Jake, I actually think that bots have assumed the identity of some of our members and just throw this crap up here to boost post count.

I mean, I know Catsailor is the oracle of all things we hold important (sailing, drinking, fraternizing with members of the opposite sex, stirring the pot, sniffing expoxy fumes, and buying stuff online) but is this really considered a reputable forum for political discussion?

Hunting the Gopher Kong again Jake?

Jake,

Do tell us why you not only care what your grandchildrens taxes will be, but why else are you again voting for King Obama?

The Ticket is set, looks like a winner! R and R the Team to beat.

And beaten like a rented mule they will be.

Peeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuu!

The smell of panic
If this summer had gone the way Mitt hoped it would, he'd never be teaming up with Paul Ryan today

By Steve Kornacki

The most important thing to know about Mitt Romney’s running-mate choice is this: It’s not the move he would have made if the campaign was going the way he hoped it would.

Until now, the Romney strategy has been relentlessly single-minded. He’s had no interest in articulating or embracing specific policy proposals and has generally shied away from saying or doing anything that anyone might find at all unsettling. More than any other candidate in recent history, he has strained to be generic, someone positioned to serve as a protest vehicle for swing voters who are inclined to vote President Obama out.

At the heart of this strategy was a belief that the dreary state of “Obama’s economy” would by itself be sufficient to bring about a Republican White House restoration. Bring every reporter’s question, every Obama attack, and every story in the news back to the stubbornly high unemployment rate and that would give voters reason enough to check his name off.

But it’s been a few months since Romney locked up the Republican nomination, and in that time a few things have become clear.

One is that a significant chunk of swing voters seem willing to consider the state of the economy in context – specifically, the context of what President Obama inherited and from whom he inherited it. Polls continue to show that Americans hold George W. Bush more responsible for today’s economic conditions than Obama. The memory of the meltdown of 2008 and the terrifying free fall that was playing out as Obama was being sworn in has earned the president something of a benefit of the doubt, leading to an approval rating and a head-to-head standing against Romney that are both stronger than they probably should be.

At the same time, Romney’s quest for generic-ness has been undermined by a series of attacks, controversies and self-inflicted wounds. The Obama campaign and its super PAC allies have spent heavily on ads that portray Romney as a heartless corporate raider whose own privileged top-1 percent lifestyle has blinded him to the suffering of blue-collar and middle-class America.

He’s also faced demands from Democrats, the media and even some members of his own party to release more tax records, and his refusal to comply has stoked talk that the missing information is even more politically toxic than what Romney has already put out. There was also Romney’s recent overseas tour, a trip designed to make the public comfortable with the idea of him representing the country on the world stage. Instead, though, it produced day after day of brutal headlines.

The effect of this has been to saddle Romney with alarmingly high unfavorable numbers in polling and to prevent him from pulling even with or ahead of Obama in the horse race. In fact, there are hints in the last week that Obama is beginning to widen his lead, with three recent national polls putting the president ahead by 7, 7 and 9 points. This, in turn, has stirred concern among Republicans and led many of them to call on their presumptive nominee to use the V.P. pick to make a bold statement that might shake up the race.

And with his choice of Paul Ryan, Romney has heeded those calls. Many things can be said about the Wisconsin congressman, but he is not at all the running mate that a generic presidential candidate would tap. If the race was now a dead heat or if Romney was ahead, you can bet he’d be going with Rob Portman or Tim Pawlenty or some other safe, do-no-harm option for his No. 2 slot. If you’ve got a good thing going, why mess with it?

But the generic strategy isn’t working for Romney, or at least it doesn’t seem to be. The Ryan pick represents a new approach: Make the campaign about a Big Idea – in this case, the radical reimagining of tax policy and spending priorities that Ryan has proposed in the name of deficit reduction. Whether Romney now runs specifically on Ryan’s budget blueprint or some revised version of it doesn’t really matter. For the rest of the campaign, he and his running mate will be answering for the social safety net cuts, Medicare voucher-ization and steep tax cuts for the wealthy that Ryan has called for.

To say this is politically risky is an understatement. The Democratic strategy to win back the House this year involves pinning the Ryan budget to every Republican candidate, and Obama has been itching to make the fall race a competition between his priorities and those of Ryan’s plan. The hope for the Romney campaign is that they’ll be able to turn the tables on their opponents by presenting the GOP ticket as a team of unusually serious and courageous policy leaders who are willing to tell hard truths about the country’s fiscal predicament.

There are endless reasons to doubt this will work. The toxicity of the Ryan budget has been tested (on a small-scale, granted) before, and the results weren’t good for the GOP. Which is why, more than anything else, this is a huge risk for Romney – a risk he wouldn’t be taking if this summer hadn’t gone so poorly for him.

Got your two grand yet Todd? You're gonna need it.

Under Paul Ryan's plan, Mitt Romney wouldn't pay any taxes for the next ten years -- or any of the years after that. Now, do I know that that's true. Yes, I'm certain.

Well, maybe not quite nothing. In 2010 -- the only year we have seen a full return from him -- Romney would have paid an effective tax rate of around 0.82 percent under the Ryan plan, rather than the 13.9 percent he actually did. How would someone with more than $21 million in taxable income pay so little? Well, the vast majority of Romney's income came from capital gains, interest, and dividends. And Ryan wants to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends.

Hello, human diary. It is I, Mitt Romney, your better.

Much has happened in the last few days. We have finally announced my choice for vice presidential unit, and it turns out it is that Paul Ryan fellow. Looking up, I see that I noted in my last diary entry that we would certainly not be choosing Paul Ryan for the position if I had any say in it. It turns out that I did not have much say in it, but let me now explain why it was my idea from the beginning.

As you know, Mr. Diary, our campaign has been rocked by scandal in recent days. My press secretary made the gaffe of noting that a law I once endorsed may have provided assistance to sick people. This was disastrous, since providing assistance to sick people goes against the very core principles of my party—there has been a large amount of public drama over this very point, in the last few years.

While our efforts to contain the scandal were admirable, they had little effect. On Friday we came to the conclusion that the only way to demonstrate that I was no longer a candidate who would tolerate providing assistance to sick people was to choose a vice presidential unit who could not possibly be accused of wanting to provide assistance to anyone, ever. Paul Ryan became the obvious choice.

In hindsight he is not as objectionable as I had previously supposed. He has a less objectionable odor than many of the other candidates, and while he is severely poor he conducts himself with an air of self-entitlement worthy of any wealth unit. His hair is the right length. It was only when discussing financial matters with him, however, in a quiet room I have dedicated for the discussion of financial matters, that I began to see that he shared many of my own core values. Like myself, he believes I should pay little to no taxes. He shares my conviction that budget calculations should not be discussed publicly, because there are many complicated parts that commoners would not understand. I believe he has opinions on other things as well. Primarily, however, he believes I should pay little to no taxes, and he has some truly innovative proposals on how to best retrieve monies from the commoners, who primarily squander it on things like sustenance and medical care, and redirect it towards wealth units who can put it to more satisfactory use.

Having spent several days with him at this point, I cannot say that I am entirely satisfied with the choice. I do not like the thought of sharing my bus with him, and so I expressed to my advisers that while this choice was entirely my idea, he would have to obtain his own bus, and that at the very least I would certainly not allow him to accompany me on the current Florida trip. We have therefore left him in some other state, somewhere up north, with instructions that I will contact him again when necessary.

With all the recent commotion, I have not even been able to enjoy riding on Mr. Bus again. I was obliged to answer questions posed by reporters today, which I had thought we had previously agreed I would no longer be doing. The trees in this state are of irritating shapes and sizes. Donald Trump continues to telephone me in attempts to give me advice. While I consider myself quite robust, I did demand that we cancel an event in one of the lesser cities of Florida today; there is only so much of this nonsense I am able to take.

In the end, however, I am determined to see this ridiculous process through. I have a vision, Mr. Diary, of a better nation. I dream of a new America in which all citizens, whether they be wealthy or commoners, whether they be investment bankers or owners of teams related to sport, whether they be white, or slightly off-white, perhaps due to tanning during a recent vacation, possibly while engaging in watersport—a nation in which all individuals, no matter who they may be or how many houses they may own, can come together and agree as Americans that I, Mitt Romney, should pay little to no taxes.

Separated at birth?

Almost two weeks with no comments. Time to shut it down. R.I.P.

This thread you mean? Not soon enough!