Brian Buetler, TPM: If the Biden group comes up with big cuts, trillions of dollars worth of cuts, but without substantially [cutting] Medicare, it won’t get your vote?
Mitch McConnell (R, KY), Senate minority leader: Correct
Lemkin: I mean, what’s the point of governing if you can’t tell a few old people who’ve finally run out of money to kindly go die in the streets? They should have thought of this before they agreed to take part in Medicare and/or get sick. It’s all about personal choices. Also: Death panels. Real ones. Run by Mitch McConnell and his cronies. Trillions in cuts aren’t the point of any “deficit reduction” talk by the GOP. All they want, all they have ever wanted is an excuse to foist the same old laundry list of punitive attacks on the social safety net coupled to lavish giveaways to their chosen few at the very top. That is all this is, was, or ever will be about. Time for the Democrats to start messaging accordingly. Well past time, in fact. After all, Mitch McConnell stands a pretty good chance of being Senate majority leader in 2013.
Day: May 27, 2011
[The Republicans are being advised to spend] 2012 accusing the Democrats of sponsoring death panels. The Democrats will spend 2012 accusing Republicans of ending Medicare. Whichever party demagogues best wins.
David Brooks, outdoing even his own unusually high standard for making exceedingly stupid statements. One of these is simply not like the other. “Death panels” have been fully, categorically, absolutely, and completely made up from whole cloth. Lies. The biggest lie of 2009, in fact.
The Ryan plan, on the other hand, demonstrably ends Medicare. It transforms the program over the course of ten years from a government-run, single payer system into a voucher-based private insurance steeplechase for Granny and Gramps. If they can’t make the difference between the voucher payment and the cost of coverage, then they can go die in the streets.
Yes, David, a program called Medicare will still exist, and I know it’s terribly hard for you to square that circle inside that mind of yours, but it’s clear to a four year old that that Medicare, the one described in the preceding paragraph, will be nothing like the Medicare we have today.
Furthermore, that David Brooks feels confident pitching this sort of brazen false equivalency from his airy perch at the nation’s finest newspaper is a big indication of just how punishingly stupid our discourse is. Is there an editor in the house? George Will routinely spouting horseshit at the Washington Post is one thing; you’d think the Times still has a standard or two.
The Ryan plan, on the other hand, demonstrably ends Medicare. It transforms the program over the course of ten years from a government-run, single payer system into a voucher-based private insurance steeplechase for Granny and Gramps. If they can’t make the difference between the voucher payment and the cost of coverage, then they can go die in the streets.
Yes, David, a program called Medicare will still exist, and I know it’s terribly hard for you to square that circle inside that mind of yours, but it’s clear to a four year old that that Medicare, the one described in the preceding paragraph, will be nothing like the Medicare we have today.
Furthermore, that David Brooks feels confident pitching this sort of brazen false equivalency from his airy perch at the nation’s finest newspaper is a big indication of just how punishingly stupid our discourse is. Is there an editor in the house? George Will routinely spouting horseshit at the Washington Post is one thing; you’d think the Times still has a standard or two.
The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it. The way real science goes is that you come up with lots of ideas, and most of them will be wrong.
Francis Crick, Nobel laureate, and pretty clearly a high percentage of the brains in the team that first described the structure of DNA.
Academic books pack about 600 words to a page. Normal books clock in around 400. Large-print books — you know, the ones for kids or the visually impaired — fit about 250. The House GOP’s jobs plan, however, gets about 200 words to a page. The typeface is fit for giants, and the document’s 10 pages are mostly taken up by pictures. It looks like the staffer in charge forgot the assignment was due on Thursday rather than Friday, and so cranked the font up to 24 and began dumping clip art to pad out the plan.
Ezra Klein reflecting on the GOP “jobs plan.”
Lemkin 