<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="imgon2"><img src="http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs8/8022-joe-biden-debate-101112.jpg" alt="Joe Biden at the vice presidential debate in Danville, Kentucky. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)" title="Joe Biden at the vice presidential debate in Danville, Kentucky. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)" border="0"> <br>Joe Biden at the vice presidential debate in Danville, Kentucky. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)</p><p class="noslink"><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-vice-presidential-debate-joe-biden-was-right-to-laugh-20121012" target="_blank"> <img src="http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/rsn_gotoarticle.jpg" alt="go to original article" title="go to original article" border="0"></a></p>
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<h1 class="txttitle">Joe Biden Was Right to Laugh</h1><p class="txtauthor">By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone</p><p class="date">13 October 12</p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p><img src="http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/alphabet/rsn-I.jpg" border="0">'ve never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in <a href="http://youtu.be/j3roG09O6T4" target="_blank">last night's debate</a>,
and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the
facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this
morning (many outlets are <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/vice-presidential-debate-bidens-smirk-causes-mixed-reactions/2012/10/12/a1e0b1d6-1475-11e2-bf18-a8a596df4bee_story.html" target="_blank">criticizing</a>
Biden's dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his
eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air
whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.</p><p class="indent">But he should have! He was absolutely right to be
doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the
media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but
so-called "objective" news reporters as well. We should all be rolling
our eyes, and scoffing and saying, "Come back when you're serious."</p><p class="indent">The load of balls that both Romney and Ryan have been
pushing out there for this whole election season is simply not
intellectually serious. Most of their platform isn't even a real
platform, it's a fourth-rate parlor trick designed to paper over the
real agenda - cutting taxes even more for super-rich dickheads like Mitt
Romney, and getting everyone else to pay the bill.</p><p class="indent">The essence of the whole campaign for me was
crystalized in the debate exchange over Romney's 20 percent tax-cut
plan. ABC's Martha Raddatz turned the questioning to Ryan:</p>
<blockquote><em>MS. RADDATZ: Well, let's talk about this 20 percent. <br><br>VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well - (chuckles) - <br><br>MS.
RADDATZ: You have refused yet again to offer specifics on how you pay
for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the
specifics, or are you still working on it, and that's why you won't tell
voters?</em></blockquote><p class="indent">Here Ryan is presented with a simple yes-or-no answer.
Since he doesn't have the answer, he immediately starts slithering and
equivocating:</p>
<blockquote><em>REP. RYAN: Different than this administration, we actually want to have big bipartisan agreements. You see, I understand the -</em></blockquote><p class="indent">"We want to have bipartisan agreements?" This coming
from a Republican congressman? These guys would stall a bill to name a
post office after Shirley Temple. Biden, absolutely properly, chuckled
and said, "That'd be a first for a Republican congress." Then Raddatz
did exactly what any self-respecting journalist should do in that
situation: she objected to being lied to, and yanked on the leash,
forcing Ryan back to the question.</p><p class="indent">I'm convinced Raddatz wouldn't have pounced on Ryan if
he hadn't trotted out this preposterous line about bipartisanism. Where
does Ryan think we've all been living, Mars? It's one thing to pull
that on some crowd of unsuspecting voters that hasn't followed politics
that much and doesn't know the history. But any professional political
journalist knows enough to know the abject comedy of that line. Still,
Ryan was banking on the moderator not getting in the way and just
letting him dump his trash on audiences. Instead, she aggressively
grabbed Ryan by his puppy-scruff and pushed him back into the mess of
his own proposal:</p>
<blockquote><em>MS. RADDATZ: Do you have the specifics? Do you have the math? Do you know exactly what you're doing?</em></blockquote><p class="indent">So now the ball is in Ryan's court. The answer he gives is astounding:</p>
<blockquote><em>REP. RYAN: Look - look at what Mitt - look at what
Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did. They worked together out of a
framework to lower tax rates and broaden the base, and they worked
together to fix that. What we're saying is here's our framework: Lower
tax rates 20 percent - we raise about $1.2 trillion through income
taxes. We forgo about 1.1 trillion [dollars] in loopholes and
deductions. And so what we're saying is deny those loopholes and
deductions to higher-income taxpayers so that more of their income is
taxed, which has a broader base of taxation -</em></blockquote><p class="indent">Three things about this answer:</p><p class="indent">1) Ryan again here refuses to answer Raddatz's
yes-or-no question about specifics. So now we know the answer: there are
no specifics.</p><p class="indent">2) In lieu of those nonexistent specifics, what Ryan
basically says is that he and Romney will set the framework - "Lower
taxes by 20 percent" - and then they'll work out the specifics of how to
get there with the Democrats in bipartisan fashion.</p><p class="indent">3) So essentially, Ryan has just admitted on national
television that the Romney tax plan will be worked out after the
election with the same Democrats from whom they are now, before the
election, hiding any and all details.</p><p class="indent">So then, after that, there's this exchange.</p>
<blockquote><em>VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Can I translate? <br><br>REP.
RYAN: - so we can lower tax rates across the board. Now, here's why I'm
saying this. What we're saying is here's a framework - <br><br>VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I hope I'm going to get time to respond to this. <br><br>REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress - <br><br>MS. RADDATZ: I - you'll get time. <br><br>REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress on how best to achieve this. That means successful - look - <br><br>MS. RADDATZ: No specifics, yeah.</em></blockquote><p class="indent">Raddatz did exactly the right thing. She asked a
yes-or-no question, had a politician try to run the lamest kind of game
on her - and when he was done, she called him on it, coming right back
to the question and translating for viewers: "No specifics."</p><p class="indent">Think about what that means. Mitt Romney is running
for president - for president! - promising an across-the-board 20
percent tax cut without offering any details about how that's going to
be paid for. Forget being battered by the press, he and his little
sidekick Ryan should both be tossed off the playing field for even
trying something like that. This race for the White House, this isn't
some frat prank. This is serious. This is for grownups, for God's sake.</p><p class="indent">If you're going to offer an across-the-board 20
percent tax cut without explaining how it's getting paid for, hell, why
stop there? Why not just offer everyone over 18 a 1965 Mustang? Why not
promise every child a <a href="https://www.google.com/shopping/product/1766812430151690068?q=zagnut&hl=en&prmd=imvns&sqi=2&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=7552bd4a238dcccb&bpcl=35243188&biw=2144&bih=1131&tch=1&ech=1&psi=8iJ4UJqKL4X20gGzlYCYCg.1350050548405.3&sa=X&ei=Ci94UOrmGbCC0QH0rYHACQ&ved=0CFYQ8wIwAA" target="_blank">Zagnut</a> and an Xbox, or compatible mates for every lonely single person?</p><p class="indent">Sometimes in journalism I think we take the
objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight
to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be
objective, reporters get confused. You can't report the Obama tax plan
and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is
really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an
electoral gambit.</p><p class="indent">The Romney/Ryan ticket decided, with incredible
cynicism, that that they were going to promise this massive tax break,
not explain how to pay for it, and then just hang on until election day,
knowing that most of the political press would let it skate, or at
least not take a dump all over it when explaining it to the public.
Unchallenged, and treated in print and on the air as though it were the
same thing as a real plan, a 20 percent tax cut sounds pretty good to
most Americans. Hell, it sounds good to me.</p><p class="indent">The proper way to report such a tactic is to bring to
your coverage exactly the feeling that Biden brought to the debate last
night: contempt and amazement. We in the press should be offended by
what Romney and Ryan are doing - we should take professional offense
that any politician would try to whisk such a gigantic lie past us to
our audiences, and we should take patriotic offense that anyone is
trying to seize the White House using such transparently childish and
dishonest tactics.</p><p class="indent">I've never been a Joe Biden fan. After four years, I'm
not the biggest Barack Obama fan, either (and I'll get into why on that
score later). But they're at least credible as big-league politicians.
So much of the Romney/Ryan plan is so absurdly junior league, it's so
far off-Broadway, it's practically in New Jersey.</p><p class="indent">Paul Ryan, a leader in the most aggressively and
mindlessly partisan Congress in history, preaching bipartisanship? A
private-equity parasite, Mitt Romney, who wants to enact a massive tax
cut and pay for it without touching his own personal
fortune-guaranteeing deduction, the <a href="http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/01/24/mitt-romneys-sweetest-tax-break-the-dirty-little-secret-of-car/" target="_blank">carried-interest tax break</a> - which keeps his own taxes below 15 percent despite incomes above $20 million?</p><p class="indent">The Romney/Ryan platform makes sense, and is not
laughable, in only one context: if you're a multi-millionaire and you
recognize that this is the only way to sell your agenda to mass
audiences. But if you're not one of those rooting gazillionaires, you
should laugh, you should roll your eyes, and it doesn't matter if you're
the Vice President or an ABC reporter or a toll operator. You should
laugh, because this stuff is a joke, and we shouldn't take it seriously.</p></div></body></html>