Romney Picks Paul Ryan as Veep - Mkay ...

[HAL]

All I have to say is ...

Bwahahahahahaha!

[jetson]

Indeed.  And here's something that will surprise us all:   

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-earned-an-f-on-the-secular-coalition-for-americas-congressional-scorecard/

Ryan gets an "F" from the Secular Coalition Congressional Scorecard.

[Red McWilliams]

I get the feeling that Romney picked Ryan to help win Wisconsin and to bolster his position on the budget.

Too bad Romney's tax plan explodes the deficit and raises taxes on all but the very wealthiest.

I can't wait for this to be over.

[HAL]

Paul Ryan is a super-polarizing figure, so all I can assume is that Romney camp thinks they are in trouble with even conservatives.

All I can say is, if those two clowns win, look out.

[Nick]

Romney had to give into the people in the party who control things.  Ryan was their pick.  I saw one post that saw something in the pick...Romney/Ryan= Ronald Raegan.  How's that for sucking up to the right.

Man, are we in for social change if they get elected.  I would think AARP would be out in full force to stop this.

The next 2 months can't get over soon enough.

[HAL]

OK let's find out how many affairs Ryan has had.

[Traveler]

For any or all of you members who live outside the USA ... please share the pros and cons of living in your country. If Mittens wins you can expect my arrival ASAP.

[jetson]

OK let's find out how many affairs Ryan has had.

And what closet he is in.

[Nick]

For any or all of you members who live outside the USA ... please share the pros and cons of living in your country. If Mittens wins you can expect my arrival ASAP.

Canada looks nice.

[Traveler]

For any or all of you members who live outside the USA ... please share the pros and cons of living in your country. If Mittens wins you can expect my arrival ASAP.

Canada looks nice.

Its tops on my list so far. Cooler weather, close enough to the US that I could still easily visit my old friends, and I know a few people up there. Unfortunately, the folks I know up there are VERY far apart from each other. Big country.

[Seppuku]

So, who's Paul Ryan? Is he like Jack Ryan? Because if so, daaaaaamn, Obama will have stiff competition. Then again, Jack Ryan is a fictional character, one can only that this Paul Ryan is also fictional and alongside him Mitt Romney and the whole campaign.

[Nick]

Paul Ryan is a guy who could not afford a proper last name so he picked two first names.

He is head of the budget committee in congress and the plan he put forth would give further tax breaks to the wealthy and turn medicare into a voucher program and social security privatized.  He also wants major cuts in all programs (education, social, roads, etc.) and increase the military budget a bunch.

He's also a Catholic and very pro life.  Suppose to be a fitness freak on account of his father passing away of a heart attack when Paul was 16.

Voted for Bush's wars, NO Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription plan for seniors...all unfunded.

Not much of  personality...so he and Romney should get along well.  Rich and richer together...two rich white men...imagine that for the Republican Party???

[Seppuku]

Sounds like an awesome guy. Well, I was thinking "at least he's not Sarah Palin", but stupid people aren't the only people who would be dangerous with power. Don't get why people would want to put more money into the armed forces and less into things that would benefit US citizens. But hey, I'm one of these naive people who things the government should be about the people.

[Nam]

Indeed.  And here's something that will surprise us all:   

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-earned-an-f-on-the-secular-coalition-for-americas-congressional-scorecard/

Ryan gets an "F" from the Secular Coalition Congressional Scorecard.

Yeah but he gets an "A" from conservatives. When they go to the polls in Nov.they won't be voting for Romney but Ryan.

-Nam

[Timtheskeptic]

For any or all of you members who live outside the USA ... please share the pros and cons of living in your country. If Mittens wins you can expect my arrival ASAP.

Me too! I vote for either Germany, Canada, Sweden, or united Kingdom! I never want to be here! I'll swim my way if i have to or crawl my way to Canada!

[Nam]

I still want to live in Ireland. I could afford it 4 years ago but not now.



-Nam

[Garja]

For any or all of you members who live outside the USA ... please share the pros and cons of living in your country. If Mittens wins you can expect my arrival ASAP.

THIS

[Kimberly]

How hard is it to get Canadian citizenship? Is it easy to find a job? I seriously don't think I will be able to afford to live here if Romney gets elected.

[Seppuku]

For any or all of you members who live outside the USA ... please share the pros and cons of living in your country. If Mittens wins you can expect my arrival ASAP.

Merry Old England:

Pros -
We speak English.
We have fewer murders
Nobody cares if you're an atheist
Gays can marry
Street Preachers are more of a novelty
Lots of English people, apparently American women find us attractive for some reason
NHS
Politicians and Journalists find it harder to get away with scandalous behaviour. It's not perfect, but it is satisfying watching one of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers being destroyed
We're not so worried about Christian fundamentalists
No Westboro Baptist Church
The word 'socialism' is not anywhere near as demonised.
Our conservatives are tame in comparison. Heck, they're a lot more liberal on topics like 'gay marriage'.
People aren't paranoid that we're destroying their religion by being more tolerant. Well, in general, though we do have people with similar views held by groups in the US.


Cons-
Some speak in a form of English that's even incomprehensible to us.
We have more assaults
The job market is terrible
Piers Morgan (but he's your problem now, sorry about that, we tried to get him sentenced as part of  the whole phone hacking scandal, but he's a slimy git)
Politicians suck. We can't feel enthusiastic about any political leader because it simply becomes a choice of "which crap would I be able to put up with the most?"
The Monarchy has power, they don't used it, but in a free democratic society, people shouldn't have power out of entitlement or birth right.
Our government has a history of kissing America's ass.
Sharia Law is used in some courts
No WBC, but we have Islam4UK and unlike WBC, people pay attention to them and take them seriously
We're more worried about Islamic fundamentalists
I live here.
Cost of living is high

[Timtheskeptic]

How hard is it to get Canadian citizenship? Is it easy to find a job? I seriously don't think I will be able to afford to live here if Romney gets elected.

I don't think i can live here anyway, this place is too damn expensive to live in and if Romney gets elected, then it would even be too expensive to live in the street either!

[Timo]

I'm not sure if this is even a bad pick on a political level.  Part of me thinks that Romney and the Republican Congress especially are already somewhat tethered to the Ryan budget, even if Romney claims not to agree on all the specifics.  Why not have its author defend it himself?  On the other hand, the plan wasn't guaranteed to become a major issue until now.  It could have just ended up being just a part of the debate about our priorities going forward.  In any case, Romney was already losing momentum in the polls.  Exiting his base with a pick like this might help him turn that around.  On the other hand, this will also excite the other side, as well.

Still, it's not as if Romney and Ryan differ dramatically on these issues.  They both, for example, want to make massive tax cuts, especially for the wealthy and both claim that this will be balanced out by unspecified deductions in tax credits.  When policy analysts go over the plans, the only way that they can square with their additional claim that these plans will be budget neutral is to assume that the unspecified deductions will include things like the mortgage tax credit.  This has the effect of making their policies extremely regressive.  A massive distribution of wealth to the upper class from the middle class, as well as from cuts to services to the poor.

As far as whether or not I feel like I should be afraid of this sort of thing, I'm not sure that I am.  I'm not sure how serious Romney is about actually doing this were he to get elected, or how feasible it would be to move such a plan through Congress, where even a majority Republican Senate would find itself limited by Democratic obstruction--especially after the unprecedented obstructionism of the last three years.  I'm also not sure that Republicans would actually have the will to do this.  I think that a lot of what the Republican party has become over the last few years is more of a reaction to Obama's presidency than some actual ideological shift in the population.  And nowhere is this more clear than on the issue of health care, where despite vowing to end "Obamacare," which itself is virtually identical to the sorts of things Republicans used to propose, Republicans will often agree that there needs to be a way to allow people with pre-existing conditions to get affordable health care.  I don't think that health care providers would be willing to go for that without something like the individual mandate.

That said, I would worry about what these two would do if they were heading our foreign policy.  As wonky as people think Ryan is, foreign policy really isn't his forte.  And Romney appears to be out of his depth on the issue.  Furthermore, the Republican foreign policy establishment is stacked with neoconservatives of the sort that talked us into war with Iraq.  Whatever Obama's faults are in this area, I have no interest in seeing Republicans back in control.  On social issues, I think there's also a lot to worry about.  The midterm elections showed us that whatever the Republicans try to sell us about achieving economic growth, they're really interested in limiting a woman's right to chose and even to contraceptives.  And on this score, Paul Ryan is actually identical with Michelle Bachmann.  He supports personhood.

So yeah...

[kin hell]

wild conjecture

 McCain and Palin were the sacrificial goats presented to the voters by the powers that be and designed to fail at the polls.
Thus win Obama Democrats etc, and so the appearance of a working democracy, while the GOP culls, (through use of the poison chalice of the nomination) an irritating maverick.

Bush et al had achieved what wealth had wanted from him, and to keep the masses happy, with Bush/GOP finally being so loathed by the electorate, wealth realised the GOP needed rest from the public gaze.

To maintain the illusion of democracy Obama was empowered by being presented with deliberate loser opponents like McC and Palin.

Wealth hasn't suffered under Obama. (happy to be proven wrong)

Romney (and now Ryan) are each-way bets, not expected to win, but to tune the electorate for the next after these elections.
And if they do miraculously win, then yeehaha wealth certainly wins.

The parties are bought.
Democracy has been sold.
The feudal system never really died out.


...... just changed titles.

[Garja]

^ Kin, you just gave my inner Marxist a Class-induced-hardon.


im being figurative.

[Nick]

Several years back the Republicans were pushing the term "compassionate conservatives" about how they would tame government yet look out for the needy.  Now, their true colors are showing and its "fu*k the needy" and pull speed ahead for the 1%.


I was kind of surprised by Paul Ryan's pick for VP.  He has no foreign relations experience.  Hell, he can't even see Russia from his kitchen window.

[Nam]

kin hell.

There's a Civil War going on in the Republican party. You have what's left of the moderates trying to battle the conservatives, and they are losing. Especially when you have moderates like Romney capitulating to them. And there's a third side who recently entered the fight: tea partiers. Once the conservatives defeat the moderates, it'll be a war vs those two camps. Which, from what I recently read from a Republican pundit: will ultimately destroy the Republican party leaving the Democrats to control unless a third party arises to challenge them.

-Nam

[nogodsforme]

Romney-Ryan looks like an albatross tethered to a boulder. Yesterday I worked the voter reg. booth for the Dems. at a summer fair. The Repub. booth was right across from us.

We had a big photo of Obama and a sign saying "We love our president!" We had literature, buttons, bumper stickers on all our candidates and issues.

They had photos of Reagan and Eisenhower. No Romney signs or photos of either Bush or Romney. A handwritten, misspelled sign saying, "We welcome Tea Partiers, Independents, Liberterians, etc." I was tempted to go over and add "and Morans".

Working in our booth we had two college-aged gay activists, an African girl, a handicapped lady, a Jewish guy and dreadlocked me. They had a couple of really old white folks.

People of all kinds stopped to register at our booth, chat with us, encourage us, ask questions and take window signs for Obama. Only white people stopped at their booth. Two nuns stopped at their booth.

And this was a small town in a conservative farming area, where a fundie woman with about 6 kids screamed insults at our young gay activists. (Stupid ignorant beeyatch.) Repubs have the money, but they don't have the people. The Repubs are the past and can't help it. The Dems, if they choose to, will own the future.

[Nam]

The Republican party used to be the "liberal" party once upon a time...then they changed some of their ideals and started to convert Southern Democrats to their party. Of course Democrats already had their inner-party Civil War in the 1950s-1960s, resulting in the more "conservative" ones going to the Republican party.

It should be noted that many of those Democrats who went to the Republican party were actually social-Democrats, and they, the politicians, were for Healthcare as a social economic issue, and they catered to the poor. At least so my research on the issue seems to entail such. Of course, when they became Republicans, that ended. It took them decades (30-40 years) to take over, and they are about there.

-Nam

[mrbiscoop]

There is nobody that Romney could pick, nothing he could say or do that would make me vote for him.

[screwtape]

So, who's Paul Ryan?

I wish he were fictional.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/11/677171/12-things-you-should-know-about-vice-presidential-candidate-paul-ryan/