Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Our local CBS affiliate here in L.A. just broke in with the news. Oh boy. Let the differences stand out like crazy.
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 Yup, that's what I am hearing as well...Doesn't really matter as Romney doesn't stand a chance...
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 Jon Stewart summed up my feelings about Romney best a few months ago.. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cPbjhVhV3I" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...bjhVhV3I</a>
Originally Posted By andyll <<Doesn't really matter as Romney doesn't stand a chance...>> This will seal it. He picked Ryan to please wall street and the base. Ryan's medicare plan won't fly with many and will cost Romney Florida.
Originally Posted By ecdc Two pasty white guys who think we ought to be balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, the elderly, and minorities. Fantastic!
Originally Posted By 182 "Two pasty white guys who think we ought to be balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, the elderly, and minorities. Fantastic!" ecdc, you know that is not true.
Originally Posted By 182 Since 2008, the well-spoken Republican Congressman from Janesville, Wisconsin has emerged as a leading figure on the right and a champion of reduced government spending. Ryan has earned the admiration of conservatives for the tough, government-slashing budget proposals he's put forward since becoming chairman of the House Budget Committee last year. But when he first arrived in Washington as a freshman lawmaker in 1999 at only 28 years old, budget shrinking wasn't exactly in style. Ryan told the New Yorker that he was "miserable" during the George W. Bush years, when a Republican-majority Congress added $5 trillion to the debt in war spending, bank bailout, tax cuts, and other costs. But Ryan also tended to vote with the majority at that time, though he put forward unsuccessful proposals to privatize Social Security and made other budget-shrinking suggestions. In 2008, he released his "Roadmap for America's Future," which described his sweeping vision for how to make America's main entitlement programs of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid solvent. The plan made him a hero among conservative circles, and Ryan eventually remade it as his "Path to Prosperity" plan, which President Obama and Democrats have criticized for embracing tax cuts while cutting government programs that help the poor. (It wasn't just Democrats who criticized Ryan. While running for president, Newt Gingrich called Ryan's plan "right wing social engineering," which probably helped kill Gingrich's bid.) President Obama actually helped raise Ryan's profile on the right by critiquing the Congressman's budget, and just last year, Ryan was reportedly mulling his own run for president. Ryan, an Ayn Rand fan, ably articulates a conservative vision for economic growth; a mark that Romney occasionally misses as he dodges the subject of his own personal wealth. "I think [Obama] looks at the economy as a fixed pie, and that it's government's role and duty to redistribute the slices in the name of equity versus our belief, which is 'Let's just grow the pie' and have an opportunity in our society for upward mobility — a society defined by upward mobility, not equal outcomes," he told Esquire magazine last year. "Under our view, we want to make sure people can get the opportunity to make the most of their lives, but that necessarily means that under the kind of economic-freedom system that we have had, you will have different outcomes of people's lives. And that's fine." Ryan, who spent his early political career working for Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and the late Republican Congressman Jack Kemp, grew up the fourth child in a Roman Catholic family in Janesville that has lived in the town for five generations. He worked in his family's construction business after earning his degree in economics from Miami University in Ohio. His father died when he was only 16, which prompted soul-searching that led Ryan to discover the works of Rand, who is still a major influence on him. He and his wife, Janna Little, have three children. <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/paul-ryan-063300661.html" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ti...661.html</a>
Originally Posted By ecdc >>ecdc, you know that is not true.<< Of course it's true. Have you read about Ryan's budget? Have you seen Mitt's tax plan? Despite a horribly bloated defense budget, neither wants to cut it at all. Neither wants to raise taxes on the rich (but Mitt's all for raising YOUR taxes, Donny), but both want to cut significantly from programs that benefit the poor and the elderly. If I'm wrong, Donny, show me how. If you want to support Mitt and Paul Ryan, be my guest. But dude, at least be aware of what their plans are.
Originally Posted By ecdc Here's a genuine, honest to goodness sincere question from a non-believer to Christians who support Romney. Or maybe even those that don't can offer insight. How can anyone who is a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ be a supporter of someone who says his hero is Ayn Rand? (That probably sounds rhetorical and on-the-attack, but I really don't mean it to be - it's an honest question.)
Originally Posted By 182 I know that Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior.with that I will tell you as long as his policies don't take away from people and churches of faith, I really don't care that he likes someone who rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism.
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 This will be the first election I have declined to vote. I cannot support either candidates as both have major flaws.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism." You don't have ANY idea what that means. You copied and pasted it from somewhere.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Well, Romney just cemented the base and kissed off the independents. The election belongs to Obama.
Originally Posted By ecdc <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand</a> >>Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed all forms of collectivism and statism, instead supporting laissez-faire capitalism, which she believed was the only social system that protected individual rights. She promoted romantic realism in art. She was sharply critical of the philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her besides Aristotle.<<
Originally Posted By ecdc >>You don't have ANY idea what that means. You copied and pasted it from somewhere.<< I thought the same thing. It was taken from the introduction to Rand from Wikipedia.
Originally Posted By TMI "I know that Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior.with that I will tell you as long as his policies don't take away from people and churches of faith, I really don't care that he likes someone who rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism." You do realize it's customary to quote your source rather than outright rip off someone else's thoughts, if you want to avoid looking like a compete fool. Don't you?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Well, having watched the announcement and etc. now, I have some thoughts (surprise, surprise). First, I think RT is right. "Romney just cemented the base and kissed off the independents. The election belongs to Obama." I think that's correct. For two reasons: 1). Romney just pandered to and caved in to the far right YET AGAIN. That alienates moderates and independents big time. Doing that during the primaries was bad enough. But typically after you secure the nomination you tack back to the center. But no. After weeks of the conventional wisdom being that he'd pick a safe center-right guy like Pawlenty or Portman, and the Romney campaign itself putting out hints that that's what they'd do, the right freaked out and let Romney know that he'd better pick a far-right guy like Ryan. And Romney caved. This tells you two things: that Romney was still scared of the far right base (so this was more a scared choice than the "bold" choice some pundits are saying it is), and that he'd continue to be scared of them throughout his presidency. I said this back in June: "If Romney wins (the Nov. election), they (the tea party/far right) will correctly assess that he has no spine, and will blow whichever way the wind blows, and will proceed to blow as hard as they can. I worry that people who think Romney would govern as a moderate because he did so in MA overlook the fact that the guy is a phony with no core convictions other than helping the very rich. Other than that, he blows where the wind blows. In MA that was from the left, which blew him back to moderate positions (you pretty much CAN'T govern as a far-righty in MA). But if Romney is elected president, the prevailing winds would all be from the right. The far right would let him know in no uncertain terms that if he doesn't toe their line, they will run someone against him in the 2016 primaries. That's unusual, but they've gone so far right, I believe they'd do it - at least as a threat, that he would instantly buckle to. (Hell, people like Bob Bennett and Richard Lugar aren't even "conservative enough" for them.) So no one should believe, IMO, that Romney would be able to govern as a moderate. " This choice perfectly echoes that idea. He caved to the tea party/far right. Again. And he'd continue to do so as president. That's NOT what independents and moderates want. Grover Norquist also gave the game away at C-PAC when he said that he was okay with Romney as a nominee because all they needed as a president is someone "with enough working digits to handle a pen" to sign the legislation handed him by the tea party Congress. Conservatives loved this message. Moderates and independents - not so much. 2). They just handed the Obama campaign the Medicare issue on a freaking silver platter. Most people don't actually know what the Ryan proposal is for Medicare. They're about to find out. When the Democrats focused on it in the special election in upstate NY in 2011, they won a seat that had been Republican for decades and considered ultra-safe Republican. But the Democrat made it all about the Republican's support for Ryan's Medicare plan, and she won this "unwinnable" seat as a result. When people find out what Ryan's proposal for Medicare is, they don't like it. At all. It throws soon-to-be-seniors off the current system and gives them freaking coupons to buy private insurance when they become seniors. The problem with that, of course, is that seniors are horrendously expensive to insure - private insurers either won't insure them, or charge an arm and a leg. That's why we HAVE Medicare in the first place. People especially don't like it if they've been paying in to the system for many years and are just below the cutoff age for the change, i.e. 40's and early 50's, who would really get the rug pulled out from under them. And even though present-day seniors are unaffected, those people I just mentioned are present-day seniors' kids. Nobody wants to think their kids will have it worse than they did, but that's exactly what will happen if the Ryan plan goes through. So they just handed the Obama campaign this issue on a silver platter. Romney would like to talk about the economy (in vague terms) for the next 2 and a half months). And only that. Not his taxes. Not his record as Governor. Not his actions at Bain. Only the economy. Well, guess what, Mitt? You just added Medicare to the list of things we'll all be talking about besides the economy. And it's not going to help you.
