[T]here are many ways, whether it is increasing revenue, reducing spending, establishing priorities, eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, duplication, obsolescence, harshly subjecting every federal dollar to the harshest scrutiny. But let’s not start by raising retirement age, balancing the budget. A deficit was created by giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America. A deficit that was created by having these unpaid wars. A deficit that was created by having a laissez faire recklessness on Wall Street that [de]creased the revenue stream to the Treasury enormously, which reduced the wealth in America by $17 trillion. Think of what that means in terms of consumer capacity and confidence to spend or to invest or to save. So how did we get here in the first place? Let’s unravel that and let’s understand what Social Security means to us and not say because we gave tax cuts to the rich we have to raise the retirement age.

A few days ago Blue America and our pals at the Americans For America PAC launched the first in a series of videos about how extreme and out-of-step the Republicans are. The video is above and it focuses on 3 well-known and especially unsavory characters, Palin, Boehner and Ron Paul's nutty son. There are so many left out that we're putting together a contest so you can vote on which Republicans we should include in the next one. I mean, do you want religious fanatic Michele Bachmann, obsessed homophobe Virginia Foxx or sex predator and real estate swindler Ken Calvert? What about Big Oil shill Joe Barton or "You Lie" kook Joe Wilson? There are so many. In fact, one we left off this week, really needs some consideration. Wall Street derivatives trader Pat Toomey is running against Joe Sestak for the open U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania. If the interview he gave to AP yesterday is any indication, this guy would be as bad a senator as Jim DeMint is or as Sharron Angle wishes she could be.Toomey was a radical right congressman and then head of the lunatic fringe Club For Growth (that even conservatives mistrust and hate ). Now he's trying to pass himself off as "mainstream" or even "moderate," which is a laugh. He must have gotten carried away during his A.P. interview and allowed his mask to slip off. I don't think Pennsylvania voters are going to feel all that thrilled when Toomey admits he's willing to "consider" dismantling Social Security, starting with raising the retirement age to 70. And, like everyone on the far right, he said he supports giving younger workers the option of taking a portion of the payroll tax they pay and putting it into a Wall Street managed account, the GOP euphemism for privatizing it. Yesterday, responding to demands from Republicans like Boehner and Toomey, that Democrats let them start cutting up Social Security and Medicare and dismantle what's left of the safety net, Speaker Pelosi articulated an approach that most Americans share Toomey's assertions about Social Security are age-old right-wing myths and the same tired, anti-family propaganda the right has been screaming about since FDR first got it passed. Toomey also admitted he opposes health care reform, banking and Wall Street reform and the stimulus programs. He says he wants to give corporations an even "freer hand," which is the GOP dog-whistle term for the same kinds of deregulation agenda that brought on the Great Depression and almost landed us in a second one-- and is certainly behind the Gulf oil spill. What B.P. did in the Gulf, could never happen in Britain because therereasonable regulation of oil companies there.Yeah, Pat Toomey is... on the table. In the next few days we'll be rolling out our contest to see whothink deserves to be in the next video.

Labels: failed of conservatism, Nancy Pelosi, Social Security, Toomey