1) "Politicians" are worrying about the "next election" not the "next generation." Right, Paulie. This is Paul Ryan demagoguery on the House floor, when he knows as well as anyone it's a question of priorities: Are we going to preserve Medicare by holding down health care costs, spreading the responsibility among all citizens, not the poor and middle class to give millionaires and billionaires MORE tax cuts — or, as they have plotted for decades, are we going to "starve the beast" of government and hand the spoils to millionaires, billionaires, and corporations, privatizing everything. Keep in mind, Social Security is the LAST big pot of OUR money these scumbags and Wall Street want to get their grubby little hands on.
FIRST, they KILL Medicare and GUT Democratic progressive programs in discretionary spending. NEXT, they launch an all-out assault on Social Security. All in the name of "deficit reduction;" a deficit, as the President noted, they ran up the flag pole during the George W. Bush years when all those ginormous tax cuts for the top two percent failed to create any jobs whatsoever.
And they continue to push this narrative, that tax cuts for plutocrats are absolutely essential for job creation, because the rich are the "job creators." There is no empirical evidence for this whatsoever. As Jonathan Alter said: "This is a radical Republican attempt to repeal much of the social contract that served this country through the 20th century; they want to repeal the New Deal (Social Security) and the Great Society (Medicare) and take us back to the 1920s." Jonathan is right on target (except for some prescriptions, like raising the retirement age to 69), and people better start waking up to this clear and present danger to our country. Democrats and so-called "independents" have to rise up and turn the Republicans back. The President cannot do it alone.
2) Dan Lundgren came out talking about the "arithmetic" of Medicare. Where the fuck did he come up with this? Progressives, Rachel, this blog with my "Beltway Math Rant," have been pounding the hypocrisy of these ratbastards, in which they consider $400 billion in unpaid tax cuts for the rich the deficit CREATOR we can't touch, off the table, a "nonstarter," but they want to take $100 billion off the hides of the poor and middle class, the pliant Democrats calling them "historic" deficit reductions. And that's just for starters, gutting programs that are INVESTMENTS in our people, from Planned Parenthood to environmental regulations to children's nutrition — and on and on.
3) Republicans claim they're "saving" Medicare not DESTROYING it, when they know full well that a $15,000 voucher won't cover the costs of a senior citizen's typical medical problems, many of which are chronic and UNINSURABLE. Most despicable of ALL (it's ALL despicable, actually) is the notion that people in their 60s and 70s who may be in poor health and failing mental acuity, are in NO CONDITION to shop around for some fly-by-night operation that will sell them a fraudulent bill of goods, take their voucher money, and call it health insurance — that is, until they become sick. This is what had been happening to younger Americans for DECADES until the Obama healthcare plan put an end to these practices. Now the Republicans want to reinstate it ON THE BACKS OF SENIORS! Don't they know that seniors are ALREADY among our most vulnerable populations for all kinds of scams that will drain their meager retirement savings?
4) They're going to play dangerous games with the good faith and credit of the U.S. government. They are already trying to set Democrats up to extract outrageous budget cuts by threatening not to raise the debt. These ratbastards know full well they cannot default on our debt, lest their biggest clients, Wall Street, the rich, and the corporations, suffer huge financial losses. But they will take us to the brink, with a cadre of Teabagger true believers ready to push us over the edge. The slightest miscalculation and it happens. They are willing to plunge us into a spiralling worldwide recession-depression just so they can blackmail Democrats by playing a game of chicken or Russian roullete.
All of it is so disgustingly despicable, it's almost beyond belief, beyond words. Will the Idiot Punditocracy pick up on these points? Of course not. They'll lap this shit up as if it's a genuine line of argument. Our media is a HUGE part of the problem; just when they're most needed as watchdogs and advocates for the people.
Here's the sad truth. This garbage you're hearing from Republicans is straight out of the Rove-Luntz playbook of message-language manipulation. They have a PROBLEM with accurate charges of killing Medicare, so they've been advised by Luntz to repeatedly say they're "saving" it, even though, of course, it's a LIE. Ever notice how a governing rule of propaganda 101 is to attack one's weakness and then attempt to co-opt it? Hence, the talk of "arithmetic" OUTRAGEOUSLY from the party that, as the President pointed out, threw two unpaid wars, ginormous unpaid tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and a Medicare prescription plan that cost as much as his healthcare plan, into the DEFICIT column. Then they have the shameless gall to "pivot" from this history of plundering our Treasury to give our wealth to millionaires and billionaires, to come out and say the "arithmetic" doesn't add up — which has been the progressive argument for raising revenues from the rich all along. Republican hypocrisy boggles the mind.
These Republicans and Teabaggers are un-fucking-believable. They're all in the pockets of the rich and the corporations. They are like criminals; a crime syndicate; a mafia. They are the most contemptible politicians EVER to populate the Republican Party. Worse than Nixon and Reagan. Although Reagan started this nightmare.
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