I will leave it to the experts to fill in the blanks, but I thought Paul Ryan acquitted himself very well tonight. He proved himself to be Biden's equal. Biden made three mistakes.
With Libya, he said that they (the administration) were relying on information from their intelligence services when they initially said it was a spontaneous protest over a video that spun out of control. That was the line they spun for a week, but now we know that intelligence knew within 24 hours that it was a pre-planned terrorist attack. Joe threw his intelligence services under the bus.
A worse mistake was when Biden said that the administration was not told that the Libya mission needed more support. Not according to the testimony before Congress this week when both Colonel Andrew Wood and DOS regional security officer Eric Nordstrom testified that they had requested more support from the State Department, but had been refused.
Finally, Biden, though he performed better than President Obama and held his own argument wise, it was his arrogant, condescending manner that surely has to have turned off many people. He constantly laughed derisively at Ryan and continuously interrupted him as he was answering questions. Biden basically (once again) came across as a jerk. In contrast, Ryan conducted himself with dignity and respect.
That's my take without being influenced by the talking heads.
4 comments:
The Moderator did a much better job, aggressively telling the squabbling pair to settle down, wait their turn, be nice, then asking pointed questions demanding facts behind bald claims.
Neither responded with direct answers, but that should at least have been obvious to any listener who was awake.
Ryan proved himself to be an effective snake oil salesman, a smooth operator, and a bold faced liar. But that's nothing new.
His numbers on social security don't add up -- Biden sort of called him on it, but should have been much more direct. Ryan adheres to a line of political philosophy that has always been opposed on principle to social security. He can't say that, Americans LOVE social security. So he exaggerates a modest future discrepancy between revenue and benefits, easily adjusted, into a contrived crisis, promises that everyone 55 and over will continue getting their benefits, and somehow "my generation" will take the hit, in a manner that his contemporaries will somehow be OK with. If this saves us trillions of dollars, then his "vouchers" CAN'T be worth much. Money doesn't grow on trees. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, even when cutting deficits.
After all Gary Fouse has said about getting out of Afghanistan, I don't know how he could vote for a ticket with Paul Ryan on it. Ryan's commitment to send troops only "in the security interests of the United States" is about as open ended as Mao Zedong's promise to allow full political participation to everyone except "enemies of the people." Biden affirmed, "We are leaving in 2014." That ought to be quite popular. Right Gary?
Biden flubbed the answer on abortion, as Roman Catholic Democrats often do. He should have said, "I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America," not to advance the agenda of my church. My beliefs govern my personal conduct. A public servant must first and foremost represent the constituency that elected them. The constitution does not allow, nor has any constituency that has elected me clamoured for, draconian criminal laws against abortion.
Further, I personally do not believe criminal penalties are the best way, or even an effective way, to limit the number of abortions.
Politicians of either party seem incapable of offering such straightforward responses. The professional campaign staffs are too afraid of their own shadows to allow it.
"The Moderator did a much better job, aggressively telling the squabbling pair to settle down, wait their turn, be nice, then asking pointed questions demanding facts behind bald claims."
Really. I missed that part. I must have been exchanging emails with Stephanie Cutter.
As I believe I have previously observed (no real harm in occasional reiteration, is there??), the best answer to the Social Security mess is the partial privatization of its retirement leg, on a strictly voluntary basis, for those all are required to pay the SS tax, by allowing them to divert a portion of that tax to some form of a yet to be determined private account.
I have done the numbers. Properly structured, privatization would absolutely, positively guarantee a continuing, perpetual surplus (anywhere from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars) in the retirement leg, for as long as there were participants, which surplus could then be used to fund, in part or in whole, the upcoming shortfall in the other two legs.
In addition, barring the complete and continuing collapse of both the entire economy and the Federal government (which may happen yet), participants would have as close as is possible to an iron-clad guarantee of moderately to significantly higher retirement income, whild non-participant’s retirement income would be unaffected.
As an example, even though the current earnings rate of certain U.S. Treasury instruments is certainly low, these purportedly risk-free investments, if that was all they ever earned over the long haul, would still provide the participant with approximately what the original SS retirement income would have otherwise been. The other nine (9) investment funds in the Federal Thrift Savings Plan, in which I would wager that Gary is a participant, and which is at least roughly/somewhat similar to what I am talking about with SS, have earnings for the last 12 months ranging from 5.24%-30.75%.
Long-term returns in the lower third of this range, which has historically been the case, would result in at least moderately to significantly increased retirement income for participants. The higher end would result in very significantly increased retirement income (at least double if not triple or more), compared to the original scheduled SS benefit.
Not difficult to do at all, and I am unable to comprehend why we don‘t get after it..
I would also like to say that I wish my dance card was not so full so that I could respond to some posts, particularly by Siarlys but not him alone, prior to their ending up in “older posts” or the “dead-letter section”, where no one but me apparently goes very often. He had one relative to an electric car which I would love to have responded to, but if I do it here he will harangue me for being off topic, so I won’t.
Feel free to click on my name elwood. You can find some suitable venue at my widely unread site to comment on electric cars. I might even make a post out of it.
You are missing the real dynamic of putting social security money into the stock market. The infusion of new cash would bid up the price of stocks, creating a windfall for current shareholders. When the crash came, guess who would be left holding the bag?
That's why social security isn't wagered on the stock market.
Imagine how retirees would have felt if GWB had successfully privatized social security before the 2007-2008 crash???
I've seen numbers like yours before... a guy named Madoff offered them to investors. Managers at other investment firms berated their investment staffs, asking "why can't you get returns like this guy?"
TANSTAAFL elwood, there really isn't, even, or especially, not when "conservatives" are making the promises of pie in the sky.
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