Friday, August 31, 2012

RNC Convention Excellent




Lordy, get me out of here!
Best Quotes from the RNC Convention

For the next week until the end of the DNC convention I will run a quote or two from the RNC.  I may even compare a DNC quote with an RNC quote

“Fifty-five years ago, when my dad was a penniless teenager, thank God some well-meaning bureaucrat didn’t put his arm around him and say ‘let me take care of you.’” –- Ted Cruz.

“And on a personal note – a little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham – the most segregated big city in America – her parents can’t take her to a movie theater or a restaurant – but they make her believe that even though she can’t have a hamburger at the Woolworth’s lunch counter – she can be President of the United States and she becomes the Secretary of State. Yes, America has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect. But of course it has never been inevitable – it has taken leadership, courage and an unwavering faith in our values.” — Condi Rice
  

Some thoughts on the RNC Convention

Seeing the speakers and the Romney Ryan team at the RNC I am reminded of the business saying that first rate people hire first rate people.  Second rate people hire third rate people.  Compare Paul Ryan with Joe Biden.  

I thought the convention was terrific.  We saw a big and diverse GOP with stories about success with the explanation “this is America.”  It seems the GOP has a much bigger and more diverse bench, one that comes from talent, not affirmative action. 
   
The Democrats have a hard act to follow.  The Republicans focused on success, the economy, jobs, taxes and spending.  We heard a lot of complaints from DNC people about the negativity, but this appears to be more of an inoculation to protect themselves from criticism when them come forward trying to convince the American people that to paraphrase Marco Rubio when he said the President wasn’t a bad man but a bad president, that in fact, Mitt Romney is the devil on earth.   

The other point you heard from the left was there wasn’t enough details of the plans the GOP had to address the economy, jobs, taxes and spending.  It will be interesting to see what kind of specific we will hear from Mr. Obama.  

I with the majority of Americans watched the convention on FNC.  I did go over to CNN and MSNBC to see what their commentators had to say between speakers.  MSNBC is fantasyland for liberals.  Any connection with the truth seems to be purely coincidental.  

I thought Clint Eastwood was too slow but he did level what was probably the most criticism of President Obama.  The empty chair with a teleprompter was very clever. And it appears the White House's thin skinned occupant had to answer it.

Does seem like something a confident candidate would do

To which critics with Photoshop answered his answer.



The Best and Worst at the RNC Convention

Who do you think gave the best speech?  What was the best joke?  Who was the worst gate crasher or the worst sport?  Read about it here.

Peggy Noonan chimes in with her views of the Convention.  It’s interesting to see what she saw as the game changer. 


It’s official.  Bush is to blame

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, was stumped this afternoon when ABC’s Jake Tapper questioned him about a new study that showed that under Obama household median annual incomes have fallen 4.8% since the recession technically ended in 2009.

Carney weaved in and out over several vague platitudes, blaming the previous administration for plunging the economy into a recession.




It appears Romney is to blame here

President Obama announce he will go to New Orleans on Monday after Romney announced he was going there today.  




“You didn’t build that”

Many moons ago, I spent a couple of years in a fiction-writing program at a local university. I never finished the novel I aspired to write, but I did learn some valuable lessons. The most important: “It doesn’t matter what you meant. What matters is what you conveyed.




Great New Crossroad’s Ad





Fact checkers for Obama

It seems the official fact checkers can’t tell the difference between a fact and something they don’t like. 

AP found Ryan’s Janesville GM plant story to be false saying the plant was shut down in December 2008, even though that contradicts AP’s story of the plant’s shutdown in April 2009.  What the old saying?  Is AP lying now or were they lying then? 

In the meantime, this article finds PolitiFact to be high on Political but very iffy on facts. 



Liberal film critic Roger Ebert thinks Clint Eastwood was sad and pathetic

Well it does take one to know one.

Others have different opinions.


RNC Protests

Despite what little attention they got, they weren’t young, they weren’t many, and they weren’t effective.



Obama: When you need help who should you turn to?

Campaigning at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio last week, President Obama raised quite eloquently -- okay, succinctly -- the question of where one should turn for help in pursuing one's happiness.  The answer: government,"applause"; family, "booo."

This may explain why unmarried women are strong supporters of the Democrats while married women are strong supporters of the Republicans (they have their families to take care of).



Obama:  President or King

We have seen over the past 3 ½ years an embolden President ignore the Constitution and do more and more questionable things by executive fiat.  It has become epidemic this election year as he has given more goodies to the groups he’s counting on for their votes.  From free birth control, to green cards, to supporting gay marriage Obama seeks to gain support by tearing us apart.  


Speaking of Dog Whistles

The left seems to think everything can be construed as a hidden racial slur including the words “Chicago” and “golf.”  So how do they react when one of their own crosses the line? 




Thursday, August 30, 2012

Republican Convention



Ryan connects with speech

Paul Ryan connected with the delegates at the RNC Convention and with a vast part of America as well.  CNN ran a group of undecided voters to rate the speech and asked them if Ryan seemed scary.  Much to the Democrats chagrin no one found him scary.  Women liked his stories of his widowed mother and I like where he promised that the Republican want to have a debate about the big issues, aren’t afraid of the debate and will win the debate. 
One of the reports on the speech said:  “It has been a very long time since Americans have met a leader who uses ideas not to dazzle, not to appeal to our heads but to our hearts as well.”

Another writer found: “His soft-spoken manner played intimately, even in an arena of 22,000. When protesters began chanting against Ryan, the crowd drowned them out with thunderous applause. Ryan brought fire to a campaign lacking in it – and he also brought credibility on serious issues.

Democrats will have a significant problem painting Ryan as unsympathetic or insincere.”
You can read the entire speech here. 

Roger Kimball says: “I suspect that Joe Biden is feeling pretty awful this morning. For that matter, I’d wager Barack Obama has had better nights’ rest. Condi Rice’s speech was bad enough for the Democrats — it was serious, dignified, eloquent — but Paul Ryan hit it out of the park…”



2012:  The Sex Party vs the Jobs Party

It appears the Democrats plan a woman’s festival at their convention headlining women and birth control and abortion.  I imagine we will also see some on Gay Marriage since Obama has moved to support that.   Against these issues we see the Republicans talking about jobs, Medicare, spending, and getting the economy moving again.  Looking at Gallup's poll on the issues I don’t find birth control, abortion or gay marriage on the list.  In fact, I don’t see any social issues there. 




Leftist Claim Ryan lied Repeatedly—Factcheck

Dave Weigel of Slate compiled a useful list.  Wrote Weigel, “Ryan plowed through one of the more impressive strings of whoppers we’ve seen at this level,” wrote Weigel. Here are his complaints, in order of importance.



Ryan is making a difference

A funny thing didn't happen on the way to Paul Ryan's rousing speech Wednesday night accepting the GOP nomination for Vice President. The Republican ticket hasn't sunk in the polls, Democrats haven't nationalized the race around Medicare to their advantage, and seniors haven't fled Mitt Romney in droves.
All of those outcomes were predicted with utter certainty by the great political sages when Mr. Romney selected Mr. Ryan on that mid-August weekend. Go back to the videotape for the August 12 Sunday talk shows. Many Republicans—some in Mr. Romney's own campaign—said the same thing sotto voce. (We know who you are.)

So far they've all been exactly wrong, as the polls show Mr. Romney having closed the gap against President Obama not only in Mr. Ryan's native Wisconsin but in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. On Medicare, an issue that Democrats usually dominate, Mr. Romney is battling to a draw at worst and is nearly even among voters on which candidate is most trusted. This hasn't happened since the dawn of the entitlement age.




Whining Democrats Claim Republicans are too negative

The Democrats are losing it, literally. The Obama camp and its surrogates are losing the fight to control the narrative about Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) They are losing the effort to distract voters through the presence at the GOP convention of Obama campaign staffers such as Robert Gibbs and Ben LaBolt, who spend their time wandering about and whining to the media here in Tampa about the “negativity” of the other side.

It’s really a stretch for the Democrats to complain about negativity when we have had them attack Mitt Romney as a felon, a killer, and someone who liked to fire people (see picture below). 





RNC Convention deep, diverse, and youthful

“Tuning in to the Republican National Convention this week, viewers could be forgiven for thinking they had switched on the Democratic convention of yesteryear, what with all the up-and-coming women and minority politicians taking the stage. It’s a contrast with Democrats, who will trot out a bunch of timeworn white guys next week in Charlotte to help make the party’s case to the nation.”  The Republican bench is deep, diverse, and youthful. 




2008:  Proof the Americans were Racists 

Was voting for Barack Obama because he was black an act of racism?





2012:  Will there be a Romney Landslide?

Are the polls (even the left leaning ones) hiding the truth?  Is the election really in the bag for Romney?  “It is my contention that this is due to a mix of the infamous Bradley effect and what is known in Britain as ‘the Shy Tory Factor, with both coming together to exaggerate just how popular Obama is in America.”

I think there is a large group of Americans who are looking for permission to actually vote against Obama and most of them will get that permission in the next two months. 




The Democrat Brand in Trouble
  
“For the very first time, the favorable/unfavorable ratios are now higher for the Republican Party than for the Democratic Party. For the first time ever, the Democratic favorability ratio, which has always been within the range of 1.20 to 1.56, is now below 1. It is a stunningly low .83, which is 31% lower than the prior Democratic Party low of 1.20, which was reached in 2004. . . . The Democratic brand has thus suffered more (down 39%) under Obama than the Republican brand suffered under either of George W. Bush’s two terms (-16%, then -31%).”




Finding racism everywhere

Mitch McConnell said:For four years, Barack Obama has been running from the nation’s problems, he hasn’t been working to earn re-election. He has been working to earn a spot on the PGA Tour.”
Lawrence O’Donnell found the racism in that quote: Well, we know exactly what he’s trying to do there. He is trying to align to Tiger Woods and surely, the — lifestyle of Tiger Woods with Barack Obama. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. They find every way they possibly can to..”

Another case of leftists finding what they are looking.  Even the person he was talking to didn’t see the connection.   

In the meantime over at Legal Insurrection we find, “And then there is the media race card feeding frenzy, which is more out of control than anything I have seen in the three years and 10 months this blog has been operating.  Far worse.

The race card playing by the media has become a mental illness that is getting worse over time as they self-medicate with necessarily escalating false accusations of racism.”

Finally John M. Robinson, the Chief Diversity Officer at the U.S. Department of State, is scouring our language to expunge the racism in our vocabulary.  Finding “holding down the fort,”  “Black and Tan,” “Handicapped,” and “Rule of thumb” offensive he probably wants to confer with Lawrence O’Donnell to see what he might have missed.




Bigotry on the Left

Do you want to tell me one more time why the left isn’t bigoted?



The Democratic Party’s Problem

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” When government goes beyond equal protection by law and undertakes to allocate wealth and opportunity, “the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.”  AndrewJackson





We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it

Because of a rule in the Affordable Care Act that lifts caps on policy payoffs, the cheap insurance policies typically healthy students previously got are skyrocketing, some over 1,000 percent. The reason: Without payoff caps, insurance firms are boosting prices to cover their potential losses.  The law of unintended consequences strikes again. 



The wrong story for the anti-Second Amendment crowd

Teresa Barron, 38, had just dropped off her child at the school when the child's father showed up, and the two got into an argument. The child's father, 38-year-old Roberto Barron allegedly then stabbed the woman several times in the upper body and neck area.

Police say a bystander who happened…



Are we too tough on discipline in public schools?

Evidently NY City schools think they are.

In the meantime, “Only 32 percent of Americans believe public schools deliver a good education, and just five percent of people surveyed believe students at public schools will receive an excellent education. Sixty-one percent of Americans think public schools will give only a fair education at best, including 18 percent who rate the education as poor.”