[dante]

Some of you guys have a heck of a lot more trust in the government than I do.

We've used extrajudicial killings of citizens who have taken up arms against the state since before the US formally existed (see: Tory's, Whiskey Rebellion, Civil War, WWI, WWII, etc). I'm still trying to figure out how the Civil War would have turned out if the Union Army hadn't been able to, you know, carry out extrajudicial killings of rebel soldiers on the field of battle... I'm guessing Gettysburg might have turned out somewhat differently?

 

[Serial Midget]

I'm guessing Gettysburg might have turned out somewhat differently?

Chik-fil-A franchises nationwide?

 

[johnbryanpeters]

Chik-fil-A franchises nationwide?

Yank-fil-A

 

[eaterofdog]

We've used extrajudicial killings of citizens who have taken up arms against the state since before the US formally existed (see: Tory's, Whiskey Rebellion, Civil War, WWI, WWII, etc). I'm still trying to figure out how the Civil War would have turned out if the Union Army hadn't been able to, you know, carry out extrajudicial killings of rebel soldiers on the field of battle... I'm guessing Gettysburg might have turned out somewhat differently?

Why don't you think about why you get so fired up and defensive about it? Who else gets all riled up and hoot and hollers when you don't agree with them?

 

[$tinkle]

Who else gets all riled up and hoot and hollers when you don't agree with them?

<--- this girl

 

[dante]

Why don't you think about why you get so fired up and defensive about it? Who else gets all riled up and hoot and hollers when you don't agree with them?

Still waiting to hear how "this time is different" from the countless times in the past 200+ years that we've used extrajudicial killings to go after hundreds of thousands of people who have taken up arms against the government?

If you don't agree with the policy, fine. If you think that it's creating more terrorists than it's getting rid of, fine. If you don't support a president that would do it, that's fine too. The problem arises when you claim that there's a "loss of Constitutional rights by the American people". That's blatantly false, and if you're basing your voting decisions based on that erroneous fact you might want to dig a little deeper into the actual law/precedent. Shrug, if you consider that "fired up and defensive", then I'm not really sure how to respond...

 

[bean]

No way will I vote for Obama again. Virtually everything about his presidency has been deeply disappointing. Romney isn't an option either. So third party it is. I'm done with the lesser of two evils nonsense. For now I'm leaning toward Libertarian, but I could be swayed.

 

[$tinkle]

No way will I vote for Obama again. Virtually everything about his presidency has been deeply disappointing. Romney isn't an option either. So third party it is. I'm done with the lesser of two evils nonsense. For now I'm leaning toward Libertarian, but I could be swayed.

not only will your vote not cancel out like mine & squeeb's, but it won't even matter

live like a libertarian
vote like a pragmatist

 

[mattmatt86]

I'm voting for Obama cause he's a Black Socialist Kenyan Muslim and that pisses all the old crotchety republicans off, and that brings a slight pleasure to me.

 

[IH8Rice]

who else would i vote for?

 

[stevew]

I just can't vote for Obama with the way he's continued to erode our rights. I can let some stuff slide, but I won't tolerate those who sh!t on the constitution.

edit: And there ain't no ****ing way I'd vote for scumbag Romney.

 

[dante]

not only will your vote not cancel out like mine & squeeb's, but it won't even matter

live like a libertarian
vote like a pragmatist

If people aren't willing to vote in their best interest, they deserve the government they get.

How much would YOUR taxes go up under a Romney administration?*

*Based on the expiration of the Making Work Pay tax credit that Romney wants to get rid of to fund a permanent extension of the Bush Tax Cuts for those making $250k+.



edit: WashPo critiquing the ad run by Obama pointing this out (or at least the income tax portion).

 

[Pesqueeb]

No way will I vote for Obama again. Virtually everything about his presidency has been deeply disappointing. Romney isn't an option either. So third party it is. I'm done with the lesser of two evils nonsense. For now I'm leaning toward Libertarian, but I could be swayed.

Al Gore sees what you did there.

 

[splat]

I've always thought the elected pres shouldn't be able to pick a VP, it should go to the guy with the 2nd most votes. (3rd would get Secretary of State)

Not Up on your History Are you . it used to be that way , but of course politicians found a way to F*** it up.

Under the original terms of the Constitution, the electors of the Electoral College voted only for office of President rather than for both President and Vice President. Each elector was allowed to vote for two people for the top office. The person receiving the greatest number of votes (provided that such a number was a majority of electors) would be President, while the individual who received the next largest number of votes became Vice President. If no one received a majority of votes, then the House of Representatives would choose among the five highest vote-getters, with each state getting one vote. In such a case, the person who received the highest number of votes but was not chosen President would become Vice President. In the case of a tie for second, then the Senate would choose the Vice President.[23]
The original plan, however, did not foresee the development of political parties and their adversarial role in the government. In the election of 1796, for instance, Federalist John Adams came in first, but because the Federalist electors divided their second vote amongst several Vice Presidential candidates, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson came second. Thus, the President and Vice President were from opposing parties. Predictably, Adams and Jefferson clashed over issues such as states' rights and foreign policy.[24]
A greater problem occurred in the election of 1800, in which the two participating parties each had a secondary candidate they intended to elect as Vice President, but the more popular Democratic-Republican party failed to execute that plan with their electoral votes. Under the system in place at the time (Article II, Section 1, Clause 3), the electors could not differentiate between their two candidates, so the plan had been for one elector to vote for Thomas Jefferson but not for Aaron Burr, thus putting Burr in second place. This plan broke down for reasons that are disputed, and both candidates received the same number of votes. After 35 deadlocked ballots in the House of Representatives, Jefferson finally won on the 36th ballot and Burr became Vice President.[25]
This tumultuous affair led to the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, which directed the electors to use separate ballots to vote for the President and Vice President.[26] While this solved the problem at hand, it ultimately had the effect of lowering the prestige of the Vice Presidency, as the office was no longer for the leading challenger for the Presidency.

 

[bean]

not only will your vote not cancel out like mine & squeeb's, but it won't even matter

live like a libertarian
vote like a pragmatist

I'm under no delusions that an individual vote matters. I'm also not trying to cancel anyone out.

My hope (which is probably a pipe dream) is that with enough votes for a third party the other two might someday put forth a candidate that isn't a sack of **** or that a third party will and can win.

Continually voting for the better of two terrible candidates and hoping for improvement doesn't seem all that pragmatic to me.

 

[Westy]

How quickly we forget the candidate that truly supports the Average American.

Ham Sandwich 2012.

 

[JohnE]

Quick, un-scientific poll. If the election was today, who, between the presumptive candidates and an unknown independant, would you vote for.
No pontificating, just post who would/will get your vote.

Me? Obama

Dint you guys see what the OP directed? Sheesh...just like my kids...

 

[AngryMetalsmith]

Well, since bacon is not an option, I'll go with Barry.

 

[dante]

I'm under no delusions that an individual vote matters. I'm also not trying to cancel anyone out.

My hope (which is probably a pipe dream) is that with enough votes for a third party the other two might someday put forth a candidate that isn't a sack of **** or that a third party will and can win.

Continually voting for the better of two terrible candidates and hoping for improvement doesn't seem all that pragmatic to me.

It is absolutely a pipe dream under the current rules. If you want a viable 3rd party, change the rules from the winner-takes-all Electoral Collage. Perot got 19% of the popular vote and won *zero* EC votes. It would be slightly different since 2 (?) states do appoint EC votes on a proportional basis, but it would mean that if the 1992 election were held today Perot would have gotten 19% and 1-2 EC votes (out of 538)

Voting 3rd party under the current system just means that you're helping the candidate who's views you oppose most to win. We got 4 years of GWB because 100,000 thousand people in FL voted for Nader in 2000, which Bush won by ~500 votes. How many of those 100k people do you think would have gone back and changed their votes to Gore after 2 wars, 2 tax cuts, a switch from budget surpluses to deficits, etc?

 

[$tinkle]

who should we pull for?

 

[Beef Supreme]

who should we pull for?

There is no shortage of republicans that would be delighted to pull a train for Romney.

 

[jimmydean]

How quickly we forget the candidate that truly supports the Average American.

Ham Sandwich 2012.

I would like to have a beer with him.

 

[dante]

Good a place as any: Paul Ryan picked as VP.

I think it shows desperation on the Romney campaign. The need to "shake things up", and to "cement your base" is never, *ever* a good sign in a campaign. That's what gave us Palin 4 years ago... Someone's keeping an eye on internal polling and it must not be very good.

Also, this shifts the narrative away from Obama's handling of the economy, and instead makes voters choose which economic plan is more beneficial to them. That's not going to work out well for the Romney campaign...

 

[Pesqueeb]

Derp:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/oops-romney-introduces-ryan-as-next-president-of

 

[dante]

Derp:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/oops-romney-introduces-ryan-as-next-president-of

Herp derp.

 

[$tinkle]

i think the move was predictable; he needs "blue collar" tbagger creds to lift the ticket, and can use ryan as a surrogate & keep his distance from that "fringe" element

and there's everything right with cementing a base...just ask ghwb about ross perot

i think & hope it will work out well for the campaign, and for the country. just as long as they put forth a realistic & attainable plan that will get more americans off freeloader status.

for you lot, another plus re: romney is we're getting farther from teh conventional wisdom of a president having to be a mainstream christian. 1600 could use some jewing up, especially in these tough times.

 

[Pesqueeb]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106029/ryan-romney-vp-budget-cuts-medicare-medicaid-voucher-tax-cut#.UCZYSWNU6pc.reddit

 

[X3pilot]

Great, another I'm richer than you guy on the ticket. Ryan's family fortune came from road building and he wants to cap federal spending on infrastructure. Hmmmm..

We.are.fvcked

 

[dante]

Romney's already trying to run away from the Paul Ryan plan, less than 12 hours after making him his VP choice:

From Romney campaign talking points, distributed to reporters after Romney&#8217;s first appearance with his VP pick (emphasis added):

Does this mean Mitt Romney is adopting the Paul Ryan plan?
&#8226; Gov. Romney applauds Paul Ryan for going in the right direction with his budget, and as president he will be putting together his own plan for cutting the deficit and putting the budget on a path to balance.

&#8226; Romney&#8217;s administration will go through the budget line by line and ask two questions: Can we afford it? And, if not, should we borrow money from China to pay for it?

&#8226; Mitt Romney will start with the easiest cut of all: Obamacare, a trillion-dollar entitlement we don&#8217;t want and can&#8217;t afford.

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/mitt-romney-ryan-budget.php

 

[Pesqueeb]

The new Sarah Palin?

To say this is politically risky is an understatement. The Democratic strategy to win back the House this year involves pinning the Ryan budget to every Republican candidate, and Obama has been itching to make the fall race a competition between his priorities and those of Ryan&#8217;s plan. The hope for the Romney campaign is that they&#8217;ll be able to turn the tables on their opponents by presenting the GOP ticket as a team of unusually serious and courageous policy leaders who are willing to tell hard truths about the country&#8217;s fiscal predicament.

There are endless reasons to doubt this will work. The toxicity of the Ryan budget has been tested (on a small-scale, granted) before, and the results weren&#8217;t good for the GOP. Which is why, more than anything else, this is a huge risk for Romney &#8211; a risk he wouldn&#8217;t be taking if this summer hadn&#8217;t gone so poorly for him.
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/11/the_smell_of_panic/

*edit: and a real wowzer @ esquire via reddit:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-romney-vp-pick-11562917?hootPostID=968a1934625e8d3816b8b8866bf5cbde

 

[dante]

i think the move was predictable; he needs "blue collar" tbagger creds to lift the ticket, and can use ryan as a surrogate & keep his distance from that "fringe" element

and there's everything right with cementing a base...just ask ghwb about ross perot

i think & hope it will work out well for the campaign, and for the country. just as long as they put forth a realistic & attainable plan that will get more americans off freeloader status.

for you lot, another plus re: romney is we're getting farther from teh conventional wisdom of a president having to be a mainstream christian. 1600 could use some jewing up, especially in these tough times.

Or president McCain after he felt the need to "cement his base" with picking Palin for VP?

The thing is that picking Ryan as VP means that the narrative will be about him and his plan as opposed to Romney's economic plan or even the state of the country. The election's not going to be fought on Obama's record, or the economy, or unemployment, or GDP, or anything else. It's going to be about Obama attacking Paul Ryan and his "plan" (throwing in the "Romney endorses it just to try to keep it relevant), and Romney either trying to defend it (hard) or distance himself from it (impossible). Who cares about the current ~8% unemployment when the other guy wants to take away your Medicare?? Quoting Frum:

...Romney has transformed a campaign about jobs and growth into a campaign about entitlements and Medicare. Romney will now have to spend the next months explaining how and why shrinking Medicare after 2023 will create prosperity in 2013. Economic conditions are so tough&#8212;the Obama reelection proposition is so weak&#8212;that Romney may win anyway. But wow, the job just got harder.

Now, Frum has hated the Tea Party in general and specifically the idea of Ryan for VP for a while now, but that's still pretty damning. It completely shifts the narrative from something that works in Romney's favor (current economic climate) to one that doesn't (gutting Medicare, shifting health care costs on to seniors, tax cuts for the rich). Most Americans agree that the economy sucks. Most Americans *don't* agree that the first thing we need to do is start chopping up our social safety net.

Remember, a "conservative" didn't make it through the Republican Primary. Gingrich/Bachmann/Santorum all crashed and burned, and that was playing only to those wackjob conservatives who went out and voted. How do people think that if a hardline conservative couldn't win the primary that they can win the general?? Romney's obviously thinking that independents won't be paying attention to the VP pick and will vote against Obama, and that hardliners will be happy and content that "one of their own" is on the ticket. The second part of that statement is definitely true, but is the first?

We.are.fvcked

Only if you believe that Obama is taking the US to bankruptcy and ruin and you were desperately looking to the Republicans to put up a viable alternative. I'd already made up my vote, this just makes it a little easier to connect the arrow for Obama.

 

[JohnE]

Zombie eyed granny starver...love it.

 

[dante]

Any of the 6 people who voted "for some other guy" change their mind after the Ryan pick? Prospect of gutting Medicare/Social Security for anyone under 55 tempt any monkey's to rethink their protest vote?

 

[$tinkle]

Prospect of gutting Medicare/Social Security for anyone under 55 tempt any monkey's to rethink their protest vote?

by 'gutting', are you implying medicare will be cost prohibitive and/or significantly reduced care across the board, resulting in poorer health care outright, or just in this program?

don't you find it just as misleading when the r&r camp claims that obama has cut from medicare to help pay for part of obamacare? which while true, leads the reader to believe this directly translates to loss of care and/or greatly increased costs, which does not appear to be supported by the facts.

from over here, it looks like the obama campaign isn't running on the wake of his glorious achievements, but rather of fear & smear of the other guy. disappointing, but not surprising. what else could he run on? that a few thousand gays can now openly serve in the military, but unfortunately due to sequestration are going to have fewer opportunities to serve? plus, he already got bin laden, so they're not as needed now

 

[Jim Mac]

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43023

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12128/04-05-ryan_letter.pdf

 

[$tinkle]

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43023

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12128/04-05-ryan_letter.pdf

srsly? i have teh attention span of a dead kennedy's song as it is, and with this droll tripe it drops to 7 seconds

 

[dante]

by 'gutting', are you implying medicare will be cost prohibitive and/or significantly reduced care across the board, resulting in poorer health care outright, or just in this program?

don't you find it just as misleading when the r&r camp claims that obama has cut from medicare to help pay for part of obamacare? which while true, leads the reader to believe this directly translates to loss of care and/or greatly increased costs, which does not appear to be supported by the facts.

from over here, it looks like the obama campaign isn't running on the wake of his glorious achievements, but rather of fear & smear of the other guy. disappointing, but not surprising. what else could he run on? that a few thousand gays can now openly serve in the military, but unfortunately due to sequestration are going to have fewer opportunities to serve? plus, he already got bin laden, so they're not as needed now

Last I checked the Ryan plan shifted costs from the government to the (soon to be) elderly. The vouchers only kept up with inflation (ie, 0% the last couple years), while health care costs have *always* gone up faster than the rate of inflation. What good is a $500 voucher (let's say), when the cheapest insurance you can get is $2,000? What insurance company in their right mind would insure a 90 year old with a history of heart disease without making the premiums prohibitively expensive?

I'm personally annoyed at the R&R claims that Obama "cut Medicare", since there were zero cuts to beneficiaries, only to the providers. Not only that, but Paul Ryan's "budget" also keeps all of those cuts in place.

Paul Ryan knows that his plan is toxic to anyone *actually* impacted by it, which is why he only has it start for those of us who are 55 and younger. He's hoping that the elderly will say "I got mine so fvck you" and screw all of us who WILL have to pay far more when we're old. Furthermore his cuts to MedicAID will also impact seniors, since most seniors (especially those who end up in nursing homes) end up on Medicaid at some point. For nursing home care, you spend the money that you have and then become poor enough that you can go on medicaid to cover you till you die.

Sorry, I've paid into the system for 20 years now. I'll be paying into the system for *another* 30 years, and Ryan's proposing that I get screwed just so he can give Romney a 0.83% effective tax rate? Seriously?

As for the Obama campaign, he's definitely setting it up as a choice between him and Romney. Romney was desperately, DESPERATELY hoping to make it a referendum on Obama; If you like Obama, vote for him, if you don't like Obama, vote Romney. However polling showing Obama leading by a substantial margin (by 9 points in a recent Fox "News" poll), Romney panicked and felt he had to "shake up" the race. In doing so, he turned it from being a referendum on Obama to a referendum on Ryan's budget proposals... I'm not sure that that's going to work out so well for him, but only time will tell.

 

[dante]

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43023

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12128/04-05-ryan_letter.pdf

I seriously don't know why the CBO would even score something with this in the request:

For 2023 and later, Chairman Ryan and
his staff specified rules by which revenues and spending would evolve:
&#9632; Revenues. Starting from 18¾ percent of GDP in 2023, revenues would rise by
one-tenth of 1 percent of GDP per year until they reach 19 percent of GDP in
2025 and then stay at that level.

We're around 14% of GDP right now. Ryan (and Romney) have both proposed LOWERING tax rates, and yet he wants to not only start at 18.75% in 2023 but rise (above the historical average of 18%) from there. It would be like doing a family planning budget with the stipulation that "in 2 years I'll double my salary and we'll only spend half as much on stuff"...

 

[Jim Mac]

srsly? i have teh attention span of a dead kennedy's song as it is, and with this droll tripe it drops to 7 seconds

both docs back up the 'gutting' phrase in Medicaid, just in a few more words

EDIT: both are analyses of Ryan's plan.

 

[dante]

Why I read David Frum.

This year, an incumbent even more embattled than George H.W. Bush has his own preferred election theme. He doesn't want to debate his own record, which is pretty dismal. He wants to debate the record of the congressional Republicans elected in 2010, a bunch radically less popular even than the president himself.

You'd imagine that Romney's job was to refuse the Democratic invitation, to choose his own ground for the election, and to keep his distance from the congressional GOP. You'd imagine, but you'd be wrong.

Romney has instead chosen to bolt himself to the House Republicans. He has chosen as his running mate Paul Ryan, the House Republican leader -- not their formal leader, but their intellectual leader, the person who set their agenda. He has effectively adopted Paul Ryan's agenda as his own: big immediate cuts in spending, a dramatic cut in the top rate of income tax to 28% and a bold reform of Medicare for those 55 and under.
Obama's message in 2012: "Forget the economy. It's Medicare, stupid!"

The Romney-Ryan response? "We agree. Medicare it is."

The Romney-Ryan team will tell you that fixing Medicare is crucial to their plans for economic growth. By assuring markets that Medicare costs will grow more slowly after 2023, a Medicare fix -- it's argued -- will ignite job creation in 2013. In the meantime, federal spending cuts and upper-income tax cuts will restore business confidence.

Will voters accept this argument? Possibly, although relatively few economists will do so.