2012 Presidential Election

The Club for Growth argues that despite Tea Party rhetoric, many of the 87 member freshman class are not conservative enough.

Original post:
Club for Growth issues Tea Party purity scorecard on freshmen

Er … Paul Ryan had better check in with his parish priest for some penance assignments.  No less an expert in the exercise of Catholicism in public policy than Joe Biden has pronounced the House Budget Committee chair a heretic, or something.  Speaking today at a rabbinical assembly in Atlanta, Biden scolded Ryan for his budget, which View the video

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. The government is getting smaller under President Obama, proclaimed an astonishing headline in the New York Times last Friday. Really? For the first time in 40 years, the government sector of the American economy has shrunk during the first three years of a presidential administration. Spending by the federal government, adjusted for inflation, has risen Read this post

Milestones. Yesterday marked an inglorious milestone for the Democrat leadership in the U.S. Senate: it was the 3-year anniversary of the last time they passed a budget measure. Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Budget Committee, seems to have diagnosed the problem. Via the Daily Caller: “This is a deliberate plan that Read this post

Waste, fraud, and abuse. Over the last two weeks, the importance of a $820,000 junket put on by the General Services Administration (GSA) in Las Vegas has dominated the politician and pundit worlds. The spending spree has resulted in an investigation from Congress, the release of several federal employees and recriminations from both parties. Unfortunately, it has also allowed Read this post

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's Monday column ” The Gullible Center” bashed — you guessed it — Rep. Paul Ryan, and perhaps took a hidden swipe at “self-proclaimed centrists” who take Ryan's budget seriously, like fellow Times columnist David Brooks (Michael Calderone at Huffington Post noticed the jab ). It would not be the first time Krugman and Brooks conducted a secret grapple (Times policy discourages columnists from taking issue with each other.) In the fall of 2007 Krugman accused Ronald Reagan of launching his successful 1980 presidential campaign from outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered, as a sop to Southern racists. Brooks, himself an Obama fan, delivered an able defense of Reagan against Krugman's twisting of history, without mentioning Krugman, referring only to the slur ” being spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn't even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence .” Ahem. On Monday Krugman slammed”extremists” like Ryan and “self-proclaimed centrists” (like Brooks?). So, can we talk about the Paul Ryan phenomenon? And yes, I mean the phenomenon, not the man. Mr. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and the principal author of the last two Congressional Republican budget proposals, isn’t especially interesting. He’s a garden-variety modern G.O.P. extremist, an Ayn Rand devotee who believes that the answer to all problems is to cut taxes on the rich and slash benefits for the poor and middle class. No, what’s interesting is the cult that has grown up around Mr. Ryan — and in particular the way self-proclaimed centrists elevated him into an icon of fiscal responsibility, and even now can’t seem to let go of their fantasy. The Ryan cult was very much on display last week, after President Obama said the obvious: the latest Republican budget proposal, a proposal that Mitt Romney has avidly embraced, is a “Trojan horse” — that is, it is essentially a fraud. “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.” The reaction from many commentators was a howl of outrage. The president was being rude; he was being partisan; he was being a big meanie. Yet what he said about the Ryan proposal was completely accurate. Actually, there are many problems with that proposal. But you can get the gist if you understand two numbers: $4.6 trillion and 14 million. Krugman asked the rhetorical question “What does it mean to be a centrist, anyway?” It could mean supporting politicians who actually are relatively nonideological, who are willing, for example, to seek Democratic support for health reforms originally devised by Republicans, to support deficit-reduction plans that rely on both spending cuts and revenue increases. And by that standard, centrists should be lavishing praise on the leading politician who best fits that description — a fellow named Barack Obama. …. Enter Mr. Ryan, an ordinary G.O.P. extremist, but a mild-mannered one. The “centrists” needed to pretend that there are reasonable Republicans, so they nominated him for the role, crediting him with virtues he has never shown any sign of possessing. Indeed, back in 2010 Mr. Ryan, who has never once produced a credible deficit-reduction plan, received an award for fiscal responsibility from a committee representing several prominent centrist organizations.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday said President Obama wins the budget debate if the electorate is as gullible as people like NPR's Nina Totenberg. Just three minutes later on PBS's Inside Washington , as if on cue, Totenberg said people making between $60,000 and $125,000 pay the most in taxes (video follows with transcript and commentary): NINA TOTENBERG, NPR: And if you look at, if you look at the taxes paid today in brackets of about 20 thousand, you see that actually the people who pay the most are between $60,000 and $125,000. And then, and they pay about 30 percent in income, taxes across the board. It then starts to go down for people who make more than that. And, and this proposed budget would give all of the benies so to speaked to unearned income. Salaried people would be paying more and more, and unearned, and people who made a lot of money would be paying less and less. Really? If you look at this strictly from a federal income tax perspective, folks with adjusted gross incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 pay between 7.7 percent and 11.9 percent. Those making above this pay considerably more. As for total taxes including state, local, and excise fees, an April 2011 report by Citizens for Tax Justice also refutes Totenberg's point. Isn't it wonderful that such a “gullible” person has so many platforms to misinform the public from?

Originally posted here:
Nina Totenberg Falsely Claims People Making Between $60K and $125K Pay the Most Taxes

Are the folks at MSNBC the slightest bit concerned anymore with showing even a hint of impartiality in their so-called “news” programming? On Wednesday, Ed Schultz began the nationally televised show bearing his name saying, “Suck it up Righties !” (video follows with transcript and commentary): ED SCHULTZ: Good evening, Americans, and welcome to the Ed Show tonight from New York. President Obama has Republicans cornered into backing the most radical budget in the history of America. Now Mitt Romney’s flaks are whining about the President being a bully? Suck it up Righties . Interesting how he started with “Good evening, Americans.” After all, according to January's Gallup poll , 40 percent of Americans described themselves as conservative. This compared to only 21 percent claiming to be liberal. This means Schultz began his show telling 40 percent of the nation to suck it up. Is this really what should be acceptable on a so-called “news” network?

See the rest here:
Ed Schultz Begins Show Saying ‘Suck It Up Righties!’

Change? Paul Ryan told ABC yesterday when they asked him about O’s latest smear job that he’s “become accustomed to this kind of rhetoric from the president,” but wait until you see this. He didn’t know the half of it. Look at it this way, though: There are only so many ways to accuse House Republicans View the video

Not what Harry Reid has said. Did Debbie Wasserman Schultz mean to say what she said in this interview? In three different ways, she says that we’ll see a Senate budget. Harry Reid has said otherwise. According to Reid, the Budget Control Act — the lackluster deal that concluded the debt ceiling drama of last summer — is all the budget Read this post