What’s New Today
Story
# 1 is signs of desperation as Medicare seems to have blown up in the Democrats
face. #2 is an interesting look at Obama
and Wall Street. #3 shows you whose
fault it is if you are a Democrat?
Someone else’s. #4 and #5 are
videos. #4 is a great new RNC ad. #5 is an independent one from Military and
intelligence professionals. #6 explains
how the Democrats stepped into their own trap.
It appears it is Romney who will save Medicare not Obama. #7 discusses the Republican Medicare
advantage. #8 tells of Dr.
Kimball’s Self-Help Program for Disillusioned Liberals. Finally #9 warns about another GM
bailout.
Today’s
Thoughts
The comedy
site, Newsbusted has
declared that Joe Biden has already
phoned in sick for his October 11th debate with Paul Ryan. Probably
a wise move.
There’s a lot of speculation that Obama will dump Biden and have Hillary run with him. I don’t see that happening, not because Obama
doesn’t need her, but because Hillary
doesn’t need him. There’s nothing in it
for her. She’s already the odds on favorite to be the Democratic nominee in
2016.
In case you want to read it, here is a link to the Paul Ryan Budget.
Why is the
Medicare issue blowing up in the Democrats face? Seniors today have been
hearing for the past 20 years the system
is going broke. They know something
must be done. What Obama did was to steal $716 billion from Medicare to fund
Obamacare. Seniors may be old, but they aren’t stupid and stupid is what
the Democrats were counting on.
Lie of the Day
Soledad
O’Brien: “I don't think I show bias in my TV show.
I think I am aggressive with people about trying to find the facts behind what
they say,” O'Brien said. “Am I a liberal
or conservative? I'm neither.”
1. Signs of Desperation
On Special Report, Charles
Krauthammer weighs in on the Medicare debate in the 2012 Presidential race.
Charles Krauthammer:
I think the Democrats are discovering that they
stepped on a land mine with Medicare. The fact is that Medicare was raided
for Obamacare and here's why. This isn't even a wee issue. The Obama
administration had to show -- because it kept arguing that this is not going to
cost anybody anything, this will be revenue neutral. It's not going to add to
the budget deficit. Remember that was the mantra for a year and a half. So they had to get half a [trillion] dollars
from somewhere. That's why they made the cuts in Medicare in order to be able
to say in the bill, in the Obamacare bill itself, you take that money, you put
it in Obamacare, it pays for itself, thus it's revenue neutral. This is not
a fable, it's not a fiction, it was the heart of the debate.
Now, as you interviewed the
president, you pointed out that they
keep arguing, 'No, the money isn't spent over here, it's really in the trust
fund.' It is not. You can't have it in two places. So that is simply a fact
and that is devastating because the Republicans can now argue that Obama is actually taking the money from
your grandma today and for the next decade. Whereas the Ryan plan
contemplates a change which begins in ten years which would exempt anybody who
is in the system today, which doesn't' reduce the spending in Medicare. And
then what Obama said is that at the end of that plan you lose the guarantee of
the Medicare. That also is a falsehood. The Medicare is retained in 2022.
Charles is correct, but incomplete. Part of Obamacare is the IPAB which will
review reimbursements and adjust them down if there is too much spending in
Medicare. It a form of price controls
and never in the history of the world have they worked. It ends up as rationing. That is the end of Medicare as we know it.
2. Obama and Wall Street
For
all the bluster of Obama, pre- and post-2008, as well as that of Attorney General Eric Holder
concerning the alleged criminal activities on Wall Street, there have been zero Wall Street prosecutions under Obama/Holder.
Compare that with his predecessors Bush and Clinton:
GAI [Government Accountability Institute] details how the
George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations both actually took down
financial criminals - unlike the Obama administration. Between 2002 and 2008, for instance, GAI
points out how a Bush administration task force "obtained over 1,300
corporate fraud convictions, including those of over 130 corporate vice
presidents and over 200 CEOs and corporate presidents."
"Clinton's
DOJ prosecuted over 1,800 S&L (savings and loans) executives, senior officials, and directors,
and over 1,000 of them were sent to jail," GAI adds.
But, despite having "promised more of the same,"
especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Obama administration's DOJ has not brought criminal charges against
a single major Wall Street executive.
The
Bush and Clinton administrations' track records on prosecuting white-collar
crime, and the Obama administration's failure to do so, Schweizer said, is
"evidence that this has less to do with some sort of partisan or
philosophical issue."
Bush
- 1,300 convictions;
Clinton
- 1,000 convictions;
Obama - Zero attempts.
Here’s another example of the facts contradicting what most
people believe.
3. If you are a Democrat, it’s always someone else’s fault
Joe Biden just returned from another
one of his vacations. So it can't be blamed on fatigue. Maybe age? He does turn
70 this year.
But JB's been gaffing up a storm
recently. He's in Virginia talking about
winning North Carolina. He's proclaiming the 20th will be an American century.
He's describing Mitt Romney's new vice presidential partner as Governor Ryan.
And then there's Joe's BFD chains
gaffe that really wasn't a gaffe. He's introduced in Danville, Va. as
"the conscience of our nation's capital." He's talking to a
significantly black crowd and he warns what Gov. Romney is going to do to
help those evil banks:
"Romney wants to let the--he
said in the first 100 days he’s going to let the big banks once again write
their own rules, unnnn-chain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
A guy from Scranton living in Delaware on the public payroll
since Obama was in grade school suddenly talking like a faux Southern preacher. The crowd approved. But elsewhere, the vice president of
the United States looked, in the vivid image of Charles Krauthammer, like a
crazy uncle in the attic. And this guy's a heartbeat away from the
presidency?
The campaign reacted to the public
shock in typical Obama fashion. It's the
country's fault for hearing anything racial in that. Just like the lousy economy and poor job growth is always somebody
else's fault.
Remember back in 2008 when Obama was
mocking then-opponent Hillary Clinton to a North Carolina crowd? As he spoke of
her, he scratched his cheek with a middle finger, like some defiant high
school boy behind the teacher's back. The crowd knew exactly what he was doing
and hooted. Obama dragged the moment out. (See video below.)
His campaign spokesman then was shocked, he said, shocked
that anyone could see anything like a senatorial bird. Again, someone
else's fault….
One of the signs of leadership is taking
responsibility. I guess it’s not
surprising Obama refuses to do so about anything.
4. Video:
Great new RNC ad
The
ads are getting better.
5. Video: Dishonorable Disclosures
Twenty-two
minutes that you want to watch. It
appears Obama is getting the same treatment that John Kerry did when he tried
to take credit for things he didn’t deserve credit for. My favorite line is killing bin Laden was a victory,”
but the politicians turned that victory into an intelligence disaster.”
'
6. The
Democrats Growing Medicare Dilemma
In the last few days, the Romney campaign has moved to dramatically
change the terrain of Medicare politics, and it looks like the Democrats are
beginning to realize how vulnerable they might be. Because of Obamacare, it is the Democrats who now plan to cut
current seniors’ benefits (especially those in Medicare Advantage) and access
to care (thanks to the IPAB) while still failing to avert the program’s (and
the nation’s) fiscal collapse, and because Romney would repeal Obamacare
and pursue a version of the Ryan-Wyden premium-support reform it is the Republicans who would protect
current seniors’ benefits and make them available to future seniors while
saving the program from collapse through market reforms. Through the
candidates’ statements this week and through this new ad, Romney and Ryan have
made clear they’re going to inform voters about this and force the Democrats to
defend themselves on Medicare.
That
won’t be easy for the Left, since the Romney campaign’s charges are true, and
it is beginning to become apparent that the Democrats are totally unprepared
for the coming fight.
Their defenses so far fall into roughly three categories: Ryan did it too, the Obamacare Medicare cuts aren’t very serious, and
finally what can only be called frantic distractions. Even as pure
demagoguery (let alone as efforts at actual substantive arguments) all three
are exceptionally weak defenses, and suggest the Democrats could be in serious
trouble. Let’s examine each one.
The “Ryan did it too” defense is perhaps the most
amusing of the three, as it succeeds in being simultaneously untrue,
irrelevant, and an admission of the basic charge against the Democrats. Even as they
call Paul Ryan a cruel and merciless budget cutter who cares not for the
weather service and would gladly see children exposed to E. coli, the Democrats
justify their taking $710 billion out of Medicare and spending it on Obamacare
over the next decade by pointing out that Paul Ryan didn’t put that money back
into Medicare in his budget. So if he had, would that have made their cuts
unjustifiable? Well it so happens that he did. By repealing all of Obamacare’s spending, the Republican budget does
not spend the money Obamacare took out of Medicare and thus those funds are
used to extend the Medicare trust fund. And this point is hardly hidden in
the Ryan budget. The budget document spells it out in its spending tables and
also explains it in its narrative section, noting on page 54 that:
This budget ends
the raid on the Medicare trust fund that began with passage of the new health
care law last year. It ensures that any
potential savings in current law would go to shore up Medicare, not to pay for
new entitlements. In addition to repealing the health care law’s new
rationing board and its unfunded long-term care entitlement, this budget
stabilizes plan choices for current seniors.
The Democrat’s position on Medicare and cutting $716 billion
from it seems to be 1. I didn’t do it, 2. You can’t prove that I did it, and 3.
I’ll never do it again. I think the Democrats were giddy about Romney
figuring they could demagogue Medicare and peel of senior voters for Obama. It now appears that that isn’t going to work
but actually addressing the issue is popular with young voters and that appears
to be peeling off young voters from Romney. Win/Win for Romney and Lose/Lose
for Obama.
And here’s the latest Romney/Ryan ad on it
7. The Republicans Medicare Advantage
…Mr. Ryan's plan has a different
approach. While there would be no changes
in Medicare for those 55 or older, starting in 10 years younger Americans would
have a choice. They could either pick traditional Medicare or use the
average amount of money the government spends on each Medicare enrollee to buy
private insurance. The reasoning is based on a reliable truth: Competition will
lower costs by using market forces to spur innovation and improvement.
This approach is nothing new or radical. Called
"premium support," it was recommended in 1999 by Louisiana Democratic
Sen. John Breaux, chairman of President Bill Clinton's Medicare Reform
Commission.
There's
evidence of how effective—and popular—this approach would be. In 2003, Congress structured Medicare's
prescription drug benefit by using the "premium support" concept.
Though more seniors signed up and used
it more than expected, the Congressional Budget Office now says the 10-year cost of this popular drug
benefit will be 43% less than it estimated in March 2004.
Premium support can also make good
politics. This spring, Resurgent Republic (a conservative polling group I
helped organize in 2009) offered 1,000 registered voters the choice between a
candidate who echoed Team Obama's recent Medicare arguments and a candidate who
backed allowing those aged 55 and younger to choose between traditional
Medicare and private insurance backed up by premium support. The poll's respondents picked the candidate
favoring choice and premium support by 48% to 40% with independents preferring
him 48% to 41%.…
I think the prescription drug program is the first government
program in my lifetime that came in costing less than the original estimate.
8. Dr. Kimball’s Self-Help Program for Disillusioned Liberals
You’re seeing these sad people
everywhere these days, especially in large East-and West-Coast urban areas and
on college campuses. At parties they alternate between a melancholy, far-away
wistfulness and a muttering “why me?”-belligerence. They’re touchy and quick to
blame others, and they seem to suffer from night sweats and vague feelings of
persecution. Their symptoms worsened
suddenly a few days ago when it was announced that Paul Ryan would be joining
the Romney ticket as candidate for vice president.
These people are not conservatives. It’s not clear that
they’re liberals, exactly, either,
though in recent history they have, as it were, caucused with liberals, that is
to say, with people who identify themselves as liberals (never mind how
illiberal their policies and sentiments happen to be). Above all, however, they are part of the tout le monde: the
people who think of themselves as being on the right side of history
(corollary belief: they think history has sides and a direction). They go to the right cocktail parties. They
have “advanced” (i.e., establishment) attitudes
about art, culture, and morals. They are part of that group Harold
Rosenberg memorably denominated “the
herd of independent minds.”…
…First
time around, these people voted for Obama, giving themselves a little
frisson of self-satisfaction when they pulled the lever and, even more, when
the emitted condescension about anyone who happened to vote for John McCain —
they didn’t encounter such people often, but it always gave them a little
thrill of self-satisfaction when they did. It wasn’t long, however, before doubts
began to accumulate. The seas didn’t
subside, as promised, nor did the unemployment figures. By now, they’re
thoroughly depressed. Their man has clearly let them down, and the inadvertent
comedy of Joe Biden screaming that Republicans are going to “put y’all back in
chains” isn’t helping. Even worse is the news that team R&R, the Romney-Ryan express, is surging among
young voters…
This is just a small part
of the coming Romney Landslide.
9. Is GM heading to another bankruptcy?
President
Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That’s good,
because, if he wins a second term, he is
probably going to have to bail GM out again. The company is once again losing market
share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive
in the U.S. market….
…GM
is unlikely to hit the wall before the election, but, given current trends, the
company could easily do so again before the end of a second Obama term.
In the 1960s, GM averaged a 48.3% share of
the U.S. car and truck market. For
the first 7 months of 2012, their market
share was 18.0%, down from 20.0% for the same period in 2011. With
a loss of market share comes a loss of relative
cost-competitiveness. There is only so much market share that GM can
lose before it would no longer have the resources to attempt to recover….
…“The game isn’t over until it’s over”,
but if President Obama wins reelection, he should probably start giving some serious thought to how he is going to
justify bailing out GM, and its unionized UAW workforce, yet again. And,
during the current campaign, Obama might want to be a little more modest about
what he actually achieved by bailing out GM the first time.
I cut out the heart of the article. If you are a fan of American Automobiles this
is a very disturbing article. It
features the Chevy Malibu (GM’s entry into the most important market segment) and the latest Malibu comes in dead last
compared to its competitors.
