Welcome to the War on Chalk. How's this for absurd? "Over the past five years, at least 48 people in 13 American cities have run afoul of authorities for coloring things with chalk. The vast majority were arrested in connection with drawing designs or messages on public streets or sidewalks." Children drawing pictures, menace to society. Meanwhile, police don't respond to burglaries anymore. Priorities.
Back to the unreal world....
Oops. Ryan pick looking like not such a good idea after all. Seniors in Florida are getting the word. "Assailing proposed changes to the retiree health plan is a time-tested line of attack, nowhere more so than here in Florida, where voters 65 and older made up 22 percent of the electorate in the 2008 presidential election. Polls show that a majority of elderly voters nationally oppose changes in Medicare or Social Security, which Mr. Ryan in the past has also proposed altering." Send Sununu to talk to them. He's doing a swell job.
The argument goes like this: When Obama wants to cut Medicare costs, the same ones Republicans want to cut mind you, it's a bad, bad thing. But when Republicans want to both slash funding AND turn the program over to the inefficient and profiteering private sector where you're going to end up paying a whole lot more out of pocket, it's "reform". See how that works?
"Republicans concerned Ryan could cost party House and Senate seats" sez an article in The Hill, complete with Republican anonymous sources freaking right out about the implications of ending Medicare As We Know It and what the voters are going to do to them if they don't run away fast enough. "There are a lot races that are close to the line we're not going to win now because they're going to battle out who's going to kill grandma first, ObamaCare or Paul Ryan's budget,” said one Republican strategist who works on congressional races." Awww. What a shame. Politico has more.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jonathan Chait. Must read on all things Ryan. You're welcome.
Watch out for that landslide talk though. Sure is fun to think about.
The WaPo notices that Romney's budget cuts are much worse than Ryan's. "But Romney would also spend far less than Ryan on non-defense programs, including entitlements. To stick to his budgeting principles, Romney would have to cut $7 trillion from all non-defense programs, and he would have to cut $9.6 trillion if he wanted to balance the budget, as he’s also promised, the CBPP says. The Ryan plan would cut $5.2 trillion from entitlements and non-defense discretionary spending. 'Thus, Governor Romney’s ten-year cuts would range from one-third deeper than those in the Ryan budget to almost twice as deep as the Ryan cuts,' the CBPP concludes." In other words, unworkable insanity.
Remember that time when Paul Ryan scuttled the bipartisan debt reduction deal on the orders of Grover Norquist? Bloomberg does. "Representative Paul Ryan was a pivotal figure in killing the 2010 Bowles-Simpson agreement, which Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney now holds out as a model for putting America’s fiscal house in order." Couldn't have President Obama actually solve any problems now, could we?
You know how I've been going on and on about the wind production tax credit this year? Well, thanks to your obstructionist GOP House, Vestas is now starting to lay off workers in Colorado. Can we call them "job-killers" now? 90 of their 450 workers in Pueblo, shown the door. "Elsewhere in the statement, Vestas tied the layoffs directly to the failure of Congress to extend a wind energy tax credit set to expire this year." President Obama will raise the issue again today in Iowa.
And by the way, even though Paul Ryan claims he hated the stimulus and government spending on green energy, turns out that didn't stop him from putting his hands in the till for some green energy projects for his district. "Ryan’s letters to the energy secretary praising the energy initiatives as he sought a portion of the funding are in sharp contrast to the House Budget Committee chairman’s image as a Tea Party movement favorite adamantly opposed to federal spending on such programs." Millions of those "wasteful" stimulus dollars flowed into Janesville thereafter. Hypocrite much?
If you haven't been reading "The Chronicles of Mitt", you really should. Brilliant. Follow them here.
More subversive messages from Ogawa...
