Haha, Romney.

Ryan gave a good speech. "Reapply our founding principles, not replace them."

Yeah because accusing Romney of throwing grandma under the bus is way more constructive.... :)

No, you're mistaken. It's Ryan that's throwing gramma under the bus, and Romney that's strapping the dog to the top of it. Sheeshk!

how do they find the time between dogs and gramma to screw the workers rights and ship jobs to china?
Very hard working those two ain't they:har:

I want to know how Paul Ryan finds time to be an eccentric actor and do his political stuff too. Oh wait, that's Crispin Glover. Ah heck, they look too much the same.

:hmmm: I have to dig a bit. I hadn't heard about that little detail (despite reading some pro-Team R blogs) care to provide a link?

First I'm not talking about "taxing the rich" crap. I'm talking about general tax increases to all taxpayers or to be more accurate returning them back to what they were before tax cuts. Bulk of actions have to be spending cuts and in this no area of government should be exempt but you can not cut endlessly and taxation changes has to be on table.

Btw its true that in scale off your economy about $300bn (or about 2% of GDP) is very small amount of money but it still matters.

If we stopped meddling in everyone's affairs and put and end to acting as the world's police, we probably could save Medicare. But nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room, especially not Team R.

The Republican faithful will probably be very excited about this choice, as we have seen in this thread. However, those people are firmly entrenched in team politics and were voting R anyway, regardless of who was running. It'll come down to where it always does; moderates and independents. We've been told repeatedly that they are breaking away fom Obama in droves, but this has not really been the case. Will this Ryan choice push Romney over the finish line? It will give him a bump in the polls, but we will have to see if it will last. My instinct says no and that Obama still pretty much has this in the bag, but we will see.

It was a well-constructed speech. Would have been nice if Ryan would have shaved this morning, as that was some serious 5 o'clock shadow. Like the supposed gaffe, none of that really matters. He hit all the buzzwords, including the one I can't stand -- "freedom". "Freedom" and "Liberty" in Republicanspeak refer to taxes, not individual civic rights. It's one of the things that caused this once faithful Team R supporter to stray from the flock.

In the end, as I said, I don't think any of it will matter. I do not see Ryan has having much draw outside of the faithful, and certainly not as a figure that the moderates and independents will flock to. We, however, will see.

I agree. This isn't an inclusive pick, it's a pick that fires up the base to get them out and vote. I can see the Romney campaign worried that they'd lose the election before they ever had a chance due to pure apathy from the far rightists. This shores them up, and I would bet that the next couple of months are spent trying to juggle both sides - pandering to the independents and moderates with Romney while at the same time pandering to the hard rightists with Ryan.

The VP debate will be fun to watch. I imagine Biden is licking his chops.

Well, I can see why Ryan was chosen. He isn't supposed to be the inclusion guy; that's Romney. Ryan is supposed to pump up the R's, who were already pretty pumped up with the anti-Obama thing. For Romney, it was a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. People will, as we have done, point and say that it's all about Team R neoconservatism. If he went with a guy like Chris Christie, then the true believers would be leading the call of 'Massachusetts Moderate'.

In terms of the VP debate, it is always just a sideshow. However, to that end, I don't think that Biden will do so well. Things were easy for him in 2008, but Ryan can actually make his views known in a coherent manner. He is not Palin.

What I meant was that they're perfect foils for each other. Biden's going to attack Ryan as the cold, brutal, heartless rich man who doesn't care about the middle class and is willing to dismantle our social safety net so that the 1% and corporations can get a tax break. Ryan's going to go after Biden as the big spending idealistic Democrat who can't say no to anything and is wasting and spending America into oblivion. You couldn't draw up two better caricatures of an R and a D.

That is certainly true. It should make for excellent theatre.

If Ryan wants to cut Medicare, will he go along with the 5% reduction in the Defense Dept budget? I mean there is absolutely no wasteful spending over there!

Maybe he plans on abdicating if elected. :hmmm: This whole us vs. them stuff is stupidity at it's highest form and shows the world the US is nothing but a bunch of children in a kindergarden sandbox fight. I want the parties of we to prevail. Until this works it will be waste from both the big players with the general populace footing the bill. :down:

Y'know when congress first instituted the federal income tax the rate for the middle class was less than 10% and there were lots of promises made at the time that it'd never go higher than that, so it's really more accurate to say that Bush tax "cuts" are really just a small step in the right direction.

Valid point. I was talking about last 20-30 years. Btw for what purpose Congress instituted that federal income tax and when it happened?