Different Day, Same Shit.

Paul Ryan is an idiot. Most of us know this already. So it was no surprise that he would attempt to woo Obama Derangement Syndrome sufferers with the following patented dogwhistle:



The above conjures up the ages-old image of the indolent Negro and the equally old argument that a Negro whose back was not under the direct path of an overseer's whip was a Negro bound for a life of excessive sloth and inexcusable leisure. Therefore, it was nearly a moral imperative to "encourage" otherwise indolent Negroids to donate their sweat equity to the cause of hard labor for their white American betters. The "convict lease" programs of the early 20th century were more or less an involuntary push to deliver the Negro from the ills of idleness.

Fast-forwarding to the modern era, scolding the black community over the lack of well-paying jobs and the resultant poverty is a comforting pastime for conservatives and quite a few progressives, as well. Solving the actual problems of poverty and joblessness among inner city black Americans requires a structural teardown and rebuild of our society, something that many Americans are loath to do. Instead, it's much easier to scold from afar, although that does as much good as blaming a man who woke up in the eye of a hurricane for his current predicament.

Suggesting that poverty and joblessness are cultural problems allows people to equate systemic failures among a group of people as a moral and personal failing of said group. It makes it that much easier to dismiss inner city black Americans as a lazy, shiftless lot unwilling to do a hard day's work - consequently an echo to those times when even an accusation of loitering spelled swift imprisonment under the employ of a farm or a mining company, for starters. Nevermind that job prospects for black Americans have always been dismal.

Ryan's feigned pseudo-sincerity over the inner city black American's plight exists only to gain an edge in the popularity polls and all the electoral advantages they offer.

You have to give the Republican National Committee credit for knocking out a new attack ad straight after the Vice Presidential debates. While Vice President Joe Biden's derisive chuckling made for lovely Twitter fodder, this was probably why so many people wanted ol' Crazy Joe to mask his contempt for veep hopeful Paul Ryan. Then again, there are a million things the RNC and others could use to create an attack ad.

Perhaps Joe Biden should have been as somber and as stone-faced as possible. I'm sure people will ding him for being too "aloof" or "unresponsive." One way or another, you just can't win.

Keep in mind the RNC haven't yet found anything substantive to bang Biden on, hence the above. Meanwhile, Think Progress was keeping tabs on the entire debate with a series of wonderful live posts. Great for calling out the loads of malarkey Ryan tried throwing at Biden and the audience.

- People who want to vent displeasure at a political figure often do it by burning them in effigy. Someone in Minneapolis did it by burning a cat:

A threat to President Obama in the form of a burned cat staked to a tree stump drew officers from several city and federal agencies to a south Minneapolis park before dawn on Monday.

The cat's carcass in Longfellow Park was staked with a handheld American flag on a small stick, according to a federal law enforcement official. Standing next to the cat was an Obama/Biden 2012 lawn sign, the official said.

No arrests have been made.

On the stump along with the cat, with the flag's stick staked through its throat, were an iced tea can and a cat food tin, the federal official said. There was no note, the official added.

- The president doesn't have to worry about lame-assed threats like the one above, as he's learned how to harness the power of the sun. Conservatives reacted by calling the president's discovery "socialist Kenyan voodoo crap" and "proof positive" that he was, somehow, the anti-Christ.

- In an interview with American Enterprise Institute tax scholar Alan Viard, Derek Thompson ponders whether liberals are really, REALLY giving Paul Ryan a fair shake. Please have a bottle of Pepto-Bismo ready prior to reading.

- I shouldn't be surprised Paul Ryan's brother happens to be a private equity executive, too. He also did a little work with Bain & Company, but after Mittens made his exit from the company. I'm also not surprised about big names from private equity and venture capital investment firms chipping in on the wannabe-VP's bottom line.

- Some factories in the U.S. are finally realizing that prison labor is eating their lunch. Speaking of which, there's yet another "kids-for-cash" scandal happening in "Lawd Jesus hold meh" Mississippi. And the "Schools-to-Prison" pipeline goes on as intended.

Last, but not least:


And from the peanut gallery over at Current:

You really think it is a First Amendment right to enter a place like that - most likely uninvited - and shout down a speaker? That is to be our process of discourse in our country - to scream and yell and shout down that with which we disagree? Is that what the Left is all about? Is that what the Left thinks our freedom of speech was intended for?

I doubt Paul Ryan would have entertained this man's questions if he had simply shut up and politely waited until the end, especially since they would most likely be the wrong sort of questions to ask. That Q&A could have ended the same way. Politeness isn't something that flows freely from conservatives, yet it's expected and demanded of liberals and everyone else.

Mitt Romney's known for his gaffes and Freudian slips, but this is perhaps the biggest and most revealing by far. In short, here's a guy whose core support group could care less about aside from the vaunted (R) by his name picking a guy who's a bit more palatable to most of that core. Magic underwear meets soup kitchen and cat food sensibility. Anyone hoping he'd pad his campaign with a minority for vice-president were sorely mistaken. So no Sarah Palin and no Michelle Bachmann. I was personally hoping he'd really fall off the rocker and go with Allen West, as a sort of comedy option. It would have been hilarious.

Instead, we get Paul Ryan. Of the Ryan Plan.

This pick pretty much says everything Romney's "supporters" have been thinking to themselves ever since he won the nomination. "Did it really have to be you, Mitt?" If it wasn't for the other nominees undoing themselves spectacularly, Mittens probably would be working on a House or Senate seat right about now.

You go with the nominee you have, not the nominee you wish you had. Unless the nominee you have picks the nominee you wish you had as his running mate, the consolation prize being he's second-in-line to the presidency if Mittens falls off one of his wife's dressage horses on the White House lawn and breaks his back or something equally tragic.

I sincerely hope there isn't some sort of elaborate bait-and-switch plot brewing. Romney has yet to reveal the bulk of his tax information and if there's anything that could cripple his campaign. If things get too hot for him to handle on that front, he could always resign his nomination ahead of the 2012 Republican National Convention. I honestly don't know how that would work, but I can imagine the following happening:

• Mittens finally releases his tax info ahead of 2012 RNC.
• People discover serious improprieties in said tax info.
• Tax info and any other related info quickly becomes a massive scandal.
• Mittens "steps down" to "save" the GOP's electoral chances.
• Paul Ryan is somehow gifted the nomination, barring calls for a impromptu second primary.
• Tea Party-goers and GOP supporters finally get a presidential pick they actually like, causing the saga of the magic underwear-donning gaffe machine to fade into irrelevance.

GOP supporters love Ryan. He's a clean-cut, inoffensive white guy of the proper Christian faith with proper conservative bonafides and no track record of being a walking, talking gaffe machine. The Tea Party loves him, thanks to his supposed fiscal hardassery thanks to the Ryan Plan. If you haven't noticed what the plan actually entails, here's a quick synopsis that'll probably save you time reading the aforementioned Wiki link:

By selecting Ryan, Romney closely associates himself with the author of a controversial budget plan which would dramatically overhaul the federal government. Ryan, as head of the House Budget Committee, has called for big reductions in taxes for both wealthy individuals and corporations and turning Medicare into a program in which each senior citizen gets a voucher of several thousand dollars to purchase their own plan, instead of the current, government-operated program. He would make Medicaid a block grant program where each state could set its own rules.

Under Ryan, corporate taxes would be 25 percent instead of 35 percent, and the highest tax bracket for individuals would also be 25 percent instead of 35 percent. He would also cut trillions in government spending, likely reducing funds for education, health care and transportation at a much faster rate than Democrats have proposed in order to balance the federal budget.

And here's a walk-through of exactly how the Ryan plan will affect millions of Americans:

1. The Ryan Plan shitcans Medicare as we currently know it in 2022 for everyone born after 1956. In other words, everyone under the age of 66 who hasn't already enrolled in Medicare at that point will receive vouchers. These vouchers will go towards purchasing a private health insurance plan of their choice. It's the illusion of choice that opponents of universal health care clamor for. After all, they don't want government "dictating" their health care - that's for the health insurance companies to do.
   
   The vouchers feature a fixed amount indexed to the projected net federal spending per capita for the average 65-year-old in the old Medicare, specified to be somewhere around $8,000 for 2022. If your private health insurance plan is more than that amount, then you'll just have to supplement it with your own money.
   
2. Age eligibility for Medicare increases by two months per year starting in 2022, until it reaches 67 in 2033. God help you if you can't afford or qualify for insurance until then, because the Ryan Plan also shitcans the Affordable Care Act.
   
3. Medicaid goes from a state/federal funded program to a block grant program, where the federal government simply hands over a set amount (which will be much less than the current federal government funding) and lets the states do as they wish regarding their Medicaid programs. States like Alabama are guaranteed to be parsimonious with this eligibility, which means millions of low-income people will be without some form of insurance coverage.
   
4. Federal discretionary spending takes a dive to 6 percent of the nation's GDP by 2021 and 3.75 percent by 2050, or less than one-third of today's current spending. Meanwhile, Ryan and Romney are pushing for increases in defense spending. There's plenty wrong with that picture.
   
5. The Alternative Minimum Tax and taxation on foreign profits goes away and the corporate tax rate drops from 35 percent to 25 percent. Meanwhile, the tax burden on the poor is set to increase.

Personally, I don't understand why Republicans are falling over themselves over Paul Ryan. If anything, the GOP should be running away from him as fast as they can. The Ryan Plan is the GOP's very own Fukushima  Daiichi in the making and all it needs is a tsunami to make Romney/Ryan radioactive to voters. It's only a matter of time before the GOP's thrown into panic mode when the sheer toxicity of the dynamic duo reaches campaign-threatening levels.

I'm sure it's easy for President Obama to dismiss these clowns, but even clowns like Ryan and Romney display cunning every once in a while.