[SpockLives]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'T')here's getting old and there's getting old.

Getting old all coddled and pampered and everything served on a silver platter, you can live a long, long, long life.

Getting old under great burdens, physical duress, and long hours makes many in the working class look 70 when they're 40 and they never live to see retirement.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ithout quantifying "many" I won't dispute the basic point. Certainly I am not aware of any society where all its members can sit around and be coddled and pampered without someone, somewhere, actually doing something (working).

[Cid_Yama]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', ' ')I don't see a conspiracy

[Shar_Lamagne]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '[')url=http://youtu.be/OGnE83A1Z4U]Is America Still Beautiful?[/url]

And while we're at it. The Social Security/Medicare "Crisis" Is Really a Choice - Between the Middle Class and the Wealthy
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he word for today is "choice," not "crisis." ...
Now we're told there's a "crisis" and we can no longer afford the middle-class American dream. The truth is the opposite: Our long-term problems aren't caused by the middle class, but by politicians who choose to sacrifice the middle class for wealthy interests.
Wealthy Americans and corporations have enormous political influence. That means it's easier for politicians to say "We can't afford today's Social Security and Medicare" than it is to raise taxes on the wealthy and move away from our dependence on for-profit healthcare. But every time they say that somebody should hit 'em with Mom's words:
"Don't say we can't. Say you don't want to."

[Livewire713]

Pretorian wrote - $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ell I guess its my bad as I have confused you with somebody else. What kind of product or indispensable service does your company provide?
Also, I find it fascinating how people show off with their contributions to the economy and ecology ( some ego issues huh) and trying to get a credit for both, like if one thing does not cancel another.
By the way, you not having kids stands for NOTHING unless you are a female or you secured yourself a fertile female and convinced her to commit genetical suicide as well.

[EnergyUnlimited]

It seems that there is a lot of whining in collapsing America, particularly about some aspects of helping those poor.
Unfortunately no amount of money is enough to help the poor, regardless how much you spend more would be needed, and on the top of it US is bankrupt.

So bye bye Medicare.
Some sound Phillipinian solutions are just behind a corner...

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'T')ry EVERY Republican Governor targeting their respective public Unions simultaneously, with public education as their first target. That didn't just happen by coincidence. ...
And you're right, take away their education, fill their head with propaganda, and they are left unable to even understand who the enemy is.

[mattduke]

Interestingly enough, "America the Beautiful" was written and popularized long before Lyndon Johnson imposed medicare upon everyone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_the_Beautiful

[Livewire713]

My last computer based job was working for a medium sized Insurance company. Worked with a older gentleman that had worked for the company for 20years, since the start of the company. One day I get a email that everyone should stop by and say goodbye to this person, Ill call him Bill. Didn't say why he was leaving so I figured he must be retiring and I thought well good for him. At this time the company was really growing and they were hiring new employees. So I went to Bills cubicle to say goodbye and I was shocked to find out that he was let go because of lack of work. Bill was not happy to say the least, he was offered 2months of severance and 2 months of insurance, his wife was scheduled to have a hip replacement the next month. Bill, flat out told me he was let go because they could hire 2 new guys for what they were paying him, which was about $45k per year. Right there I knew I no longer wanted to work for that company. I told my boss there was no security in this job and shortly after that I turned in my laptop and walked out. So anyone that is dependent on one person or company for your income, I wish you luck. Your going to need it because you can be easily replaced with younger cheaper labor.

[ian807]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Livewire713', 'M')y last computer based job was working for a medium sized Insurance company. ... So I went to Bills cubicle to say goodbye and I was shocked to find out that he was let go because of lack of work. ... Bill, flat out told me he was let go because they could hire 2 new guys for what they were paying him, which was about $45k per year. ... So anyone that is dependent on one person or company for your income, I wish you luck. Your going to need it because you can be easily replaced with younger cheaper labor.

[Shar_Lamagne]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '[')url=http://youtu.be/OGnE83A1Z4U]Is America Still Beautiful?[/url]
It is the industrialists that want this. They want a groveling, subservient workforce that has no choice but to work for slave wages or starve.

What they are after, is taking away the dignity of the working class. Creating a serf class with no rights and no options. They want a broken people they can do with what they will.

[Cid_Yama]

NY 's 26th district, a strongly Republican district, voted in a Democrat for only the 4th time in history.

Republican Corwin's statement that she would vote for Republican Paul Ryan's Bill to replace Medicare with a voucher program cost her the election.

Democrat Kathy Hochul won by a significant margin.

[Livewire713]

Not a good sign for Repubs with the 2012 elections coming up. All that talk from Cog about the 2010 election and how the democrats are dying out. How do you explain this election? This race should have been a walk in the park after a Sunday drive. I see the democrats coming back strong in 2012.
Keep pushing the Paul Ryan plan repubs, better yet, have him run for President! We need to cut medicare so millionaies and billionaires can get another tax cut so they can create all those jobs.

[rangerone314]

I guess that proves you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

Must have been bad marketing. The Republicans didn't spend enough money to manufacture votes.

[Cid_Yama]

Corwin Concedes
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'w')ith 87 percent of the precincts reporting, Hochul has 48 percent of the vote to Corwin's 42 percent. Jack Davis picked up 9 percent and Ian Murphy 1 percent.

Corwin conceded the race shortly after 10 p.m.

[Cid_Yama]

Cantor says Ryan should run for presidency
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ouse of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on Monday that he would like to see fellow Republican congressman Paul Ryan seek their party's 2012 presidential nomination.

It’s a striking statement from the No. 2 House Republican, who is the highest-level lawmaker to call for Ryan to enter the 2012 contest. Other conservative figures started the unofficial draft Ryan push after Gov. Mitch Daniels announced he wouldn’t jump into the race this weekend.

[PrestonSturges]

Corwin spent $68 per vote and lost.

I love the absurdity of a Ryan candidacy. It looks like they want a sacrificial goat because nobody else wants the job. Ryan could retire now and live the rest of his life on that sweet sweet wingnut welfare, but if he agreed to fall on sword this year, they would bring him back to run every cycle for the next 20 years, which is also a pretty good way to get rich.

Apparently Cantor is just a stupid fidgeting ball of neurotic ambition.

You got to love how the GOPers mock Obama when the 50 most prominent GOPers self destruct the moment someone points a camera at them and lobs them a couple softball questions.

[Sixstrings]

The central problem with the Tea Party is that all they want to cut is spending that helps people. But when it comes to war, a massive chunk of the budget.. they're all for more war, while still against taxing those who have the money to frickin' pay for the wars.

So that's why the Tea Party fails, if you're going to be a Liberterian then you have to go full monty and apply real liberterianism across the board.. if you just target the poor and old, people see right through that.

The Tea Party better be careful here If they push it too far they're going to wind up creating a real socialist movement in this country. I honestly don't know what they're thinking.. of course old folks aren't going to let them privatize Medicare. That just ain't gonna happen. So all the Repubs are doing on this thing is hurting themselves, really turning voters against them, to the point of being viscerally hated by the voters.

Come on guys, "throw grandma out of her nursing home bed?" The sheeple may be dumb and asleep, but throwin' grandma out to the gutter is just the sort of thing that will wake them up.

[Cid_Yama]

I'm with Cantor, They need to run Ryan. The entire Republican party has already rallied around him.

Not only will people be upset about grandma having to leave the nursing home, but they'll be upset about having to put her in the spare bedroom with no medicare to cover her needs.

Most people aren't equipped to handle the disruption of having grandma in the home. Perhaps coming home to die.

[Cid_Yama]

The 'Paul Ryan for President' delusion
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ot all Republicans are delusional.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich correctly identified House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan's plan to use a form of vouchers to redirect Medicare and Medicaid spending away from providing health care and toward enriching for-profit insurance companies as "right-wing social engineering." Only when the gatekeepers of the new Republican orthodoxy informed him that truth telling was not allowed by those who might imagine themselves as serious contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination did Gingrich abandon reality-based politics. But that did not make his initial assessment of the scheme by Ryan, R-Janesville, to redistribute wealth upward any less truthful.

Even after Gingrich got slapped around for daring to challenge the GOP's "golden boy," the other GOP presidential candidates avoided making Ryan's plan their own. While they did not dare condemn it, they certainly did not extend a warm embrace to a proposal that polls suggest is opposed by almost 80 percent of Americans.

Polls suggest that Ryan's ideas are politically toxic. Mainstream American voters would rather slash the Pentagon budget or hike taxes on the rich before even considering any of the changes the congressman is proposing to begin a process of privatizing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

But there is one constituency that still approves of Ryan.

Indeed, they love him so much that they are now booming him as a GOP presidential prospect.

Washington powerbrokers and lobbyists had been counting on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels to make a run for the party's nod. Daniels, who served as director of George W. Bush's Office of Management and Budget, presided over the policies that expanded deficits in order to provide massive tax breaks to the rich, pay multinational corporations to move jobs out of the U.S., and steer hundreds of billions of dollars into the accounts of inefficient and disreputable defense contractors.

When Daniels decided late Saturday night to acknowledge the obvious — his would have been a ridiculous candidacy — the insiders shifted immediately toward Ryan.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who once served as a Gingrich lieutenant but now makes his millions by fronting for corporate-sponsored "grass-roots" campaigning on the tea partisan right, was talking up a Ryan candidacy within hours of the Daniels exit. "We have about 2 million activists across the country and, frankly, we are disappointed," the FreedomWorks boss said of the decision by the Indiana governor. But, with Daniels done, Armey told CNN's "State of the Union": "Now, obviously, we have to start looking, and I was just saying this morning, maybe it's time to start drafting Paul Ryan."

Weekly Standard boss William Kristol, who once led the cheering section for former Vice President Dan Quayle's national ambitions, was even more enthusiastic, predicting on Sunday that there was an even chance Ryan would be the GOP nominee in 2012.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who enjoyed a pleasant round of speculation as a possible vice presidential running mate for John McCain in 2008, was positively gushing at the prospect of a Ryan presidential bid.

So there will be at least two groups cheering on this "Ryan for President" talk.

Delusional Republicans (and the cynical Republicans who want to use them to grab control of the party apparatus) ... and Democrats who recognize that the only thing better than running against Mitch Daniels would be running against Paul Ryan.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is preparing for the 2012 election season with a new line: "The fight of this Congress and beyond will be to preserve Medicare and not have it abolished," says Pelosi. "The three most important issues we should be talking about are Medicare, Medicare and Medicare."

Pelosi knows that, if the 2012 presidential and congressional races are referendums on preserving Medicare as we know it, Democrats will win up and down the ballot.

And nothing would make 2012 a referendum on Medicare like a Ryan run.