from Political Theater:
Rick Perry promises to speak the truth in new ‘Politically Correct’ ad
Rick Perry appropriates the idea of political correctness in his latest television ad, a thirty-second video denouncing Washington as "the capital of political correctness, where double speak reigns and the truth is frowned upon.”
“You can’t say that Congressmen becoming lobbyists is a form of legal corruption," Perry says in the ad. "Or that we give aid money to countries who oppose America. Or that Washington insiders are bankrupting social security.”
Here's the video, courtesy of rickperry.org:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzUIJVerqN4&feature=player_embedded
Credit: rickperry.org/YouTube
Standing room only at Social Security rally
Social Security rock stars? Senate Democrats held a rally that turned into almost a religious revival-type event on Capitol Hill where they were treated like rock stars by a standing-room only audience.
The crowd, which included the old and disabled, embraced the lawmakers with a prolonged ovation, cries of approval and shouts of “back off Social Security.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a battle with Republican House Speaker John Boehner over how to keep the government running when temporary funding ends April 8, gave fiery defense of the popular retirement program.
“Republicans have shown they couldn’t care less about those who have the least,” Reid said. “Their plan on Social Security is simple, and it’s this: end it. They use words like ‘privatize’ and ‘personalize.’ But they’re all code words for the same thing: ending Social Security as we know it.”
“Give ‘em hell, Harry!” one member of the crowd roared.
Reid stood with fellow Senate Democrats Tom Harkin, Al Franken and Richard Blumenthal and Bernie Sanders, an independent who routinely votes with Democrats.
Polls show Americans don’t support weakening Social Security to help control the $14 trillion federal debt.
Why are these politicians smiling?
Social Security reform is coming. You can tell by the smiling nice guy personas being adopted around Washington in uncommon bipartisan fashion.
There’s Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. “If we’re smart, we can adjust those programs in ways that minimize the impact,” he reassures the viewers of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
After all, Sessions says there’s no reason seniors should have to worry about losing their Social Security (who says they would?) or see it “savaged in any significant way.”
Never mind the bizarre implication that it might somehow be savaged in an insignificant way.
These are not fighting words like the ones that adorned political speech before the Giffords shooting in Arizona.
That’s because politicians who talk tough about Social Security can wind up sleeping with the fishes, electorally speaking, and because political sharpies are getting the idea that the public is just about scared enough by the deficit to accept some change to the financially ailing government pension program.
People inside the big white mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue also want to avoid violent metaphors like any permutation of the verb to slash.
With the current and projected budgets, you’ll have to raise the age to 1 year after we die!
CPAC victory in hand, Ron Paul takes on Tea Party
Libertarian Ron Paul, a godfather of the Tea Party movement, isn’t altogether happy with his political progeny these days.
Fresh from victory in last week’s CPAC presidential straw poll, the Republican congressman from Texas laments to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that some Tea Partiers aren’t measuring up when it comes to the tough defense and entitlement program cuts he believes are needed to save the United States from economic cataclysm.
“They don’t want you to touch Social Security. They don’t want you to touch anything but Obamacare,” Paul says. “Some of them are real Republicans and they wouldn’t dare touch Bush’s increase in medical care costs, you know, prescription health programs.”
“They treat the symptoms and they don’t look at it philosophically,” he adds.
This sounds like a new fissure in the divisions emerging among Republicans. The Tea Party movement swept Republicans into the majority in the House of Representatives last November, while narrowing the Democratic Party’s hold on the Senate.
This year, newly elected Republicans with Tea Party backing have embarrassed the party leadership in the House on high-profile votes and pushed to expand initial 2011 spending cuts of $40 billion to more than$60 billion.
Differences between Republicans have appeared to turn on degrees of conservatism and aggressiveness about spending cuts, with some balking at the prospect of reducing popular programs that could cost votes.
Fox News has been busted yet again editing video to misinform its viewers.
“Fox News. We distort, you buy it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwo0Iyrh1 Zk
Is Rand Paul a U.S. Senate action hero?
It didn’t take Rand Paul long to become Captain America of the U.S. Senate. He’s tough-minded, strong-willed and he’s ready to battle the most dangerous titans on the political landscape, like Social Security and Medicare.
In fact, the Republican Tea Party favorite from Kentucky tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that a courageous and comprehensive plan for fixing America’s public finances will soon be on the march. And if all goes as planned, much may be accomplished before the start of this year’s Major League Baseball season.
“Within two to three weeks, I’m going to propose a fix for Social Security,” says Rand, son of Ron, who has already far surpassed the fiscal aims of the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill by proposing $500 billion in budget cuts.
“We’re going to fix the budget the first week. The second month, I’m going to fix Social Security and then the third month, we’re going to work on Medicare,” he adds, with tongue somewhat in cheek.
At the moment, his blueprint for Medicare still amounts to “a secret plan.” But on Social Security, we can expect what other Republicans are avoiding: an increase in the retirement age and means testing for wealthier beneficiaries.
Paul says the difference between him and other Republicans is that he’s “unafraid” of voter reaction: “If you talk frankly and speak boldly, you’ll get more people to vote for you.”
Another important difference is that his brave ambitious plans are unlikely to succeed at a time when congressional leaders seem increasingly unwilling to consider large-scale reductions. Look at it this way: the GOP’s bold campaign pledge to cut 2011 spending by $100 billion shrank first to about $50 billion and now to $32 billion.
Comedy that’s a good analogy, the whole political system in america is rife with comedians. Yet perhaps we need more goofballs like Rand Paul and his father. The last time the economy and the country was in this type of shape. Huge corporations extremely wealthy individuals no middle class. Teddy roosevelt became president. He was most definitely a waco and a goofball but he got the job done. So for me bring on the mental cases, what the hey that can’t do any worse then the rational sane politicians that america has….
Is deficit debate a new political dawn?
Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles think it may be a new day in American politics, one where politicans who hike taxes and alter Social Security stay in office.
Simpson, a former Republican senator, tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he sees evidence of change whenever he strolls through an airport: “I can tell you, we used to get lots of signals. I get more thumbs up now than other digits.”
The pair, co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, have proposed cutting the U.S. budget deficit by reducing defense spending, eliminating tax breaks, hiking the gasoline tax and altering Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Those kinds of measures have been a presciption for political suicide up to now, although the recommendations call for lower tax rates overall.
But with voters agonizing over joblessness, the deficit and growing economic powers like China, Simpson and Bowles believe the public wants to hear straight talk about the country’s problems and the steps needed to set things straight.
“Congress people used to believe if they came up here they’d get punished for making tough decisions. I think it’s just the opposite today,” Bowles says. “They will be severely penalized if they take a walk and don’t make these tough decisions and don’t get real.”
Simpson warns specifically against a current argument that says you can eliminate the deficit by banning earmarks, attacking waste, fraud and abuse, and scaling back foreign assistance.
Washington Extra – A snowball’s chance?
American voters made their feelings very clear last week. U.S. government borrowing is too high and needs to be reduced. How sad, then, that the presidential commission tasked with coming up with a credible plan to cut the deficit is already being dismissed as a non-event.
“This is the most predictable economic crisis we have ever faced,” Erskine Bowles rightly said today as he unveiled his joint proposals with co-chair Alan Simpson.
What is lacking, though, is not a realization of this fact, but the political will and bipartisanship to find a solution. Already, some members of their own commission have expressed skepticism about the plan or dismissed it entirely, while the wider audience in Congress is hardly rushing to embrace the ideas.
The commission was supposed to show the way to bipartisanship and magically supply the missing political will. It is already clear that has not happened.
Bowles and Simpson challenged critics of their plan to come up with better ways to cut the deficit. Somehow, that too seems like a vain hope.
And yet, perhaps, as the White House said, this is “just a step in the process,” or, as Senator Judd Gregg put it, “just a starting point.” Perhaps American politicians will surprise me.
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
Bejeebers! A scary fiscal outlook and Tea Party politics
Tackling huge budget deficits and growing debt is essential for the United States to avoid a financial market crisis that would push interest rates higher and severely damage the U.S. economy, many economists have warned.
Compromise and statesmanship will be needed to cut spending and raise revenues to narrow the budget gap, and that might not be possible in the current political environment, says at least one experienced budget expert.
“We’re certainly going to have a more fiscally conservative Congress next year,” Rudolph Penner, a former Congressional Budget Office director told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce forum. “The Tea Party, if nothing else, has certainly moved both the Republicans and Democratic Party to the right.”
However, that may not translate into a deficit-reducing budget deal that can pass the House of Representatives and the Senate and then get signed by President Barack Obama, he said.
“A real problem here is that the Tea Party is going to scare the bejeebers out of any Republican that is talking about compromise for fear of what will happen in the next primary,” Penner said. “There is no way we’re going to get out of this problem without a compromise between the two parties.”
Tea Party activists are pushing for deep government spending cuts and have threatened to end the careers of Republicans who go along with tax increases. Democrats are reluctant to cut the Social Security retirement program and Medicare and Medicaid health plans for the elderly and poor.
Alice Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman and member of Obama’s fiscal commission, said U.S. government spending will rise dramatically faster than the economy can grow as the retiring 77 million-strong baby boom generation begins to draw on promised Social Security retirement and Medicare health benefits. Bringing the budget into balance will take compromise, she said.
A Social Security reality check for deficit hawks
President Barack Obama’s fiscal commission is expected to recommend changes to Social Security to help reduce the deficit when it issues its report in early December. But protests in France over pension reforms there could serve as a reality check to U. S. deficit hawks who want to raise the U.S. retirement age and make other benefit changes to the popular retirement plan.
While they may not go on strike or take to the streets in protest — like is happening in France over a plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 – older Americans are more likely to show up at the voting booth in November than other groups.
A new survey by the influential AARP, which advocates for older Americans and has 35 million readers for its magazine, shows that lawmakers who embrace deficit reduction proposals that include cuts for Social Security may do so at their own peril.
The survey of AARP members who are likely to vote in the November 2, congressional elections showed that 60 percent would be less likely to vote for a candidate who would support cutting Social Security benefits to reduce the deficit.
AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond said the survey shows that older Americans see Social Security as “their investment and their money.”
Deficit hawks have discussed raising the Social Security retirement age, which already is gradually rising to 67 from 65 under current law, to as high as 70 years. The proposal worries many older Americans, LeaMond said.
“One of the things we’ve noticed is the tremendous concern of people over the age of 50 about finding jobs and keeping jobs, LeaMond said.
Tit for tat
Deficit commission co-chair Alan Simpson has apologized for remarks to a women’s group that compared Social Security to a “milk cow with 310 million tits.”
But that is not good enough for the National Organization for Women (NOW), which has launched a “Tits for an Ass” campaign to toss the former Republican senator off the panel that was created by President Barack Obama to recommend ways to cut the $1.4 trillion deficit.
NOW says that for every $5 donation to the group, it will deliver a baby-bottle nipple to the White House to pressure the administration into dumping Simpson who has made similar colorful remarks about the retirement program in the past.
The “T and A” battle started with an email that Simpson wrote to Ashley Carson, the executive director of OWL, which stands for the Older Women’s League. OWL, which formed in the 1970′s as a part of NOW, calls itself the voice of midlife and older women. In the email, Simpson not only called Social Security a milk cow, he told Carson to “call when you get honest work.”
NOW called the email “a sexist rant.”
Some lawmakers have joined the fray, demanding Simpson go. Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, and Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, put out statements late Wednesday urging Obama to dismiss Simpson, who heads the 18-member bipartisan panel alongside Democrat Erskine Bowles. The commission is to make its recommendations on putting the federal budget on a more sound fiscal footing in December.
The commission posted Simpson’s letter of apology to Carson on its web site. Simpson said that when he makes a mistake, “It’s a doozy! ” He suggested the two get together to discuss OWL’s concerns.
Pretty sure that even Richard can read the writing that’s on the wall saying his campaign is just about over. So now he has the freedom to say just about anything he wants. The fact that he chooses to channel the Bar Room Buddies is “just good business”. He made a bundle running for Prez, and he’s still got his job back in Austin.