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Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was loudly and repeatedly booed by members of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) on Friday after he pledged to repeal President Barack Obama's health care reform law.

"The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obamacare," Ryan said, pausing as the audience in New Orleans booed and shouted, "No!"

"I had a feeling there would be mixed reaction," the candidate said, but the booing continued. "It weakens Medicare for today's seniors and puts it at risk for the next generation."

That, too, was met with audible groans and jeers.

"It funnels $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for a new entitlement that we didn't even ask for," Ryan insisted.

"No!" people shouted.

Although Ryan seemed to be unfazed by the heckling, his explanations and assurances never convinced the AARP audience, who continued booing him throughout the remainder of his speech.

During a video appearance at the AARP Life@50+ conference earlier in the day, Obama had told members that Ryan's claim that $716 billion had been cut from Medicare services was "simply not true."

"Contrary to what you've heard and what you may hear from subsequent speakers, Obamacare actually strengthened Medicare," the president explained.

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Prior to his pretty horrid interview with Grover Norquist this Sunday, David Gregory decided to do his best Candy Crowley imitation from her interview with the AARP director last week where she was asking him if seniors were going to be willing to put any "skin in the game" when it came to balancing our budget.

Gregory did his part in attacking the AARP by comparing their ad demanding that members of Congress keep their hands off of Social Security and Medicare or they'll face the wrath of their members to Republicans being beholden to lobbyist Norquist and his anti-tax pledge during his interview with Chuck Schumer.

Because naturally any members looking out for protecting our social safety nets and being responsive to a group that represents seniors is the equivalent of Republicans refusing to raise taxes on the rich and shrinking government to the point where it does nothing to protect average citizens as Norquist has been demanding. Both Gregory and Crowley seem to have that false equivalency meme down pat when it comes to who represents some sort of "special interest" in American politics.

Transcript below the fold.

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Apparently Tom Brokaw isn't the only one out there who's confused about the notion of "shared sacrifice" and who thought the AARP's recent ad telling politicians to keep their hands off of their Social Security and Medicare was terribly unfair. CNN's Candy Crowley badgered the Director of the AARP, David Certner about whether seniors are going to be willing to "put skin in the game" when it comes to getting our budget deficits under control.

I assume she thought this was a "fair and balanced" discussion since she brought on representatives from the American Petroleum Institute and the Air Transport Association to ask them what they'd be willing to give up as well.

Transcript via CNN:

CROWLEY: Joining me here in Washington, Marty Durbin, executive vice president of government affairs for the American Petroleum Institute, Sean Kennedy, senior vice president of Global Government Affairs for the Air Transport Association, and David Certner, legislative policy director for the AARP.

Before we begin we want to disclose that the AARP and the American Petroleum Institute's advocacy and industry ads have run on CNN. I've seen them many, many times.

I'm sure that makes you all happy.

So listen, I want to start out with the AARP ad. This is representing seniors, for those who might not know. And this is one of the public ways you've been pressuring the super committee.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's a number you should remember. 50 million. We are 50 million seniors who earned our benefits. And you will be hearing from us today and on election day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CROWLEY: David, it seems to me that in fact this has become a threat, you know, to the super committee. Here's the super committee which we're all hoping will do the best thing for the country and everybody's out protecting their bailiwick. So what I want to know from each of you, I'm starting with David, is what are you willing to give up? What will seniors give up to help the country that's in a big problem at this point?

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Tom Brokaw is apparently very confused on the issue of “shared sacrifice” and who has and has not already been sacrificing in our society. On this Sunday's Meet the Press, while discussing a recent AARP ad where the group basically stated that the politicians had better keep their hands off of Social Security and Medicare, Brokaw called the ad selfish and an example of "I got mine, to heck with the rest of you." Brokaw followed that with a lot of hand wringing about what tough times we're all in for in America and how we need to be ready to “make some hard calls.”

It seems those “hard calls” include means testing Social Security, which is a terrible idea because it turns it into a welfare program that would be much easier to destroy. And nowhere in the conversation did raising taxes on the rich, raising the cap on payroll taxes, our terrible trade laws that encourage a race to the bottom on wages, the destruction of the labor movement or the refusal to regulate the financial industries come up as a solution to making sure we can keep our social safety nets in place and that we don't have senior citizens or anyone else for that matter living in poverty.

Color me not shocked since our Villagers in the corporate media still aren't over their fetish with austerity measures, regardless of where the majority of public opinion is at right now where people are fed up with the income disparity and the poor and middle class being the only ones asked to make some kind of “shared sacrifice.”

Transcript below the fold.

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Cenk filled in for Dylan Ratigan again and wrapped up Friday's show with a spot praising the Democrats for finally looking like they're striking the right chord with their latest political ad going after Republicans for their views on privatizing Social Security and handing the funds over to Wall Street with a few very huge qualifiers following that praise that I could not agree with more.

Uygur: Finally, the Democrats getting it. This is such an obvious winning strategy and the Republicans gave you the Queen here when John Boehner and Mike Pence came out and said, hey you know what, maybe we should raise the age of Social Security before you even get it, or when they said maybe we should cut your benefits.

You know what the numbers are? The American people hate that idea. A new AARP poll says 85% of the country oppose cutting Social Security. 68% say even though the budget is really important, that we shouldn't cut Social Security or Medicare to trim the deficit according to a recent Greenberg poll.

Look, the American people are absolutely clear on this. When the Republicans asked over and over as Bush did and now Pence and Boehner are doing, "Hey can we cut your Social Security?" the American people say "Hell no you can't!" to quote John Boehner.

So given this golden opportunity, why don't you attack on this? Make Boehner the new Gingrich and say if Boehner is in charge of the House, what he's going to do is he's going to come after your Social Security?

That has the added benefit of being true. But how do the Democrats screw this up? Look, it's a good ad and a good campaign to start with but they've already shot themselves in the foot because already Steny Hoyer who's one of the leaders in the House came out and said "Well maybe we should consider trimming Social Security or raising the age that you would have to retire and then James Clyburn came said very similar things.

Now that's the trouble for the Democrats in the House, but how about Obama? Obama, a Democratic President that promised change has got a deficit commission where 14 out of the 18 people involved in the commission are fiscal conservatives.

The likely result of that deficit commission is, they're going to come out and say let's cut Social Security.

That's insane!

Yes it is. As Cenk said it's not too late for them to make this a defining issue if they had an ounce of political sense at all. Given Gibbs brain dead remarks this week, I've got to wonder. I've said this before and I'll say it again, if they think the public is going to sit quietly if they decide that the Social Security trust fund doesn't have to be paid back after they raided it or that Americans are going to be duped into turning it over to Wall Street, they've got another thing coming. Get rid of the cap and make the rich start paying their share. And while you're at it lower the rate for all of us when you do that.

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October 16, 2009 CBS David Letterman

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Rachel Maddow talks to the AARP's John Rother about the fear mongering astroturf ad campaigns targeted specifically to scare the hell out of seniors on health care reform.

BARACK OBAMA: The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that we don't-it's too expensive to let her live anymore. I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, et cetera.

The irony is that actually one of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican then-House member, now-senator named Johnny Isakson from Georgia who very sensibly thought this is something that would expand people's options. And somehow, it's gotten spun into this idea of death panels. I am not in favor of that. So just-I want to-I want to-I want to clear the air here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Also, the president would like to make clear that he is not in favor of rubbing chewing gum into everyone's hair, nor is he in favor of forced sex changes, nor is he in favor of making everyone wear nude-colored panty hose on their hands like mittens all year around just for the pure inconvenience of it all. He'd like to make that clear.

What's being called a debate about health care policy right now is so far from an actual debate about health care policy that the charge from his critics that the president of the United States has to rebut in public is whether or not he wants health care reform because he secretly wants to kill all of the old people. And apparently he doesn't.

As we've discussed before, the health care reform is a secret plot to kill old people rumor was started by a woman named Betsy McCaughey. She is the person who in "The New York Post" and on right-wing talk radio first promulgated this idea that Medicare covering consultations about living wills is secretly the murder of the elderly.

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Rachel Maddow on the GOP's latest conspiracy theory. Republicans are trying to rally their base by painting health care reform as a way to advance assisted suicide and to literally kill old people. It would be bad enough if this were only coming from fringe groups or right wing web sites, but as Rachel notes, it's coming straight from these politicians' mouths.

The Republicans continue to prove that Bill Maher was right about them with this kind of talk.

Maher: This is because we don't have a left and a right party in this country any more. We have a center right party, and a crazy party. And over the last thirty odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital.