Comments for Do All Conservative Intellectuals Have Trouble With Arithmetic? at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 9 out of 9 comments http://www.cepr.net Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:15:55 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18266 All right wingers are math challenged. Just bring up the $1 trillion that we are wasting each year on health care compared to every other country and they act like you're from outer space. They've all wiped clean anything that involves math from the Cheney/Bush administration as if it never happened. Add to that the phony fiscal conservatives who are nothing more than paid water carriers for the wealthy. The early estimates that I saw on Paul Ryan's first budget proposals was that it doesn't project a balanced budget until the year 2062. Lucky for Ryan, the Republicans can't add. - FoonTheElder Mon, 20 Aug 2012 07:10:04 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18245 The Times ran Annie Lowrey's blowjob piece on Saturday on the front page of the paper of record, and then on Sunday ran another piece on the front page with the headline "The Courtship Before Romney Elevated Ryan", in which the "reporter" (Michael Barbaro this time) gushed over the Romney/Ryan duo in language like this: "Inside the Longworth House Office Building, 15 minutes turned into an hour as the two men traded theories about how to overhaul Medicare, Social Security and the tax code, a pair of policy mavens out-geeking each other over esoterica...." Really? Policy mavens? Later in the article, Mr. Barbaro writes "Mr. Ryan was a Tea Party hero who gave the conservative movement a detailed policy alternative to employ against President Obama's spending and deficit increases and complex health care overhaul." Not being quite satisfied with that bit of fluffing, the author goes on: " 'The nominee is saying: "I share this philosophy. It's not enough to get elected--I want to fundamentally transform this government,'" said Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who became a symbol of small-government conservatism when he cut the collective-bargaining rights of unionized state workers last year." Yes, this is supposedly a news story, and I guess it's news to me that suppressing collective-bargaining rights has something to do with small government. As in the Saturday puff piece, nothing critical of Ryan or Romney is mentioned in this "news" story. On the same page with the inside jump of this front-page "story", there's another article entitled "Both Campaigns Seize Role of Medicare Defender", which, to give it credit, does include some critical commentary, as when it quotes Ryan as saying "the president raids $716 billion from the Medicare program to pay for the Obamacare program" and goes on to say "Left unsaid was that his own budget plan passed by the House in March includes the same $716 billion in savings, to be used to reduce the deficit", although that tacitly endorses the ridiculous notion that Obama's $716 billion in savings is bad, because it funds "Obamacare", while Ryan's $716 billion is used to "reduce the deficit". But while the headline reads "Both Campaigns...", the article has 18 paragraphs on the Romney-Ryan take on Medicare, and 7 paragraphs on Obama's. This is our great liberal tribune, eh? Regarding Saturday's valentine to Ryan on the Times's front page, I wrote the following elsewhere: [i]Speaking of reporters, check out the article by Annie Lowrey on the front page of today’s New York Times, entitled “Conservative Elite in Capital Pay Heed to Ryan as Thinker”. I guess this is the kind of “reporting” that guarantees a young up-and-comer a slot on the front page of the Times–a ludicrous puff piece that allows all the usual suspects to reaffirm each others bizarre self-valuations. The author refers to Ayn Rand as both a “canonical conservative thinker” and a “philosopher”. She writes that Ryan “spoke passionately about the threat posed by the national debt” while refraining from pointing out that this threat seems to bother Ryan only when a Democrat is president, and that Ryan’s own budget plan would add another 2.6 trillion dollars to the debt to finance huge tax cuts for the rich. “Aides and confidants”, she writes, “describe [Ryan] as an earnestly interested…policy thinker, with a deep knowledge of budget numbers”, which is what Ryan himself would have us believe even though the budget numbers he throws around are gibberish. Lowrey quotes Bill Kristol repeatedly, passing along his comparison of Ryan to Pat Moynihan, among other gems. I wonder if Ms Lowrey is giving Paul Ryan actual blowjobs in addition to the virtual one in the Times. (And let me hasten to add that I would make the same remark if the author of this article were Ezra Klein.) [/i] Is the Times, not content with putting George Bush in the White House and helping to make the case for invading Iraq, really trying to replace Barack Obama, who for all his faults is the best president we've had for a very long time, with Romney and his new boyfriend Paul Ryan? It sure look like it. What else could explain the appearance of these odious pieces of journalistic malpractice in the pages of their newspaper? - Herschel Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:12:39 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18238 here is the deal. republicans, lead by romney and ryan, are pushing a budget that is a fairy tale. they had an internal memo yesterday, that said "dont talk about specifics on anything, if we do, it is political suicide" romney think that the 63% of americans that want to see 12 years of his tax returns, are "small minded". his arrogance offers one insult after another. we wont see the tax returns, or see the nonexistant tax plan. like ryan said, we have not run the numbers yet. when asked when the budget would balance, ryan side stepped to talk of the % of GDP his plan has. he certainly did not want to say, it will balance between 2030-2040. wow, impressive!! he squirms in every interview. obama did it, he is the worst person that ever lived, and knows nothing, right ryan? what the people know about ryan, is his and willards tax plan is nothing but a ruse, fairy dust. show u the tax returns and the tax plan. - jacksmith Sun, 19 Aug 2012 09:54:33 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18223 It's hard to have a reality based policy debate about Ryan when reporters consistently tag Ryan with caveats like " deficit hawk" found here in an AP report. Fiscal conservative is an equally undeserved term given Ryan's record. http://news.yahoo.com/medicare-barbs-dominate-white-house-race-090113444.html Ryan's budget with all it's fake spending cuts and undisclosed tax expenditure cuts still increases the deficit by 3.1 trillion over the next decade according to Ryan's numbers. Eliminating the fake stuff more than doubles that. Ryan is a 'policy wonk' only in the sense that he's very good at sounding like a policy wonk. Real policy wonks have real policies, not hidden ones. - Robert Salzberg Sun, 19 Aug 2012 03:12:36 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18222 From the NYT source referenced by Baker above, [quote]“He’s worried about much more than the budget arithmetic, about the kind of government that we are going to have in America,” said Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center here and a favored policy thinker of Mr. Ryan."[/quote] Never mind the arithmetic. It's about smaller government. See the link below on Ryans faux populism that puts the lie to Ryans call for "smaller government". http://robertreich.org/post/29638134341 - Last Mover Sun, 19 Aug 2012 01:25:34 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18220 No, but certainly all those who are given a voice in the media. - Erik Sat, 18 Aug 2012 22:59:05 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18218 Conservative intellectual = lies well and wears an expensive suit. - PeakVT Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:25:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18217 Ryan gets kid glove treatment from the media (there was a similarly horrid op-ed "article" on the AP today, supposedly looking adt both sides) - David Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:10:14 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/do-all-conservative-intellectuals-have-trouble-with-arithmetic#comment-18215 Sarah Palin was dead-on correct about the uselessness of the "lamestream" media. I think before you can work at NYT, WP, or WSJ, 1st thing you learn is that "Opinions about the shape of the Earth differ". - weirdness Sat, 18 Aug 2012 12:33:43 +0100