revised version of it doesn’t really matter. For the rest of the campaign, he and his running-mate will be answering for the social safety net cuts, Medicare voucher-ization and steep tax cuts for the wealthy that Ryan has called for.

Steve Benen:

In any presidential election in which there’s an incumbent, there’s a larger fight about whether the race is a “referendum” or a “choice.” In 2012, Mitt Romney obviously wanted it to be a referendum — if you’re not satisfied with the status quo, replace President Obama with a generic Republican. The tack helps explain why the GOP candidate has been so vague on so many issues.

As of this morning, Romney’s strategy has been thrown out the window. Paul Ryan wrote a right-wing budget plan, which redistributes wealth from the bottom up, and which guarantees voters will be presented with a very clear choice in the fall, not a referendum.

Indeed, it’s not unreasonable to think the entire election dynamic will be turned on its ear — voters will be asked to vote, not on Obama, but on the far-right Romney-Ryan vision.

On the other hand, I’m hearing that Ryan really is a good campaigner and quick on his feet in a debate, so the Obama campaign is going to have to stay smart to make this work for them. And much of the news media will be working very hard to portray Ryan as “serious” and “bold.” But I’m feeling pretty good about November right now.

Faux Nooz Says It’s Ryan (Update: It’s Ryan)

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Mittens is scheduled to announce his running mate this morning, while touring the battleship Wisconsin, in Virginia. Stephen Hayes and Bill Kristol gleefully are predicting the pick will be Paul Ryan. Yes, Hayes and Kristol are nearly always wrong, but if Mittens doesn’t choose Ryan, the GOP establishment will likely feel bitch slapped and will whine about it all through the convention.

Now Faux Nooz has confirmed that it’s Ryan. Faux is about as reliable as Kim Kardashian’s wedding vows, but again, they’re speaking for the GOP establishment, and if Mittens disappoints, Mittens will feel their wrath.

In short, the establishment is demanding that Romney choose Ryan, and I doubt Romney has the cojones to say no.

The more interesting question is, why does the GOP establishment have a death wish?

Update — now the Washington Post says it’s Ryan.

Update — now the New York Times says it’s Ryan.

They are high-fivin’ in the White House right now.

Update — Ezra Klein has several thoughts on what the choice means. Significantly —

  • “This is an admission of fear from the Romney campaign.”
  • “Ryan upends Romney’s whole strategy.”

How does Ryan upend Romney’s strategy? The Romney plan had been to make the campaign a referendum on Obama’s handling of the economy, while Mittens himself remained vague about what he would do to make things better. With Ryan as the choice, the campaign is going to focus on specific policy proposals, which is what the Obama campaign wants.

Mittens also has wanted to run on his record as a private businessman and frequently reminds people that President Obama “never spent a day in the private sector.” But Paul Ryan “never spent a day in the private sector” either.

Update — Mistermix writes,

I woke up this morning to the reek of piss-pants desperation emanating from my Twitter in the form of Mitt Romney’s VP Pick, Paul Davis Ryan (and yes, it is happening, because those morons can’t keep a secret). Man, this tells us a lot about just how worried, weak, meandering, insular and politically inept the Romney campaign is.

Update: Charles Pierce —

Leave it to Willard Romney, international man of principle, to get himself bullied into being bold and independent.

Hey, Mitt — Politics Ain’t Beanbag

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Mittens thinks his business record as well as his taxes should be off limits in the campaign.

Mitt Romney, battered by Democratic attacks over his Bain Capital record and taxes, is calling on President Obama to agree to a truce over his business career.

“Our campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature,” Romney said, according to excerpts of an upcoming interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd released Friday.

Romney said he would prefer the campaigns “only talk about issues,” and claimed that “our ads haven’t gone after the president personally. … We haven’t dredged up the old stuff that people talked about last time around. We haven’t gone after the personal things.”

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul offered up a broader take on whether Romney was really suggesting that his career at Bain Capital — the crux of his argument that he is better equipped to handle the economy — should be considered off-limits.

First, since Mittens has been running on his business career, it’s not off limits. And if he’s not going to release his taxes, he needs to man up and take his lumps for it, and stop whining.

Second, Mitt’s anti-Obama ads are among the most dishonest campaign ads ever produced. For example,

Mitt’s anti-Obama welfare reform ad is a lie.

Mitt claimed the Obama campaign was trying to take voting rights away from servicemen and women — a lie.

The “you didn’t build that” ad — a deceitful fabrication.

I could go on. Basically, under Mitt’s Rules, he gets to lie with impunity, but the Obama campaign is not allowed to tell the truth about Mitt. I guess he thinks that’s the only way he can win.