What’s New Today
Story # 1 and #2 are today’s signs of desperation by the Obama
Administration. #3 and #4 are stories of
Paul Ryan. It appears he’s making a
difference already. #5 looks at
Medicare. Expect to read a lot about it
with lies and half-truths coming from the current administration. #6 is about
the greens finally telling the truth.
They are opposed to any kind of energy.
Today’s
Thoughts
Paul
Ryan represents Obama’s most horrifying
nightmare: Math.”
Democrats seem to be happy with
Romney’s pick as they consider Ryan to be an extremist on budget issues. Since
when is balancing a budget and extremist view?
1. Signs of Desperation
Email from Joe Biden:
“Starting
now, we can expect even more wealthy, right-wing ideologues lining up to
support the Romney-Ryan ticket”
The people on the other side who are
trying to buy this election are putting nasty, deceptive TV ads on the air
right this very minute. They're not going away. They're getting worse.
If we don't do what we can to keep this close, right now at this crucial moment, we risk letting the other side run away with it.
If we don't do what we can to keep this close, right now at this crucial moment, we risk letting the other side run away with it.
"Keep this close?" I say.
"They're posing as if they think they are already behind."…
They
know they are in trouble.
2. Signs of Desperation part 2
Romney did a great job responding to a
heckler, then turned it on Obama telling
him to get his campaign out of the gutter. Fantastic.
It’s
only a two minute video and worth watching.
It is exactly as the author characterized Romney’s response.
3. Ryan: Inside Information
As
they took their first steps together on the campaign trail today, it was
revealed that Paul Ryan's path to becoming Mitt Romney's Republican
vice-presidential running mate was
steeped in secrecy, from an incognito trip to meet Romney to a furtive walk
through the woods at his boyhood Wisconsin home.
The
head of Romney's VP search process, longtime confidante Beth Myers, broke her silence on many details in a briefing with
reporters inside a hangar at Dulles International Airport near Washington.
Romney and Ryan themselves spoke to reporters briefly on their flight to North
Carolina.
Almost a week ago, Ryan snuck
through Chicago's O'Hare airport in a baseball cap and sunglasses and flew to
New England.
Myer's
19-year-old son picked up Ryan and drove him to a private meeting in his
parents' dining room where the deal was sealed.
By Friday afternoon, Ryan was cutting through the Wisconsin woods behind his home to evade a
reporter on the street out front, and heading to North Carolina.
By night, he
was eating Applebee's takeout at a nondescript chain hotel in that state
and preparing for his big debut speech, according to Myers.
The search for VP was so
confidential that background information on a short list of candidates,
including several years of tax returns and other documents, were kept in a safe
in a locked room at Romney's campaign headquarters and the few people allowed
in were not permitted to make copies or take anything out….
A good start here as the decision, made last week, didn’t leak
out.
4. Ryan energizes the Romney campaign
Newly minted vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan hit the stump this weekend with a
level of energy that seemed to boost Mitt Romney’s entire campaign, giving
the presumptive nominee a much-needed change in the narrative while adding
another high-profile fundraiser and campaigner to deploy across the country.
It got off to an inauspicious start, though.
When Mr. Ryan was first introduced Saturday in
Norfolk, Va., walking down the gangplank of the USS Wisconsin with the theme of
the movie “Air Force One” playing in the background, Mr. Romney’s got a little ahead of himself, introducing Mr. Ryan as
“the next president of the United States.”
Mr. Romney quickly corrected the slip-up, saying
he had been known to make mistakes, “but I didn’t make one with this guy.”
Mr. Ryan showed a clear ability to connect with
voters and infuse Mr. Romney’s campaign with, quite literally, a dash of
youthful energy. At 42, Mr. Ryan is the same age as Mr. Romney’s eldest son, Tagg…
.
Ryan brings
a target of opportunity to the Democrats, but also a huge risk to them. They are counting on the American public
being ignorant of the problems with entitlements and how the Democrats and President Obama has done absolutely nothing
to address them.
5. Medicare: It’s
already ended as we know it
Liberals and Democrats these days
like to believe that the Right and the Republican Party can be safely ignored.
Obama and his allies argue that balance in media can be responsibly eschewed,
because conservatives are inherently
closed-minded, and the GOP, unlike the Democratic Party, is thoroughly
unserious and dishonest.
I wonder if even the most strident
and self-satisfied of these liberals -- to wit, New York Times columnist Paul
Krugman -- can maintain this self-serving posture when Joe Biden debates Paul
Ryan this fall.
When Mitt Romney chose Ryan this
weekend as his running mate, the liberal freak out was telling. Attacking the budgets Ryan authored, they
have trotted out the hoary line that Ryan would "eliminate Medicare,"
and push grannie off a cliff.
Obama campaign manager Jim Messina
wrote that Ryan's "plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning
it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to
seniors."
The "end Medicare as we know
it" mantra highlights two ways in which it is the Democratic Party that is
deeply unserious.
First, it echoes Obama's mendacity. Second, it reflects the party's irresponsible insistence
on looking the other way while driving our government full speed toward the
cliff of insolvency
.
Ryan's budget would not change anything about Medicare for
people over age 54 or anyone younger who wants to go
onto traditional Medicare. Ryan's plan, crafted with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden
-- who earns gushing praise from self-styled wonks on the Left as a serious
legislator (which he is) -- merely allows some people to opt instead for a
voucherized version of Medicare.
So Democrats assert that Ryan-Wyden
would "end Medicare as we know it," because any modification of any
existing policy would "end" that policy "as we know it."
This slippery charge is Team Obama's
standard rhetorical tack: Say something clearly misleading, but with one
potential interpretation that could be construed as not a lie.
The Democratic alternative to Ryan's
Medicare reform, meanwhile is, well, nothing…
Actually the response is not nothing. Buried in Obamacare is the creation of the
IPAB, a 15 member board that would have the power to reduce reimbursements on
any and all Medicare covered procedures.
In fact, the IPAB and Obamacare have ended Medicare as we know it
starting in 2014. The Ryan Plan would
affect new seniors going on to Medicare in 2024. The two plans let you choose what you want to
be insured against (Ryan) or lets a board choose what you will be insured
against (Obamacare). Add to this the
fact that Obamacare relies on taking $500,000,000,000 out of Medicare to pay
for the added people covered by Obamacare.
6. Dedevelopment: The Greens start to tell the real truth
…For
years, the green argument was something like this: If only we can replace fossil fuels with cleaner, renewable energy
sources, we can enjoy our current standard of living without endangering the
environment. Now it appears some greens have advanced the argument to a
brand new phase: It’s as if they’ve replaced
a green energy policy with a no-energy policy.
This is an example of where the left will take us. Certainly Hope and Change ended up in
recessions and despair. Progressives
have actually become Regressives.
