President Obama Re-Elected - Page 302

On August 18 2012 00:04 thatonekid.907 wrote:


Except for the fact that non-millionaires generally don't have their primary source of income come from capital gains, it generally comes from working, which is taxed at a much higher rate.

On August 18 2012 00:10 paralleluniverse wrote:

How is Obamacare unsustainable? It reduces the deficit over the long term. The CBO report you links says repealing it would increase the deficit by $109 billion over 10 years. It does not support your argument, it supports mine.

I don't want Ryan's budget to be dead, I'd prefer it to be continually mocked and ridiculed for making insanely unrealistic assumptions about growth and revenue and giving no specifics on how it would be achieved.

On August 18 2012 00:35 DoubleReed wrote:
You really think people will buy that Ryan/Romney are on their side for Medicare? That's ridiculous.

xDaunt, your harsh partisanship can be really tiring...

On August 18 2012 00:35 DoubleReed wrote:
You really think people will buy that Ryan/Romney are on their side for Medicare? That's ridiculous.

xDaunt, your harsh partisanship can be really tiring...

On August 18 2012 00:36 xDaunt wrote:

When people find out that Obama cut $700 billion Medicare, then yes, they will be. I apologize if "facts" are partisan.

On August 18 2012 00:36 xDaunt wrote:

I apologize if "facts" are partisan.

On August 18 2012 01:00 DoubleReed wrote:


I was actually referring to the "I don't agree with it, but go do it anyway" line...

On August 18 2012 01:07 xDaunt wrote:

That wasn't me being partisan. I was inserting my opinion about the cuts in the context of offering my analysis.

On August 18 2012 01:20 DoubleReed wrote:


And you clearly don't care that Romney/Ryan is campaigning with something you're against or just straight up lying. Your attitude is really frustrating and tiring.

On August 17 2012 16:59 Danglars wrote:

Pretty much identical thoughts here.

PPACA says soak the DOCTORS & HOSPITALS for the treatment they provide.

From the Washington Post
Article also includes a pie chart for the medicare cuts

The political reasoning behind the PPACA was to rob Medicare to bring the total to under a trillion dollars (actual 1.2 trillion estimated currently). This helped its passage. The Trustees report of Social Security and Medicare invites plans to reform the program and its funding. Demonization of the Ryan plan in current dialogue is demagoguery. The program is going to die, and any attempts to reform it are compared to Republicans killing granny.

On August 18 2012 02:09 xDaunt wrote:

You're being absolutely ridiculous. First, it is unreasonable to expect either of the major party candidates (democrat/republican) to have a platform with which you're 100% in agreement. That just doesn't happen. You pick the guy who either promotes most of what you want or the most important things that you want. Second, even assuming that I was a single-issue voter when it comes to cutting Medicare, I'd still pick Romney over Obama because Obama uses the money to fund a new entitlement rather than reduce the deficit. I'd rather leave Medicare as is than keep Obamacare in place. I also think that if Romney wins, there's a good chance that he'll revisit Medicare. On the flipside, I know that Obama is not going to fix the problem, so I don't see where the alternative is.

Libertarians Sue to Have Romney Kicked Off Washington Ballot

As I first reported some weeks back, the Washington State Republican Party's failure to nominate a candidate for US Senate in 2010 appears to have cost them "major party" status under the letter of RCW 29A.04.086. This failure should in turn have required Mitt Romney to qualify for Washington's presidential ballot under rules and deadlines applied to "minor parties," a deadline that has long since passed.

Today the Libertarian Party of Washington State filed suit (PDF) to have Romney's name removed from the November ballot:

The suit seeks an order declaring that the Washington State Republican Party is “minor party” for purposes of the 2012 general election and directing the Secretary of State to issue ballots for the November election that do not contain the printed name of any Republican Party nominee.

Secretary of State Sam Reed's office responds that the Republicans retain major party status under WAC 434-208-130:

(1) For purposes of RCW 29A.04.086, "major political party" means a political party whose nominees for president and vice-president received at least five percent of the total votes cast for that office at the last preceding presidential election. A political party that qualifies as a major political party retains such status until the next presidential election at which the presidential and vice-presidential nominees of that party do not receive at least five percent of the votes cast.

Okay. Clear enough. But that's not what RCW 29A.04.086 actually says:

"Major political party" means a political party of which at least one nominee for president, vice president, United States senator, or a statewide office received at least five percent of the total vote cast at the last preceding state general election in an even-numbered year. A political party qualifying as a major political party under this section retains such status until the next even-year election at which a candidate of that party does not achieve at least five percent of the vote for one of the previously specified offices.

US Senate was the only applicable race in 2010, the preceding even-numbered year election, and for internal political reasons (both Dino Rossi and Clint Didier were afraid they would lose the state convention vote) the Republicans declined to officially nominate a candidate. In their suit, the Libertarian's accuse Reed of attempting to give the Republicans a "free pass," arguing that under established precedent "a WAC regulation cannot modify or alter a statute by interpretation." The Secretary of State's office requested legislation in the previous session to amend the RCW to match the WAC's redefinition of party status, but that bill failed. Thus concludes the Libertarian suit:

The subject WAC regulation purporting to redefine “major” and “minor” parties is therefor unlawful. A WAC regulation cannot change the definitions for “major” and “minor” political parties set out in the statute. The Republican Party is a “minor” political party for the 2012 election cycle, and has failed to qualify any presidential nominee for the 2012 general election ballot.

I'm not a lawyer, but the letter of the law is clear. Under the definition of "major" and "minor" parties in the RCW, Romney has not qualified for the ballot. Not that I expect a court to have the balls to kick him off, but technically, the law is on the Libertarian's side.

On August 18 2012 02:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:


The readjustment to hospital reimbursement by and large isn't a direct cut; it comes from a variety of quality improvement strategies that should have been there in the first place. The most noteworthy one that pops to mind is that it prohibits billing Medicare/Medicaid for hospital-acquired infections that were not present at admission, but it also penalizes hospitals with too much administrative overhead and reduces reimbursement if a patient is readmitted with a condition that should have been treated in the first place, all of which are completely reasonable.

While some of the specific numbers for a few admissions are probably taking direct hits, as far as I know, that's not where the majority of the cuts come from. If it weren't the case I suspect the hospitals I worked for would have been significantly more perturbed by the act.

I'll also note that the article you quoted itself says the hospitals by and large didn't care. The situation for a lot of hospitals in poor areas right now is that they just don't get reimbursed at all for their services to uninsured patients; if those individuals had easier access to insurance (like through state insurance exchanges, which would evaporate without the ACA), they'd at least get SOMETHING.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pressed by her husband and a top Obama aide to consider replacing Vice President Joe Biden just a couple of weeks ago, claims the author of the New York Times bestseller "The Amateur."

But Clinton, exhausted from four years of international travel and diplomacy, shrugged off the suggestion to lay the groundwork for her own 2016 bid with her husband at her side, according to author Ed Klein.

"As recently as a couple of weeks ago, the White House was putting out feelers to see if Hillary Clinton was interested in replacing Joe Biden on the ticket," Klein told Secrets. "Bill Clinton, I'm told, was urging his wife to accept the number two spot if it was formally offered. Bill sees the vice presidency as the perfect launching pad for Hillary to run for president in 2016."

He made similar comments Thursday night to CNBC's Larry Kudlow. The White House has dismissed speculation of a Clinton for Biden swap despite a string of recent gaffes by the vice president.

Klein, whose book is No. 2 on the NYT bestseller list, quoted unnamed sources who revealed that top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett put the vice presidency on the table during a lunch with the secretary of state. "The lunch was ostensibly about policy issues, but the subject of the vice presidency came up," he said. "Hillary told Valerie Jarrett that she was not interested in running as Obama's vice president."

Klein said she cited two reasons: If elected, she didn't want to be tied to Obama's left-leaning politics in her own 2016 bid. Second, if Obama loses, she would be tarred as a loser.

New on Friday: Klein told Secrets that Bill Clinton is working fast to get a 2016 Hillary for President campaign up and going. His sources told him that Clinton is sniffing around for a major donor to offer up a jet for the potential candidate to use. Also, Klein said, Clinton is looking for somebody to take over the Clinton Global Initiative "so that he can devote his full time to Hillary's campaign."

Klein has sources deep in the Clinton camp and he said that they said she is eager for a rest followed by a makeover. "She clearly is exhausted. She needs to lose weight and get her energy back for a four-year slog."

He added that Obama has never talked to Clinton about replacing Biden. The reason, said Klein, is that Obama was afraid she would turn him down and Bill Clinton would leak the snub to the media.

On August 18 2012 00:36 xDaunt wrote:

When people find out that Obama cut $700 billion Medicare, then yes, they will be. I apologize if "facts" are partisan.

First things first: Neither Obama nor his health care law literally cut a dollar amount from the Medicare program’s budget.

On August 18 2012 02:49 xDaunt wrote:
It's being reported that Hillary was offered the VP slot and turned it down.


Source.

I'm not surprised by either that she was offered the spot or that she turned it down.

Think you know the real Barack Obama? You don’t—not until you’ve read The Amateur

In this stunning exposé, bestselling author Edward Klein—a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, former foreign editor of Newsweek, and former editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine—pulls back the curtain on one of the most secretive White Houses in history. He reveals a callow, thin-skinned, arrogant president with messianic dreams of grandeur supported by a cast of true-believers, all of them united by leftist politics and an amateurish understanding of executive leadership.

In The Amateur you’ll discover:


Why the so-called “centrist” Obama is actually in revolt against the values of the society he was elected to lead
Why Bill Clinton loathes Barack Obama and tried to get Hillary to run against him in 2012
The spiteful rivalry between Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey
How Obama split the Kennedy family
How Obama has taken more of a personal role in making foreign policy than any president since Richard Nixon—with disastrous results
How Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett are the real powers behind the White House throne


The Amateur is a reporter’s book, buttressed by nearly 200 interviews, many of them with the insiders who know Obama best. The result is the most important political book of the year. You will never look at Barack Obama the same way again.

On August 18 2012 02:50 Vega62a wrote:




http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/15/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-said-barack-obama-first-history-rob-me/

Don't try to pretend like you are even remotely interested in facts. You didn't even try to fact check your claim.

On August 18 2012 02:53 xDaunt wrote:

You may want to read up further where I call Politifact on its bullshit and direct everyone to the CBO report that proves them wrong.

On August 18 2012 02:56 farvacola wrote:

This is where he shrugs off your source because of the monolithic liberal media bias inherent in all things that disagree with his perspective. And by the way xDaunt, the bottom line with the healthcare debate is not a mere dollar value, as the current system runs so inefficiently that some "cuts" are actually systemic improvements.