GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was out paying homage to the Koch brothers this Friday evening at an event hosted by their front group, Americans for Prosperity in Washington DC and I could not do a better job of summing this speech up if I tried, so I'll just refer everyone to this post by Stephen D. Foster Jr. at Addicting Info -- Mitt Romney Vows To Privatize Medicare, Raise The Retirement Age, And Fire Thousands Of Government Workers:
During a speech to a group of conservative activists on Friday in Washington, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said exactly what right wing extremists want to hear. Romney laid out his vision of government which includes privatizing Medicare, raising the retirement age, wiping out government agencies and jobs, making balanced budgets mandatory via constitutional amendment, and slashing funding for the arts, public broadcasting, family planning and passenger rail services. He also wants to give states more budget power.
The biggest and most critical portion of Romney’s plan is, of course, Medicare. Romney intends to privatize Medicare and turn it into a voucher system like Paul Ryan wanted to do in his budget plan.
“Medicare should not change for anyone who is in the program or who is about to be in it, we should honor the commitments we have made to our seniors. Tomorrow’s seniors should have the freedom to choose what their health coverage looks like. Younger Americans today, when they turn 65 should have a choice between traditional Medicare and other private health care plans. Competition will lower costs and increase the quality of health care.”
“Tomorrow’s seniors” will also have to wait much longer for Medicare since Romney also intends to raise the retirement age which is already 65 and 67 for people born after 1959.
Go read the rest since he goes into more detail of some of the other items Romney laid out in his speech. The clip above is the very end of his speech where's Romney is talking about raising the retirement age and privatizing Medicare. I've got more video below the fold.
I also wanted to add a bit more from Foster's post on just how dangerous Romney's agenda he laid out here is:
Overall, Romney’s plan is heartless, gutless, unimaginative, and caters to the extreme right wing, the wealthy, and to corporations. It’s a blueprint for making America fail and wiping out the middle class and should automatically disqualify him from holding any office. It kills the voice of the American people and destroys the programs we hold most dear. If a Republican wins the election next year, it will be perilous for the United States and the American people. Their policies have been destructive for thirty years, and now they want apocalypse.
The segment below is the better part of the beginning of his speech which has been shortened to take out pauses for applause, one standing ovation that lasted about a minute after he said he wanted to repeal "Obama-care" and a couple of the portions where he was talking about cutting government departments that oversee international trade and criticizing Obama for growing the size of government.
This screen shot is from a portion of the speech that didn't make the mashup above, but here's David Koch in the audience listening to Romney.
UPDATE: And here's more from Think Progress with some fact checking on Mitten's statements about Medicare during this speech -- Mitt Romney’s Medicare Mythology:
Mitt Romney laid out his Medicare reform plan at the “Defending the American Dream” summit in Washington, DC this afternoon, endorsing a Paul Ryan-like privatization scheme that would do more to shift costs to seniors than reduce overall health care spending. Below are the top four health care myths from Romney address... Read on...
Please please choose me. What's your latest issue? I'm for it.
Mitt's strategy is to say whatever the extremist on the right wants him to say to get the nomination and when he wins he will flip flop (hate that phrase) again forcing the right to choose between the evil black socialist democrat or him in the general election. It's ingenious and it could work. Romney doesn't believe in 90 percent of the shit he says but he is so desperate for the power of the presidency that he will do and say anything. This man is pure scum and anyone who doesn't see it is a...a...conservative.
is intended to be a factual statement
If he knew calling his mother a whore would get him the nomination he'd go even further. He'd claim she was was once a prostitute. The desperation in this man is embarrassing.
is intended to be a factual statement
Romney doesn't believe in 90 percent of the shit he says but he is so desperate for the power of the presidency that he will do and say anything.
Every time he opens his mouth I think the same thing.
far left loon >.<
If America is stupid enough to elect corporate cocksuck@rs like Romney and company we deserve the Hell we'll surely get.
Romney, the GOP's prettiest, best polished turd.
on Chris Matthews Show, a group of twelve talking heads gave Mittens the nod over Obama 10-2 in a hypothetical match-up.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
I haven't even had a chance to watch that recording yet. If the Democrats aren't already making campaign ads from this speech, they're completely incompetent.
Unfortunately, that is their track record.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
That's how we got the results we got in 2010.
The Dems simply fight among themselves and fumble the ball, time after time.
they're completely incompetent
Period.
far left loon >.<
These are the same corporate whores who think Teabircher's are populists', OWS are just bored hippies, and the MSM actually has credibility.
I'm no Obama fan, but he would crush Mitten's. By this time next year, MSM GOP propagandists' assholes may be running from teh guillotine.
Plus, when it comes down to it, the rednecks and bible bigots are not going to vote for a moron, I mean Mormon. No way, no how. Not gonna happen.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
IMO Obama has, at this point at least, locked up the moderate conservatives.
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
Norquist's cum stains...
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Thank you for that. Laughing out loud is good medicine.
99%
Shittens just seemed like a natural marriage.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
.
These fascist creeps are being driven further and further to the right, as the country lurches further to the left, and is forcing the democrats to choose sides.
Another year of GOP obstruction and fascism in these horrid economic times, is going to cost them big time. It may even be the beginning of the end for the GOP.
When young educated people - the traditional makers and shakers of a society - are completely fucked over, it is usually the beginning of the end for those in power.
All the dems have to do is show commercials of anyone of these rightwing imbeciles pandering for GOP fascist primary votes, and they are toast in the general election.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Getting insurance companies to offer competitively price health insurance to the elderly should be at least as easy as getting them to offer competitively priced insurance in flood zones. Piece of cake.
I'm so sure seniors and just plain common sense Americans are going to vote for this aristocrat. Jeez, they want to lose. Check out the homes these scumbags live in.
http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/homes-of-th...
dontcha know...
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Liars and frauds running neck and neck. The 'intellectual' cons, or neocons, are already conceding to obomba though, the more things change the more they stay the same.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/05/bill-kr...
Imagine the spawn those two could have...
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
I have never heard an overt act of fellatio referred to as paying homage , but in the aspect of this article it is a more than appropriate euphemism
It really is embarrassing to watch these people prostitute themselves out to whatever group they're speaking to at the time. Yuck!
Never to be trusted.
This is not my father's America
Prostrating themselves in homage before a small cadre of nepotism beneficiaries like Norquist and the Kochs? Kneeling in faux piety at Liberty U and Bob Jones U? All the while telling the people to suck it up and get used to pain - 'cause the gummit gots to get smaller so's we can drown it in Grover's bathtub. Sick, political fetishism of the worst kind, and the wrong prescription for the country.
in the backseat of his father's Oldsmobile.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
"Competition will lower costs and increase the quality of health care"
ahahahahahahahahahahaha sorry, I just spit up on myself from laughing so hard. That Mittens, what a kidder!!
---
what is worse, ignorance or indifference?
I don't know and I don't care!
No real solutions offered by Romney,lateral moves,privatization,austerity,and smoke and mirrors budget tricks that Repugs used under BushCo LLC.
Romney and the Repugs have nothing to offer anyone,even those nearing their SS safety net. Oh,he says that those nearing retirement and who are already retired have nothing to worry about,but that is a lie and everyone in that room knows it to be a lie.
What sort of bleak future do these nihilist offer our young people if we cannot reinstate tax levels of the wealthiest people in the history of this country to the pre-BushCo LLC levels?
Austerity is no solution for the greatest nation in the world.
'Talk to the hand'
how these rich pricks who never worked an honest day in there lives expect people that work in construction and similar jobs to just keep going for another couple of years. Of course if we work ourselves to death we wont need the medicare.
I once heard Tony Blankly (Newt Gingrich friend),offer on Left,Right,and Center,that he believes that we can work until the age of 75.
'Talk to the hand'
of the Philip Morris Study in the Czech Republic regarding smoking?
Here is just one of the links from Google. [Czech smoking study]
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/BUSINESS/07/16/cz...
Mitt might just as well be encouraging Americans to take up a pack a day....
The reason Medicare was created is because private insurance companies refused to insure the aging population.
There is absolutely no way Mittens believes private insurance companies will suddenly change their minds and keep premiums low in a voucherized system. In fact, they will GREATLY raise those premiums, causing those vouchers to be essentially worthless pieces of paper.
Mittens knows this. You and I know it.
Teatards don't know that. They're far too medicated to understand even the simplest concepts other than what's in the TV Guide in their trailer.
This term is an oxymoron for today's mega conglomerates. Romney is an asinine corporate shill of the worst kind and will throw the 99% on the tracks if elected. Corporate competition to him means having Chevron, Texaco and Exxon at the same fuel stop on interstate 5.
Their homeworld was a place called Earth, located in an uninteresting part of the galaxy. They had an expression: pride goeth before a fall. Their pride was their undoing. I know. I was there....They did not listen, of course. Arrogant men never do.
Unless Obama is found shtupping a blonde, the craziness on the other side assures his re-election. The 50 million seniors just made up their minds who's the next pres.
A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously
They always talk about the military and defense as 'protecting American interests'....
but it's only about the persons who are corporations...not the people of America.
Mitt, what was that edict about false idols......?
If Democrats simply ran segments of this speech over and over again in the 50 states, Romney would be toast.
But they won't. They're inept. And they'll maddeningly allow Romnutz to make a race of it, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Why don't the Democrats have any fast-thinking fighters who can (verbally) blast this SOB out of the water?
Romney's promise to cut Amtrak's subsidy to zero is sufficient to disqualify him for any public office above the level of dogcatcher. And Romney wouldn't want to be a dogcatcher because it would involve actual work.
and monkeys might fly out of a unicorn's ass as it watches pigs fly through cotton candy clouds
mitt omni-position just showed once again how out of touch he is with the 99% of americans who have actually had to struggle their way through the nightmare that is the us healthcare system without the benefit of crapping gold nuggets to pay for privileged care.
i wouldn't be surprised if he actually believed what he said,
Seriously, these rich guys trying to protect their 50% share of the nation's wealth when they are only 1% of the population is absolutely revolting! Greedy little piglets.
1% pay 38% of taxes, says Boehner: but...if they own 50% + of all our wealth they SHOULD pay proportionally more. Otherwise, it means the people who have far less, the 99%, are being squeezed to pay that missing 12% of the taxes the wealthy should owe.
So if the 1% has 50%+ of our wealth, they should be paying 50%+ percent of our taxes.
End of story, rich guys.
MyMy
A: Hermann Cain is finished, so he's making a pitch for Koch brother money now their sponsored candidate is on the out.
or
B: Looked at the national polls, realised that if he can't beat Obama when he's not campaigning then he can't beat him when he is, so is making a pitch for one of the many exciting 'conservative celebrity' job openings the GOP has available. Good enough for Sarah Palin, good enough for Mitt.
"I want to lose."
NOBODY 2012
He's a terrible speaker.
far left loon >.<
their minds? They would vote for Romney, exactly why?
Janek
Mittens has a fabulous track record of ending jobs, throwing people out on the streets as some kind of buy-out POS asshole. Just what is needed--less jobs when unemployment is at an all time high.
Well thought out as is usual for anyone running for Thug nominee.
me-oww!
needs to hear it. Tell you grand parents, parents and friends. This is not just Mittens plan this is the GOP plan to screw all the middle class into the ground. Spread the word.
The strategy to privatize Medicare & Social Security is essentially to tell the seniors - a huge voting bloc - we've got your back, but your screw your younger friends and your kids when they get to be your age. Because, if their plan to privatize Medicare was so amazingly great that everyone would want to be on-board, why would they have to promise anyone their Medicare won't change???
To Romney's credit, he did not straight-up lie about Social Security and say it's in trouble now. It said it would be some day. The straight truth is that Social Security is in good shape for next 25 years, and would be good for than seven decades if the US implemented Senator Sanders' plan. The people who want to privatize Social Security are salivating over a huge new injection of capital into Wall Street and all of the additional commissions those traders can make. But it's a bad idea because the program is called Social Security, not Market Insecurity.
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