The Diane Rehm Show

I wish the press would stop using the word "gaffe" to describe a politician just revealing what they truly believe. A gaffe is misspeaking, a mistake.

Polls should not even be a part of the electoral environment whether they're accurate or not. As was said, they are not scientific.

There are enough problems facing this country (under-achieving schools, homelessness) without wasting time talking about NFL referees. Let's fix the really important problems first, then worry about over-valued, under-whelming entertainment.

GOOD ARTICLE!

"The case for re-electing President Barack Obama rests on five arguments, the most important of which is that Romney/Ryan represent sexism, racism, homophobia and fascism"

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/09/06/the_five_reasons_to...

part-insane politics wrote: "The "affordable care act" (choke) takes $716 billion from medicare to pay for Obamacare..."

Gee. You mean the identical $716 billion that Ryan's budget takes. Moreover, ACA assists Medicaid - substantial numbers of the elderly depend on Medicaid. Annually Medicare ranks as THE most efficient health plan (NAIIA & OMB stats) - far better delivering care and containing actual costs than ANY private insurer. Medicare Advantage (from which the bulk of that 716B is taken) has proven NOT to be cost-effective i.e. no pay for plans that do not deliver.
Those currently on Medicare can rightly tell you actual premiums have DEcreased from prior years and benefits have INcreased, especially in MediGap plans - free market competition has been improved. The number of uninsured actually went down (first time ever); the rate of increase slowed to 4% rather than typical 8-10% rises.

You wrote: "...doctors and hospitals make up for the short comings of medicare by over charging private insurance plans, ironically the same ones that would be put out of business by Obamacare."
There is nothing to substantiate that claim. Conversely, private insurers are currently returning premiums to employers/solo-payers since they failed to provide required ACA ratio of care-to-premiums. Providers and private insurers who have overcharged especially for Medicare-Caid patients SHOULD be penalized. MOST cost-shifting by providers is from the uninsured to the insured, NOT from Medicare to non-Medicare patients - anyone familiar with hospitals can attest to that. Informed people know that large insurers and provider networks are gobbling up doctors and private practices in order to dictate methods and profits. Docs go out of business because they cannot compete with the corporate conglomerates.

To the gentleman / ex-military career person whose call was taken just before the end of the Domestic Hour:

Your comment consisted of criticism of certain people you know (or know of) who keep collecting unemployment insurance because "the media has told them that" the jobs they could get are "beneath them." You went on to say that you thought Romney was right in criticizing folks like this because they thought they were "entitled" to such help, etc.

You were clearly upset and resentful of such people, but I have one question for you: How long do you estimate you'll be receiving your military pension, which I assume both you and your wife have been collecting ever since you each "retired" from military service? Even though you are young enough to have years ago launched a second, private-sector career, you still likely expect to collect a pension from us taxpayers for, what? 40-50 years total? (Military retirees can collect a full pension starting as early as age 37 -- and they are paid this for the rest of their lives.)

In light of this enormously generous benefit YOU collect from the federal government, how DARE you criticize and carp against "lazy" people without jobs who are using their unemployment insurance to feed themselves and pay their bills?! All while YOU collect a monthly paycheck from us taxpayers that you don't even need?!

In other words, just because you served 20 years in the military doesn't give your sucking at the federal teat any more "shine" or "privilege" than anyone else's.

And maybe -- in our quest to reduce the deficit (which I'm also pretty sure you find a priority) -- we'll start cutting the outrageously generous retirement benefits folks like you enjoy. Let's see what you call in to howl about then.

I was enjoying your show until you handle the call from the gentleman from Matthews Virginia. He and his wife had served in the military for 20 years and clearly had put their lives on the line for our country. They are now working and yet, his concern that the president is saying to him, you are not giving your rightful share to taxes when 47% of Americans are not paying any income tax is a horrible form of bias. You immediately diverted his issue and jumped to a dialogue about the NFL refs. Shame on you. We needed to hear your others commentators and their response. I have lost confidence in both political parties. Our politicians (congress) have destroyed our experiment in democracy by using a massive amount of our taxes to buy votes in areas where we clearly not afford. Bush's policy along with congress were very destructive but Obama's policies are even worse. We need informed debate on a new vision for our country and NR needs to play a neutral means for it to happen.

In reply to "partisan politics" I have to say that you are spot on about the military-industrial complex and the Democratic Party. But you are wrong about "every major conflict." The Philipine-American war, the Iraq and Afghan War and the covert wars in Central America (which were serious conflicts) were started and carried out largely by Republican administrations. But your general point is well-taken. As for "small government" I take it to mean that if people are starving or hit with a natural disaster they should just do for themselves and, at the same, time we should maintain a huge and expanding military establishment to make the world safe for corporations, the dollar, and military contractors--that's essentially the Republican position. No funding for research, no investment in infrastructure or education even though these should be classified as investments since they always bring a very tangible return. To me the Republican position is irrational and destructive to the country. I'm a pragmatists and the Republicans will never get the vote of people like me (and I don't like the Democrats either) unless they stop being completely ideological--show me facts and proof not illusions and flag-waving.

Just how does evasive, unaccountable, and sworn to secrecy, Willard Mitt Romney propose to put back to work the 47% of entitled parasitic Americans feeding off the government system? Since he refuses to elaborate on any of his solutions, all we voters can do is guess. Will it be with individual state house bills like the Utah house bill HB148 passed by the legislature earlier this year and signed by Governor Gary R. Herbert to recover 20 million acres of Federal land? Will it also include the proposed anti-union California Proposition 32 (which recently received a $4 million contribution from the billionarie Koch Brothers of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States, and backed by the California Future Fund for Free Markets, and The American Future Fund, along with the Center to Protect Patient Rights)? What about the Utah Mine Safety Commission founded to replace the Federal Mine and Safety Commission of the United States? Also Utah HB477 an attempt to destroy government transparency? If so, I cannot say the American public will be too thrilled about our country being taken back to the era of the lawlessness and exploitation of the industrial revolution, which provided very dangerous high risk, overworked employment with excessively long hours, and under paid jobs, ladened with occupational hazards.

Chris Cillizza is insulted when there are claims of liberal media bias? Wow! Did he not even listen to his own comments and those of the other guests on this show?

The election isn't rigged, but according to White House advisor David Axelrod, the polls are rigged.

"Internal emails between senior officials at The Gallup Organization, obtained by The Daily Caller, show senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod attempting to subtly intimidate the respected polling firm when its numbers were unfavorable to the president.

After Gallup declined to change its polling methodology, Obama’s Department of Justice hit it with an unrelated lawsuit that appears damning on its face."

HonestAbe wrote:" Gee. You mean the identical $716 billion that Ryan's budget takes"

Wrong! it puts the money in the medicare trust fund, so it is not taken out of medicare, huge difference.

"Ryan’s Medicare cuts were solely used to extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund, and not to fund new spending elsewhere. By contrast, Obamacare cut $716 billion from Medicare in order to fund $1.9 trillion in new health care spending, through the law’s expansion of Medicaid and its new subsidized exchanges."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/08/16/fact-checking-the-obama-camp...

@Teece Bowman: You and Pres. Obama like traveling down the same road? His first big screw up was telling republicans that they were going to have to go to the back of the bus. He then, using executive order expects them to follow him merrily wherever he drives??? I think not. He insults 53% of the nation and then spends the rest of his term power whining about the lack of cooperation from those same Republicans he belittles and insults? Your 1st screw up is showing your racial bias by using the term "two rich white guys". Pres. Obama has driven the nation into the ditch financially, morally and ethically. My friend, choose carefully the roads you travel on, who you travel with, and choose your comments more carefully too. Peace, out.

Well, the polls have started to come, and they portend total disaster. Americans don’t turn out to like a heartlessly cruel Social Darwinian articulation of the national condition that by the by calls half the population worthless. Huh. Go figure.

But is this a problem? Of course not! There is an explanation for this too: The polls are wrong! All of them. Except of course Rasmussen, that rock of right-minded methodological certitude jutting out from the ocean of relativist corruption. I’d like a nickel but would settle happily for a penny for every tweet I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks from a conservative braying about a given poll’s sample.

First of all, what was the Democratic edge in 2008? Uh, seven points. Second, while he is correct that the polls are showing strong Democratic advantages, they’re doing so because that’s how people are identifying themselves to pollsters. In fact, Stan Greenberg noted last Friday, Republicans lost five points in voter identification in a month. This is not bad poll sampling. It’s reality. And while it’s true that today’s numbers might overstate what will be the case on Nov. 6, the way things are going, they just might be understating them.

But no—now, the mere fact of poll-taking is “a subtle means of Republican voter suppression,” as Simon Maloy put it over at Media Matters. And the latest whine—this cupboard somehow never runs bare—is that conservatives don’t like taking polls. So said Scott Walker to Fox on Wednesday. Yes, of course! Because conservatives are people of action, busy people, who have neither the time (like the indolent 47 percenters) nor the inclination to accept phone calls from lamestream media pollsters. Honestly. Scott Walker can’t really believe this.

@Jim Gamble

Are you really Debbie Wasserman Shultz?

@Jim Gamble: Still bloviating at gale force I see.... Yawwwwwnnnnn.....

Part-insane politics:
Sorry to let you in on the deep dark secret......there IS NO "Medicare trust fund".....never has been. In fact the bipartisan congressional commission that routinely scores these programs indicated that Obama's method ADDs four years to the longevity if Medicare while Ryan's shrinks it.
How about using the results that both sides of the aisle use in scoring instead of a right wing rag like Forbes. Next time I will give you links to Bob Scheer's Truthdig site since you just want one-sided stuff.