The Real News Network has the video Black Report: No Criminal Prosecution of Wall St. and Who is the European, Romney or Obama? This is one episode in the weekly series The Black Financial and Fraud Report.

BLACK: Well, also, also there’s a track record, and representative Ryan voted for all of the Bush things that are inconsistent with libertarian ideas and are inconsistent with being, you know, a fiscal hawk. So when it was a Republican president, he gave them everything he wanted. And the Republican president, of course, created very substantial deficits. Now, deficits are supposedly the demon,…

As I have pointed out before, saying deficits are bad in one phase of an economic cycle is not inconsistent with saying that deficits are good in a different part of the cycle. However, in the Republicans’ case they are saying deficits are good when they are actually bad, and they are saying they are bad at precisely the moment when they are good. If they would just stick to one story, they would at least be right half the time. Which is not quite as good as shifting your policy at the right time to be right all the time.

If you listen to the whole video above, you will realize that this is further proof of my remarks in my previous post, Paul Ryan – An Unserious Man:

It occurs to me that the mentality that brought you toxic mortgages and the tricks and traps hidden inside them is the same mentality that is bringing you these various Republican economic proposals.

The New York Times has the Paul Krugman piece An Unserious Man.

Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate led to a wave of pundit accolades. Now, declared writer after writer, we’re going to have a real debate about the nation’s fiscal future. This was predictable: never mind the Tea Party, Mr. Ryan’s true constituency is the commentariat, which years ago decided that he was the Honest, Serious Conservative, whose proposals deserve respect even if you don’t like him.

But he isn’t and they don’t. Ryanomics is and always has been a con game, although to be fair, it has become even more of a con since Mr. Ryan joined the ticket.

At first, I misread Ryanomics as a reference to a past President’s economic plan.

Krugman concludes with:

The first sign of trouble has already surfaced over the issue of Medicare. Mr. Romney, in an attempt to repeat the G.O.P.’s successful “death panels” strategy of the 2010 midterms, has been busily attacking the president for the same Medicare savings that are part of the Ryan plan. And Mr. Ryan’s response when this was pointed out was incredibly lame: he only included those cuts, he says, because the president put them “in the baseline,” whatever that means. Of course, whatever Mr. Ryan’s excuse, the fact is that without those savings his budget becomes even more of a plan to increase, not reduce, the deficit.

So will the choice of Mr. Ryan mean a serious campaign? No, because Mr. Ryan isn’t a serious man — he just plays one on TV.

It occurs to me that the mentality that brought you toxic mortgages and the tricks and traps hidden inside them is the same mentality that is bringing you these various Republican economic proposals.  In the case of the mortgage fiasco, the big banks got armies of expert lawyers to write complicated contracts that no sane person would agree to if they understood them. Then they went out in droves to sell these things to the rubes.  They invented something called liar loans.  It wasn’t the borrowers who were lying.  It was the mortgage brokers who put in the lies, many times unbeknownst to the borrowers.  The same type of people are now doing this scam in the political realm.

Remember that Romney was the one who figured out how to just skirt the laws so that he could take over companies, strip out their assets, rob the employees of their pensions and health care, and then leave the bones of the company on the scrap heap.

If you think these economic proposals make sense, common or otherwise, then you are one of the rubes they are depending on to get elected.

McClatchy has the story Missouri’s Rep. Akin: Pregnancy rare after ‘legitimate rape’.

 U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri ignited a firestorm of criticism Sunday when he said in a television interview that rape victims have a biological ability to ward off pregnancy.

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” the Republican said in the interview broadcast on KTVI-TV in St. Louis.

Is this the Republican brand of sex education?

Later Sunday, Akin’s campaign said the congressman had erred.

Erred?  In high school or even junior high, such a person would be laughed out of the school yard for his ignorance about sex.

On the other hand, if this were true, Rep. Akin could receive a Nobel prize for inventing a new kind of birth control.

This medical theory of Akin’s is much like the economic theory of the Republicans. You throw around a few technical terms (like secretions and hormones in Akin’s case) to come up with a theory that might sound plausible to a lay person. You ignore the idea that just because it sounds plausible to the uneducated, it doesn’t make it true. To find out if it is true, you actually have to look at the facts of how your theory works out in real life. If it turns out that real life shows that though your theory sounded plausible to you it does not correspond to real life, then you have to admit that there is a flaw in your theory. For something as important as life and death decisions for women or the economy, you don’t risk making policy decisions based on plausibility. With the resources that national politicians on the House Science Committee have (like Akin), you’d think they could find out the truth before they spout off. It doesn’t look like Akin even understands what science is. So how does he get to be on the Science Committee?

The Republicans on the various economics related committee don’t seem to show any more knowledge about economics than Akin seems to show about science.

Four years ago as I had the privilege to travel all across this country and meet Americans from all walks of life.

I decided nobody else should have to endure the heartbreak of a broken health care system. No one in the wealthiest nation on earth should go broke because they get sick.

Nobody should have to tell their daughters or sons the decisions they can and cannot make for themselves are constrained because of some politicians in Washington.

And thanks to you we’ve made a difference in people’s lives. Thanks to you there are folks that I meet today who have gotten care and their cancer’s been caught. And they’ve got treatment. And they are living full lives and it happened because of you.

We’ve come too far to turn back now. We’ve got too much work to do to implement health care. We’ve got too much work to do to create good jobs.

We’ve got too many teachers that we’ve got to hire. We’ve got too many schools that we’ve got to rebuild. We’ve got too many students who still need affordable higher education.

There’s more homegrown energy to generate. There more troops that we’ve got to bring home.

There more doors of opportunity we’ve got to open to anybody who is willing to work hard and walk through those doors.

We’ve got to keep building an economy where no matter what you look like or where you come from, you can make it here if you try.

And you can leave something behind for the next generation, that’s what at stake right now Colorado. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.

That’s why I’m asking for your vote. I still believe in you. And if you still believe in me, and if you’re willing to stand with me, and knock on some doors with me, and make some phone calls with me, and talk to your neighbor and friends about what’s at stake—we will win this election. We will finish what we started.

And we’ll remind the world why America is the greatest nation on earth.

God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

That this Republican strategy might work is what has me so agitated. I am working hard to get Elizabeth Warren elected despite some similar strategies directed against her. Are you so dispirited that you are paralyzed into inaction, or are you doing something to fight this criminal enterprise?

The Boston Globe has the article Elizabeth Warren’s politics rooted in academia. The subhead is “Fueled by original scholarship and singular ambition, Warren’s bold, barbed ascent to the pinnacle of the legal profession shattered tradition. ”

..Warren rose through the mostly male, intensely political world of academia on the strength of her unbridled — to some, off-putting — ambition as well as groundbreaking research that brought her national attention and grant money. Her ability to distill complex concepts into simple ideas and her intense connection to her students brought her student-nominated teaching awards at four of the five law schools where she taught.
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However, Baird, the Chicago law professor who was once Warren’s sparring partner, said: “To the extent that people criticize Elizabeth for having sharp elbows, that was at a time where, if you were a woman who didn’t have sharp elbows, you were going to be run over.”

The article is full of details that I found to be very interesting and informative.  You get a little better picture of the whole person than I have seen before.  I am not naive enough to think that I now have the whole picture.

USA Today has the article Obama-Romney-Ryan Medicare debate takes surprising turn.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, running mate Paul Ryan, and other Republicans are stressing $716 billion in cuts to Medicare that are part of President Obama’s health care plan.

That attack has forced Obama and company to play defense, even as they emphasize that Romney and Ryan want to turn Medicare into a voucher program that will cost seniors thousands of dollars a year.

The $716 billion in cuts are aimed not at Medicare recipients, but at health care providers, such as hospitals and medical device makers; they also target what the administration calls waste and inefficiency in Medicare.
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Obama aides quickly point out that Ryan included the $716 billion in Medicare reductions in his own budget, though Romney has not; the Republican candidate has vowed to repeal Obamacare in its entirety.

If you saw my August 13, 2012 post, GOP memo: ‘Don’t say entitlement reform’, this turn is no surprise at all.

The memo included a link to a 10-minute, 27-second YouTube video Shields had created in which he discusses a 2011 Nevada special House election Republicans had won. The race, Shields argues in the video, demonstrated how Republicans can successfully fight back against Medicare-centered attacks and “chase” Democrats “off the field on something they want to talk about.”

The video specifies exactly how the Republicans’ snake oil medicine was sold.  They are trying the same technique again.  Let us hope that this Democratic candidate is not asleep at the switch as was the Democratic candidate in Nevada.

In this most recent article:

Ryan said the cuts are hurting nursing homes and Medicare Advantage insurance plans…

Which just proves the point that the government run program is much more efficient than the private insurance run program.  The Medicare Advantage program is something that I use.  It provides a 15% incentive to private insurance companies to take over Medicare responsibilities from the government for anybody who signs up.  If the private insurance companies need a 15% incentive to do what traditional Medicare does without that incentive, it shows you the likelihood that turning over Medicare to private insurance companies will save money.  This Medicare Advantage issue that Ryan points to, when followed to its logical conclusion, shows you that their voucher plan for buying private health insurance will be a total failure.

So why do I use Medicare Advantage, and why am I not annoyed that Obamcare wants to do away with the wasteful incentives?   The private insurance companies use most of the 15% incentive for their own profit, but they include just enough sweeteners to make the plan attractive if you are willing to live with its limitations.  These limitations include restrictions on where I can live and how much vacation time I can take that is away from my principle residence.  It just so happens that our lifestyle in retirement is not affected by these restrictions.  The sweeteners are just enough to make it worthwhile for me, especially since the 15% incentive does not come out of my pocket.  If the government is willing to subsidize my purchase of Medicare Advantage over the money it normally uses for other Medicare clients, then I would be a fool not to take “advantage”.  The government is foolish to waste this money, but if the Republicans insist on it, my vote for Obama just isn’t enough to correct this foolishness.

If the removal of the 15% incentive causes private insurance companies to stop offering Medicare Advantage plans, then I will go back to regular Medicare and buy my own Medicare supplemental insurance.  With the improvements in the economy that will result from Obama’s economic plan, I might even be able to take long vacations in Florida that I would not have been able to take under Medicare Advantage.

Of course, our retirement is one long vacation, just not in Florida.

Talking Points Memo has the article, New Obama TV Ad Attacks Ryan On Abortion Stance.

The Obama campaign released a new TV ad Friday night aimed squarely at turning women off to the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket.

If you can’t win an election with positions that most people favor, then how can you win? (By mountains of propaganda, I suppose. But at least you can try to fight the mountains.)

I have seen a bumper sticker that takes advantage of the misquotation that Romney uses.  Here is an antidote that you can print up and display yourself.

This prints nicely at landscape orientation on legal sizes paper. Click on the above image to view the full sized picture.
The fuller quote is in my previous blog, If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The segment is called Daily Show: Democalypse 2012 – Cockblock the Vote.

A Pennsylvania court upholds a controversial voter I.D. law that affect 9% of the entire state electorate, but that’s the price you pay to prevent something that doesn’t happen.

If your browser has trouble displaying the above video, try the direct link to the video.

So the court in Pennsylvania thinks that a law that was created to get Mitt Romnye elected will be applied in a non-partisan manor. Is English a language this judge speaks at all, ket alone as a first, second, or third language?