Minor Thoughts from me to you

Avik Roy, on a very promising development from the AMA.

At the Vice-Presidential debate last week, Joe Biden claimed that the American Medical Association sided with him, and against Paul Ryan, on the merits of the Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare reform. “Who do you believe?” exclaimed Biden. “The AMA [and] me? A guy who has fought his whole life for this? Or somebody [like Paul Ryan]?” Well, it turns out that the AMA’s key policy committee has come out in favor of premium support for Medicare, in a fashion that tracks closely with what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are proposing.

... The AMA Council’s report states that it came around to this view not at the behest of Republican operatives or candidates, but after speaking with Bill Clinton’s former budget chief, Alice Rivlin, who along with Paul Ryan proposed a version of this plan. “Dr. Rivlin emphasized that defined contribution amounts should be sufficient to ensure that all beneficiaries could afford to purchase health insurance coverage, and that private health insurance plans should be subject to regulations that protect patients and ensure the availability of coverage for even the sickest patients.”

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How do you debate a guy who makes everything up on the fly?

I’d like to discuss the substance of the debate on health care and tax reform, where Joe Biden told one whopper after another in an attempt to help President Obama regain lost campaign momentum.

I was arguing with the TV when VP Biden was making up these facts. The more you know about policy, the more of a buffoon the VP is.

• Contra Biden, Senator Ron Wyden does still support the Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform plan.
• Contra Biden, the CBO determined that Medicare wouldn't save any money by negotiating drug prices .
• Contra Biden, Obamacare did cut $716 billion from Medicare and probably will cause 1 in 6 hospitals to go under and cause 15% of Medicare doctors to stop taking Medicare patients.
• Contra Biden, 7.4 million seniors are expected to lose access to Medicare Advantage once the Obamacare changes are fully phased in, in 2014.

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Before the debate, I predicted that Congressman Ryan would wipe the floor with VP Biden. I was wrong. I'd forgotten how good/awful of a debater VP Biden is. He's good because he's always confident and never in doubt. He's awful because he completely makes stuff up and delivers the resulting manure with complete and utter sincerity. How do you fight that without falling into the trap of constantly fact checking your opponent rather than giving your own answers?

How about an example? Last night, they were asked about whether or not the United States should intervene in Syria (given the Libya intervention). And, if not, why not? VP Biden confidently stated that we absolutely should not get involved in Syria. Syria would be a tough intervention because it "is a different country, it is five times as large geographically, it has one fifth the population." Not true. Syria is 185,000 square kilometers, while Libya is 1.7 million square kilometers. Geographically, Libya is ten times larger than Syria. Rather than Syria having one fifth the population of Libya, it actually has 4 times the population that Libya does.

Or, how about VP Biden's confident assertions that we shouldn't worry about Iran's stockpile of fissile material because "they don't have a weapon to put it in"? What kind of argument is that? Building a nuclear weapon is trivial compared to what it takes to acquire fissile material. Pakistan's A.Q. Khan sold nuclear technology to multiple countries, including Iran. If Iran did have problems building a weapon, North Korea would be more than happy to share notes. If Iran doesn't have a weapon now, it's only because they like the plausible deniability of continuing to claim that all of their enrichment is for "energy generation".

In short, VP Biden looks impressive in a debate, unless you know all of the issues well enough to spot all of the times that he's free associating and losing contact with reality. On the appearance of substance, I'd have to rate the debate a tie. Both candidates appeared that they knew what they were talking about.

However, I think VP Biden flubbed horribly on the demeanor side of the debate. He may have forgotten that his job was to persuade undecided voters. As he listened to Congressman Ryan, he spent the entire evening laughing, making faces, or sighing. When he was speaking, VP Biden often sounded angry. He was strident and loud, often shouting, and interrupted Congressman Ryan frequently. It was one of the more unpleasant debates I've ever watched. VP Biden came across as a rude, angry, boor. I know that this fired up the Democrats who already plan to vote for the President and VP. I can't imagine that this will make his ticket attractive to undecided voters. Overall, I don't think this evening was a win for the Obama-Biden ticket.

Lori Montgomery wrote an article in the Washington Post heavily criticizing Paul Ryan for not doing enough to solve America's debt crisis. Keith Hennessey rips into her article and exposes it for the politically motivated hackery that it is.

She writes that Mr. Ryan did draft a blueprint for wiping out deficits by 2040, but she fails to mention that he passed that plan through the House. She does not report that Mr. Ryan's staff were providing behind-the-scenes technical assistance to Speaker Boehner during the Grand Bargain negotiation. She doesn't report that Mr. Ryan loaned his budget committee staff director to Mr. Hensarling on the super committee. She doesn't mention that Mr. Ryan's prediction that the super committee would fail came true, or that the Obama White House was AWOL during the super committee negotiations. She doesn't mention that he voted for the Budget Control At of 2011, for the tax rate extensions at the end of 2010, and for the FY 2012 Omnibus Appropriations Act, three major bipartisan fiscal laws that deeply split House Republicans.

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Seems like fact checkers need to do some fact checking of their own assumptions.  Paul Ryan’s speech last night included a reference to a GM plant in Janesville that closed, which Ryan used to criticize Barack Obama for failing to meet his campaign promises.  A number of “fact” checkers jumped all over Ryan’s anecdote to claim that he lied about the circumstances of the plant’s closure.

Ed Morrissey does a detailed fact check of the fact checkers' hysteria over Paul Ryan's references to the GM plant in Janesville, WI.

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Progressive bloggers and TV personalities are up in arms about Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention last night. Several of their accusations revolve around Paul Ryan’s own fiscal record, and his description of President Obama’s. I asked my liberal friends on Twitter to send me an itemized list of Ryan’s alleged lies, and they kindly obliged. So far, Ryan appears to have the better of the argument.

Avik Roy fact checks the fact checkers, over Paul Ryan's convention speech.

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Deroy Murdock, with some wonderful satire.

After GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s rousing and effective convention acceptance speech last week, I found myself snapping my fingers as the GOP convention’s band in Tampa played that old hit, “Living in America.” Suddenly, it dawned on me: Team Romney might be transmitting racial messages.

I consulted my copy of the definitive reference on this topic, A Black Man’s Guide to Whitey’s Racial Code, by Jesse Jackson and Kanye West (Sharpton Books, 2010). I flipped past the highly apologetic introduction by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.). Just as I suspected, page 178 confirmed that “Living in America” was a Billboard Top 4 song by the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. This, as Jackson and West teach us, is a subtle message designed to remind Caucasians that President Obama has brown skin. Also, the song was written by Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight. It doesn’t get any darker than midnight.

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Veronique de Rugy is worried that Romney / Ryan's talk about "protecting Medicare" means that they won't really push to reform it.

The only way to ensure that Medicare is there “for my generation, and for my kids and yours,” reform it. If when Representative Ryan says “protect” and “strengthen” he means “reform Medicare,” great. Reform can take many forms, obviously. But, then we can believe Ryan when he says “ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate. We want this debate. We will win this debate.”

She lays out all of the reasons why Medicare desperately needs to be reformed, if it's to survive at all. It's worth a read, especially if you're not convinced about the necessity of reforming Medicare.

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Before Rep. Paul Ryan had a chance to sell his budget ideas to the American people, the Wisconsin Republican first had to persuade his own party.

The initial version of his "Roadmap for America's Future," in summer 2008, was treated as an afterthought by party leaders, and some were openly hostile. Fearful of political backlash, just eight Republicans signed up for his conservative wish list: rewrite the tax code, scrap employer-based health care, rework Medicare and Social Security.

Today, many of Mr. Ryan's ideas have become the de facto Republican Party platform.

The Wall Street Journal paints a nice profile of Paul Ryan's work, over the past 4 years, to sell his budget plan. There are those that argue that the plan doesn't go nearly far enough. I agree. I also think that his plan is on the bleeding edge of what's politically possible. It's impossible to pass an overnight overhaul of anything in American politics. But this is a good (and very ambitious) first step.

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