Closed-door meetings between Obama, Biden, and Hillary Clinton today…
I find it hard to believe that Ms. Clinton would accept Mr. Biden’s place on the ticket, but we’ll just have to see.
Of course, they might just be talking about, oh, foreign policy, or something, I guess. [snicker]
22 Comments
Not that it is mind. Could be they’re discussing whether to set up a bowling league.
http://osgeoint.blogspot.com/2012/07/syria-pahpad-uav-at-shayrat-afld.html
Oops. One letter too many.
Uh oh …
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/presidential-campaign/243983-white-house-says-obama-is-sticking-with-biden-as-running-mate
Thanks TBH!
For damn sure now remind me to pick up fresh batteries for the remote and the recorder when the debates roll around.
Good! I’ve heard they approached Hillary and she refused. Can’t wait for that debate.
Must be happy times, and great feelings all round, in the West Wing.
Now that the choice of Paul Ryan has turned out to be a dud, I am sure that there are happy times and great feelings in the West Wing.
I also can’t wait for the debate. I look forward to hearing Ryan explain why he voted for all of the Bush programs which produced record deficits, but found religion once a Democrat was in the White House. I want to know why he lied about seeking funds from the stimulus program he castigates, why he once called Ayn Rand the largest influence on his thinking and is now distancing himself from her, and why he constantly complains about the deficit yet created a budget which does nothing about it. I’d like to know why his budget depends on closing tax loopholes which he refuses to specify. Most of all, I’m eager to her him explain why VoucherCare is the right solution for a senior with Alzheimers – who is expected to negotiate with insurance companies and providers despite being barely able to remember his wife’s name – or with renal failure, where vouchers will cover about two weeks’ worth of dialysis every year. Should be great entertainment.
I am also eagerly awaiting the Romney-Obama debates. I’d like to see what Etch-a-Sketch Man does when he leaves the home turf of Fox News and actually has to answer real questions from real reporters. This will be a blast.
Campaign 2012: fun for all.
A “dud”?
Well, eye of the beholder and all that, I guess. I think Ryan’s OK. Not perfect, mind you — he’s awfully squishy on immigration, for example — but he’ll do fine.
Perhaps the voucher system isn’t the right answer for people with dementia who have nobody to help them. Perhaps some other arrangement needs to be made for such people. Perhaps somebody will ask Paul Ryan about that during the course of the campaign. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t thought about it. Say what you want about Paul Ryan, but if you want detailed answers about this or that particular feature of budgetary policy, he’s your man.
Is there any perfect solution to the perfect storm that an aging population, ruinous public debt, and an unsupportable (and relentlessly expanding) system of entitlements confronts us with? No. Like everything else in life, it’s a matter of making trade-offs, based on one’s underlying aims and priorities. The selection of Paul Ryan gives voters a very clear choice between diametrically opposite ideas about what sort of a nation we are, and ought to be.
So: you don’t like the Romney-Ryan ticket? That’s fine; nobody around here expected you to. You can vote for the other guys.
(It’s hard for me to imagine how anyone whose VP candidate is Joe Biden could jeer at Paul Ryan with a straight face, but hey, not my problem.)
Yo, One Eyed,
Recall that, “You didn’t build that”?
Turns out:
http://ryancentral.com/history.html
Needless to say, I would take Biden over Ryan any day. In his years in Congress, he actually passed legislation, not to mention participating in the many achievements of the Obama administration.
Paul Ryan’s signature achievement is a budget, filled with areas marked “to be determined later,” which never had a prayer of being enacted into law. Aside from that, he is touted as the intellectual leader of House Republicans, which is like being the tallest guy in Japan.
But hey: you can vote for the other guys if you want. It’s a free country (at least for those who have government-issued photo ID’s.)
Yo, JK:
Whatever his parents or grandparents may have achieved, Ryan’s business experience reached its zenith when he worked as a tortilla roller, before becoming – gasp! – a career politician.
I am eager to hear all of the conservatives who told us that Obama is unfit for the Presidency because of the paucity of his business experience, explain why it’s A-OK for Ryan.
Well One-Eye, as I recall it wasn’t so much Obama’s “lack of business experience” that was called into question – rather his lack of legislative experience.
You may recall the old saw, “all the best funerals and no heavy lifting” – still, Mr. Ryan (probably no heavy lifting here either) should make for some latish campaign season tomfoolery jabbing oratorically with Mr. Biden – thus improving the job prospects on late-night TV.
And just personally, recalling another old saw, “teach a man to fish” – organizing a tortilla as opposed to organizing a community sounds like, with a dash of salsa, could be kinda delicious.
When Joseph Stalin coined the phrase “American exceptionalism,” one of the things he spoke of was our fluid class system. Because there is no entrenched ruling class, a tortilla roller is probably more likely to become President here than in Mexico.
So I certainly don’t begrudge Ryan for his work experience. Whether rolling tortillas or teaching a man to fish, the idea that anyone can grow up to be President is as American as fish taco.
Peter?
Something’s been bothering me for a while – a “retort” I’d directed toward you during Arkansas’ 41 day run of triple digit temps. Your balmy whatever it was the day of my – well… Malcolm took down the posts and since my heat-addled mind can’t recall the date… And since we have enjoyed some good times here…
I apologize.
“No entrenched ruling class”(?) obviously shows you’ve missed delving into Arkansas’ fiefdoms.
Come East young man – I’ve been forced by drought to hold onto some stuff purchased prior to Independence Day, and now that my region’s enjoyed ½ rain over this weekend, I’d like to have you hold the fuses. We can make the papers while we celebrate.
JK?
I keep hearing that on the other side of the Sierras, it’s been hot hot hot. Here every day lately has been more perfect than the last (or would be, if perfection, like uniquity, were a modifiable condition).
Leave 72 degree sunshine with a slight breeze coming off the Bay? Come East? You’re kidding me, right?
Gawd how I hate this infernal internet thingy sometimes! Pete’s probably already got his screenshot and here I am with this:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DM_state.htm?AR,S
Nope. Not kidding. Looks like I might have to come your way though, and I may have to charter. I’m figuring you for a ‘windchimes near the deck-chair’ kinda guy One-Eye?
(At least you’ll make the papers.)
Actually, it was lack of any kind of experience other than hob-nobbing with former Weathermen, Alinskyite grievance-mongering, faculty lounges, and the Choom Gang, but that’s behind us now. Hell, I even voted for the guy myself in ’08. D’oh!
Needless to say!
A suitable campaign ad for either side, that.
You sure you want to get into a pissing contest about budget legislation? After all: for the last two years, the President’s budgets have failed to win even a single Democratic vote in Congress.
Umm… Ryan isn’t running for president.
I shouldn’t have mentioned Toby; it was a personal reference and not appropriate for the blog. He was a friend, very very smart, now dead. I’ve deleted that, and winnowed the comments a bit. My bad.
JK: Buying wind chimes was one of the first things I did when I moved here.
I would like to revisit Arkansas, if only because I’ve only been there for a few hours. I had a meeting at Wal-Mart, so I flew in and out of Rogers on a four seat plane. It was two weeks after 9/11, and the Wal-Mart headquarters was in a virtual lock-down. Very spooky. I want to return to find out if it is really true that Arkansas couples aren’t allowed to have sex standing up, because someone might think they were dancing.
Malcolm: the fact that Ryan is running for VP and not President is immaterial. If he is unqualified to be President, he is therefore unqualified to be VP. He has to be able to take over in the event that Romney suffers an untimely demise – maybe an assault by a dressage horse, or a bad accident in a Rolls Royce parallel parking competition – and must have what it takes to be the leader of the free world (or at least that part of it which does not have government-issued photo ID’s).
As for the 99-0 vote against the Obama budget: it was actually the Jeff Sessions budget, introduced by Republicans as a way to use political theater to embarrass the President by using a Senator’s prerogative to introduce amendments to their own bills. Hence the White House and Democratic Congressional leadership asked their members to vote against it.
It is no different than the “Harry Reid hasn’t passed a budget” meme, which ignores that fact that the Republican Senates of 2002, 2004, and 2006 didn’t pass a budget either.
Aside from political theater, the instructive difference is what both men did when they actually had an opportunity to take concrete action to reduce the deficit.
Obama offered Boehner a deal which would have cut the deficit substantially, with tax increases and spending cuts. Boehner rejected it, and nothing happened.
When Simpson Bowles came up for a vote, those who voted for it displayed the political courage to compromise, by giving up things they want in order to make a deal with the other side. It came up two votes short of the super-majority required to enact its recommendations into law with Ryan voting against it. If he had the courage to abandon his ideological rigidity and raise taxes along with cutting spending, we would be on the path to deficit reduction. Rather than displease Grover Norquist, Ryan displayed timidity and cowardice. As with Obama’s Grand Bargain, the refusal of Republicans to compromise on deficit reduction led to nothing happening, with the same Republicans all to happy to blame Obama for the results of their inaction.
Peter, the ‘no sex standing up’ isn’t actually enshrined in our State Constitution, rather our legislature in it’s wisdom left it up to our counties to decide on the local level.
The county I live in, avoiding the conundrum that babies don’t actually arrive by snowy egret (storks are not native) or are found under the leaves of cabbage plants, adopted an ordinance instituting an outright ban on dancing.
There are exceptions to the dancing prohibition – so long as the couples are cousins and remain within the confines of private clubs in possession of liquor licenses.
I’m unfamiliar with Benton County’s dancing ordinance except to say I believe that county likely holds to another exception along with many other counties in Arkansas – that being, group dancing is acceptable so long as it’s either of two styles. Square or Clog. (I’m personally, of the proud opinion Arkies were, like the denizens of another region, far ahead of some other religious subsets in that our ancestors displayed exceptional understanding of the means for genetic diversity.)
Now that you know we Arkies didn’t just fall off the Grapette truck – please stay there.
For those unfamiliar with our regional idiomatic shortcuts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Cola#Early_marketing
Contest is over. Here’s why:
http://abcnews.go.com/politics/t/blogEntry?id=17028146
Well, these things depend on your point of view, I guess. (Harry Reid wouldn’t even let Obama’s head-in-the-clouds budget come to the floor. And the previous Obama budget went down 97-nil.)
You’re welcome to continue the thread, if you like, but bickering about this is pretty much pointless, so I’ll leave it here. We’ll settle this in 79 days.
I think you’re right Dom, worked for Vlad.
Of course it doesn’t detract having a wife on one’s arm who:
“[Has] family [with] strong Democratic connections, and largely identify with the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of Democratic lawmakers known for being fiscally conservative.
Her uncle, David Boren, served as a Democratic governor of Oklahoma and later as senator from the state. Boren’s son, Dan Boren, is a member of House of Representatives and as a Blue Dog Democrat, has often voted with Republicans. …”
And, I’d add, appears pretty buff herself.
http://news.yahoo.com/paul-ryans-wife-no-stranger-washington-power-circles-213227408.html