What do you think Paul Ryan's obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president? [OBAMA] Well, you'd have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a "you're on your own" society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.
Back on the campaign trail in Wisconsin on Friday, Joe Biden talked about the Republican plan for the future of women’s rights:
“If anyone had a doubt about what’s at stake in this election when it comes to women’s rights, and the Supreme Court, I'm sure they were settled last night.
It was made clear last night that they don't believe in protecting a woman's access to health care. It was made very clear that they do not believe a woman has a right to control her own body. These guys have a social policy out of the fifties.”
Mr. Biden begins speaking at 1:34. Watch:
Vice President Biden is referring to statements made by both Romney and Ryan, but especially to what Paul Ryan said during the Vice Presidential Debate on Thursday night, where Ryan said called rape and incest “methods of conception” again. Ryan also said that Romney would appoint Supreme Court justices who would vote to reverse Roe v. Wade (at least two justices are likely to retire during the next four years, one of them a liberal). You can read the transcript of the debate, and/or watch the full video.
A Romney administration would be likely to categorize Americans into two groups—the “makers” and the “takers” (based on writings by Ayn Rand, Ryan’s muse). Indeed, Mitt Romney has already done so in his own mind, and verbalized his disdain for the “takers” in his 47% comments made to his fellow plutocrats in Florida. This flowchart by Mother Jones will help you determine into which category you would fall Lots of luck!.
Read the full text transcript of the 2012 vice presidential debate below, and watch the complete video of the debate here.
MARTHA RADDATZ, MODERATOR: Good evening, and welcome to the first and only vice presidential debate of 2012, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. I’m Martha Raddatz of ABC News, and I am honored to moderate this debate between two men who have dedicated much of their lives to public service.
Tonight’s debate is divided between domestic and foreign policy issues. And I’m going to move back and forth between foreign and domestic, since that is what a vice president or president would have to do. We will have nine different segments. At the beginning of each segment, I will ask both candidates a question, and they will each have two minutes to answer. Then I will encourage a discussion between the candidates with follow-up questions.
By coin toss, it has been determined that Vice President Biden will be first to answer the opening question. We have a wonderful audience here at Centre College tonight. You will no doubt hear their enthusiasm at the end of the debate — and right now, as we welcome Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan.
Vice President Joe Biden kicked some serious Paul Ryan ass last night, calling him out on lies which Ryan spewed like the rehearsed puppy that he was. It was no contest.
Watch:
When you're done watching, don't forget to ask yourself that timeless question….which man -- Joe Biden or Paul Ryan – you would prefer to be a "heartbeat away from the presidency". I don't think you'll have any problem answering that.
The full text transcript and reaction to the debate will be up a little later.
At a fundraiser in Wisconsin on Saturday, Paul Ryan talked up his running mate, aka the Lying Liar known as Mitt Romney, on Romney’s debate performance last week:
“I was so excited to see that because I was thinking to myself, finally people are seeing the guy we know. Finally — I mean didn’t you kind of think of Ronald Reagan when you were watching that?”
Uh no. I saw a guy with small, beady, rapidly blinking eyes who seemed to be hyped up by amphetamines as he spewed one lie after another, in rapid succession. On the other hand….
The GOP’s vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan the Plutocrat, hates almost as many Americans as Mitt Romney does, indicated in remarks (made by Ryan in November 2011) which went unreported until yesterday:
“Seventy percent of Americans want the American dream. They believe in the American idea. Only 30 percent want their welfare state. Before too long, we could become a society where the net majority of Americans are takers, not makers.”
In a clip released by Larry King’s online-only-show, Bill Maher talked to King about Paul Ryan, painting Ryan as a bigger liar than Romney. Watch:
“Paul Ryan is certainly an interesting man. He has the the moral core of the pimp from ‘Taxi Driver’. This is a guy who will just say anything, I mean…wow. I thought Mitt Romney was a facile liar. This guy, you know, he even lies about his marathon times, you know….He’s just one of those people who when he’s speaking, he’s lying.”
The "moral core of a pimp from 'Taxi Driver'.....HAHAHA............
In a Maddow Show segment on Wednesday night, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) spoke out about the threat Republicans pose to the Medicare program and to seniors:
“We cannot lose the debate about Medicare because if we do--forget Democrats, forget Republicans--Medicare is gone. We'll be back to a time before Lyndon Johnson. We will be putting seniors at the mercy of insurance companies by giving them a voucher but not a guarantee.
And the severing of that guarantee, the architect of that, is Paul Ryan.”
I missed posting this quote the first time around (January 2012), and felt it was even more relevant now since Mitt Romney has become the GOP’s presidential candidate and has even nominated another plutocrat to govern with him. Enjoy.
Asked for his opinion on the growing concern of Americans re income inequality, Mitt Romney says it’s all about envy:
“You know, I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare.”
Oh, there is certainly a class war going on, but it’s being waged by the 1% against the poor and the middle class. But I digress.
When Romney was asked if it’s ever okay to have a discussion about wealth inequality, Romney said it was fine to do so in “quiet rooms”:
“It's fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like.”
In other words, keep such matters from gaining wide attention or as Mitt might privately say, “We certainly don’t want the servant class to learn that they’re terribly taken advantage of in order to benefit us (the 1%), so STFU!”.
Lyin’ Paul Ryan has the utter audacity to be be in Iowa bashing President Obama re the U.S. debt:
Congressman Paul Ryan said the national debt surpassing $16 trillion Tuesday is a “downer” and argued it’s President Obama’s “worst” broken promise to the country only further underlining why voters should choose a new path this November.
“This is a serious threat to our economy,” Ryan told the crowd roughly an hour after the Treasury Department announced that the national debt surpassed $16 trillion for the first time in American history. “Of all the broken promises from President Obama, this is probably the worst one because this debt is threatening jobs today, it is threating prosperity today and it is guaranteeing that our children and grandchildren get a diminished future.”
Obama Campaign spokesman Danny Kanner responded to Ryan’s lies, emphasis mine:
“Congressman Ryan’s the last person to lecture on the debt and here’s why: he was a rubber stamp in Congress for the policies that turned surpluses into deficits, putting two wars on the credit card, voting for a prescription drug benefit without paying for it, and fighting for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans when they weren’t asking for them. ”
At the GOP’s convention last week, Paul Ryan told even more lies regarding his plans for Medicare; this one the most blatant and most likely to delude those who aren’t paying attention:
“Medicare is a promise, and we will honor it. A Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare. ”
Watch as Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow debunk the universe of Medicare lies from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in five short minutes:
UPDATE: The transcript from the video clip follows:
Romney-Ryan surrogate, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va), explains Ryan’s position on the Medicare cuts:
Attacking Obama’s health care reform law, Ryan said its “biggest, coldest power play of all” targeted seniors for $716 billion in cuts. But Ryan’s own budget counted on those same savings, which in fact would be squeezed from reimbursement payments to hospitals and insurers. Asked about the inconsistency of Ryan attacking cuts his own plan embraced, Cantor begged off.
“The assumption was that, um, the, the, ah, again — I probably can’t speak to that in an exact way so I better just not.”
The Medicare cuts that have been the topic of so many lies by both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, did not and do not affect Medicare beneficiaries at all, rather they are cost savings based on tweaking reimbursement payments to insurance and medical care providers. Additionally, Ryan retained those savings in his own budget, even as he railed against Obamacare and Obama for mythical cuts to Medicare beneficiary benefits.
Conservative Independent Andrew Sullivan was brief and to the point about the lies spewed by Lying Liar Paul Ryan during his convention speech Wednesday night, formatting and emphasis mine:
“Claim: We will protect Medicare!Truth: Ryan banks more savings from Medicare than Obama does and throws out all the cost control experiments that might - just might - bend the cost curve downward.
Claim:We will balance the budget!Truth:by slashing taxes and revenues and by boosting defense, they won't, by their own accounting, for another two decades. If we really cannot wait, how do two decades of more debt accumulation help?
Claim: we protected the auto industry.Truth: they wanted Detroit to go bankrupt.
Claim:the only thing the stimulus did was add debt.Truth:yes it added debt, but it did so in large part by tax cuts that Ryan approves of.
And so you have an alternative empirical universe in which a deeply radical platform that would transform Medicare for the young, while retaining it in full for the biggest generation, and increase the debt for two more decades, is portrayed as a multicultural rescue of Medicare and the economy.”
Unbelievably, this quote that scathingly notes the lies of [the] Serial Liar, Paul Ryan, in his convention speech last night, comes from FoxNews.com’s Sally Kohn, emphasis mine:
“On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.”
Bob Cesca on Paul Ryan’s speech (which was full, in fact, consisting only of, debunked lies): “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a major political speech so packed with repeatedly debunked lies, and I spent eight years following closely the mendacity of the Bush White House.”
Weird Paul Ryan calls rape “a method of conception”, emphasis mine:
“I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life. But let’s remember, I’m joining the Romney-Ryan ticket. And the president makes policy.”
See that part I bolded? The translation is a lot chilling, because Paul Ryan, who would be “a heartbeat away from the presidency” (and likely next in the GOP line to run for presidency if they win in 2012) is saying that if you’re a 13-year-old girl (or any other age female) and you’re raped by anyone (including your dad or brother or dirty old uncle), and that results in a pregnancy, well, you have no right to terminate your pregnancy via an abortion or the morning after pill. Seriously.
Please note:this platform belongs to Mitt Romney, and to Paul Ryan, as it was prepared under the direction of their campaign.
With the inclusion of the agenda of those once considered the fringe into the2012 GOP Platform, the Republican Party should officially be flushed down the toilet. From the time when the once great party came into being in 1856, there has been no more hateful and conservative agenda than that of the 2012 GOP Platform.
The GOP has arrived at this unenviable place/state of being , a state of being where they are feared more than respected, hated more than tolerated, derided more than praised, by catering to the extremist religious fringe of their party until that extremist wing gained majority control. This can be easily, too easily, confirmed by reading their official platforms from the years prior to Nixon through that of this platform—the difference is striking.
This year we see the Republican war against women codified in the 2012 GOP platform in the form of several planks which endorse infringement upon not only our reproductive rights, but upon our dignity (the mandatory ultrasounds). Think Progress with the details:
1. NO ABORTION IN CASES OF RAPE OR INCEST. The proposal for a “human life amendment” passed without a hitch — and without any exceptions for rape or incest. The committee didn’t stop there; they also adopted language that would ban drugs that end pregnancy after conception, which could potentially include Plan B, the “morning after pill.” [the "Akin Amendment", so called by Democrats]
2. SALUTE TO MANDATORY ULTRASOUNDS. The GOP officially praises states’ “informed consent” laws that force women to undergo unnecessary procedures, require waiting periods and endure other measures meant to discourage them from getting an abortion. One such law receiving a “salute” was crafted by committee head McDonnell, who passed a notorious mandatory ultrasound requirement after he signed an unsuccessful bill to require an even more invasive transvaginal probe ultrasound during an abortion consultation.
3. NO WOMEN IN COMBAT. The platform condemns “social experimentation” in the military, which covers everything from the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to allowing officers to wear their uniforms in gay pride events to letting women serve on the front lines.
With the GOP’s adoption of these very specific planks which seek to control women, four things should be noted:
At a fundraiser in New York City, President Obama told the crowd that Republican congressman, Todd Akin, who made some seriously ignorant comments on rape and abortion, “somehow missed science class”:
“The interesting thing here is that this is an individual [Todd Akin] who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology but somehow missed science class.”
Ryan and Akin largely agree when it comes to abortion rights. Both believe abortion should be illegal even in the case of rape and incest. Both were co-sponsors of H.R. 3, the 2011 bill that would have limited the federal abortion coverage exemption only to victims of “forcible rape” and women whose physical health was in danger from her pregnancy, closing a supposed loophole in health-of-the-mother exemptions conservatives have been crowing about for years.
In spite of the fact that the Romney-Ryan welfare lies have been proven false by independent fact checkers, Romney-Ryan continues to lie about Obama welfare policy in another new ad. Watch:
According to The Hill, “Independent fact-checkers and some Republicans have agreed, with the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org calling the Romney attack ads "simply untrue."”:
"You have Gov. Romney creating as a centerpiece of his campaign this notion that we are taking the work requirement out of welfare," said Obama during a press conference at the White House. "What he is arguing is that we have somehow changed the work requirement in our welfare laws. And, in fact, what has happened was that my administration, responding to the requests of five governors, including two Republican governors, agreed to approve giving them, those states, some flexibility in how they manage the welfare rolls as long as it produced 20 percent increases in the number of people who are getting work."
Additionally, while the Romney-Ryan Campaign is accusing President Obama of trying to gut the welfare reform enacted under Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton himself has proclaimed in a public statement that the Romney-Ryan Campaign is lying, emphasis mine:
“Governor Romney released an ad today alleging that the Obama administration had weakened the work requirements of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. That is not true.
The act emerged after years of experiments at the state level, including my work as Governor of Arkansas beginning in 1980. When I became President, I granted waivers from the old law to 44 states to implement welfare to work strategies before welfare reform passed.
After the law was enacted, every state was required to design a plan to move people into the workforce, along with more funds to help pay for training, childcare and transportation. As a result, millions of people moved from welfare to work.
The recently announced waiver policy was originally requested by the Republican governors of Utah and Nevada to achieve more flexibility in designing programs more likely to work in this challenging environment. The Administration has taken important steps to ensure that the work requirement is retained and that waivers will be granted only if a state can demonstrate that more people will be moved into work under its new approach. The welfare time limits, another important feature of the 1996 act, will not be waived.
The Romney ad is especially disappointing because, as governor of Massachusetts, he requested changes in the welfare reform laws that could have eliminated time limits altogether. We need a bipartisan consensus to continue to help people move from welfare to work even during these hard times, not more misleading campaign ads.”
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan consistently lie about President Obama’s policies as well as the state of the economy, the nation, and anything else that comes to mind. Calling them on it seems to have zero effect, but they can not be allowed to run a campaign based only on lies about their opponent. There really has never before been a campaign such as this one. It’s despicable.
Todd Akin deserves every bit of criticism he is getting, but he represents Willard Romney, Paul Ryan, and the entire Republican Party who have voted consistently to eliminate a woman’s right to choose. It is hypocritical of Romney and Ryan to distance themselves from Akin because his stance on women’s rights is their stance. Ryan has stood shoulder to shoulder with Akin in the House attempts at redefining rape, defunding Planned Parenthood, and giving a zygote the same rights as every living breathing American citizen, accept [sic] women. Akin IS the Republican Party, and the Republican Party IS Todd Akin and they represent the dire circumstances every woman in America will face if they are victorious in November. It is impossible to isolate Akin from the rest of Republicans in Congress and GOP-controlled states because their voting records, plans for the future, and lowlife opinion of a woman’s right to choose all stem from the same source; the Christian bible. Maybe Willard Romney adheres to an extra phony religious book, but his beliefs, upbringing, and campaign promises spell the same dire results as bible-thumping Republicans that relegate women to the same place every other religious fanatic believes they belong; at home, giving birth, and desperately attempting to prevent Republicans from taking away their rights.
Watch as economist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains the potentially devastating effects of the Romney-Ryan economic plan if it were to be enacted:
Share this video, tell your friends about it. It’s important.
“Todd Akin has been a great asset to the House Budget Committee. His principled approach to fiscal responsibility is exactly the kind of leadership America needs and I appreciate his hard work.”
Ryan and Akin largely agree when it comes to abortion rights. Both believe abortion should be illegal even in the case of rape and incest. Both were co-sponsors of H.R. 3, the 2011 bill that would have limited the federal abortion coverage exemption only to victims of “forcible rape” and women whose physical health was in danger from her pregnancy, closing a supposed loophole in health-of-the-mother exemptions conservatives have been crowing about for years.
In 2011, Paul Ryan also co-sponsored a personhood amendment along with Todd Akin and other Republicans. If enacted, this bill would “provide that human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization”, which would likely make birth control illegal.
So, you heard Mitt Romney say: “for people 55 years of age and older, there’s no change.” You won’t like the translation.
Under the Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare, if you are younger than age 55, let’s say 54, and Romney-Ryan are elected to office, you will see a Medicare that is completely different from the one that your parents and grandparents enjoyed. It will be a voucherized plan, entailing fewer benefits and much higher costs to the beneficiaries.
Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman on Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, emphasis mine:
In the first decade, the big things are (i) conversion of Medicaid into a block grant program, with much lower funding than projected under current law and (ii) sharp cuts in top tax rates and corporate taxes.
Is this a deficit-reduction program? Not on the face of it: it’s basically a tradeoff of reduced aid to the poor for reduced taxes on the rich, with the net effect of the specific proposals being to increase, not reduce, the deficit.
Watch and listen to President Obama knock down the Medicare lies of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan:
President Obama on the Medicare lies (text) via Jason Easley, emphasis mine:
“Now, you know the truth is I think they know it’s not a very popular idea. Now they are being dishonest about my plans, since they can’t sell their plans. I mean they are trying to throw everything at the wall just to see what will stick. The latest thing they’ve been trying is to talk about Medicare. Now, you’d think they’d avoid talking about Medicare given the fact that both of them have proposed to voucherize the Medicare system. But I guess they figure the best defense is to try to go on offense.
So New Hampshire, here is what you need to know. Since I’ve been in office, I have strengthened Medicare. I’ve made reforms that have extended the life of the program, that have saved millions of seniors with Medicare hundreds of dollars on prescription drugs. The only changes to your benefits that I’ve made on Medicare is that Medicare now covers new preventive services like cancer screening and wellness visits for free.
Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan have a very different plan. What they want to do is that they want seniors to get a voucher to buy their own insurance, which could force seniors to pay an extra $6,400 a year for their healthcare. Again, this is not my estimate. Remember those guys who analyze these things for a living? That’s their assessment. That doesn’t strengthen Medicare. That undoes the very guarantee of Medicare. That’s the core of the plan written by Congressman Ryan and endorsed by Gov. Romney.
So here’s the bottom line. My plan saves money in Medicare by cracking down on fraud, and waste and insurance company subsidies, and their plan makes seniors pay more so they can give another tax cut to millionaires and billionaires. My plan’s already extended the life of Medicare by nearly a decade. Their plan would put Medicare on track to be ended as we know it. It would be an entirely different plan. A plan in which you could not count on healthcare because it would have to be coming out of your pocket. That’s the real difference between our plans on Medicare.”
Paul Ryan in one of many, many lies, tells people at a campaign stop in Ohio that President Obama made the mess he inherited from former Republican President George W. Bush, worse. Seriously.
“Now, let’s be candid, President Obama clearly inherited a very difficult situation. There are no two ways about that. Problem is, he made things much worse.”
In fact, President Obama brought this country back from the edge with little help from Republicans who sought to obstruct almost everything with the intention of costing President Obama a second term.
Via Bob Cesca who rightfully claims “President Obama rescued the economy. Period.”.
In an op-ed for Rolling Stone, Tom Morello, popular guitarist for the band ‘Rage Against the Machine’, blasts Romney’s vice presidential pick, Paul Ryan (Rage being one of Ryan’s favorite bands) as an “extreme fringe right wing nut job” among other things, emphasis mine:
“Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.
You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night. So, when they look themselves in the mirror, they convince themselves that "Those people are undeserving. They're . . . lesser." Some of these guys on the extreme right are more cynical than Paul Ryan, but he seems to really believe in this stuff. This unbridled rage against those who have the least is a cornerstone of the Romney-Ryan ticket.”
The Obama Campaign strikes back at Romney-Ryan for their outrage and silly posturing over Joe Biden’s “chains” remarks, and refuses to capitulate to the Republicans who are calling for Obama to apologize for Biden’s remarks, emphasis mine:
“For months, Speaker Boehner, Congressman Ryan, and other Republicans have called for the ‘unshackling’ of the private sector from regulations that protect Americans from risky financial deals and other reckless behavior that crashed our economy. Since then, the Vice President has often used a similar metaphor to describe the need to ‘unshackle’ the middle class. Today’s comments were a derivative of those remarks, describing the devastating impact letting Wall Street write its own rules again would have on middle class families. We find the Romney campaign’s outrage over the Vice President’s comments today hypocritical, particularly in light of their own candidate’s stump speech questioning the President’s patriotism. Now, let’s return to that ‘substantive’ debate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan promised 72 hours ago, but quickly abandoned.”
The Romney campaign has been doing their best to gin up outrage over Biden’s, “in chains” remark today. In fact they are trying to get any controversy going that doesn’t involve discussing how Mitt Romney feels about Paul Ryan’s record, Ryan’s budget, Ryan’s stance on Medicare, or Paul Ryan in general.
Public approval of the U.S. Congress’s performance fell to 10 percent, tying a record low set in February, according to a Gallup poll. The poll, released today, found that 83 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job, the latest in a string of poor marks that the legislative branch of government has received. The 10 percent approval rating, down from 16 percent in July and 17 percent in June, ties the lowest ranking registered for Congress since Gallup began measuring congressional approval 38 years ago.
House Republicans have done little in the way of actual governing in the past two years. Just ask Paul Ryan, who is a pitiful excuse for a leader in the Republican led 112th Congress
Former adviser to Bill Clinton, Paul Begala on what he calls the “plutocrat ticket”, or Romney-Ryan 2012, emphasis mine:
“In selecting Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has doubled-down on the one thing he has never flip-flopped on: economic elitism. Romney, born to wealth, has selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, who was also born to wealth. As the former University of Oklahoma football coach, Barry Switzer, once said of someone else: both these guys were born on third and thought they hit a triple.
There's nothing wrong with inherited wealth. Lord knows great presidents from FDR to JFK came into their fortunes through the luck of birth. But there is something wrong with winners of the lineage lottery who want to hammer those who did not have the foresight to select wealthy sperm and egg.
Finally, we have peered into Mitt Romney's core. It is neither pro-choice nor pro-life; neither pro-NRA nor pro-gun control; neither pro-equality nor antigay. But it is pro-wealth and very anti–middle class. Mitt Romney has decided to go nuclear in the class war.”
The image is from Chris Hayes, and I think this pretty much puts the lie to the notion that Paul Ryan is a Very Serious Deficit Hawk.
As can be seen from his voting record, Paul Ryan was unconcerned about the deficit when voting for Bush era policies, and in fact, Ryan continued to vote for the extension of the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy even after Obama took office.
A new Obama Campaign ad touches on some of the least savory aspects of the Paul Ryan Plan. Watch:
On Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as a running mate, I agree completely with what Bob Cesca said:
If Sarah Palin represents the most irresponsible decision John McCain and the Republican Party had ever made, the selection of Paul Ryan seems like a no-brainer smart choice for Mitt Romney.
The press is deferential to Ryan because he comports himself as a very serious budget wonk (we all know he’s an Ayn Rand crackpot who’s all too willing to genuflect to Glenn Beck et al); he’s another “central casting” Republican presidential stereotype who will ultimately run circles around Romney on the campaign trail unlike, say, Chris Christie who probably wouldn’t have survived the rigors of a national campaign; and he hails from a swing state.
Credit where credit is due, Romney could’ve picked a fire-eater like Santorum, Gingrich or Christie and he went with someone who is absolutely the opposite of Sarah Palin. Paul Ryan is wrong on everything, but he’s not a moron.
All that said, Ryan’s influence on a would-be Romney White House would be utterly disastrous for the economy and the instantaneous austerity measures, along with the dismantling of the Obama agenda, would spell doom for millions of working and middle class Americans. On the other side of a four-to-eight year Romney term will be a privatized Medicare, massive deficits from radical tax cuts for the rich, and an economic depression without any real ability for the government to inject emergency cash into the economy.
But if Romney really wants to win this thing, he made the right choice. For him and the Republicans. The rest of us will be screwed a thousand different ways.
Going forward, we absolutely must tie the Ryan Plan and the Ryan Budget around the neck of both Plutocrats if we are to win
Adding….Charles Pierce has dubbed Ryan the “zombie-eyed granny-starver”, and we must make people think of this term every single time they see, hear or think about Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney!
Esquire’s Charles Pierce on Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wi), author of the infamous Ryan Plan, Mitt Romney’s choice for vice president:
“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 channeled for the general welfare.”
Yesterday afternoon, President Obama gave a terrific speech at the Associated Press luncheon. Yes, he got in a few digs at Mitt Romney, but he had much more to say about Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget (a budget which Mitt Romney called “marvelous”- said that he wanted to see one just like that on his desk the first day of his presidency):
“This congressional Republican budget ... is something different altogether. It's a Trojan Horse... Disguised as deficit-reduction plan, it's really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It's nothing but thinly-veiled Social Darwinism. It's antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who's willing to work for it -- a place where prosperity doesn't trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that's built to last - education and training; research and development -- it's a prescription for decline.”
Senior administration officials are billing Obama’s address -- coming on the same day as another round of GOP primaries -- as an important speech, and they say it builds off his remarks in Kansas last December (when he invoked Teddy Roosevelt’s “square deal”) and his State of the Union in January (when he talked about an economy “built to last”).
The House passed Ryan’s 2013 budget resolution yesterday by a 228-191 vote along party lines, with all Democrats voting against, and 10 GOP defections. The Hill:
This year's vote was by a narrower margin than the 2011 vote that passed Ryan's budget 235-193. This year and last, all Democrats voted "no."
An increase in Republican "no" votes was expected this year, as many have grown frustrated with their inability to achieve more aggressive budget savings, due in large part to opposition in the Democratic-led Senate and the White House.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) seemed to address that frustration indirectly on Thursday as he praised Ryan for putting forward a budget that represents a "real vision of what we were to do if we get more control here in this town."
The budget would privatize the Medicare program, ending the popular entitlement program as we know it. TPM on the vote to end Medicare:
For the second year in a row, Republicans voted Thursday to effectively dismantle Medicare — this time, just over seven months before a presidential election. And Democrats are salivating at the political opportunity, eager to hang the vote around the neck of the party’s presidential nominee and its candidates in tough congressional races.
“A year ago, nobody was talking about Democrats having a shot at the House. Now we’re talking about it,” a Democratic leadership aide told TPM after the vote, a party-line 228-191 that didn’t win a single Dem.
The blueprint by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan is similar to his controversial Medicare plan last year, in that it ends the health insurance guarantee for seniors and replaces the program with a subsidized insurance-
Although the bill is unlikely to get past the Senate, it could mean more threats by the GOP of a government shutdown later in the year.
“So I wonder: are they willing to concede, at long last, that he’s a clown?
His latest budget proposal has received some harsh critiques. It calls for huge tax cuts, supposedly offset by closing loopholes and ending tax expenditures — except that in a long report he fails to name a single tax expenditure that he would cut. It assumes drastic cuts in discretionary spending, basically eliminating everything except defense. And over the medium term, of course, it’s a plan to savage the poor while giving big tax breaks to the rich.
So actually two questions: are people finally willing to concede that Ryan is not now and has never been remotely serious? And — I know this is probably far too much to ask — are they going to do a bit of soul-searching over how they got snookered by this obvious charlatan? ”
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to applaud for the clown.
slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold. 
Full Text Transcript & Video: President Obama Speech in Osawatomie, Kansas
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