Category Archives: Politics

The Irony of Federal Taxing and Spending

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States that tend to vote Democratic pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending. States that tend to vote Republican receive more than they pay (those unproductive moochers!). 

I don’t know which kinds of federal spending are involved. It’s most likely spending on social welfare programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and the salaries of federal employees, including the military.

It’s an interesting situation nonetheless. How would lower taxes and reduced spending affect the people who yearn for lower taxes and supposedly want reduced federal spending?

http://www.upworthy.com/why-are-republican-states-always-leeching-off-the-rest-of-us-hard-working-taxpay?c=ufb1

Some Things Are Too Important To Lie About

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Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has been widely criticized for not just bending the truth during his recent acceptance speech, but for stomping all over the truth, leaving it for dead. It’s possible that he might have gotten away with lying about Medicare, the auto bailout and the national debt, but there was no way he’d get away with lying about running marathons. People like the editors at Runner’s World take running very seriously.

In a recent radio interview, Ryan implied that he had run more than one marathon and that his best time was under three hours:

PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or less.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/3229320e-2c55-4122-93f1-2ebe4fbc8663

Running a marathon in less than three hours is quite an achievement. Unfortunately for Ryan, Runner’s World did some research, which they presented to the Ryan campaign, which resulted in the following:

A spokesman confirmed late Friday that the Republican vice presidential candidate has run one marathon. That was the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, where Ryan, then 20, is listed as having finished in 4 hours, 1 minute, and 25 seconds.

http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/

It was 20 years ago, but runners remember their best times. Running a marathon in 4 hours is a lot less impressive than running it in 2 hours, 50 minutes. Running 1 marathon is less impressive than running 2 or more.

So the evidence multiplies. Paul Ryan is a serial liar, someone who regularly lies to advance his agenda or make himself look good. Many politicians do that. They shouldn’t be Vice President.

Same As It Ever Was

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Romney’s plan to fix the economy is the same plan offered by his predecessors (and his goal of 12 million new jobs is the number forecast by economists as normal job growth).

Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute:

The same exact playbook is there in 2006, as it was in 2004 and 2008, and as it is in 2012. Domestic oil production, school choice, trade agreements, cut spending and reduce taxes and regulations — it’s been the conservative answer to times of deep economic stress, times of economic recovery, times of economic worries, and times of economic panic. Which is another way of saying that the Republicans have no plan for how to actually deal with this specific crisis we face.

http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/romney-will-solve-crisis-exact-same-gop-plan-2008-2006-2004

Paul Krugman (today’s best political columnist by far) concurs and offers a chart showing the pathetic history of job growth during the two terms of our last Republican president:

We should ask how the identical policies worked out in Bush’s two terms. And the answer is: zero job growth in term one (and a fall in private sector employment), one million in term two. Oh, and private sector employment lower when Bush left office than when he arrived.

083112krugman1-blog480

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/the-definition-of-insanity/

Creepy

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Various news sources are reporting that someone was ejected from the Republican convention after throwing nuts at a black CNN camerawoman and saying “this is how we feed animals”. 

It’s not clear whether this occurred because of someone’s feelings toward blacks, women, CNN, or some combination thereof. This could have happened anywhere, of course, but what are the odds?

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/republican-officials-remove-2-attendees-for-deplorable-behavior-toward-cnn-staffer/