2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vacante

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

The language employed in this story is "interesting." What's the source?

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/since-when-did-paul-ryan-become-a-liar.html

 

[jmh]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Absolutely devastating article about Paul Ryan:

Since When Did Paul Ryan Become a Liar


A week ago, Paul Ryan’s political assets included — alongside his chiseled torso, plainspoken Midwestern demeanor, and the unshakable loyalty of the entire Republican Party — a firm reputation for honesty among the mainstream media. That reputation has suffered a massive, swift erosion. News stories about his speech at the Republican National Convention focused on its many rhetorical sleights of hand. Over the weekend, the revelation that he dramatically misstated a marathon time added a crucial, accessible piece of evidence to the indictment. Now liberals are calling him “Lyin’ Ryan” — a nickname that, a few weeks ago, would have seemed silly, like “Wimpy Palin.” Now mainstream pundits are defending Ryan with versions of the “well, all politicians fib” defense. Given that this constituency was once portraying Ryan as unusually honest, this represents a huge retreat for his political brand.
What happened?
Here’s what has not happened: Paul Ryan did not begin telling an unprecedented series of lies that suddenly exposed a predilection for shading the truth. His marathon boast is certainly odd and may well be a deliberate lie, but it could also be a simple failure to recall. The New Yorker’s Nicholas Thompson, arguing for the prosecution, contends that “for someone who does run seriously,” missing a marathon time by as a vast a level as Ryan does is nearly impossible. On the other hand, given that the race occurred in 1990 and was Ryan’s only marathon, perhaps the explanation is that Ryan just isn’t a serious runner.
And Ryan’s Tampa speech, while pretty dishonest, was not especially so by Ryan’s standards. Here you can see why Ryan must view the sudden attack of the truth squad so bewilderingly. Ryan has been saying things like this, and worse, all along. The bit where he sadly shakes his head and blames President Obama for the failure of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that Ryan killed himself has been a staple of the Ryan shtick for two years. Reporters usually bat their eyes and coo sympathetically. Now it has become evidence of his duplicity .
Ryan seems to have fallen victim to circumstances he didn’t quite foresee. The Romney campaign has spent the last several weeks practically daring the national press corps to call out its lies. Well beyond the usual exaggerations of a national campaign, Romney has built its entire message around two accusations — “you didn’t build that” and “just send them a check” — that are obviously false. A day before Ryan’s speech, a Romney adviser told reporters, “We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” The media that had spent the last two and a half years nuzzling gently in Ryan’s lap had been prodded with sharp sticks and reacted in the predictable fashion, though probably not predictable to Ryan himself.
The thing about Ryan is that he has always resided in a counter-factual universe. He is a product of the hermetically sealed right-wing subculture. Many of the facts taken for granted by mainstream economists have never penetrated his brain. Ryan burst onto the national scene with a dense, fact-laden attack on the financing of Obama’s health-care bill that was essentially a series of hallucinations, pseudo-facts cooked up and recirculated by conservative apparatchiks who didn’t know what they were talking about or didn’t care. His big-think speeches reflect the influence of fact-free conservatives and collapse under scrutiny.
During the last couple of years, Ryan took his act to the big city, expanding beyond his Washington conservative movement base and pitching himself to a broader audience as a straight-talking avatar of fiscal responsibility. That he managed to pull off the feat was completely incredible. Ryan’s entire career had been rooted in the “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” wing of his party, and he spent the Bush administration consistently pushing for even more fiscally irresponsible policies than even George W. Bush could bear, and then spent the Obama administration relentlessly killing any effort to ameliorate those deficits. The genuine Paul Ryan is a man deeply devoted to reducing tax rates for Job Creators, and staunchly opposed to universal health insurance and other social spending. He is not a deficit hawk. The tension between Ryan’s policy goals and the persona he crafted was strained to the breaking point. When the press corps finally applied even the slightest pressure to it, it immediately and inevitably snapped.
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How about a link or some attribution instead of plagiarizing someone else's material without acknowledging the source?

 

[geezer]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Winners lie about what they are going to do, losers lie about things they have done.

To my knowledge this is far and away the smartest thing you've ever written. Beautiful. Who did you get it from?

 

[geezer]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Sure. Like Medicare Vouchers are telling me the truth. Tell me this. If you're going to give me a voucher so I can buy my own insurance why give me anything at all? Am I incapable of just going out and purchasing insurance?

See, these are the kinds of truths they were supposed to explain to me during their convention. They gave me nothing.

It should be pretty clear to everyone by now that they have no actual plans for how to govern, only for how to get elected... and even those plans suck, among Republicans. If you have any expectations for our politicians at all, you're in for disappointment.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Absolutely devastating article about Paul Ryan:

Since When Did Paul Ryan Become a Liar


A week ago, Paul Ryan’s political assets included — alongside his chiseled torso, plainspoken Midwestern demeanor, and the unshakable loyalty of the entire Republican Party — a firm reputation for honesty among the mainstream media. That reputation has suffered a massive, swift erosion. News stories about his speech at the Republican National Convention focused on its many rhetorical sleights of hand. Over the weekend, the revelation that he dramatically misstated a marathon time added a crucial, accessible piece of evidence to the indictment. Now liberals are calling him “Lyin’ Ryan” — a nickname that, a few weeks ago, would have seemed silly, like “Wimpy Palin.” Now mainstream pundits are defending Ryan with versions of the “well, all politicians fib” defense. Given that this constituency was once portraying Ryan as unusually honest, this represents a huge retreat for his political brand.
What happened?
Here’s what has not happened: Paul Ryan did not begin telling an unprecedented series of lies that suddenly exposed a predilection for shading the truth. His marathon boast is certainly odd and may well be a deliberate lie, but it could also be a simple failure to recall. The New Yorker’s Nicholas Thompson, arguing for the prosecution, contends that “for someone who does run seriously,” missing a marathon time by as a vast a level as Ryan does is nearly impossible. On the other hand, given that the race occurred in 1990 and was Ryan’s only marathon, perhaps the explanation is that Ryan just isn’t a serious runner.
And Ryan’s Tampa speech, while pretty dishonest, was not especially so by Ryan’s standards. Here you can see why Ryan must view the sudden attack of the truth squad so bewilderingly. Ryan has been saying things like this, and worse, all along. The bit where he sadly shakes his head and blames President Obama for the failure of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that Ryan killed himself has been a staple of the Ryan shtick for two years. Reporters usually bat their eyes and coo sympathetically. Now it has become evidence of his duplicity .
Ryan seems to have fallen victim to circumstances he didn’t quite foresee. The Romney campaign has spent the last several weeks practically daring the national press corps to call out its lies. Well beyond the usual exaggerations of a national campaign, Romney has built its entire message around two accusations — “you didn’t build that” and “just send them a check” — that are obviously false. A day before Ryan’s speech, a Romney adviser told reporters, “We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” The media that had spent the last two and a half years nuzzling gently in Ryan’s lap had been prodded with sharp sticks and reacted in the predictable fashion, though probably not predictable to Ryan himself.
The thing about Ryan is that he has always resided in a counter-factual universe. He is a product of the hermetically sealed right-wing subculture. Many of the facts taken for granted by mainstream economists have never penetrated his brain. Ryan burst onto the national scene with a dense, fact-laden attack on the financing of Obama’s health-care bill that was essentially a series of hallucinations, pseudo-facts cooked up and recirculated by conservative apparatchiks who didn’t know what they were talking about or didn’t care. His big-think speeches reflect the influence of fact-free conservatives and collapse under scrutiny.
During the last couple of years, Ryan took his act to the big city, expanding beyond his Washington conservative movement base and pitching himself to a broader audience as a straight-talking avatar of fiscal responsibility. That he managed to pull off the feat was completely incredible. Ryan’s entire career had been rooted in the “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” wing of his party, and he spent the Bush administration consistently pushing for even more fiscally irresponsible policies than even George W. Bush could bear, and then spent the Obama administration relentlessly killing any effort to ameliorate those deficits. The genuine Paul Ryan is a man deeply devoted to reducing tax rates for Job Creators, and staunchly opposed to universal health insurance and other social spending. He is not a deficit hawk. The tension between Ryan’s policy goals and the persona he crafted was strained to the breaking point. When the press corps finally applied even the slightest pressure to it, it immediately and inevitably snapped.
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Entertaining article, but not sure why you characterize it as "devastating." It's not like it was written by someone on the right, or even someone who might be characterized a "centrist", if they exist anymore.

 

[Kepler]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Entertaining article, but not sure why you characterize it as "devastating." It's not like it was written by someone on the right, or even someone who might be characterized a "centrist", if they exist anymore.

This was a lot worse for Romney from that direction.

Wick Allison, former publisher of The National Review under William F. Buckley and current publisher of The American Conservative, also reaffirms his Obama decision, albeit in anguished lukewarm tones. “I will probably vote for Obama, unless I have a Gary Johnson–inspiration in the voting booth. (My vote in Texas is wasted anyway.),” Allison wrote in an email. “Romney is the opposite of conservative, with a plan that is fiscally reckless and a foreign policy that is unnecessarily militant. Obama has done about the best that could have been done, considering the united GOP opposition in Congress. My questions about Obamacare and my disappointment that we are not already out of Afghanistan are not enough to make me embrace a candidacy that even George W. Bush would have been repelled by—and, having had time to reflect on his own record, perhaps is.”

 

[Rover]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

How about a link or some attribution instead of plagiarizing someone else's material without acknowledging the source?

Settle down Professor. I got it via e-mail and it looks like Scooby took care of business for you. Never tried to pass it off as my own.

 

[geezer]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

In our own poll the Romney ticket is still tied with "Random Third Party Dingleberry." I have a feeling this election is going to be an Obama landslide of Reaganesque proportions, whatever the polls say right now.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

This was a lot worse for Romney from that direction.

It certainly shows Romney hasn't hit home with the entire conservative base. I suspect there are a lot of voters who are sitting out there like the "ObamaCons" who are pretty chagrined at the choice they now face.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

In our own poll the Romney ticket is still tied with "Random Third Party Dingleberry." I have a feeling this election is going to be an Obama landslide of Reaganesque proportions, whatever the polls say right now.

I wouldn't exactly call it a good sample, given the number of people on here of the left persuasion. It'd be like conducting a mayoral election survey poll at a post office when one of the candidates is a postal worker.

 

[Rover]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Aside from maybe Reagan in 1984 I don't ever remember someone running for re-election without the same old tired "oh his supporters are disappointed" line. I liken it to your expectations for your college hockey team at the start of the season. 4 months into the year you might not feel the same optimism about the team as you had going in but that doesn't mean you stop going to the games. Does anybody with a brain go into journalism anymore?

 

[LynahFan]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

I wouldn't exactly call it a good sample, given the number of people on here of the left persuasion. It'd be like conducting a mayoral election survey poll at a post office when one of the candidates is a postal worker.

Wait, you mean the entire country isn't filled with college hockey fans? So THAT'S why it's so easy to get tickets to games...

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

So THAT'S why it's so easy to get tickets to games...

Given your college hockey loyalties, I sense a bit of irony in this sentence.

 

[Kepler]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Aside from maybe Reagan in 1984 I don't ever remember someone running for re-election without the same old tired "oh his supporters are disappointed" line.

It's basic concern trolling. When running against an incumbent you try to drive down their repeat vote by talking about how the candidate broke all his pledges and "disappointed" his supporters. The Dems actually tried it against Reagan. Mondale's famous "they won't tell you taxes have to be raised, I just did" line was part of an attempt to win deficit hawks with "hard truths" (sound familiar?) by saying Reagan's credit card military spending spree was irresponsible. That failed miserably because Reagan's supporters were actually pretty happy with him and didn't care that he drove deficits through the roof and broke his promises to "shrink government." What the voters really liked and trusted was not Reagan's policies, but Reagan, personally. They thought he was a decent guy trying to do an honest job.

The opposition has to try to cleave off existing support. Usually they make a less obviously silly argument than these guys are. The internet means every incumbent is deluged with this sort of false flag attack from their flank. I'm sure right now every incumbent House member of either party has people from the other party "helpfully" trying to remind their supporters of how badly they got jobbed.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Given your college hockey loyalties, I sense a bit of irony in this sentence.

Well, in the grand scheme, even a Cornell hockey ticket is a lot easier to find (and pay for) than big time football or basketball.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Well, in the grand scheme, even a Cornell hockey ticket is a lot easier to find (and pay for) than big time football or basketball.

Given the second half of the NFL season and where I am, you could have fooled me.

 

[Kepler]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Well, in the grand scheme, even a Cornell hockey ticket is a lot easier to find (and pay for) than big time football or basketball.

This is one of the great ironies of life. Books, beer and college hockey are cheap. There is really nothing else necessary.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

It's basic concern trolling. When running against an incumbent you try to drive down their repeat vote by talking about how the candidate broke all his pledges and "disappointed" his supporters. The Dems actually tried it against Reagan. Mondale's famous "they won't tell you taxes have to be raised, I just did" line was part of an attempt to win deficit hawks with "hard truths" (sound familiar?) by saying Reagan's credit card military spending spree was irresponsible. That failed miserably because Reagan's supporters were actually pretty happy with him and didn't care that he drove deficits through the roof and broke his promises to "shrink government." What the voters really liked and trusted was not Reagan's policies, but Reagan, personally. They thought he was a decent guy trying to do an honest job.

The opposition has to try to cleave off existing support. Usually they make a less obviously silly argument than these guys are. The internet means every incumbent is deluged with this sort of false flag attack from their flank. I'm sure right now every incumbent House member of either party has people from the other party "helpfully" trying to remind their supporters of how badly they got jobbed.

I didn't see it but a friend at lunch today said Jon Stewart had a "man on the street" bit where democrats were asked, in five words or less, to describe their candidate. The responses were things like, "it's not all his fault," or "doing the best he can." That's what politics has come to.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Someone at the Huffington Post actually criticized one of Michelle Obama's claims!

During her speech at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, first lady Michelle Obama painted her husband as a president who has created jobs like those held by her father and his grandmother, jobs they used to give their families greater opportunities.

“He brought our economy from the brink of collapse to creating jobs again -- jobs you can raise a family on, good jobs right here in the United States of America,” Obama said Tuesday night.

The only problem: that’s not exactly true.

The unfortunate reality is that most of the jobs created under President Barack Obama’s administration pay low wages. About three-fifths of the jobs created during the economic recovery are low-wage, while most of the jobs lost during the recession paid middle-wages, according to a recent study from the National Employment Law Project. More than 40 percent of the jobs created during the economic recovery have been in low-paying sectors like retail, food and employment services.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part II -- Charlotte, a National Treasure or sede vaca

Someone at the Huffington Post actually criticized one of Michelle Obama's claims!

Set him adrift.

I'm not your friend, buddy!
I'm not your buddy, guy!
He's not your guy, friend!
I'm not your friend, buddy!