Romney Taps Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan As Running Mate 757
Shortly after 9 a.m. Eastern time Saturday, Republican candidate Mitt Romney officially announced (via phone app) his selection of 42-year-old Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as running mate for the 2012 U.S. presidential race. Ryan's selection was announced by the Romney campaign to various media outlets earlier this morning. Ryan is considered popular among a wide range of Republican voters, being a budget hawk who favors less liberal laws concerning abortion. Ryan's lauded popularity among Tea Party voters is mixed; some reports describe him as a Tea Party favorite, others as a far-right imposter.
Ryan is an Ayn Randroid! just like Greenspan! (Score:5, Informative)
Ayn Rand also nearly worshipped a sadistic child murderer and mutilator. She called this man "ideal".... Ayn Rand's Early Inspiration: A Child Killer
This certainly belongs in the "you can't make this stuff up" category. As J. Brendan Ritchie, who flagged it for me, wrote: "Apparently Ayn Rand was heavily inspired by (and admired) a psychopath. Incidently, objectivism now makes a lot more sense to me."
The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged , John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market , Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"
Re:Focus Will Be On Economy (Score:5, Informative)
Your country doesn't have a left wing.
Re:And you thought the Win8 UI was ugly.... (Score:5, Informative)
Michelle Bachmann is that you?
"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas." -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009
or is it Sarah Palin?
"But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies." --Sarah Palin, after being asked how she would handle the current hostilities between the two Koreas, interview on Glenn Beck's radio show, Nov. 24, 2010
or Paul Ryan?
“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”
but in April 2012 he said
“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told National Review on Thursday. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”
Politicians... gotta love 'em...
Wisconsin's policies were disproven. (Score:5, Informative)
Interestingly the fight in Wisconsin lead to Wisconsin being distanced by the rest of the USA in what concerns job performance. See this graph [stlouisfed.org] which shows the total number of nonfarm employees in Wisconsin (blue) vs. the entire US (red). Note how in early 2011, when Wisconsin's job creation policies were enacted Wisconsin stopped following the upwards trend of the country. (Details: the graph is normalized to the 2009 numbers, any other pre-2011 normalization wouldn't change the picture; nonfarm to not be distorted by seasonal variations; employment numbers instead of unemployment to accoutn for people leaving the state).
I don't know how much of Wisonsin's policies Ryan could claim for himself, but it certainly looks like he shouldn't at all.
Re:Pro Move, Romney (Score:5, Informative)
then bumbled his way to a $2 trillion dollar a year deficit
You conveniently ignore his predecessor's tenure, during which spending spiked to its highest-ever levels with two unfunded wars and more military and security spending than even at the height of the Cold War.
the U6 unemployment rate didn't spike up to 16% until after Obumbles was in office.
A delayed reaction to the financial meltdown which, again, happened on his predecessor's watch.
But don't let facts get in your way.
Re:Diversity (Score:4, Informative)
But I really don't think any of those names would survive even if they were hard core pro-lifers. We in the Party ranks are already swallowing hard to choke down another shit sandich forced on us by the establishment. A double RINO ticket would make it an easy decision for a lot of the base to stay just home. Seriously, we oppose Obamacare; so we are fired up for they guy who pushed the prototype?
And no, Ryan is loved by the base for taking on the budget problem. Other than being a 'businessman' what has Romney actually done on the budget problem? What has he even really said on it? Ryan has passed two actual budgets that show where he is wanting to lead. And we have seen it and saw that it is good. Pretty safe bet there is general satisfaction today out in the Republican base. Maybe not the sort of 'yee hah!' reaction from four years ago, but they should be ready to mobilize now.
> Oh, and Ryan is Roman Catholic, not Jewish.
You are right. I try to keep up with this stuff but there is just too much trivia to remember. Should use Google more. Oh well, still a 'minority' pick in that I don't think we have had one of them since JFK. Not that I particularly care about the personal trivia like that, I care more about their ideas and position than their biography or religion... unless they are the sort who make a big public thing about that sort of thing.
Re:Wikipedia analysis was wrong (Score:2, Informative)
The premise behind it actually seems like it has some truth to it. Just the wrong prediction.
Paul Ryan's page was edited 39 times on August 8 and 27 times on August 9. Before this, he was averaging about 20 edits per month for all of 2012.
Re:Pro Move, Romney (Score:3, Informative)
...though thankfully not every American has succumbed to this.
Only about 98% of them, according to the numbers anyway.
Re:Challenge Ryan's economics (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Diversity (Score:5, Informative)
A small point about Nordic nationalist parties; at least here in Finland, the "Finns" party (formerly "True Finns") is clearly leftist economically... they tend to be social-conservative otherwise.
The welfare state model is rather sacrosanct here, the only people seriously questioning it are genuine classical liberals, and they are not in parliament.
Re:Focus Will Be On Economy (Score:5, Informative)
I think you misspelled socialist. We have neosocialists. We do not have a left wing. There's more to being liberal than socialism. It must be balanced with libertarianism in ways that make sense.
For example, that. That is not left-wing. That's way, way far to the right. It is putting the desire to keep a business artificially running above the rights of the stockholders. That's a corporatist, fascist way of doing things. It means that the people who put money into the company by buying its stock lose their investment, while the big corporations that the company owes money don't lose their investment. They spin off a shell company that holds the company's debts without any of its assets, and the working class get screwed, while the rich get richer. If they had allowed the company to fold, the working class might have at least gotten back some of their investment instead of ending up with worthless stock certificates. Instead, they chose the rights of a few big companies over the rights of the majority.
Those people are also not on the left. Someone truly on the left is typically in favor of greater personal freedom, not bigger government for government's sake. True left-wing politics requires government to interfere in the lives of individuals only when those individuals hold undue power over others.
Note that this is not the same thing as libertarianism, where the government never interferes. Nor is it socialism, where the government always interferes. Both of those are skewed politics that don't represent the true political left.
You're kidding, right? You just described the political far right, except for the "small" bit. The far right consists mostly of investors who make their money by using funds and effort removed from the masses, who are beasts of burden providing all those things. Most of those people contribute little, if anything, to society other than loaning money, and for that, we reward them with a life of luxury while almost everyone else has to work like slaves just to afford basic healthcare.
Yet even the far left does not want them to become beasts of burden. They merely want those people to pay their fair share. While the rest of us are paying 30% in taxes, they pay 15%. They do less work to earn their money, yet they get to keep more of it. By any reasonable and sane standard, they're cheating the system, and that's wrong.
Capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income. At most, there should be a one-time homeowner exemption so that people can afford to change houses once in a while. Only if we treat unearned income with the same level of taxation as earned income can we legitimately say that nobody is using anyone else, treating anyone else as beasts of burden.
Re:Challenge Ryan's economics (Score:3, Informative)
Never mind; it wasn't on the Current, it was at examiner.com [examiner.com]
Re:Pro Move, Romney (Score:4, Informative)
Bush Junior inherited a budget surplus from Clinton's term.
Along with that surplus, however, Bush Jr. also inherited an economy from Clinton that was fizzling at the very end of Clinton's administration in 2000 as the dot-com bubble popped and the economy was starting to slide downwards. By 2001, the country was primed for a recession, and the 9/11 attack - less than a year into his presidency - pushed the economy over the edge.
Also, the undoing of the Glass-Steagal Act - a major deregulation of the banking industry which directly led to the financial collapse in 2008 - was passed under Clinton's watch.
It's time the US started spending MORE money building a positive image, making new discoveries , and advancing human achievement ......... and spend LESS money trying to become the policeman of the world.
We'll never really know what good those wars have done (vs. what would've happened with inaction), but in general I do agree that Bush's wars are a hard sell - especially the 2003 Iraq occupation. The price for forcibly putting a deomcracy up there was extremely high. And it is time to wind down the Afghanistan operations - that country's a mess. You can't force freedom and education on a people too afraid to stand up for themselves.
With that said, that excuse is several years old now. Look at now... 2012... and the balance sheet of the country. Regardless of the circumstances, the Obama administration has added $5,000,000,000,000 in debt in FOUR YEARS, and the economy - due to bad decisions by people over the last generation of business leaders and politicians - is as brittle and hollow as ever. When are people going to realize how much in perpetual debt service (i.e. interest-only payments FOREVER) was added during these four years that could've been going towards that "building a positive image, making new discoveries...", but will now going into international bankers' coffers? And what happens when those investors finally tire of the super-low interest rates government debt is currently paying out, and the rate HAS to go up? That's HUNDREDS of BILLIONS more... every year.
If Obama would've taken even a half-hearted swing and curbing the annual, national deficits, I'd listen, but his administration (and Congress) are not taking them seriously.
How many more years is this guy going to get a "it's Bush's fault" mulligan before just look at the budget numbers? They're unsustainable... If Obama is re-elected, and we go thorugh four more years of trillions more added to the debt, and still no long-term fixes to Social Security, Medicare, etc. is he going to still blame Bush and ask for a 3rd term - perhaps because that's what FDR needed? "Make no mistake... By 2020, I'll have the American economy evolving back into the superpower that it once was. China, India, and Brazil will once again fear our economic might... "
I will demonize them (Score:3, Informative)
Paul Ryan and Technology Voting (Score:5, Informative)
Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/paul-ryan-vp/ [wired.com]
Voted YES on terminating funding for National Public Radio.
Voted YES on retroactive immunity for telecoms' warrantless surveillance.
Voted NO on establishing "network neutrality" (non-tiered Internet).
Voted YES on increasing fines for indecent broadcasting.
Voted YES on promoting commercial human space flight industry.
Voted YES on banning Internet gambling by credit card.
Voted YES on allowing telephone monopolies to offer Internet access.
Ryan co-sponsored permanently banning state & local taxation of Internet access
http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Paul_Ryan_technology.htm [ontheissues.org]
Re:Diversity (Score:5, Informative)
There is actual data [voteview.com] for that...
Re:News for Nerds???!! (Score:5, Informative)
Emmerich has been widely debunked (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit claim is bullshit:
http://www.tnr.com/article/82962/conservatives-economic-chart-fox-de-rugy [tnr.com]
Indeed, the real story here isn’t necessarily Emmerich’s fuzzy math; as important is the fact that the chart was posted again and again with so little discussion of its accuracy. If those who pushed the chart along in its Internet journey cared about its content and the methodology, rather than its underlying political message, they could have done a little Googling. It wouldn’t have taken much to crack the surface, get below the presumption that poor people are coddled by the government, and find the beginning of a long list of problems with Emmerich’s work. But, perhaps because of ideological bent or maybe due to simple laziness, people decided that no fact-checking was required.
Re:Be serious (Score:5, Informative)
I have no idea who the guy is, so I went and looked on Wikipedia:
In late January 2010, Ryan released a new version of his Roadmap. The modified plan would: give across the board tax cuts by reducing income tax rates; eliminate income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest; and abolish the corporate income tax, estate tax, and alternative minimum tax. The plan would privatize a portion of Social Security, eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, and privatize Medicare.
If that's not far right, economically speaking, then I don't know what is.
Re:Ryan is an Ayn Randroid! just like Greenspan! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Focus Will Be On Economy (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, which is why we have to fix the imbalanced tax system that is causing it.
Wrong at pretty much every level.
Thus, the argument that raising taxes on the rich would discourage investment is absolutely absurd beyond belief. You pretty much have to have zero understanding of economics to believe that drivel. Even somebody who just took high school econ should know better.