Of course Paul Ryan wants to be Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate.
The hyper-ambitious political careerist -- who has spent his entire adult life as a Congressional aide, think-tank hanger-on and House member -- is looking for a road up. And he is sly enough to recognize that, like Dick Cheney with George Bush, he could be more than just a vice president in the administration of so bumbling a character as Romney.
Ryan figured Romney out months ago.
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Like Romney, Ryan is a son of privilege who has little real-world experience or understanding. He presents well on Sunday morning talk shows and in the rarified confines of Washington think tanks and dinners with his constituents -- the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street -- but his record in Congress and the policies he now promotes are political albatrosses.
Some Republicans, perhaps even Romney, do not get this.
But the Obama campaign recognized, correctly, that Ryan's positioning of himself as the point man on behalf of an austerity that would remake America as a dramatically weaker and more dysfunctional country makes him the most vulnerable of prominent Republicans.
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But under the serious scrutiny to which he would finally be subjected, Ryan would be revealed as something worse than a fiscal fabulist.
He would be revealed as a hypocrite of the highest order. Americans can handle hard truths and bold ideas. But they're not so good with hypocrisy.
And they wouldn't be so good with Paul Ryan.
Naming Paul Ryan is Not Pandering to the Extreme Right; It is An Act of Brazen Confidence in the Triumph of the Will Thru Citizens United Cash & ALEC Vote Suppression
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Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare.
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How likely is it that Reid's gambit is going to pay off for the Democrats?
It already is. According to the latest Times swing-state poll, about half the voters already believe that Romney must release more tax returns. The longer Romney refuses, and the more he and his surrogates whine about Reid, the longer the issue stays center stage and the more that poll number is likely to go up. And Republicans know it too — Reid seems to be driving them insane. On ABC’s This Week last Sunday, Ann Coulter was so desperate to rationalize Romney’s failure to release his tax returns that she compared him favorably to Bill Clinton, whose refusal (in 1992) to release his medical records, she said, might have been an attempt to cover up drug addiction. With Romney defenders like Coulter, the Democrats can just sit back and enjoy the show.
Alleged Chinese-Mexican Meth Lord Is Causing A Headache For Sheldon Adelson
The tea party claims they're the voice of fiscal responsibility, and that the left doesn't understand business. But a judge just ordered the Tea Party Nation to pay almost three quarters of a million dollars for skipping out on a hotel bill. Bonus: the money is owed to the Venetian owned by Sheldon Adelson, Mitt Romney's SuperPAC backer. (Note headline is in error: its not the attorney, but the organization, that is on the hook)
Oh Ann, now look what you've done. Not only have you given away the store, you got Sean to help. True, he did it unwittingly, but what did you expect? We all know he's not as bright as you are.
Now, anyone who has been paying attention for the last 15 years or so will not be surprised to learn that FOX is nothing but the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. Yes, I know. Shocking, isn't it?
But that is something they have STRENUOUSLY denied over the years. Everyone from Roger Ailes to Hannity to O'Reilly to Wallace to the FOX and Friends on the couch crowd have ALL, at various times, denied they were really mere partisan Republicans. They knew that was a damaged and discredited brand. They knew letting folks in on the joke would crush their ratings among the masses of low-information voters. No, they were better than that. They were CONSERVATIVES. That was the all-important identifier. Everyone else was that ignominious thing known as "liberal."
How ironic this happens at the hands of She Who Foams at the Mouth. In her moment of rage, Ann has summarily stripped Hannity of that fig leaf. AND HE AGREED WITH HER. Listen to the exchange again. When she says:
This is one of those rare times when I think Ann is right. This is a turning point. But not the way she thinks. This is a real turning point for FOX on par with the famous Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George let everyone in on the joke behind their show. The difference here is that unlike Seinfeld, which really was about nothing, little miss panicked partisan and block head just told the world what FOX is really about. Spoiler alert: It's not about "fair and balanced" news reporting.
Like Seinfeld, I think it is going to be all down hill from here. How is the corporate media going to continue pretending FOX is a legitimate news operation? What will happen to their seat at the White House Press Briefing Room? Will they have to give that seat up to a more reputable and even-handed operation like The Onion?
This is a point worth noting. When people look back, this may be remembered as the moment when The Great Wizard was revealed by the yapping dog to be nothing but a carnival barker. Sure, they will try and distract people, shouting "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" in unison. But it will do no good. Like The Wizard of Oz, there isn't much more you can do with the plot but send everyone home.
As Romney goes down in flames, maybe some of the credulous followers will gaze into the bonfire of their inanities and wake to the realization "these fuckers have been lying to us for YEARS."
Well done, Ann. Bless your heart. If it makes you feel any better, Romney's fate was probably sealed long before his spokesman tied Romneycare around his neck like an albatross. As you can see, history is just not on Romney's side.
1. White terrorists are called “gunmen.” What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists.”
2. White terrorists are “troubled loners.” Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.
3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion.
4. The family of a white terrorist is interviewed, weeping as they wonder where he went wrong. The families of other terrorists are almost never interviewed.
5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.
6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.
7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.
8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.
9. White terrorists are alcoholics, addicts or mentally ill. Other terrorists are apparently clean-living and perfectly sane.
10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.
Whenever a Republican tells the truth it's like an IED going off! The biggest threat to the biggest liars on earth is the truth accidentally coming from one of their own.
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Rick Santorum was right - Mitt Romney is the worst possible candidate the Republicans could run. He's kicking his own ass! No wonder voter suppression is the only shot they have to win the November elections! If they weren't such a danger to America and democracy itself, they'd be funny!
The Real Reason Mitt Romney Is Losing and Will Lose
No, this isn't the most sophisticated analysis. But why bother when the conclusion is so obvious? The fact is that most of you reading this, on the left or right, are coming up with another dozen ways that demonstrate Romney is an unbelievable putz. If nothing else, Romney's pricktastic ego and endless supply of money will make the next few months amusing, as he degrades himself and his party further and further with such unsubtle, obvious lies that at some point the word "liar" sticks even more than "dick."
A direct descendant of Brigham Young, Sue Emmett left the church because of the very values she says would make Romney a frightening president.
Emmett says Romney was a bishop, “a position where everyone defers to you. What a bishop says goes. People come to them to receive blessings.” He then became a stake president, she says, which means he presided over several congregations, and at that point bishops deferred to him.
“Mitt has had people defer to him and not challenge him his entire life,” says Emmett. “In the Mormon church if you challenge your priesthood leaders it’s a very bad thing to do, especially for women. As the world can now see, Mitt has a very hard time with being questioned and criticized; he’s had so little of this in his life."
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Emmett says she doesn’t think Romney has the ability to separate what leaders of the church want from what the country needs.
“Mitt has been groomed to become president from a very young age,” says Emmett. “The thing is, I think his father [George Romney, who ran for president in 1968] would have made a much better president. In many ways the church was more benign then than it is now.”
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Emmett says she thinks Romney’s biggest fault is that he has a “serious problem telling the truth. There is flip-flopping, which he has done more than any politician in modern history, and then there is out and out lying,” she says. “This kind of thing has sadly been a part of the church from the very beginning. Some modern apostles actually taught that it is not always the best thing to tell the truth if it interferes with preaching gospel.”
Emmett says the notion of “Lying for the Lord,” as it has been called, implies that teaching the whole truth about the church should be avoided. At a presentation on Lying for the Lord at the 2008 Exmormon Foundation conference, Ken Clark addressed the issue. Clark, who worked as a teacher for the LDS Church Education System (CES) for 27 years and also served as a bishop before leaving the church in 2003, tells The Daily Beast, “Lying has become an institutionalized method of administrative control with the church.”
Don't you just hate it when a prophecy doesn't come true? All his life, Mitt's been on quest for the presidency, a role for which he was preordained. The GOP convention is just days away, and the nomination is all but final. Everything's falling into place. All he has to do is pick a vice president who can add a touch of humanity and street cred to the ticket, get through the debates unscathed, spend Sheldon Adelson's money on some more factually bereft attack ads, and step across the finish line to get his reward. What could possibly go wrong?
Interestingly, Mitt's sons expressed reluctance about another run for the White House. Didn't they get the memo? What part of dynastic inevitability don't they understand? [...]
Filled with umbrage and indignity, Mitt is pulling out all the stops. There is no lie or misrepresentation too egregious, no back-room deal too sleazy, no previous position immune to the possibility of retroactive revision.
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Stripping away every last vestige of his supposedly self-made-man success, he stands before us like the emporer, naked, and holding a small hand-lettered sign professing:
"I'm not Obama"
and wondering what in the world he has to do to make this gosh-darn prophecy come true. How much more must he endure? When will this persecution ever end?
The hell-hound, growing impatient, snarls:
"Keep moving, jackass."
and a cold wind rustles the trees that no longer seem anywhere close to being the right height.
