While discussing whether Gov. Mitch Daniels is going to support Richard Mourdock, who just defeated incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar from his home state of Indiana and Mourdock's statement that his idea of compromise equals Democrats voting with Republicans if we're unfortunate enough to see them gain control of the Congress and the presidency again, Daniels was apparently suffering from a severe case of amnesia when he made this statement that was flagged from our friend Jed Lewison over at Daily KOS:
Another dazzling display of Romnesia: Mitch Daniels says we're in 'peacetime':
As you watch this or read the transcript, keep in mind that from 2001 to 2003—during which time the Bush administration launched two wars, one of which we are fighting to this day, and two rounds of tax cuts for the wealthy—Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was George W. Bush's budget director. Yet now he is blaming President Obama for allegedly creating a debt bomb:
Well, you know, he's been the president of this nation for the three years in which we have drifted ever closer to the biggest peacetime crisis we may have ever faced. There's no doubt it. It's a mathematical certainty. [...] To me the central question of this election is why such an administration deserves a second chance.
The fact that Mitch Daniels apparently has forgotten we are at war in Afghanistan—even though he served in the White House when we began the war more than a decade ago—is a fitting tribute to the Romnesia that has infested the Republican Party.
As he noted, Daniels and his ilk want to erase from our memory banks the fact that George W. Bush busted the budget with billions wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is someone who worked for an administration that gave us those two "wars" off the books, an unfunded prescription drug plan and the Bush tax cuts which weren't paid for. And despite that, he's treated as someone we're supposed to take seriously by the media month after month.
And of course no interview with Daniels would be complete without the likes of Chuck Todd or one of his fellow Villagers in the corporate media talking about what a "reasonable" compromise the now defunct Simpson-Bowles plan was and doing their best to continue to push for some sort of "grand bargain" which would slash our social safety nets, which is deeply unpopular with the public.
No one on the liberal side of the aisle that I've read is saying that Social Security and Medicare don't need to be addressed along with the budget deficit. We just have completely different ideas on how to fix the problems, like raising the income cap on Social Security to make sure it remains solvent and not allowing it to be privatized, and if we can't have Medicare for all, at least regulate the insurance industry the way they do in some of those evil Socialist European countries and force them to put patient care ahead of profits, CEO pay and Wall Street.
The budget put forth by the Progressive Caucus in the House actually addresses all of those problems and does not balance our budget on the backs of the middle class and the poor, but that somehow never seems to make it into the conversation in most of our corporate media.
And while we're at it with ideas that run completely counter to our corporate media's talking points on how to get our economy back on track, I would love to see a discussion for once on Thom Hartmann's suggestion to lower the retirement age in order to stimulate the economy which you can watch here: Unconventional Wisdom -- The Retirement Age is Too High.
