The funniest thing I saw all day

Giuliani tops CNN/ORP survey of preferred Republican '12 candidates.

Giuliani 16%
Romney 15%
Palin 13%
Paul 12%
Cain 10%
Gingrich 8%
Bachmann 7%
Pawlenty 5%
Santorum 2%
Huntsman 1%
Johnson 1%

That really happened today. 

BlogFight

I link to my buddy Max a lot. Max is more libertarian-leaning than I am. In fact, he changed his answers on a questionnaire so that his result would make him libertarian. BUSTED!!

This is his response to something I wrote earlier.  Money quote: "at the core, the debate is over what level and type of spending we want.  Once that is figured out, the math of tailoring tax rates to our spending is indeed as simple as Dave makes it sound."

Agree! But unfortunately, one party just ain't doing that.  We're not having an honest debate about the level and type of spending we want at all, mainly because Republicans are basically lying.

Untruth 1: Telling the American people that the Ryan budget does not dismantle Medicare.  Medicare right now guarantees that once you hit a certain age, the government will pay for your bills.  It is one of the most popular programs in the country.  Ryan's plan is entirely new - it just gives seniors a lump sum of money, and then they buy their own plan.   Unfortunately, that lump sum of money is about half of what Medicare currently pays (which means that you'd get about half the amount of care). You can say market forces will bring this down, but there's really no evidence that that has worked ever.

If you wanted to have a "debate" about whether we should cut it or not, you can try, and you would probably lose - that just happened in NY-26.  So instead Ryan is just saying that his plan actually "saves" Medicare - when really all it does it shifts costs to seniors and then makes them pay twice the amount they currently would. See?

So this isn't really an honest "debate," when your argument is "My plan is the only way to save Medicare," but it actually just cuts the amount of health care seniors would get by a lot.

Again, to reiterate - if we were having the debate Max wants, Ryan would stand up and give a speech saying "We can't afford Medicare, so we're going to have to cut your benefits significantly." Obama would answer "Yes we can, we'll just have to implement my health care reform bill, and raise taxes a bit." That's really not what's happening - Ryan and the Republicans are saying their plan "saves" Medicare, when it just starts a whole new program and pays you less.  So that's not an honest debate.  Fortunately, the American people see right through it.

Lie 2: This isn't really a lie but it's a big problem.  Republicans' stated strategy is literally to stack the deck in their favor for this so-called honest "debate."  Here's what I mean, and this is the big takeaway from the original post: the cause of our big deficits/debt is NOT entitlements up to now - it's unpaid-for Republican policies.

1) Bush tax cuts - unpaid for
2) Two huge wars - unpaid for
3) Medicare Part D (which Max obliquely criticized the Obama administration for extending today, but they extended it by PAYING FOR it)

So then we get these giant budgets and all of a sudden republicans start screaming about "omg you guys we're living beyond our means we spend sooooooo much we have to cut these programs which btw we've always hated and have wanted to get rid of!"

That's not an honest debate.  That's taking advantage of the fiscal mess that you've created to scare people into thinking that we can't pay for programs that we can actually afford.

I guess my closing thought is - we live in a democracy.  These programs are really, really popular, among basically everyone.  You know what else is really, really popular? Raising taxes on the rich.  I trust the wisdom of my people - that should be the priority of the government. Republicans are just wrong, so they have to lie to convince people their plans are ok.

I'll have more later.

Sarah Palin is Not Running for President

There I said it.  She's doing lots of things that make it seem like she is lately:

1) Moving to Arizona (you can't run for president from Alaska, it takes 13 hours to get anywhere)
2) Going on some bus tour for no reason
3) Hiring staffers
4) [the big thing] releasing in IOWA a documentary about how she is "The Undefeated" or something (newsflash: Obama/Biden won the 2008 election and McCain/Palin lost).

Anyway, that would add up to a normal candidate running. I really just don't think she is.  I have no reason.  Sarah Palin is a weirdo.  But I'll bet any of my 4 readers $5 that she doesn't run.  This is highly technical, scientific reasoning.

If she runs, I think she actually COULD win.  The pathway is there.  I hope she runs!

Honestly, everyone should run for president. If you really think you're qualified, go for it. Huckabee should've run too.

Part two of why not raising taxes is weird

OK let's just ignore the ending of that chart for a second, because that craziness is mostly a result of the Great Recession or whatever we're calling it, and the lines will normalize as the recessions ends.  The whole cause of the deficit is that since roughly the 80s (REAGAN), the red line (government spending) was more than the blue line (government revenue).  For the record, that is the opposite of fiscal conservativism.  Things were getting progressively better in the 90s for the first time in a while - and spending was flatter than it usually is, and revenues increased a lot.  Then things just went to shit in the 00s, with revenues plummeting and spending continuing at increasing levels. That is just bad math.

And it's not complicated either! C'mon.

If you care about the deficit, you really need to support raising some taxes

Like, seriously.  That chart is scary/gross.  You see that the Reagan Administration was the real harbinger of debt - the debt more than doubled under his presidency.  Why? Because he cut taxes without cutting spending.  Then Clinton/Bush I raised taxes and cut spending, and the debt shrunk a little (that blip between 1995-2000), and then Bush cut taxes and INCREASED spending, which just did this:

Ok, gray area is what the debt would be without any of the bad shit that happened under Bush.  It would've gotten smaller! Ugh.

Listen, everyone knows that we have an entitlement spending problem, but that's not what's driving our national debt.  The #1 driver of the debt is that people (i.e., Republicans) keep cutting taxes and INCREASING spending. Taxes are now too low, so the debt is too high.  I mean...can someone explain the competing narrative to me? Entitlements haven't caused our current national debt $14 trillion national debt - these failed policies have.  The numbers don't lie.  Why the heck would we not be open to raising some taxes as part of a deal to also reduce spending?

Jon Huntsman Will Not Be The GOP Nominee

Onto our next profile of GOP candidates for President, Jon Huntsman.  Huntsman is probably the most interesting of all of them, because he is pretty normal seeming. Short bio from what I remember - 2 term governor of Utah (extremely popular). Rich. Mormon, but it's questionable if he's mormon-mormon or just "spiritual." Speaks fluent Mandarin. Two-time ambassador to China (Under George H.W. Bush and Obama).  Dropped out of high school to join a rock band.  Supported civil unions and cap and trade.

Full stop. That last sentence should make you sit back and think one thing: "this person will not be the nominee." The GOP hates cap and trade with a passion (even though it was originally their idea) and the base of the GOP still hates gays because they are "sinners," obviously.  So he's going to lose. But he'd be a great president probably! Anyway, here's a cute little video that Huntsman didn't create about how much of a "progressive" he is.

Politicians are Weird Negotiators

Let's blog.

This is going to be even more stream of consciousness-y than usual, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how atrociously bad politicians are at negotiating.  You may think I'm talking about how the Obama Administration repeatedly "gives away the baby."  For example, Obama wants cap-and-trade to pass, so he just makes a press conference saying "We will now expand domestic oil drilling" - which is something Republicans want and Democrats by and large do not.  The story goes that if Obama was a good negotiator, he would wait until negotiating with Republicans and say "OK, I want cap-and-trade, you want oil drilling. If you vote for my program, I'll give you more oil drilling."  That's pretty bad negotiating.

Psyche! It's actually really not. The thing to understand is twofold. One, Republicans will reflexively oppose almost anything Obama supports, even if it's their own plan (see: ObamaCare/RomneyCare, cap-and-trade (endorsed by Reagan, Bush I/II and McCain/Palin until Obama came to office, etc.). So he knows he's dealing with dishonest negotiators.  That's a problem! But he still needs to do something, which brings me to: Two, the things that Obama "gives away" to Republicans are invariably popular with moderates/independents.  In other words, I think it's safe to say that Obama is (rightfully) negotiating not with the Republican Party but with the American people.  That's ok. The Republican Party is kind of weird right now, and the best way to bring them back to sanity may be for Obama to convince the American people that he is right and the GOP is wrong.

Oops.  That was all just prelude to my real point, which is this: the Republican Party is really bad at negotiating!  Here's why.  Democrats actually REALLY want to compromise with Republicans, for a lot of reasons.  First, Democrats just like compromise.

See? That's pretty compelling!  Second, Republicans want to do two things: cut taxes and cut spending.  The problem is that we have a huge deficit and historically low taxes, so it's pretty doubtful that we will cut them again.  The other problem is that the only spending cuts that will actually decrease the deficit (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, military) are also the spending that Americans really like and refuse to cut.

So Republicans can do two things now. They can propose a plan with cuts to entitlement spending that is engineered to at least be appealing to Democrats. This is very possible. There are about 104 different deficit plans that are out there that make spending cuts in different ways -- some of them would attract real Democratic support.  Obama authored one of those plans. ObamaCare itself actually cut entitlement spending (in Medicare) by $300 billion over the next ten years - he's serious about this shit.  So if they propose cuts this way, even if those cuts prove to be unpopular (they will be), they'll at least have the cover of saying "listen I know I voted to cut Social Security (or whatever), but it was the right thing to do - that's why Democrats voted for it too."  Fiscal crisis over, political life intact.

The other option is to do what they did - propose an incredibly conservative plan that they KNOW will be unpopular in the country.  They did know this. They aren't dumb. They hired pollsters that told them it.  But no Democrats will go along with it because it is so gosh darn conservative.  And let's not even talk about the first thing that the Republican's "budget" does is just straight up repeals ObamaCare. You really think Democrats are EVER going to vote en masse for that? It's just a nonstarter as a negotiating tactic.

So anyway. Long story short, Republicans just lost a House race in upstate NY that Obama himself lost to McCain by 6 points.  They should've won that easily.  They lost because the Democrat pointed out that the Republican wanted to cut Medicare. That would not have happened if the GOP proposed a plan that attracted Democratic support.  So now they both lose on getting their policies passed and lose elections.

THAT IS DUMB. Why did they do this?! I don't really have an answer, but I bet they feel like numskulls.