Friday News Roundup - Domestic
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-09-07/friday-news-roundup-domestic
Democrats wrapped up their national convention this week with key speeches by Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and former President Bill Clinton. Manufacturing and construction spending reports showed continued sluggish growth ahead of the August jobs report. And the Department of Justice approved a New Hampshire voter ID law. Greg Ip of The Economist, Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times join Diane for analysis of the week's top national news stories.
Guests
Greg Ip
U.S. economics editor for The Economist and author of "The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World."
Ruth Marcus
columnist and editorial writer for The Washington Post.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
Friday News Roundup Video
The panel discussed why Democrats made two last-minute changes to the party's national platform. The revised document mentioned the word "God" and declared Jerusalem the Israeli capital. Ruth Marcus, columnist and editorial writer for The Washington Post, said Democratic strategists didn't read the platform's language on the Middle East well enough before the convention in Charlotte, N.C. New York Times correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg said the Jerusalem gaffe was problematic because it's contrary to the Obama administration's foreign policy. Economist editor Greg Ip said the changes were more symbolic than practical.
Comments
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I know the truth is one of the first casualties of this very liberal show, but I will put this bit of truth out there. Clinton in very strong terms said no one could have done a better job given the bad economic hand Obama was dealt when he assumed office. This is just flat wrong, the situation Ronald Reagan was handed was worse and Reagan did rise to the challenge and get a lot of positive things done to right the economy. When reelection time came their was little doubt he was a leader deserving of four more years, not so in 2012. The problem with all democrats right now is all their selling is losing, "hope and change" has morphed into the despair of the "new normal". I am not buying this defeatist garbage, I know we can do much better but first we have got to get that intellectual cripple out of the white house.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/05/05/reaganomics-vs-obama...
Bob Woodward's new book coming out will explain a lot as to why the incredible arrogance of Obama and all the amateurs he surrounded himself with are why he failed so badly as a leader.
George Santayana observed "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." A second George wrote the book on doublespeak. Doublespeak language deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. As in George Orwell's 1984, the Republicans wrote a new a new dictionary distorting the meaning of words while taking out others? Small business, yes, but what happened to Main Street? People might remember of Wall Street.
Remember they got us into this mess? The Republican convention didn't remember. The Bookie is kept more honest by his employer than Wall Street brokers by theirs. Wall Street computer programs played GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out), Junk=AAA. Econometric Models crashed. Want Wall Street crooks back on the loose?
Invoke Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet, Republicans pass laws requiring all citizens- be they octogenarians, war veterans or both- to find their birth certificates, or don't vote. Praising Martin Luther King while stealing the right to vote from American Citizens? Orwellian?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the 8.3% unemployment rate means 12.8 million unemployed. 12.8=23 million, Governor?
Affordable Care Act? Not one penny in benefits was taken from one senior citizen. Romney and Ryan say it stole money from seniors. Doublespeak, anyone? It saves
44,000 plus Americans lives die each year who lacked health insurance.
Romney/Ryan epitomized sophistry, casuistic sophistry. Cynical leaders from history who controlled their worlds through doublespeak would be proud.
Statman2 wrote: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the 8.3% unemployment rate means 12.8 million unemployed. 12.8=23 million"
“if the labor force participation rate were back at its January 2009 level, the U-3 rate would be 11.0 percent”
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/what-is-the-real-unemployment-...
Statman2 wrote: "Affordable Care Act? Not one penny in benefits was taken from one senior citizen. Romney and Ryan say it stole money from seniors. Doublespeak, anyone?"
It cuts $716 billion from Medicare service providers, net result is the same, doctors will either cut services to those currently on medicare or go out of business. It's a shell game.
Your post does not have one accurate statement in it.
Medicare? “The Trustees project that Medicare costs (including both HI and SMI expenditures) will grow substantially from approximately 3.7 percent of GDP in 2011 to 5.7 percent of GDP by 2035, and will increase gradually thereafter to about 6.7 percent of GDP by 2086.” Yes, costs will go up? Want them to go up faster? Well, the Trustees say that “Projected Medicare costs over 75 years are substantially lower than they otherwise would be because of provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (the "Affordable Care Act" or ACA).” There's no question the Trustees question whether efficiencies can be maintained that keep costs down to 1.1 percent increase per year. Do you want to get rid of the efficiencies in place for right now? Just repeal Obamacare and costs jump up.
Does the Affordable Care Act save lives? Yes. First, according to Wilper and colleagues (2009) in the American Journal of Public Health, approximately 44,000 plus Americans die each year because of lack of access to health insurance. Second, the National Academy of Sciences 2001 report on medical errors estimated that approximately 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die because of medical errors each year. A midpoint approximation is about 71,000 Americans. According to Lucien Leape, MD, from Harvard,who served on the Academy of Sciences Committee, "accidental injuries result from faulty systems not from faulty doctors and nurses.."
That is, the 71,000 dead per year, who have access to the health care system, i.e., overwhelmingly with insurance, die because of dysfunctional aspects of the system. That means 44,000 without insurance + 71,000 with insurance die per year because of our current health care system. If that's not an epidemic, what is? And those with insurance are subject to the roll of the dice, as well. Do we want 100,000 plus tragic deaths per year and 1,000,000 plus tragic deaths per decade?
Good Morning Diane and panel:
The question I have is: Why Dick Armey, as founder of FreedomWorks (morphed into The Tea Party), was not tapped to lay out the theme of "’I built it’ individualism” as outlined in the 2010 publication of his book Give Us Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto? Are Governor Romney and Representative Ryan afraid to lay out Armey’s principles about “the individual uber alles with no responsibility to their neighbors” ones that a plurality of American voters (if they really understood them) would reject them and cause them to lose the election?
I ask this second question from the perspective that former Representative Richard (Dick) Keith Armey was born and raised in the same small North Dakota town as was I and graduated from the same small liberal arts college as did I (I’m 2 years older.). The farmers and small business owners in that small town knew in their very bone marrow that “we’re all in this together”, especially when drought dries the pastures and a carelessly thrown cigarette can start a prairie fire that burns everything in its path (witness the fires in western South Dakota). Or a massive hail storm destroys 90% of the wheat harvest and there will be no way to make the payment to the bank for the tractor or be able to buy seed for next spring’s planting? They also know that without the various subsidies of and financial backup by the federal government for destroyed crops, they would lose everything.
Phyllis R. Schultz, RN, PhD
Professor of Nursing (retired)
University of Washington
Port Townsend, WA
360-379-3397
Dear Diane and Panel,
Here are a couple of nagging items that I wish someone would address truthfully:
a. Over and over those describing unemployment mention that there are untold thousands of workers who "give up looking for work". I've been laid off/lost contracts etc. a number of times as have many acquaintances.......INcluding Bain-style takeovers. I never ever quit looking for the next job. As a business owner I paid the max into unemployment INSURANCE both state and Fed. Please know that NObody really quits looking.
b. Conservatives demand more legislation to "guarantee" elimination of abortion, or rollback of Roe v. Wade. After Bush's term and after Reagan's vs. Clinton and Obama, were there real reductions in abortions during the "conservative" terms or the "choice" terms??
c. Would businesses really despise having a government that uses international influence and REGULATIONs to improve their chances in the global markets? Japan and China and South Korean governments use all kinds of methods to help their businesses. China in fact plays games with tariffs and access to their markets to block US businesses and enhance theur own. Japan has done these tricks for decades (e.g. Import/export of apples, plywood, beef etc.)
Thanks
OK...time to wake up the knuckleheads...!"
-Please name the last president with "business experience" (Regan & Clinton had no "business experience." GWB had an MBA from Harvard, remember?)? It's an irrelevant argument .
-If any of you think you can do a better job changing things, why not run yourselves? Oh...that's right...you don't have any friends in high places, PAC money, or aren't involved in politics beyond armchair quarterbacking!
-Both Democrats and Republicans play with the truth--both do it in order to get elected, but Republicans do it because they put ideology before reason ("we aren't going to allow fact checkers to run our campaign).
-Anyone who doesn't like YOUR "truth" will be "biased" or "partisan."
Please think about this as you rub the morning delusion from your eyes! http://beyond-the-political-spectrum.blogspot.com/
Thank you for your wonderful program Diane.
The Republicans have made Mr. Romney's business experience pivotal in his campaign for president. Business and businesspeople are essential, yet the Romney team blurs the boundary between business and government and puts business on a pedestal.
Michigan governor Snyder especially blurred the boundary when he declared that he runs a "customer service business" and the people are "customers." A dangerous analogy in my view.
Businesses are diverse: most ethical, some not, some callous, even ruthless. That's why we have the saying: Let the buyer beware.
So, what do you and your guests think of using business descriptors when talking about the Romney-Ryan political behavior? Examples:
. Bait-and-switch or false advertising instead of flip flopping
. Cut-throat competition or cheating the customer (worker) instead of blaming unions for our economic problems and teacher unions for all education problems
This might stop some of the lying and scapegoating behavior and encourage critical thinking among voters. What do you think?
I watched Obama's speech and yeah I am angry as hell, I don't like him personally because personally he is a weak parasite of a man. He stands as the symbol of the permanent victim, a loser, lost in such deep pessimism that he drags down anything that he touches. There is no optimism there only pessimism. What he offers is what all of the far left offers, waiting for the end of the world and to die. I know we can do much better.
Could you straighten the AP out on fact checking? There should be a facts checked. Snide opinions of personalities under the cover of contrary opinion or judgement are not fact checks.
http://tucsoncitizen.com/in-the-aggregate/2012/09/06/checking-the-fact-c...
I'd just like to point out that advantages previous presidents had in mounting recoveries versus the current recession/weak recovery/trough of despondency that President Obama has had to deal with are that when Ronald Reagan was president, the full effect of his eviscerating unions hadn't taken hold yet; and of course neither he nor Bill Clinton dealt with fallout from the transfer of the United States' manufacturing capacity to countries with cheaper labor enabled by NAFTA and CAFTA. It seems to me that Obama started with a smaller base of living-wage jobs than they did, due to a legacy of bad Republican policies that sacrificed American prosperity, perhaps forever, to the false idols of free trade and free markets. (Yes, I know the Democrat Clinton pushed NAFTA through Congress; it was still a Reagan-Bush policy that he adopted.)
I certainly hope voters take that history into account as they hear Mr. Romney, fibbing through that demented, unbalanced grin matching his patrician, detached air and lyin' Paul Ryan spinning his Candyland fantasies where the deserving invariably get rich and all the poor are parasites. I also hope that people are smart enough to realize that with all their happy talk about jobs, the GOP ticket never offers any specifics of how they'll bring back good-paying positions to America.
I'm no fan of Barack Obama, but he's earned a measure of respect to the degree he's opposed the dark side's kleptocratic, squealing sanctimonious charlatans.
'Go back (to your submerged home) and call 211.'
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/09/romney_go_home.php
After Former Governor of Ohio Ted Strickland, Castro and Michelle Obama raised the roof of the convention on Tuesday evening I did not think it could be raised much higher. But Sister Campbell, Elizabeth Warren and then Bill Clinton blew the roof off. Clintons lecture/speech was a national teach in on the economy, education, health care. About half through I said on a Huff Po blog pass the caffeine around that convention and then I swallowed a gulp of a double espresso to try to keep up with Clinton's brain. Focused on personal responsibility as well as taking care of your less fortunate friend, neighbor or family member. President Obama was calm clear and resolute while talking about "citizenship" "no on said this journey would be easy" and the focus on "you are the change, the reason, the hope"
Sure seems like the Democrats wrapped it up
I just don't know how anyone could argue with the fact that the Democratic convention was far far far more diverse. The real face of America.
"I watched Obama's speech and yeah I am angry as hell, I don't like him personally because personally he is a weak parasite of a man. He stands as the symbol of the permanent victim, a loser, lost in such deep pessimism that he drags down anything that he touches. There is no optimism there only pessimism. What he offers is what all of the far left offers, waiting for the end of the world and to die. I know we can do much better."
I don't quite understand what you mean..Why are you so angry at Obama? Why would you say that he is a parasite of a man? How does his "parasitism" manifest itself? Please explain... Thank you!
President Clinton stated that in a mere four years, no one could have righted the situation which President Obama inherited. However, after four years, it would seem that President Reagan had turned the corner on a equally intense economic crisis (yet very different, as his was inflationary not deflationary). Does President Clinton's claim hold up to credibility analysis, considering the results posted by President Reagan?
I thought that the best definition of the difference between Romney and Obama was in Biden's speech when he talked about the Auto Bailout comparing a balance sheet with the people who would be impacted. I am surprised that no one I have heard has spoken of that distinction.
The accepted definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. It was Rethuglican policies that ran the country's economy off a cliff. Why would anyone give them the opportunity to do it again? In order to vote Rethuglican you either have to be insanely rich or richly insane.
Please recall that President Reagan used the question "Are you better off today than you were four years ago" TWICE. First, in 1980, as an indictment of the feckless Carter administration. Secondly, in 1984, explicitly inviting America to grade him on his results.
I really liked when he said "I am the President" the crowd went wild. He calmly settled everyone down and then somberly talked about sending American soldiers into harms way, holding family members of those who do not come back. Moving.
Biden and Obama both focused on a "fair shot". The image that Biden stirred up with his building the U.S. from the middle. Middle class expanding.
"The accepted definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results."
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Wouldn't this apply with greater veracity to the President's claim that we have to keep doing the same things, with the hope of seeing improved results?
Jokr Clinton had his hand in that. Going along with Rubin, Summers deconstructing Glass Steagall. Clinton went along
The First Lady looks a bit pregnant in that above snap shot. She always glows but she was especially glowing during this convention. Almost a pregnancy glow.
I wish to comment on the notion that 'doing the hard thing' means we must cut Social Security and Medicare. In truth, the REALLY hard thing will be to address current tax arrangements that privilege capital at the expense of wage income, and especially laws that enable offshoring of taxable income. The Tax Justice Network recently released a report estimating that a full one third of the world's financial wealth - between $21 and $32 TRILLION - is now hidden outside of the real economy in the shadow financial system. That is 'lost' money that is undermining both our economy and our democracy and the truly hard thing, in my opinion, would be to bring that money back into the real economy and tax it for the benefit of all.
What policy, exactly, ties the unemployment rate to the Obama candidacy or administration, except perhaps the rejected jobs bill, the gridlock over the pending economic cliff or simply rhetoric.
We Need 90,000 Jobs Per Month to Keep Pace With the Growth of the Population
Congressional Budget Office projects that the underlying rate of labor force growth is now just 0.7 percent annually. This comes to roughly 1,050,000 a year or just under 90,000 a month.
Just read the ADP employment report claiming 201,000 jobs were added in August. Why are we looking only at the Labor Department report when there may be more accurate measurements than can give us a better understanding of the current employment picture?
Dem's excuse for the Jerusalem issue in platform: 'We just didn't read it carefully.' Hey, just like the health care reform bill. At least they're consistent. Forward!
Best coverage of the God/Jerusalem blip is over at Mondoweiss. The fact that the three time vote which did not end up being 2/3rds for the language being inserted as the chair decided even took place was amazing. If you listen to the vote it was close to even during the three votes. THIS WOULD HAVE NEVER EVEN HAPPENED YEARS BACK. MOVEMENT.
Also Chris Hayes was the only MSNBC talking head who was honest when this vote was brought during a panel discussion. Lawrence O'Donnell blew it off, Rachel Maddow was silent, Ed rolled over, Al Sharpton covered his own back but Chris Hayes went out on a limb and said on air that it was a bad bad decision supporting the negative behavior of Israel. Al Sharpton then lectured Hayes for stepping out of the box covering his own ass even more. That clip is over at Mondoweiss too "In Caving on Jerusalem, Dems pulled back the curtain of the lobby" by Phillip Weiss.
American Jews will overwhelmingly vote for Obama -- regardless of the platform flap over Jerusalem. And 98% of Catholic women use contraceptives. These are non-issues. The Jewish and Catholic leaders who make a lot of noise about these issues don't represent the voters they claim to represent.