The GOP dodges a bullet

Its political convention time again.  The GOP dodged an obvious bullet as Hurricane Issac sailed past the Tampa area which the convention will be held.

The news stations are asking Americans if political conventions are becoming a thing of the past.  The networks no longer televise the conventions like in the good old days.  Is the political convention just a see and be seen venture nowadays?  Lots of money is spent.  Will political animals be content to compress their conventions to a day or two?

 

My guess is that compression of any convention would get in the way of some serious partying and elbow rubbing and that nothing will change.

Meanwhile, how about those hurricanes.  Has we dodged the hurricane bullet or is there more to come this September and October?

128 Thoughts to “Open Thread…………………………………………………Monday, August 27”

  1. Need to Know

    @Censored bybvbl

    Censored – that part surprises me. I would think that with the upper-income people living here we would score more nice restaurants. Our local economy is based on creating jobs to serve a residential area. PWC ranks well in terms of wealth, because of the jobs people find in other parts of the DC area. Businesses that serve a residential economy – restaurants, doctors, dentists, CPAs, dry-cleaners, grocers, etc. tend to do well. We should be getting more upscale restaurants than we have.

  2. Oh what’s his name…Toure maybe?

  3. Starryflights

    : The True Story Of Mitt…

    MATT TAIBI / Rolling Stone

    “And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt
    Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored
    great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd
    financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced
    consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what
    most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his
    fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced
    to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded
    America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential
    campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible
    debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney
    has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more
    gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but
    a handful of people on planet Earth.

    By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a
    calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet
    on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has
    been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up
    companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those
    same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them
    who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled
    them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president
    riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as
    his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous
    and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than
    the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have
    to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run
    for president riding this big of a lie.

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz24xyLtY

  4. Cato the Elder

    SlowpokeRodriguez :
    @Moon-howler
    He’s an MSNBC “The Cycle” personality. I could have spelled his name wrong, but I doubt anyone would care. Anyway, he thinks “index cards” is code for “Obama is an N-word”.

    I want to meet the genius who named a show the “Cycle” and staffed it with a bunch of women.

  5. SlowpokeRodriguez

    @Cato the Elder
    That’s why they call it PMSNBC!

  6. @Starryflights
    Having read Matt Taibi’s work from Afghanistan…

    He’s a hack. Nice spin.

    1. Cargo, are all those lakes salt water lakes?

      Are they below sea level?

  7. George and Barbara Bush appear very emotional and both seem to be in ill health. It upset me to see them in such bad shape. I consider them very good people.

    Actually I consider George W. and Laura to be very good people. I have no problem separating politics from the person. ,

  8. Marinm

    Cato

    I can’t blame him too much. He’s busy campaigning. He’s got a pretty good shot at a 2nd term too so I don’t think he’ll let a few dead SEALs get in his way.

  9. SlowpokeRodriguez

    Cargosquid :
    @Starryflights
    Having read Matt Taibi’s work from Afghanistan…
    He’s a hack. Nice spin.

    Good old Matt Taibi:

    Left-wing darling Matt Taibbi wrote on his blog in 2009, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.” In a Rolling Stone article about Secretary of State Clinton, he referred to her “flabby arms.” When feminist writer Erica Jong criticized him for it, he responded by referring to Jong as an “800-year old sex novelist.” (Jong is almost 70, which apparently makes her an irrelevant human being.)

    Where are my “war on women” friends??

  10. Marinm

    Slow

    Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy and John Edwards hve all taught us what women get under the Dems tent.

    1. @marin, and there is plenty of that under the republican tent also. Lets not go tit for tat on that one. You aren’t on terra firma.

  11. Marinm

    Hahahaha. You said tit for tat.

    1. yes I did…not differentiating which was which…..

  12. Cato the Elder

    SlowpokeRodriguez :

    Cargosquid :
    @Starryflights
    Having read Matt Taibi’s work from Afghanistan…
    He’s a hack. Nice spin.

    Good old Matt Taibi:
    Left-wing darling Matt Taibbi wrote on his blog in 2009, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.”

    I guess Matt was going to borrow a set from his Mom?

  13. middleman

    @Starryflights
    Taibi may be a hack, but I don’t hear anyone here actually refuting his claims. Mitt did help spawn some good companies, but his intention was to make huge fees and profits either way. Nothing wrong with that, unless your plan is designed to throw people out of work, which in many cases it was…

    The other truth that has eluded the “lamestream press,” is that Paul Ryan is a career politician who has spent, flip-flopped and ear-marked with the best (worst?) of them. He is a religious zealot whose “budget” is a social statement that does nothing to reduce the deficit. I’m amazed at the inability of the press to independently assess the political scene, but with the corporate influence involved, I guess I’m just being naive.

    1. Definitely a zealot. I see no difference in Ryan and Santorum. Santorum is just more revealing and less sneaky.

  14. middleman

    This Republican plank is downright dangerous: Federalism and the Tenth Amendment (plank #5, although they’re not numbered for some reason).

    The way it’s written in the document it seems fairly innocuous, but in actuality this is a recipe to destroy the power of our country. Americans fought and died in unheard of numbers to decide this question of states rights already- it was called the Civil War. Since that time we have had a strong central government in a form the framers never considered, which isn’t surprising since the framers were looking at a disconnected group of states mostly on the east coast, not the major connected nation we have today. With a strong central government, we won WWII, the Cold War, built the Interstate Highway system, established the National Parks, built the best education system in the world, established a centralized health research organization, NIH, that leads medical research, established the EPA, which resulted in dramatically cleaner air and water, overcame segregation, and on and on. This plank would take us back to fragmented rules and laws and a central government that is weak and unable to govern and defend.

    1. It was interesting to ask the old people when they started thinking of themselves as Americans rather than Virginians. I think the time around WWI was the answer. That fits with what Middleman says. The old people I was referring to were Virginians and they weren’t won over with losing the Civil War. It took a long time for the one nation thing to settle in.

  15. @Moon-howler
    That whole area is a marsh. From there down to the gulf are bayous and canals.

  16. So tell us, Cargo, from a local point of view, what a bayou is. Real English,not dictionary def.

    What’s the difference in a bayou and a slough?

    I hear slough in the west for those boggy meandering creeks that aren’t creeks in the fast moving, tumble down the hillside definition.

  17. Is only difference in bayou and canal that one is natural and one is man-made?

  18. Morris Davis

    Paul Ryan took a little poke at his Tea Party base in the course of his speech.  At one point he said: “If we’re serious, and if we’re smart …” Serious and smart excludes most of Ryan’s supporters. Good thing for him that they are gullible.

  19. A bayou is a meandering, very slow moving body of water, almost a lake, found in the swamps and marshes. I’ve never heard of a slough. Might be the same. They’re usually shallow. Canals are man made and straight.

    Usually a good place for fishing, crabs, and crawfish. In many places, the water will be brackish. Others, farther inland, like Bayou Laforche are used for drinking water.

    Some of the bayous are quite large. Bayou Laforche was originally named a river
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayou_Lafourche

    Others are quite small.

    1. Thanks Cargo. Things are named Whatever Slough out on the Pacific coast–probably a lot of other places also and maybe with a different meaning. I am just not aware of those places.

      The ones I have seen out west have been brackish, slow, meandering creeks, not swift running brooks. They were also on flat land. I mispronounced saying it also. They say “slew.”

      I think they are also in the midwest..maybe on the prairie? No ocean water involved, obviously.

  20. @Morris Davis
    Morris, Morris, Morris….

    Usually you’re quite a good commenter….this time you’re venturing into squir…um, Starry territory.

  21. blue

    @Morris Davis

    Oucch. I had considered you serious and smart. I disagreed with you as did others but I had respected your input.

  22. Morris Davis

    Cargo & blue – Fox News article on Paul Ryan’s speech:

    “On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/#ixzz252tcvlIu

  23. Steve Randolph

    “Are you prepared to see your dwelling in flames,
    female chasity violated, your children withering
    on the pike? … A ravening wolf is preparing to glut
    his deadly appetite on the vitals of our country!”

    Republicans attacking Obama?
    Democrats attacking Romney?

    Neither, it was John Mason, a N.Y. minister “Warning Christians on the
    Ensuing Election” (1800). The “wolf” was Thomas Jefferson.

  24. Starryflights

    Jan Brewer accidentally endorses Obama at convention (VIDEO)
    .
    .By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News

    Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who pointed her finger in President Barack Obama’s face during a heated confrontation on a Phoenix tarmac earlier this year, accidentally endorsed him on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

    During an interview with MSNBC from the convention floor, Brewer, who has taken a hard line on border security and illegal immigration in her state, was asked if she had talked to Mitt Romney about those issues.

    “I know Governor Romney understands those issues,” Brewer said, just before her slip-of-the-tongue:

    “I know that if President Obama is elected in November, which I hope that he is, that he will be able to come together with all of us and come up with a solution and I believe he will secure our borders and therefore we can resolve all those other issues, it’s a simple matter.”

  25. Steve Randolph

    Morris, surprised to see such an objective unbiased review of Ryan’s speech
    on a FOX website.

    Imagine both parties will keep the fact-checkers busy through the first week
    of November.

  26. @Starryflights

    Will you put the link here? I changed channels before Brewer said that,.

    Couldn’t happen to a nicer person. LOL

  27. blue

    If Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow had a love child, it would be Sally Kohn

    Sally Kohn is a liberal to watch.
    — Alan Colmes.

    Almost proud of Fox for giving voice to this –person. Fair and Balanced – fair may be a bit out of wack here but other more well known commentator responses are certainly in formulation.

  28. Pat.Herve

    @Morris Davis

    I find it startling that the RNC would allow the VP Nominee to give a speech with no many half-truths and less than factual references. I would think the RNC would have a higher standard on the national level.

  29. Shoot, I was watching when she said it and I didn’t even catch it. I distinctly remember Chris Matthews saying “how convenient,”

    I am getting as senile as Jan Brewer. Cry!!!!!

    http://video.msnbc.msn.com/msnbc/48836308#48836308

  30. @Morris Davis

    Typical biased article.

    FACT: Politifact is a leftist group. Their credibility as “unbiased” was lost long ago.

    FACT: “While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling”
    Wrong. As per the CREDIT AGENCIES. It was the refusal to take spending seriously.

    fACT: “While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush”

    It was closed in 2009. The decision was made in 2008. Obama declared that he would prevent the closing. Oops. Fail.

    FACT: “Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn’t what the president said. Period.”
    Except that Obama determines that its the roads that make businesses successful and that the businesses apparently don’t have any contributions to the roads being built. Nothing gets built without private money. The money comes from private sources. PERIOD>

    Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan

    Spin. Obama removes that money from Medicare and spent it for ACR. “savings in Medicare reimbursement rates” equals less service. And those cuts start next year. Both cut Medicare in different ways. For an actual unbiased report, I’d like to see a direct comparison instead of links to biased reports and interpretations.

    Just because its from FOX doesn’t mean that its any different. You have to see who is actually writing the report.

    @Steve Randolph
    Objective unbiased review? What were you reading. Kohn is a typical leftist reporter. Unlike the other networks, FOX actually employs some leftists reporters….That’s their “balance.”

    @Starryflights
    OOOOPS…. That’s funny.

  31. Morris Davis

    @Pat.Herve

    Your key phrase is “I would think.” They’re banking on those that wouldn’t.

  32. I would think that both Morris and Pat would actually think instead of just accepting the media’s spin and would refrain from insulting people. Its almost as if they’re refusing to think….

  33. blue

    Best line of the day…

    “I wanna help the helpless, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about the clueless anymore,

  34. Morris Davis

    Cargo – Pasted below is a link to Ryan’s hometown paper and an article from April 2009. Obama talked about the plant in early Feb 2008 and did not pledge it would remain open. GM announced it would close the plant in June 2008. More than 2,000 employees worked their last day at the plant in Dec 2008 while Bush was still President. The final 50 or so worked their last day in April 2009, three months after Obama took office. Ryan has made the claim about Obama and the plant closing before and has been called out on it, yet he keeps repeating it in the same misleading fashion. Gullible people that don’t bother with facts take Ryan’s bait hook, line and sinker.

    http://gazettextra.com/news/2009/apr/21/thursday-last-day-production-isuzu-line-comes-end/

  35. punchak

    @Starryflights
    Romney is in “good” company. Ari Onassis, the fabulously rich Greek who married
    Jackie Kennedy, said that he got rich by the formula “OPM” = Other People’s Money.

  36. Cargo, you dismiss all reports as “leftist” or “biased” with the wave of a hand and then declare what you perceive as the right answer, often without any legitimate verification.

    Many of us will remain unconvinced.

    What is it that makes you say that politifact is leftist based?When I think about some of the responses I have seen on fact meter etc, I seem to recall it being pretty even handed about calling out fact and fiction. One side didn’t win most of the time.

  37. @blue

    Rachel Maddow is a self proclaimed liberal.

    Jon Stewart, not so much. Left leaning progressive might be a little closer to the truth.

  38. @Morris Davis
    The final 50 or so worked their last day in April 2009, three months after Obama took office.

    Closed, 2009. Here ya go: This will save writing. http://www.humanevents.com/2012/08/30/the-saga-of-the-janesville-plant/

    @Moon-howler
    Kohn’s bio shows Democrat “style” jobs…like community organizer.

    Politifacts writers have been revealed to be Democrat donors/ voters.

  39. Steve Randolph

    Non-news shows with highest concentration of voter segments:
    (Today’s WaPo Style section)

    Super-Democrats-
    1) Daily Show
    2) Colbert Show

    Ultra-Conservatives
    1) College Football
    2) Antiques Roadshow

    I like all four plus #9) for Moderate Republicans– Pawn Stars.

    A true Independent!

  40. So…. what’s it say if I only like Antiques Roadshow out of your 5 listed?

  41. SlowpokeRodriguez

    Moon-howler :
    Rachel Maddow is a self proclaimed liberal.

    Thank GOD she made it clear. Otherwise….who’da thunk it?

    1. Oh she makes it very clear. I like Rachel Maddow. I don’t agree with all her politics but she is so polite about them she doesn’t ruffle my feathers.

  42. Morris Davis

    @Cargosquid

    A link to a conservative website not only saves having to write, it also saves having to address facts and think. It is true that the plant was padlocked in 2009 while Obama was President. GM announced the decision to close the plant, however, in June 2008, well before Obama was even the nominee. More than 2,000 workers were let go in December 2008, a month before Obama became President and while Bush was still in charge. Bush announced the auto bailout on December 19 and GM said it would start drawing on the loan by the end of the month, but by then 2,000+ Janesville workers were already out of their jobs. As the article from Ryan’s hometown newspaper that I linked says, there were 57 people let go in April 2009 when production came to a final end. If you do the math, that means 98% of the workforce was out of work before Obama came to office and before the bailout was made available. Ryan’s attempt to blame Obama for the displaced GM workers in Janesville is like blaming the sinking of the Titanic on the guy who held the wheel for the final 10 seconds before the last 2% of the ship slid beneath the surface of the Atlantic. Go back and look at what Obama said in Janesville when he spoke in February 2008. He said that if the government helped the plant to re-tool and transition it could survive. Unfortunately, the plant was DOA before help arrived in the form of the Bush bailout.

  43. He blamed Obama for failing yet another campaign promise. He basically stated in that quote, “vote for me and I’ll save your jobs.” THAT was the point of the story. He’s not blaming Obama for CLOSING the plant. Ryan even states that. He’s blaming Obama for promising more than he could deliver, and that became the pattern. So, you go look back and see what Ryan actually said. Ryan stated that the plant was slated for closing in 2008.

    Ryan’s just taking Obama at his word.

    But, let’s turn this around. If you’re this concerned about Ryan, where’s all your comments about Obama’s failures and claims?

    1. I expect if Romney and Ryan win, they will be facing promises they can’t meet also. I hope they are protected from this accusation by not winning though.

  44. Morris Davis

    @Cargosquid

    Here is what Obama said when he was in Janesville in Feb 2008: “And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years.”

    Here is what Ryan said last night: “My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you. . . this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.”

    No matter how you parse it, for the millions of people who listened last night who haven’t spent the time you and I have examining the details, the clear message Ryan conveyed is that Obama promised he’d save the plant and he broke his promise. It’s a more subtle version of what he said explicitly two week earlier: “I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he’ll keep that plant open. One more broken promise.”

    GM announced in June 2008 that they were closing the Janesville plant. In mid-October 2008, GM notified the workers that the main production line, one that made full-size SUVs, would close on December 23, 2008. Congress, in the meantime, was wrapped around the axle over what to do about the financial crisis that went full tilt in September and they wouldn’t get around to passing a bailout until mid-December, more than a month after the presidential election and over a month before Obama took office. To suggest that over 2,000 people lost their jobs in December 2008 because Obama failed to deliver government help after he took office in January 2009 is absurd.

    You asked where is my criticism of Obama for his shortcomings? There was a hearing this week in my case in federal court for getting fired for criticizing Obama. The next hearing is in October. If you think I haven’t been critical of Obama I can show you the scars to prove otherwise.

  45. SlowpokeRodriguez

    So that liberal dope Chris Matthews says that the word “Chicago” is racist…..and we’re supposed to believe anything these liberal “journalists” say?

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