Visual source: Newseum
NY Times:
A comment by Mitt Romney’s adviser on the difference between the primary and the general election dominated the day’s political conversation.
Yes, it did.
NY Times editorial:
Political leaders across Europe have begun to push back against the campaign of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to put the Continent’s economies into a straitjacket of unrelenting fiscal austerity. It is about time. Two years of insisting that weak economies carry out tax increases and spending cuts have brought nothing but recession and deepening indebtedness.
Matt Miller:
“Why don’t you balance the budget at 24 percent [of GDP] instead of 19 percent?” I asked.
“I think it would do damage to the economy,” Rep. Paul Ryan replied...
For starters, Ryan’s assumption that higher levels of spending and taxation would automatically hurt the economy can’t be right. If it were, America would be a poorer country today than it was a hundred years ago, when the federal government taxed and spent less than 5 percent of gross domestic product. But we’re obviously vastly wealthier. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a limit beyond which higher taxes and spending would hurt. Just that we’re not close to that point. How can we be, when President Reagan ran government at 22 percent of GDP?
Many of the other assumptions aren't right, either, including that it's a politically viable document. But we shall see in November how well it plays.
Gallup:
Americans' approval of Congress is now 12%, after registering an all-time low 10% last month. Congress' approval rating has not improved significantly since January, while ratings of President Obama and U.S. satisfaction have.
Frank Rich:
Romney may be almost too ripe for parody. Won’t the gags and Web parodies get old?
Never. Letterman landed a new dog joke just this week. (“It was such a beautiful day today, Mitt Romney was riding on the roof of his car.”) Comedy is the only business we can be certain that a Romney presidency would grow.
Ouch.
In Flunking the Medicare debate, Robert J Samuelson writes one of the more arrogant articles on the Ryan plan you'll see out there. Trying to appear objective while defending a right wing plan and story line, Samuelson claims that his fellow reporters are buying into partisan terms by recognizing that Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare as we know it and privatize it well beyond where it is now with vouchers is unfair language:
But many Democrats despise vouchers, which (they say) would “privatize Medicare” and “end Medicare.” The language is self-serving demagoguery intended to terrify seniors. Unfortunately, some in the media sometimes sloppily adopt these attack phrases as acceptable descriptions.
Such terms are not only acceptable, they are accurate, unlike Samuelson's disingenuous argument that changing something in such a fundamental way isn't really changing the program (the same argument we've been through with the
Politifact nonsense.) Not that anyone pays attention to him, but a system based on subsidized private insurance is not Medicare as we know it. Even
Politifact understood that part the first time around last April:
Democrats, including Obama, have said the plan would end Medicare "as we know it," a critical qualifier.
But that's the idea. "End it, not amend it" is what the Ryan plan is about.
Danbury News Times:
Under the bill, which is coming up for a vote in the General Assembly's Judiciary Committee and is gaining support, marijuana would be available to people diagnosed with specific debilitating conditions. Those conditions include glaucoma, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, damage to the nervous tissue of the spinal cord, and positive status for HIV or AIDS.
If Connecticut passes the legislation, it would become the 17th state along with the District of Columbia to legalize medical marijuana.