Political & Elections

Hope, it's even worse than that.

"I believe we have to go forward," Obama said. "I believe we have to keep working to create an America where no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, no matter what your last name is, no matter who you love, you can make it here if you try. That's what's at stake in November. That's what is why I am running for a second term as president of the United States of America."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/13/obama_a_new_vision_of_an_america_which_prosperity_is_shared.html

I'm sorry Mr. President, but this is the America in which we already live.  It's the America my refugee father and mother separately immigrated to over 60 years ago, the America in which I was privileged to be born, the America in which you graduated from the Choom Gang to become the President of the United States.  We don't need you or your second term to create this America.  It already exists.  What clueless arrogance.

Incumbents also have VP's, ones they can't easily chuck out on the side of the road, as much as Obama probably wishes he could...

"My dad used to have another saying, for real," Biden said. "And, by the way, I've been saying this for 30 years. And I'm glad to see that Congressman Ryan likes his dad, too, and quotes his dad. I mean that sincerely. But my dad [had] a lot of wisdom. Every time someone tell you, say, 'Look, let me tell you what's important to me, what I value.' My dad would go, 'No, no. Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value.'"

Ryan's father died when the congressman was 15 years old.

... but on the bright side ---  the chance of Joe showing his boss up intellectually is about that of another virgin birth.

While you might not like what Ryan believes it's going to be really difficult to Palinize the man. Good luck trying.

  You and Charles Krauthammer are entitled to your opinions.     As I am to mine.

 Again, the "that" in "you didn't build that" refers to public infrastructure, not a business, so it wouldn't make any sense to tack on an "alone" at the end.  

Obviously, how Obama's words are heard by different people depends on their already established perceptions of him and it's unlikely those set in stone perceptions will change.

 Obama's words rubbed you the wrong way, fair enough, but from my perspective, he was saying that we can't turn our back on public --- yes, government --- investment in the infrastructure, the innovations (internet), and the institutions (education) that help individuals create success in business and in their lives.  

It was an awkwardly delivered speech, though, and it was easy pickings for political distortion. 

libs feel every human is the same, that we are clones. We should all have the exact same as everyone else no matter the intelligence difference or drive.

Sorry, it doesn't work that way....not in this country anyway

Oh, it was obvious what he was saying (taking Elizabeth Warren's spin out for a test drive) but the problem is it's just that: spin, twisted bs spin.

Got news for even a minimum wage earner who thinks he/she has a few bridges or miles of interstate - even a mile or so of really crappy county road, to be honest: you didn't build squat. The heavily taxed did, the kind of successful that small business and up are. About the best possible spin that the "we can't do it alone" crowd can truthfully put on this is "we took the money from the last rich" to contract out the building of what's made it a little easier for you to make enough money to pay it back.

And all this has been done with those extremely tiny amounts of waste and fraud government agencies are known the world over for, too.

Stop and consider that a large segment of the population is a net consumer of services, a liability as far as tax revenue goes, and you have to concede our president is either simply deluded or lying through his teeth for a vote.

DW-NOMINATE scores in one Congress are directly comparable with scores in another Congress. However, cross-Congress comparisons should be conducted only between Congresses occurring during one of the stable 2-party periods of American History. Also, the DW-NOMINATE scores cannot be compared across chambers. In addtion, because these coordinates were estimated using a weighted utility model, if distances are computed between legislators, this weighting must be taken into account! This was not true of the original D-NOMINATE coordinates.[emphasis added]

 -- Keith Poole, http://www.voteview.com/page2a.htm

Interesting stuff, but as Keith Poole, the DW-Nominate guru writes, you can only compare scores between Congresses from different eras under limited circumstances, and you cannot compare scores across the two chambers of Congress under any circumstances.  Nate Silver routinely disregards or is unaware of this caveat.

Is it really that aberrant that a republican vice-presidential candidate is not pro-choice?  A Catholic republican, no less?

Everyone is for equal pay for equal work.  I bet you even Paul Ryan is.  The "Paycheck Fairness Act" should have been called the "Plaintiff Attorney Full Employment Act."  It was a phony gimmick cooked up by the dems to stage their concocted "war on women" ploy going into the election.  It is not a true litmus test of fairness in the workplace.  Female staffers in the Obama White House earn an average of $11,000 a year less than their male counterparts, and women staffers in Nancy Pelosi's office earn $27,000 less than the men.  Maybe they should lead by example.

Romani:

 On women's issues, he is right up there with Santorum and Bachmann.  Ryan is staunchly opposed to a woman's right to choose abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.  He supported a bill that would allow hospitals to refuse an abortion to a woman in an emergency even if it would cost her her life.  

Ryan voted against the equal pay for women bill and he has repeatedly voted to defund Planned Parentood, which provides accessible health care services to millions of women.   Not moderate in the least.   He is very far right.   Democratic campaigns should be pounding home the point that electing RR would put Tea Party radicalism a heartbeat away from the presidency. 

   From Nate Silver's "Fivethirtyeight" site: 

Various statistical measures of Mr. Ryan peg him as being quite conservative. Based on his Congressional voting record, for instance, the statistical system DW-Nominate evaluates him as being roughly as conservative as Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

By this measure, in fact, which rates members of the House and Senate throughout different time periods on a common ideology scale, Mr. Ryan is the most conservative Republican member of Congress to be picked for the vice-presidential slot since at least 1900. He is also more conservative than any Democratic nominee was liberal, meaning that he is the furthest from the center. (The statistic does not provide scores for governors and other vice-presidential nominees who never served in Congress.)

I also think the choice speaks well of Romney. As a proven leader, he knows how to build a team. He made a choice that was both bold and deliberative. He found someone who fills many of the needs of his campaign thus far (energy, passion, focus, blue collar sensibilities, getting out message above the din of the gutter politics and the media that are in the tank for the other guy), gives him a mandate to tackle the difficult problems upon winning, and will help him be successful.

Some idiot commentators in the news are suggesting that Romney is somehow inconsistent or hypocritical because after touting how important it is to have private sector experience, he selected a vp who has none.  Duh, Romney is the one who brings that to the table.  He picked someone with complementary skills.

Ryan makes the social conservatives happy because they know he shares their values, but he is not running on the social issues.  That is a good thing for a socially lib/fiscally center right voter like me.  He doesn't blow hard about them or get sidetracked by them, like Rick Santorum, for example.  Sure, he'll speak out against forcing Catholic institutions to provide "free" contraception and morning after pills to their employees, or to entitled future six figure income earners like Sandra Fluke, but that's hardly an extreme position.  And if gay marriage were THE decisive issue, than democrats would have been compelled to vote for Dick Cheney over Barack Obama in 2008, if that had been the choice.

The people Ryan really excites are the fiscal conservatives who care about spending, growth of government, economic growth, sane energy policy, the debt, tax reform, and the need for entitlement reform that everybody acknowledges is necessary but ignores.  Obama's greatest failure (among many) is that he has ignored the major challenges of the day, and instead, for the past two years, has been interested in nothing but dividing and conquering and kicking the big can(s) down the road as he focuses like a laser beam on his own re-election.  Romney is at his best when he talks about the big issues, but he can talk about them all day and not be heard if the MSM are more preoccuppied with the latest Obama diversionary trash talk.  At least Ryan's selection, for the moment, has given Romney some mojo and has refocused the media's attention on the actual big issues of the election.

While this is still, first and foremost, a referendum election (if people thought Obama was doing a good job, we wouldn't even be having this discussion), the challenger still has to present a vision and a choice.  Romney/Ryan's challenge will be to deal effectively with the democratic demagoguing on the issue of medicare reform.

Some one has to be the scapegoat. He's young, and he'll recover if he loses the Election. He's also young enough to get the blame if the philosophy fails. And if the Philosophy of Individualism wins, (I hope it does)-he's going to be a Hero. One outta three outcomes is not a big gamble.  

I'm prepared to move everything to cash. 

This a great ticket if it wins.  Privatizing SS is great news for the sharks on wall street who will eat the middle class alive just like the last 10 years with the fools who have gotten decimated in their 401k plans.  Bravo!!

Maybe a Huntsman might have gotten a pass on the social issues but since the point isn't to mollify those who're going to vote against your ticket anyway, it looks like an inspired choice.

We all know SS/Medicare/Medicaid is broken - unsustainable and worse - and that while claiming they aren't might be a winning strategy in the short term, our kids are going to have to pay for it. That Ryan's been willing to weather the crap that falls on any politician who's honest enough to point that out should chum up some votes from all those socially neutral but fiscally conservative independents we've all heard about for the last twenty years or so.

And, kudos to the man for having the guts to climb on a ticket with a damn murderer, too.

What I'm curious about is whether this choice will shake the anti-Obama far left out of their disgruntled stupor (and third party fantasies) and bring them out in droves for the Democrats on Election Day rather than stay home. 

The far left was going to show no matter how fatalistic the stupor in the Obama camp, grandmothers and all.

-- Edited by catahoula on Saturday 11th of August 2012 08:35:26 PM

The federal deficit will be another trillion dollars this year. That's money to be paid for by our children. I am glad Romney chose someone who might have some ideas on how to make able bodied adults pay for the government services they receive rather than expecting their children to pay for those services.