As political junkies go, I'm right up there with the best of half of them, I suppose.
You see, I can't quite stomach watching the GOP convention. Alison has done a great job of detailing yesterday's events, and I'll thank her publicly for that. Oh, and my husband writes notes and leaves them on the laptop, so I don't miss anything. Last night he wrote that Ryan is pro-Romney and anti-Obama. And Ryan "also went into some detail in describing that he is pro-Ryan." Heh.
(Aside: Back in the old days, knitters got together online in a Yahoo group called the Knitlist. That's how I first "met" Alison. I quit reading the Knitlist a few years ago and lost track of quite a few members who are suddenly popping up as friends of my Democrat Facebook friends. I'm loving this small world, connected by invisible threads.)
When the Washington Post – not exactly a liberal mouthpiece – publishes a fact-checking piece on Ryan's speech, well, that says a lot. More than I can say, especially since I haven't done any research. Because Alison did it for me.
A friend stopped by yesterday who is as left of the salad fork as I am, and between the two of us we've solved all the problems of the world. What we haven't figured out is how any Republican woman can vote for the Republican ticket this year.
Republicans have been taken over by the well-financed Astro-turf Tea Party Rethuglicans. The current batch of GOP candidates are nothing like the moderate Republicans who actually worked with their colleagues to govern. We should have known things wouldn't go well when Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stated after President Obama's victory that "Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term."
Here's the GOP in a four-minute nutshell, courtesy of Will McAvoy, Alan Sorkin's fictional anchor on the HBO series The Newsroom. There are longer pieces out there in which McAvoy identifies himself as a registered Republican. In this clip he's explaining how his party has changed:
I will work as hard as I know how to re-elect President Obama. I think our country is in grave danger if Republicans win. We need to re-elect President Obama and hand him a Democratic-controlled Congress, and we need to bring back some sanity to the political process.
Countries fail. The GOP seems to be hellbent on making the United States one of them. And those who will lose the most are women. I can't let that happen. My granddaughters deserve more. And so do yours.
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4 comments:
Preach it, sister!
It horrifies my personal pride that someone who claims my religion in public acts as dishonest as Romney does. And why is it not all over the news that a Washington Post reporter got Ryan to admit that even though his Roadmap got voted on numerous times in the House, he had not once, not even yet, run the numbers to see if they actually worked? It was all based on a bluff and he knew it. He still knows it. He still pushes it.
And the claim of gutting work to welfare, when they know full well that Obama responded to Republican governors who wanted permission to tweak the program to get people to work faster. And they if put in charge would do what differently, exactly?
I have been actually watching the 10pm primetime coverage of the convention - very unusual for me, as I don't take a lot of interest in such things typically.
It's been disturbing to watch, but figured I owed it to myself to hear it "from the horse's mouth" so to speak so I couldn't be accused of just quoting sound bites from the "liberal media" etc.
I found it unbelievable that Christy could get up there and say with a straight face that once the republicans were in office they would foster an environment of cooperation between parties etc. REALLY...? Then why couldn't they foster that over the last 4 years. UGH!
Paul Ryan had an annoying habit of doing a sort of semi-clearing of his throat every time he paused for applause. I found his medicare remarks to be disingenuous. I'm tired of the criticism of "Obamacare" for "taking" $760B from Medicare when it is savings over time, not money taken away. Of course, any good republican would tell me that I'm just brainwashed to believe that.
But the most disturbing thing I've seen in the last few days was an interview with Romney on the CBS evening news - last night, I think, but could have been a few days ago - where he was pressed to say how he plans to balance the budget - what would he cut.
He specifically mentioned: Repeal of "Obamacare" (of course) as a big savings, then when pushed a bit said he would do away with funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities, funding for Amtrak and funding for PBS.
When the reporter pointed out that these 4 cuts would be but a drop in the bucket and pushed a little harder, he admitted he would take Medicaid and food stamps out of the federal budget and give them back to the states...yeah, if the feds can't afford it, I'm sure that states can take it over - no problem. So maybe our federal taxes go down (maybe), but state taxes would either go up or a lot of people would be SOL.
It's all looking ugly. There's no sign that if Obama gets reelected that there would be any more cooperation than he's had so far. The whole republican thing appears to be a "my way or the highway" sort of proposition. Even though an additional term would not be at stake for Obama, I have no hope whatsoever that republicans would be cooperative in any way with programs and policies that might get us back on track if they are no in power to take the credit.
Very depressing, really...
Denise you have expressed EXACTLY why we not only need to re-elect President Obama but also give him a Congress who will work with him. It couldn't be more important. We're very hopeful here in WV that we can unseat one or both of the GOP seats in Congress.
Thanks for watching ... I would have ended up throwing something at the television, probably. Thanks for your analysis, too. Between your comment and my husband's little handwritten notes about the proceedings, I feel fairly well-informed.
Facebook has been all about Fox News calling Ryan's speech "dazzling, deceiving and distracting." When Fox calls you out, you know you've been bad. (Well, except Ryan's probably too narcissistic to think he's done anything wrong.)
Debbi: I was having a talk with hubby last night who used to be a big political junky and I was surprised he wasn't watching the convention to critique it etc. .He got a book, and sat up and said he would break the tv...he said he would catch up on it in print tomorrow... safer for the tv.
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