DebateGate

Audience at tea party debate cheers leaving uninsured to die
By Rachel Rose Hartman | The Ticket

If you're uninsured and on the brink of death, that's apparently a laughing matter to some audience members at last night's tea party Republican presidential debate.
 
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a doctor, was asked a hypothetical question by CNN host Wolf Blitzer about how society should respond if a healthy 30-year-old man who decided against buying health insurance suddenly goes into a coma and requires intensive care for six months. Paul--a fierce limited-government advocate-- said it shouldn't be the government's responsibility. "That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks," Paul said and was drowned out by audience applause as he added, "this whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody ?"
 
"Are you saying that society should just let him die?" Blitzer pressed Paul. And that's when the audience got involved.
 
Several loud cheers of "yeah!" followed by laughter could be heard in the Expo Hall at the Florida State Fairgrounds in response to Blitzer's question.

Paul disagreed with the audience on that front. "No," he responded, noting he practiced medicine before Medicaid when churches took care of medical costs--a comment that drew wide audience applause. "We never turned anybody away from the hospital."
 
Paul voiced support for legalizing alternative health care and argued that the reason medical costs have skyrocketed is that individuals have stopped taking personal responsibility for their health care.
 
Though Paul spoke to the larger issues of health care and government-backed health insurance--both pivotal in the 2012 election--the audience's reaction has overshadowed the substance of the exchange between the candidates. And the day after the event, Texas Gov. Rick Perry offered his own criticism of the audience response.
 
"I was a bit taken aback by that myself," Perry told NBC News and the Miami Herald of the audience reaction after appearing at a breakfast fundraiser in Tampa Tuesday morning.
 
"We're the party of life. We ought to be coming up with ways to save lives."
 
The campaigns for Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann did not immediately respond to The Ticket's request for comment.
 
Conservative Andrew Sullivan writing for The Daily Beast's The Dish Tuesday noted that the United States obligates society to save someone in an emergency room. "America, moreover, has a law on the books that makes it a crime not to treat and try to save a human being who walks into an emergency room. So we have already made that collective decision and if the GOP wants to revisit it, they can," Sullivan wrote.
 
Sullivan also decried the audience reaction, writing: "Maybe a tragedy like the death of a feckless twentysomething is inevitable if we are to restrain healthcare costs. But it is still a tragedy. It is not something a decent person cheers."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/audience-tea-party-debate-cheers-leaving-uninsured-die-163216817.html

Republicans Will Not Give Typical Formal Response To Obama Jobs Speech
From Ted Barrett and Deirdre Walsh CNN Congressional Producers

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Republican Party will not provide a formal response to President Barack Obama's speech on jobs, a senior GOP aide said Tuesday.

"This is not a State of the Union Address," said a senior GOP leadership aide, who spoke on condition of not being identified.

"The (House) speaker is opening Statuary Hall (in the Capitol) to media following the speech, giving every member of Congress the opportunity to provide a reaction to the president's address," the aide said.

Obama plans to unveil a major jobs initiative to a joint session of Congress Thursday.

After the scheduling brouhaha over the president's State of the Union-style speech was resolved last week, Republican aides in the House and Senate were noticeably mum about details of the official response, which typically all the major television networks carry about five minutes after the president's speech in the House chamber ends.

"Republicans are, and have been, entirely focused on job creation," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, on Tuesday. "Every member of Congress, and -- more importantly -- the American people, will provide a reaction to the president's address. We trust in the good judgment of the American people, and the president's proposals will rise or fall on their own merits."

In the past GOP leaders have chosen rising political stars in their party including Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana to respond to the president's speech. In January Republicans tapped House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to give the official GOP response to the president's State of the Union speech.

In September 2009, when Obama delivered a major speech on health care to a joint session, Louisiana Republican Rep Charles Boustany, a heart surgeon, was picked to present the GOP health care plan.

CNN's Kate Bolduan contributed to this report.


I think if you cut through all the crap and doublespeak, you might figure out that the Republicans realize they shot themselves in the foot. If Oblather finishes his speech on time to not interfere with the start of the season opening NFL game and they give a rebuttal that pre-empts the start of the game...Well, then, folks aren't going to blame Oblather, are they, especially since he didn't choose that night to give his speech.

So nice to slap Barry down a bit, isn't it?

I see Obama is being criticized by the congressional Republicans - and some Democrats - for taking off on a 10-day vacation.

Seems kind of stupid to me, since at this point in their administrations, Obama has only spent 61 days on vacation, compared to Reagan's 112 and George W. Bush's 180 days.

Oh, and besides, isn't congress itself in recess for the next couple of months?

Nixon's Colossal Monetary Error: The Verdict 40 Years Later
By Charles Kadlec | Forbes ? Mon, Aug 15, 2011


Today, Aug. 15, 2011, is the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's colossal error: severing the final link between the dollar and gold. No other single action by Nixon has had a more profound and deleterious effect on the American people. In the end, breaking the solemn promise that a dollar was worth 1/35th of an ounce of gold doomed his Presidency, and marked the beginning of the worst 40 years in American economic history.
 
The announcement itself was dramatic, contained in a Sunday evening address to the nation from the Oval Office. The promises made were profound and reflected the received wisdom of that day and today: unshackling the U.S. government from the requirement of maintaining the dollar's value in terms of gold would empower able men and women at the Federal Reserve to use monetary policy to increase the general prosperity of the American people.
 
Domestically, we were promised that the manipulation of quantity and value of a paper dollar would avoid costly recessions, provide high employment, and produce strong economic growth. Internationally, we were promised that the devaluation of the dollar would reduce our trade deficit and improve the international competitiveness of American workers and businesses. And, because trade was only one-tenth of the U.S. economy, all of this could be done while maintaining price stability.
 
Each and every one of these promises has been broken.
 


Since Nixon killed the gold standard, the unemployment rate has averaged over 6% and we have suffered the three worst recessions since the end of World War II. The unemployment rate averaged 8.5% in 1975, almost 10% in 1982, and has been above 8.8% for more than two years, with little evidence of any improvement ahead.
 


This performance is horrendous compared to the post World War II gold standard era, which lasted from 1947 to 1970. During those 21 years of economic ups and downs, unemployment averaged less than 5% and never rose above 7%.
 
Growth, too, has slowed. Since able men and women were given the power to manipulate the quantity and value of the dollar, real economic growth has averaged 2.9% a year ? more than a full percentage point slower than the 4% growth rate during the post World War II gold standard era.
 
A 1% difference may not seem like much, but in reality it is the difference between prosperity and austerity. A growth rate of 3% creates just enough jobs for all new workers. A growth rate of 4% yields higher employment and a decline in the unemployment rate.
 
In addition, when compounded over 40 years, 1% slower growth under the paper dollar system has had a mind-boggling impact on all things that depend on the overall size of the U.S. economy. At 3% growth, the U.S. economy is about $8 trillion smaller than it would have been had we continued to experience the average growth rate prior to Nixon severing the link between dollar and gold. That implies that median family income today would be about $70,000, or nearly 50% higher than it is today.
 
It would also mean that the tax base ? for the federal, state and local governments ? would be approximately 50% bigger as well, generating a bounty of tax revenues that would make the current and projected fiscal challenges manageable without severe spending cuts or growth killing tax increases on working Americans.
 
And, what about the promise that devaluing the dollar would magically improve our competitive position? During the past 40 years, the dollar has fallen in value by more than 70% against the euro/German mark and the Japanese yen. The U.S. had a modest net export surplus in 1971 before Nixon started the dollar on its downward path. Today, we have a $405 billion trade deficit.
 
Finally, the dollar has done anything but keep its value. Today, the dollar is worth less than two dimes in buying power compared to the pre-Nixon dollar. And, with little reason to believe that the dollar will maintain even this paltry value, the average American family is left with no meaningful way to save for their children's education or their own retirement. We experience all of this in the form of financial insecurity and well-grounded anxiety about the future.
 
By contrast, a gold standard is extraordinarily good at maintaining the buying power of the dollar. From 1948 to 1967, inflation averaged less than 2% per year. Interest rates were low and stable, with the yield on AAA corporate bonds averaging less than 4%, providing a reasonable cost of funds to borrowers, and a fair return to savers.
 


Moreover, if Nixon and his successors had maintained the promise that a dollar was worth 1/35th of an ounce of gold, a barrel of oil today would sell for less than $2.50.
 
That's right, the whole notion of an energy crisis and the ever more intrusive government regulations dictating energy usage are based on the grand illusion that the price of oil has gone up more than 30 fold, when in fact, it is the dollar whose value has fallen relative to gold, oil, and all other goods and services over the past 40 years.
 
And finally, since Nixon killed the gold standard, the world has suffered from 12 financial crises, beginning with the oil shock of 1973 and culminating in the financial crisis of 2008-09 and now the debt crisis in Europe, and the growing deficit crisis in the U.S. Conversely, between 1947 and 1967, there was only one currency crisis, involving the British pound, and no major bank failures or Wall Street and corporate bailouts in the U.S.
 
The evidence is in. The great experiment of a paper dollar managed by able men and women has failed and failed miserably to keep any of its promises.
 
We have paid dearly for Nixon's colossal error. But this abhorrent deviation from a sound dollar can be corrected. The country -- and the world -- awaits the political leader who truly understands making the dollar as good as gold is vital to the prosperity, security and liberty of the American people, and who can therefore lead the country and the world forward to a 21st century gold standard.

...Saw the usual collection of topics and figured I'd keep on passing....

But I'll leave you this nugget that might make you want to go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....if Obama is warning people not to call his bluff, does that not give away the fact he is bluffing to start with?

Not even a twitch.

Did the world end for anyone else? Anyone get raptured?

Iraqi defector admits lying about WMD claims
By Michael Calderone

Colin Powell dramatically made the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq at the United Nations just over eight years ago. During that presentation, Powell claimed that Saddam Hussein was hiding a secret biological weapons program, relying on information that came from an Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball."

The U.S news media barely challenged Powell's claims that day, with political pundits and columnists largely praising the former secretary of state's methodical performance. Of course, Powell's weapons evidence has been proven bogus in the years since the invasion.

But until now, the man who made the false claims to German intelligence officials--later seized upon by the Bush administration--hasn't admitted what seemed apparent after WMDs weren't found in Iraq: he lied.

CBS News first identified Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi as "Curveball" in a 2007 investigation of "one of the deadliest con jobs of our time." Although U.N. inspectors found no evidence to back up al-Janabi's claims of a biological weapons program, the Bush administration still relied on the bogus evidence to start a war that's led to over 100,000 deaths.

So why did he do it?

In interviews with the Guardian newspaper, al-Janabi spoke about how he sought asylum in Germany and wanted to see an end to Hussein's brutal regime in his homeland.

"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," al-Janabi said in his exclusive interview with The Guardian newspaper. "They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."

Al-Janabi said he gets sad when hearing about anyone killed in Iraq, but questions whether there was another solution to ending the Hussein regime.

"Believe me, there was no other way to bring about freedom to Iraq," he told The Guardian. "There were no other possibilities."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20110216/ts_yblog_thecutline/iraqi-defector-admits-lying-about-wmd-claims