Can anyone tell me why two guys who’ve never been in the military are using a WWII battleship as a stage prop?

Because it’s illegal to take out one’s literal dick and wave it around?

It makes a heck of a driving range for the country club white folk. Perhaps they can run the macaca video of George Allen, to further please the 0.01%. Nothing says more about having never served than campaigning on a retired battleship. Typical Republicans. Romney and Ryan will have to change their diapers. Chicken hawks.

I think Romney’s choice was by the process of elimination rather than having a luxury of any best of the best. There’s been a lot of baggage distributed throughout that field.

Ryan then does make some sense as a choice if only for cosmetic reasons. At least Ryan was never on that TV stage with all the others making fools of themselves so many times. Not that Ryan isn’t a fool, but he went about it in a different way. I wonder if Ryan had been the pick for a long time and the rest were simply play acting.

Portman and Pawlenty are gray clones of Mitt, and their persistence as possible choices was a sign Romney had nowhere to go. Then Confrontational Christie and Rubio, the klepto credit card abuser, and on and on, would seem to make Ryan the only plausible selection in the end. Maybe it was always such.

Nice crowd. Where’d they get all those people on such short notice?

Probably.

Probably dragooned from the nearby Naval bases. Though Mitt’s got the dough to bus ‘em in or even fly ‘em in.

Ryan is another big fan of Ayn Rand. So far as I can tell, she is the Anti-Christ in the sense that her teachings are the exact opposite of his.

I’ve said it before but no one really agreed with me (or mocked me for being superficial). Romney walks like his shoes are too tight.

I’m reminded of H.L. Mencken, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

Or space ship them in from another planet.

Does this mean we will have an austerity fight of Erskine Bowles vs Paul Ryan as the surrogates for who can cut the most from SSMM? Oh goody, can’t wait. Paul Ryan has the added feature of repealing Obamacare.

Could be difficult to explain from a Mormon…..or not.

Ryan is also the tacit acknowledgement and confirmation of what we saw in 2008: It is no longer possible for the Republican Party to pivot to a more sane and humane general-election stance where presidential elections are concerned. They must from now on always, ALWAYS, pump up the crazy base they’ve spent nearly five decades making this rabidly crazy and racist, thanks to the Southern Strategy.

Which is why it’s key for us to squawk about Bowles now, to pressure Obama to back off on this nonsense.

It’s called a “recall roster” in the military. A branched telephoine list shaped like a tree.

He’s got a flag pin….how special.

Phoenix Woman thank you for the post.
Whoooee, this is getting really interesting and I cannot wait to see the Dems ads on this combo. They have to be ready to roll them out.

I would like to hear SouthernDragon’s take on this and I especially loved your comment about two Chickenhawk’s choosing a battleship to announce Ryan’s annoitment.

Did Romney introduce him as ‘the next president of the US’?

Ryan’s not a good speaker. Never really heard him before.

Srsly, How did they get that big boat for this event?

Romney is planning on stepping down the minute he’s elected. Pres does not pay enough for the time involved.

I don’t think busses and planes are likely, because he couldn’t have kept the “secret” that way. Gotta have been a phone bank yesterday. There aren’t all that many locations he could have done it so quickly so large though. Norfolk has a huge military community plus civilian right wingers within a useful radius.

I agree. Hopefully, with the Ryan pick Obama will figure out the problem. (or opportunity)

From the ship building company that Bain acquired and outsourced, of course.

They are trying to sell us the same failures of Bush and Cheney. 40 years of Reaganomics biblical failures.

Oops! Apparently Ryan has recently renounced Ayn Rand; per the Wikipedia:

At an Atlas Society meeting celebrating Ayn Rand’s life in 2005, Ryan said that “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”,[24] and “I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff.”[25] In response to criticism from Catholic leaders, in 2012 Ryan distanced himself from Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, telling National Review, “I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview”, and noting that his views were more aligned with those of the Roman Catholic philosopher and saint, Thomas Aquinas, than Ayn Rand. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he said in 2012.[26]

I assume we don’t get rid of Ryan in Congress when they lose the election. Too bad. I guess that’s the upside for them.

This is Obama’s opportunity to move back to the middle-left by embracing SSMM and pointing out the problems with the Ryan medicare voucher program. Heaven help me, but if he dropped the B.S. about austerity and cuts to the safety net he could bludgeon them with a populist fervor. But that’s not likely to happen.

Saturday morning news dump…WOW. They got confidance.
Oh boy, two smart-aleck pretty rich boys want to run my country but pretend I’m not here!

Doesn’t matter. He bought into it and that is what his budget is based on. Gotta make him own it.

Whack a doo time. Go Ryan, kill Grandma.

Good Morning Phoenix Woman and Firedogs,

I have mad love and respect for ya PW, but this pick is Pete Peterson’s Golden fucking Ticket -

they are going to Good Cop/Bad Cop our grandchildren in to the work house -

for the next several months we are going to hear

‘Bad Romney/Ryan want to take away your SS/Medicare !!, whereas we feel just a little responsible tweaking will leave it safe for posterity’ –

and then gut the holy shit out of it the first wednesday in November

Responding to a surge in the homeless population, New York City has rapidly opened nine shelters in the last two months, and local officials say they were blindsided by the moves.

From the NYTimes on line. This could be the future with the austerity budgets of Bowles-Ryan.

The ” bobbleheaded wives club ” has never been represented so well. When is bobblehead night, anyway, at the RNC? The podium looks like it came from Rent-A-Center so all Mitt’s money and we get Darren from ” Bewitched ” or Ward Cleaver spouting boilerplate crap. Where’s the rest of The Mouseketeers since they’re doing the 50′s? Shouldn’t the backdrop be Disneyland? Are they going to have a Sock Hop, afterwards?

Oh great and powerful Oz, what kind of country do we want to have, what kind of people do we want to be? Turn this country around….in front of the RRmoney economic program = build more military stuff in every Congressional District.

Ryan is trying to sell us Reaganomics the same epic failures that have been gutting American industry fro the past 30 years.

Bad timing. Bad choice. I smell panic.

A-yep. :-)

Oh, it is panic — Mittens is desperately trying to change the subject from, among other things, why he won’t follow his dad and fellow Republican presidential candidate George’s 1968 example and release several years of full tax returns.

The Catholic bishops, unlike the Protestant ministers who serve as Mark Sanford’s spiritual guides, are a bit less tolerant of members of their flocks openly advocating the writings of an atheist, particularly one whose open contempt and hatred for most of humanity was the basis for nearly everything she wrote. They may be conservatives like her, but they don’t like her giving the game away so blatantly.

the potential good news of romney picking ryan is that it will push obama into making promises to preserve medicare and social security. (Its a shame we have to worry about the Democrats in that way, i.e., being “forced” again by republicans to commit to ss and medicare)

They are a strange bunch. Pope Leo XIII was a true progressive and wrote some excellent stuff. So was John XXIII. Those that followed, not so much.

Romney has to win Florida. He can’t win without it.

Ryan actually hurts him in Florida. In fact, I don’t think Ryan brings one electoral vote to Romney.

And, announcing this early Saturday morning in the dog days of August, you can’t make this stuff up.

So Rmoney did indeed pick “Budget From Hell” Ryan. Well, I have only one thing to say to that.

Morning PW and crew,

John Nichols, along with analysis, was contemplating on the humorous tidbits, yesterday, that will be exposed on the national stage with the possible Ryan pick in the podcast available here.

One was Ryan sending his brothers to march in district holiday parades, the crowd not always being aware of who was really visiting their fair city.

Worth a listen.

Per Swopa:

Deciding they have to name Mitt’s VP now — more than 2 weeks before the GOP convention, with the Olympics not over yet, and on a Saturday morning, no less! — is as pure a sign of panic as you can get.

I like your thinking.
Now if Obama would only listen to your thoughts and enact them.

Probably a recent Wikipedia edit, just like the one last night that removed any references to the April AP story — about Ryan’s election in high school as “Prom King” and “Best Brown-Noser” — as needlessly trivial for such a short Wiki entry….

Good question — does Wisconsin have a “Lieberman Law” that allows a candidate to run for his current seat as well as the Vice Presidency?

You and I agree, how long has it been since that happened?!

No one on Team Romney was willing to have the horrible polls, Andrea Saul, or Romney’s income tax transparency be the topic of tomorrow’s gabfests. They needed to change the subject, fast, and are willing to go on bended knee to the Villagers who adore Paul Ryan to do so.

I conjecture that this panic move was in response to a gathering “Dump Romney” sentiment among GOP leaders. I think that Romney’s team hopes that this choice will secure the support of the Tea Party faction of the GOP leadership.

That one is simple. The people don’t know anything. And they are telling the people they are in control of the U.S. military and will use it because useless wars are what the U.S.A. manufactures in the 21st century.

Ah rewriting history is alive and well in the land of the free.

Teddy @ 51

Too long.