Palin Was Wrong About Paul Revere and No Amount of Right-wing Revisionism Will Change That

This is Palin's word jumble: He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed.

I've read Revere's account of the entirety of that night. The Right has read it and seems unable to grasp the meaning of words. With it all right in front of them they fail reading comprehension and analysis. Revere warned the British, or more correctly, was bragging to the British that they would soon get their just punishment after he was captured. After his famous ride to warn Hancock and Adams. Once captured, perhaps he angrily shouted the warnings of a braggart, but not warnings as the type he made on the famous ride in question. Show us where in Paul Revere's own words where he "riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells".

It has been ages since conservatives showed the kind of honor and humility to admit when they are wrong and apologize. There is certainly no reason to think today will be any different.

"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world."
Thomas Jefferson

New York Times Admits one of its biggest mistakes was not addressing the paper's misleading pre-Iraq War coverage sooner

New York Times Admits one of its biggest mistakes was not addressing the paper's misleading pre-Iraq War coverage sooner

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller says one of his biggest mistakes as editor was not addressing the paper's misleading pre-Iraq War coverage sooner, including the reporting of former Times writer Judy Miller.

Keller tells Media Matters that he is "not at all" surprised that Miller ended up at the "conservative" Fox News Channel after she left the Times under a cloud of controversy related to her Iraq reporting.

Keller, who announced Thursday that in September he will leave the post he has held since July 2003, said: "Judy was the author of a lot of those stories, and I should have dealt with the stories and with her I think as the sort of first order of business when I took the job rather than waiting until the following year."

Keller was referring to the unusual editor's note the Times published on May 26, 2004, in which it admitted many of its pre-war stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- a number of which were reported by Miller -- misrepresented the situation before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"The whole Judy Miller WMD experience was ... one of the low points of the last eight years," Keller said.

Keller, who took over as editor in 2003, did so in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal that forced the departure of former executive editor Howell Raines and former managing editor Gerald Boyd. It also prompted the Times to institute new safeguards for accuracy and plagiarism.

Keller said he did not want to add to the post-Blair scandal atmosphere by correcting the WMD reporting that soon. But says he should have.

"When I came in, I thought I sort of hate this business of, you come in and you immediately start pointing a finger of blame at your predecessor.

"I covered the Soviet Union and that is what Soviet leaders would always do. They sort of come in and they establish their bona fides by trashing their predecessor. [It was] partly that and it was also I wanted to kind of strike a positive tone in the early days.

"People, I thought, did not need another scandal and so I let it fester for a year. ...What I should have done when I came in was ... write that mea culpa and explain to readers, 'You know, look, we wrote some bad stories in the run-up to the war. I don't think it was out of any malice, I think it was we kind of fell for the conventional wisdom. But, you know, and we've learned from it.' Instead, I let a year go by when a lot of people, particularly people on the left, became disenchanted with the Times because they saw it as having been cheerleaders for the war."

"I think I could have saved the paper a lot of trouble and some damage by dealing with that much sooner."

Miller did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Keller also said that Miller's 2005 jailing on contempt of court charges for refusing to reveal a source in the Valerie Plame scandal made it difficult to criticize her then.

"One of the reasons that we didn't want to be seen chastising Judy was she was facing a threat that was tied up in a principle we believed in, which is you have to honor your commitments to sources."

Miller is now a Fox News contributor and makes regular appearance on Fox News Watch, the network's media criticism show.

Keller said he is "not at all" surprised that Miller ended up at Fox.

"The places that she has written for are Fox and The Wall Street Journal op-ed pages -- the two where I have encountered her work since leaving the Times," said Keller. "I think she left with a considerable feeling of bitterness about the Times, so those would be naturally hospitable environments for her. ... We now know because of things that she's written that her viewpoint on a lot of subjects is comfortably at home in those venues."

Keller was critical of Fox News, however, saying that its false claims of being "fair and balanced" actually hurt all news outlets that truly strive to be fair and balanced.

"Fox is perfectly entitled to be a conservative news organization. ... I will always defend their right to be that. My criticism of Fox is that a lot of the time they pretend that they're not. And I think that just tends to contribute to cynicism about the media. People say, 'Well Fox claims to be fair and balanced, but they're not. You claim to be fair and balanced, you must not be either.' And so all news organizations, including the ones that try very hard to play fair and to be even-handed in their reporting and writing get tarred by the Fox brush."

According to Keller, "People see Fox News, they recognize that it's conservative. Its commentators are conservative; some of the time its news programs are overtly conservative. They see that and they see that its slogan is 'fair and balanced' and then they see other news organizations that say, 'Yes, we really try to be even-handed and impartial.' And they know Fox is misrepresenting themselves, so they think everybody else is, too."

Keller also said that he worries people do not seek out many different viewpoints of news today. Still, he remained hopeful that many news organizations would continue to strive for fair reporting and not go overboard either on the left or the right.

"I've always found it a little worrisome that people can select a news diet that just suits their prejudices. If you're a liberal, you can put together a menu of web sites that's only liberal and, if you're conservative you can put together a menu that's only conservative, and so your ideas never get challenged. And I think that's not healthy.

"But I don't think that everybody -- that every website and every news organization is going to gravitate to the right or left. I think there are and there always will be news organizations that really strive to provide you with the information you need to make up your own mind."

Bush, Conservatives and the NYT lied and people died.

Americans Are Paying Lower Taxes Than Ever Yet Republican Swear We Do Not Have a Revenue Problem

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. Tax Cuts Generate Revenue

The political system may be different from Orwell's time, but the corruption and propaganda remain. We all have to 'sacrifice' to balance the budget. As Time Magazine wailed: "Do the nation's leaders have the courage to cut health entitlements or Social Security?" And the horses say, "We will work harder."

But the wealthiest individuals and corporations are not paying their taxes. They say they are. The richest Americans complain that they're paying most of the federal income taxes, and that's true. But since 1980 their AFTER-TAX share of America's income has TRIPLED. That's a trillion dollars a year in extra income for the wealthiest 1%. Their federal income tax rate has gone DOWN during that time, from 34% to 23%.

If they're paying most of the federal income tax it's because they make almost all the money.

The wealthiest 125 U.S. corporations, meanwhile, paid only 10% in U.S. income taxes last year. They claim that a lower tax rate will generate more tax revenue.

Here are the facts about corporate tax rates. Over the past 50 years the marginal rates for top corporations have steadily fallen, from over 50% to 35%. But according to the U.S. Office of Management, the corporate share of total tax revenue has dropped from about 20% in the 1960s to under 9% in 2010. Average Americans have made up most of the difference.

What the very rich won't admit is that they benefit the most from government-funded research, national security, infrastructure, property rights, and a financial industry tailored to their pleasure and profit. They insist that anyone can share in the prosperity, if only, like the horses, they keep working harder.


Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org),

Taxes are lower than ever, yet far Right governors are cutting corporate taxes as they lay off teachers and firefighters. Republicans complain our education system is broken and we have to compete in the world market, but they are eroding our capacity to compete. All of this lying and propaganda to protect those who are reaping the greatest wealth from paying the same rates they paid under Ronald Reagan-  Taxes Are Lower Under Obama Than Reagan. The big secret about the deficit is we have a revenue problem, not a spending problem, or at least not one that we can't handle with more revenue. The same revenue we were rising during the Reagan years.

Rep. Anthony Weiner Was Framed By Right-wing Stalker Dan Wolfe

 Rep. Anthony Weiner Was Framed By Right-wing Stalker Dan Wolfe

The important point is this: The anomaly in the header indicates that the image was not sent by Weiner. It had to have been sent by someone else.

Not only that. Believe it or not, when an outsider sends a pic to someone else's Yfrog account in this fashion, the action creates a message in the "twitterstream." The message seems to originate with the Twitter account holder -- but it doesn't. It comes from somewhere else -- from someone mailing a picture to the account holder.

This is a serious security flaw in the design of Yfrog and Twitter. It allows a malicious outsider to "spoof" a tweet that seems to come from someone else.

Various technical details at the link. One doubts that Rep. Weiner(D-NY) will press charges, but he would have every right to do so.

We Must Stop Supply-side Economics and Provide the middle class a share of economic gains sufficient to allow them to purchase more of what the economy can produce

 We Must Stop Supply-side Economics and Provide the middle class a share of economic gains sufficient to allow them to purchase more of what the economy can produce

The U.S. economy continues to stagnate. It’s growing at the rate of 1.8 percent, which is barely growing at all. Consumer spending is down. Home prices are down. Jobs and wages are going nowhere.

It’s vital that we understand the truth about the American economy.

How did we go from the Great Depression to 30 years of Great Prosperity? And from there, to 30 years of stagnant incomes and widening inequality, culminating in the Great Recession? And from the Great Recession into such an anemic recovery?

The Great Prosperity

During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward.

During these three decades everyone’s wages grew — not just those at or near the top.

Government enforced the basic bargain in several ways. It used Keynesian policy to achieve nearly full employment. It gave ordinary workers more bargaining power. It provided social insurance. And it expanded public investment. Consequently, the portion of total income that went to the middle class grew while the portion going to the top declined. But this was no zero-sum game. As the economy grew almost everyone came out ahead, including those at the top.

The pay of workers in the bottom fifth grew 116 percent over these years — faster than the pay of those in the top fifth (which rose 99 percent), and in the top 5 percent (86 percent).

Productivity also grew quickly. Labor productivity — average output per hour worked — doubled. So did median incomes. Expressed in 2007 dollars, the typical family’s income rose from about $25,000 to $55,000. The basic bargain was cinched.

The middle class had the means to buy, and their buying created new jobs. As the economy grew, the national debt shrank as a percentage of it.

The Great Prosperity also marked the culmination of a reorganization of work that had begun during the Depression. Employers were required by law to provide extra pay — time-and-a-half — for work stretching beyond 40 hours a week. This created an incentive for employers to hire additional workers when demand picked up. Employers also were required to pay a minimum wage, which improved the pay of workers near the bottom as demand picked up.

When workers were laid off, usually during an economic downturn, government provided them with unemployment benefits, usually lasting until the economy recovered and they were rehired. Not only did this tide families over but it kept them buying goods and services — an “automatic stabilizer” for the economy in downturns.

Perhaps most significantly, government increased the bargaining leverage of ordinary workers. They were guaranteed the right to join labor unions, with which employers had to bargain in good faith. By the mid-1950s more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie. Non-unionized companies, fearing their workers would otherwise want a union, offered similar deals.

Americans also enjoyed economic security against the risks of economic life — not only unemployment benefits but also, through Social Security, insurance against disability, loss of a major breadwinner, workplace injury and inability to save enough for retirement. In 1965 came health insurance for the elderly and the poor (Medicare and Medicaid). Economic security proved the handmaiden of prosperity. In requiring Americans to share the costs of adversity it enabled them to share the benefits of peace of mind. And by offering peace of mind, it freed them to consume the fruits of their labors.

The government sponsored the dreams of American families to own their own home by providing low-cost mortgages and interest deductions on mortgage payments. In many sections of the country, government subsidized electricity and water to make such homes habitable. And it built the roads and freeways that connected the homes with major commercial centers.

Government also widened access to higher education. The GI Bill paid college costs for those who returned from war. The expansion of public universities made higher education affordable to the American middle class.

Government paid for all of this with tax revenues from an expanding middle class with rising incomes. Revenues were also boosted by those at the top of the income ladder whose marginal taxes were far higher. The top marginal income tax rate during World War II was over 68 percent. In the 1950s, under Dwight Eisenhower, whom few would call a radical, it rose to 91 percent. In the 1960s and 1970s the highest marginal rate was around 70 percent. Even after exploiting all possible deductions and credits, the typical high-income taxpayer paid a marginal federal tax of over 50 percent. But contrary to what conservative commentators had predicted, the high tax rates did not reduce economic growth. To the contrary, they enabled the nation to expand middle-class prosperity and fuel growth.

The Middle-Class Squeeze, 1977-2007

During the Great Prosperity of 1947-1977, the basic bargain had ensured that the pay of American workers coincided with their output. In effect, the vast middle class received an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth. But after that point, the two lines began to diverge: Output per hour — a measure of productivity — continued to rise. But real hourly compensation was left in the dust.

It’s easy to blame “globalization” for the stagnation of middle incomes, but technological advances have played as much if not a greater role. Factories remaining in the United States have shed workers as they automated. So has the service sector.

But contrary to popular mythology, trade and technology have not reduced the overall number of American jobs. Their more profound effect has been on pay. Rather than be out of work, most Americans have quietly settled for lower real wages, or wages that have risen more slowly than the overall growth of the economy per person. Although unemployment following the Great Recession remains high, jobs are slowly returning. But in order to get them, many workers have to accept lower pay than before.

Starting more than three decades ago, trade and technology began driving a wedge between the earnings of people at the top and everyone else. The pay of well-connected graduates of prestigious colleges and MBA programs has soared. But the pay and benefits of most other workers has either flattened or dropped. And the ensuing division has also made most middle-class American families less economically secure.
Government could have enforced the basic bargain. But it did the opposite. It slashed public goods and investments — whacking school budgets, increasing the cost of public higher education, reducing job training, cutting public transportation and allowing bridges, ports and highways to corrode.

It shredded safety nets — reducing aid to jobless families with children, tightening eligibility for food stamps, and cutting unemployment insurance so much that by 2007 only 40 percent of the unemployed were covered. It halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70 to 90 percent that prevailed during the Great Prosperity to 28 to 35 percent; allowed many of the nation’s rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax; and shrunk inheritance taxes that affected only the top-most 1.5 percent of earners. Yet at the same time, America boosted sales and payroll taxes, both of which took a bigger chunk out of the pay the middle class and the poor than of the well off.

How America Kept Buying: Three Coping Mechanisms

Coping mechanism No. 1: Women move into paid work. Starting in the late 1970s, and escalating in the 1980s and 1990s, women went into paid work in greater and greater numbers. For the relatively small sliver of women with four-year college degrees, this was the natural consequence of wider educational opportunities and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women. But the vast majority of women who migrated into paid work did so in order to prop up family incomes as households were hit by the stagnant or declining wages of male workers.

This transition of women into paid work has been one of the most important social and economic changes to occur over the last four decades. In 1966, 20 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home. By the late 1990s, the proportion had risen to 60 percent. For married women with children under the age of 6, the transformation has been even more dramatic — from 12 percent in the 1960s to 55 percent by the late 1990s.

Coping mechanism No. 2: Everyone works longer hours. By the mid 2000s it was not uncommon for men to work more than 60 hours a week and women to work more than 50. A growing number of people took on two or three jobs. All told, by the 2000s, the typical American worker worked more than 2,200 hours a year — 350 hours more than the average European worked, more hours even than the typically industrious Japanese put in. It was many more hours than the typical American middle-class family had worked in 1979 — 500 hours longer, a full 12 weeks more.

Coping mechanism No. 3: Draw down savings and borrow to the hilt. After exhausting the first two coping mechanisms, the only way Americans could keep consuming as before was to save less and go deeper into debt. During the Great Prosperity the American middle class saved about 9 percent of their after-tax incomes each year. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, that portion had been whittled down to about 7 percent. The savings rate then dropped to 6 percent in 1994, and on down to 3 percent in 1999. By 2008, Americans saved nothing. Meanwhile, household debt exploded. By 2007, the typical American owed 138 percent of their after-tax income.

The Challenge for the Future

All three coping mechanisms have been exhausted. The fundamental economic challenge ahead is to restore the vast American middle class.

That requires resurrecting the basic bargain linking wages to overall gains, and providing the middle class a share of economic gains sufficient to allow them to purchase more of what the economy can produce. As we should have learned from the Great Prosperity — the 30 years after World War II when America grew because most Americans shared in the nation’s prosperity — we cannot have a growing and vibrant economy without a growing and vibrant middle class.

(This is excerpted from my testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, on May 12. It is also drawn from my recent book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future.) - Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations

 Liberal economic policies built the world's most dynamic economy and thus a string middle-class. What has been eroding the middle-class? The Republican religion of supply-side economics. This is where conservatives guard the unearned wealth of the top 10% and cut wages and services for the people who actually work and produce products and services that have value. Republicans want something like the modern equivalent of medieval estates where the top aristocrats keep most of the wealth and the rest of us serfs get the crumbs.

What’s Driving Projected Debt? Republican Infatuation With Vooddoo Economics

What’s Driving Projected Debt? Lack of Revenue and Cowardly Conservatives Who Still Believe in Voodoo Supply-side Economics.

As we’ve noted, my colleagues Kathy Ruffing and Jim Horney have updated CBPP’s analysis showing that the economic downturn, President Bush’s tax cuts, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire federal budget deficit over the next ten years.  So, what about the public debt, which is basically the sum of annual budget deficits, minus annual surpluses, over the nation’s entire history?

The complementary chart, below, shows that the Bush-era tax cuts and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — including their associated interest costs — account for almost half of the projected public debt in 2019 (measured as a share of the economy) if we continue current policies.

Tax Cuts, Wars Account for Nearly Half of Public Debt by 2019

Altogether, the economic downturn, the measures enacted to combat it (including the 2009 Recovery Act), and the financial rescue legislation play a smaller role in the projected debt increase over the next decade.  Public debt due to all other factors fell from over 30 percent of GDP in 2001 to 20 percent of GDP in 2019.

We focus here on debt held by the public, which reflects funds that the federal government borrows in credit markets to finance deficits and other cash needs.  That’s the proper measure on which to focus because it’s what really affects the economy.  We compare it to GDP because stabilizing the debt-to-GDP ratio is a key test of fiscal sustainability.

As Kathy and Jim note, simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule (or paying for any portions that policymakers decide to extend) would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade.   While we’d have to do much more to keep the debt stable over the longer run, that would be a huge accomplishment.

Republicans have made their decision - its better to cut Medicare and Medicaid than rise revenue for the filthy rich. The wealthy do not, despite the claims of right-wing conservative, create wealth, all wealth starts with labor - working Americans. When are working Americans going to get feed up with Republican communism which redistributes wealth from workers to the top five percent of the obscenely wealthy.

The myth of the week - Conservative Media Revive Misleading Claim That Health Care Reform "Cut" $500 Billion. If you lie all the time about everything that means you have no honor or integrity. Those used to be the kind of values America stood for. Republicans use them to swipe themselves.

The Latest Elitist Republican Attack on the Middle-class and American Values

House Republicans Escalate Attacks on Agency Created to Protect Middle-class and Poor

Congressional Republicans have frequently attacked Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [1] (CFPB) she’s setting up, which officially launches on July 21. The House GOP escalated its anti-Warren, anti-CFPB campaign [2] at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee today, chaired by Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC).

McHenry was once known as Tom DeLay’s “attack-dog-in-training [3],” a title he more than earned today. Before the hearing had even begun, McHenry went on CNBC and brazenly accused Warren of lying to Congress [4]. He claimed that Warren had misrepresented her role in advising state attorneys general who are seeking a multibillion-dollar settlement [5] with the country’s largest mortgage service providers, who stand accused of massive and widespread foreclosure fraud. As evidence, McHenry pointed to a leaked internal document prepared by the CFPB that laid out different settlement options for the state AGs. McHenry claimed this went beyond the scope of the “advice,” that Warren had already admitted to providing, at the behest of the Treasury Department, in earlier testimony to Congress in March. “We’ve given advice when asked for advice,” she reiterated this afternoon.

The subcommittee hearing devolved into a linguistic discussion of the true meaning of the word “advise,” as the Merriam-Webster definition (“to give [someone] a recommendation about what should be done”) flashed on large TV screens in the hearing room. But given that Warren had already copped to giving such advice, it was difficult to find any meaningful contradiction in her remarks. Nor has she or the CFPB played a leading role in the settlement talks. “It’s simply not accurate to say the CFPB has masterminded this,” Geoff Greenwood, spokesman for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who’s leading settlement talks for the AGs, told me recently.

Despite his thin paper trail, McHenry was intent on making Warren look bad. The Western North Carolina Congressman frequently interrupted her answers and accused the CFPB of possessing “virtually unchecked” power. Near the end of the hearing, Representative John Yarmouth (D-KY) apologized to Warren for the “rude and disrespectful behavior of the chair.” Incidentally, McHenry has accepted generous campaign donations this year from big banks and industry trade associations opposed to bureau, including $1,000-plus checks from the American Bankers Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, American Express, American Financial Services Organization, Cash America International, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Ed Mierzwinski, the consumer program director at US PIRG, said the hearing was just another attempt by the GOP “to try to weaken Warren’s credibility.” He invoked an old saying from law school: “If the law is on your side, argue the law. If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If you don’t have either, just argue.”

The hearing was titled “Who’s Watching the Watchmen? Oversight of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” but Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) argued that it should be dubbed “Let’s Pretend the Financial Crisis Never Happened.” Indeed, Congressional Republicans spent no time on the lax oversight and corporate deception that led to the financial crisis—and how a consumer agency dedicated to policing the murky financial services sector might have prevented or mitigated a prolonged recession. “Too often consumer protection was the second thought, third thought, or not even thought of at all,” Maloney said. That’s why Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration created the CFPB as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act.

“I’m begging you to keep the fire,” Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) told Warren. “I’ve had constituents who’ve lost so much they don’t even know why…. We need your passion and concern. Thank you for syncing your conduct and conscience.”

At the end of the testy hearing, McHenry told Warren: “I admire your service to our government. I do.” He and the House GOP certainly have a funny way of showing it. 

Links:
[1] http://www.consumerfinance.gov/
[2] http://www.thenation.com/blog/160086/gop-struggles-dent-consumer-financial-protection-bureau
[3] http://www.thenation.com/article/all-delays-children
[4] http://www.cnbc.com/id/43151627
[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/28/big-banks-save-billions-homeowners-suffer_n_841712.html
[6] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nationnow/id399704758?mt=8

Remember the last election was all about Republicans supposedly getting back to their roots and looking out for the middle-class and working poor who worked hard and played by the rules and were going to protect the average American from the elites on Wall St. It did not take long for conservative loons like McHenry to show their true colors. They are bought and paid for by the elite to keep watchdogs and true patriots like Elizabeth Warren from wrangling in the financial elites worse excesses.

Run, Paul, Run!

Writing in the LA Times today, Jonah Goldberg is unhappy that none of the big-name GOP presidential candidates are full-throated defenders of Paul Ryan's budget plan:

    So the question many are asking is, should Ryan ride to the rescue? If the election is going to be a referendum on his plan, maybe the one guy who can sell it should get in the race. On Monday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called for Ryan to get in the race, saying, "Paul's about real leadership."

    If Ryan ran, he would probably drive the other candidates further away from his own plan while forcing them to come up with serious alternatives of their own. If he got the nomination, many think he would clean Obama's clock in the debates.

    It's a lot to ask. He has three young kids and would have to get organized and funded from a cold start for a long-shot run. But politics is about moments, and this one is calling him. Unless someone suddenly rises to the challenge, the cries of "Help us, Paul Ryan, you're our only hope!" will only get louder.

Let me get this straight. The Ryan plan is wildly unpopular and is ripping the Republican Party apart. In fact, it's so unpopular that even Newt Gingrich won't endorse it. So the answer is for Ryan to run because somehow the great man himself will make gutting Medicare into a national movement.

How did a sissy-britches no talent hack like Goldberg get a job writing on one of the nation's biggest newspapers. No mystery. His mommy is rich and connected. Jonah lives in the typical bubble of his own opinion. America wants and deserves its Medicare. It is the kind of program a modern civilized nation should have. Jonah doesn't understand that because he has never woken up in the morning wondering where or how he can get medical care. When mommy pays for everything you never achieve anything on your own you tend to be like Jonah, totally incapable of relating to regular folks.