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Bain/Pain 2012 – Déjà vu all over again

Just a short diary on the Ryan pick for VP.  About a month ago, Rachael Maddow said that she must be the only person in America who thought Ryan would be the VP choice. I told my sister that, no, she would be the 2nd.

greedy fuckersBecause, 14 months ago, an MM member wrote this:

Since you cannot get political news

I will bring you this from the future:

Romney/Ryan 2012

Rep. Paul Ryan would be the best fit for Romney. I wrote earlier that he would choose someone with fundie or TP cred. I will amend that to eliminate the fundie side. The last thing Romney wants is to open the religion issue in his campaign. A fundie VP pick would do just that. So TP it is and Ryan fits to a T. Romney’s no spring chicken (64) and Ryan gives him some youth and sex appeal.

The weird thing is this would be similar to the Dole/Kemp ticket of ’96 (although Kemp wasn’t young). Get this, Ryan was a speechwriter for Kemp back in the ’90s. That’s spooky.

by: virginislandsguy @ Sun May 29, 2011 at 09:16:31 AM EDT

It goes without saying that this move by RMoney is a sign of desperation and weakness.

For my next trick, I’m predicting that the BLS employment numbers for August, September and October will be good to explosive on the upside. This is because the seasonal adjustments have been out of whack for the last 3 years.

Floyd Norris of the NYT analyzes this in “Another (Seasonally Adjusted) Slowdown”

The result is that the seasonal adjustments make things look better than they are in the winter, when fewer workers are being let go than the government expects, and worse in the spring and summer, when the workers who were not let go cannot be rehired. There is, of course, more than seasonal adjustment going on, but I suspect that the underlying swings are far more modest than the monthly figures seem to indicate.

…

If that analysis is correct, the job numbers are likely to seem poor for the next two months, but to pick up with the September report on Oct. 5, and then to look impressive in the October report, which will appear on Nov. 2, four days before the election.

Anecdotally, from the comments:

I know somebody who works for BLS and makes exactly the same argument . I don’t know why this is not more widely communicated

If this comes true, it will destroy the sole rationale for RMoneys campaign. I stick by my prediction of Obama 53%, RMoney 43%, Johnson 2%, Goode, etc 2%.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 157 Comments

157 comments

  1. fogiv

    You nailed it.  Mitt even introduced him as ‘the next President of the United States…’

    Overshadowed much, Mitty Pooh?

    All along, the Obama campaign has sought to make the election a clear choice between the stark Randian ethnocentric social darwinism of the fever-addled GOP and well…sanity.  They’d prefer to avoid a referendum on the President in a still sluggish economy — I call it the Better Angels Plan. The choice of Paul Ryan gives Obama exactly what he wants: a fundamental argument about the kind of country that most Americans want, and the role of government in shaping that future.

    When opposing forces have the exact same goal, one of those forces is wrong.  I know who I’m betting on, and safely.

  4. HappyinVT

    hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha … snort … hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha … gasp. … ha.

    The throw granny off the cliff guy?  The take-the-war-on-women-to-all-new-levels guy?  That’s the guy Romney tapped?  Really?  In the dead of night on a Friday?  On the deck of a government-owned naval museum?  When the nominal head of the ticket is a draft-dodger?  On the weekend of the closing ceremony of the Olypmics?  Well before the GOP convention?  Color me incredulous and still not completely surprised.

    Ryan has zero business experience, unless one counts driving the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile and/or working the grill at McDonalds.  Ryan used SSI benefits, Pell Grants and Stafford loans to get through college.  His district has benefitted greatly from funds from the federal government; pork for me but not for thee apparently.  In other words, surprise!, Ryan is a hypocrite.  And that doesn’t even account for Ryan begging for support for TARP.

    Saw that only 27% of those few who even know of Paul Ryan have a favorable opinion of him.  I believe it was 29% have an unfavorable view.  The guy has never campaigned outside of his district and is best known nationally as the guy who wants to end Medicare as we know it.  People of a recent focus group found it impossible to believe that a politician would propose Ryan’s budget because it is so bad.

    And just after introducing Ryan Romney camp backed off of supporting Ryan’s budget.  So again Romney tries to have it both ways.  Methinks he’ll be as bad at it as ever.

    Not sure, though, what this does to the senior vote.  I’ve seen suggestions that Florida is lost to Romney; that AZ may be in play.  AZ was not called in 2008 until a day or two after the election and it was McCain’s home state.  Does the threat to Medicare close the gap?  At least make Romney/Ryan spend money/resoures there?  I guess it depends on how successfull Dems are at articulating what Romney/Ryan would do to the safety net.  It is already unpopular but by pounding away for the next few months Romney/Ryan might just cry “uncle”  before election night.

    On a slightly more shallow note I have to think the optics aren’t that great, either.  They look like they could be father and son.  How does that play when last election we had an African-American and a woman (blechy though she was) on separate tickets?  That both Romney and Ryan look like entitled assholes (oh wait, they are) can’t help.

    Lastly, I was reminded of the incident where POTUS invited Ryan to a front-row seat to a speech he was giving on Ryan’s budget and then proceeded to shread it to pieces right in front of the Munster man.  Obama/Biden have to be salivating at the opportunity to wrap Ryan’s budget around Romney’s neck in a metaphorical sense.

  6. rfahey22

    I don’t think many people understand the Republican “plan” for America, as reflected by the Ryan budget.  It will be refreshing to have a national discussion on this nonsense.

  8. Peter Jukes

    And we waited this long? A year? For shame…

    Give your prescient insight, I think we might have a money making venture here.

    Can you tell me who is going to win the 2014 World Cup? Or indeed, the numbers for the EuroMillions lottery tomorrow could come in handy too.

    Bit distracted by Olympics to follow the downer of the Ryan choice. For some reason, I get this guy mixed up with Rand Paul. It’s all that incestuous objectivist superhumanity!

    I think Chris has a point of not letting the GOP frame Obama as more taxes, government stifling innovation, and unfortunately Paul is good at that libertarian streak. It resonates with a lot of Americans still, even though all the evidence is that stripping out regulation and cutting social investment has actually led to the current malaise, compared to America’s heyday.

    But as Blasky opines above – people moan about 140 dollars for a boat registration, without thinking that TARP was the equivalent, in real monetary terms, of the Manhattan Project, Apollo Project, Vietnam and Iraq wars, New Deal and Great Society combined. And what’s happened to all that?

    Romney profited from the outsourcing and asset stripping of extreme Reaganomics. Paul enshrines it as an ideological good and moral force. Scary combination. But perhaps more effective than people realise.

    The real hope for the Obama campaign (which despite all the punditry’s prognostications is actually pretty certain to emerge victorious) is the extra votes it gets from its organisation. The aerial campaign by Romney/Ryan will be defeated by the ground war.  

  9. Strummerson

    Rof the GOP House, he gets out of the trap of being pegged for blaming others (even if they deserve it) and avoiding responsibility.  A poll out today reveals that 60% of people agree with the statement that this is the worst congress in history, and this includes 51% of Republicans!  

    It’s a choice: do you want the pres. who has been fighting for national financial stability and middle class growth against a demonstrably obstructionist GOP caucus that has consistently put party before country, or do you want the candidate who selected a leader of the congress that 60% of Americans consider the worst in history as his vp candidate and point man on budgetary issues?

  10. creamer

    Romney/Ryan consistenly say that the stimulus didn’t work. They are counting on low info voters who are not aware of 22 straight months of job growth, Ryans use of stimulus funds in his district, or the over reliance on tax breaks in the bill. I think they tend to accept what ever argument takes the least amount of thought on their part. (I also think this dynamic explains why the GOP is even relevant today.)

     On a brighter note, a NYT piece today indicates that the “swing voter” is smaller in number than actually thought. Many proclaimed “independents” vote consistenly with one party, the just don’t want the partisan label. I think that would give the edge to a well liked incumbent.

     On a darker note, GOP state governments have worked very hard to roll back early voting and inact voter id laws that are meant to inhibit turnout. That makes me a little apprehensive.

     The fact that one political party trys to restrict voter turnout speaks volumes about are current state of affairs.

     

  11. Chris Blask

    Ryan Begins Attacking Romney’s Record As Massachusetts Governor

    here

    “Mitt Romney doesn’t want you to know the disturbing truth about his record as governor,” Ryan said at the Iowa State Fair yesterday, immediately displaying the sort of passionate conservatism that led to his selection by the Romney campaign. “But the facts are clear. Gov. Romney embraced the legalization of same-sex marriage, he imposed anti-business carbon-emission limits, and he championed efforts to limit Second Amendment rights. This isn’t the record of strong family values and small government ideals that our country needs to get back on the road to prosperity-this is a record of ruin.”

    hehehe

  12. Chris Blask

    He has never held a job, is opposed to everything his running-mate has ever done and disagrees with his church leadership, his ideological hero and himself.

    What does that leave?

  13. Cheryl Kopec

    …but I love you guys, really I do! I’ve recently reconfigured my home tabs to where MM will be right in my face every time I start IE, so maybe I’ll be lured in more often, like I was by virg’s alt tag of “greedy fuckers.” Can’t get more real than that!

    Cheers,

    ~~Cheryl

  16. virginislandsguy

    Per my diary prediction that Goode/Johnson/3rd Party will get 4% of the 2012 vote.

    PPP has an 8/21/12 Virginia poll:

    Barack Obama     50%

    Mitt Romney      45%

    Undecided         5%

    But when Virgil Goode (who is close to qualifying as the Constitution Party candidate) is added to the mix:

    Barack Obama     50%

    Mitt Romney      42%

    Virgil Goode      4%

    Undecided         4%

    An 8 point lead at this point looks good, but wait, there’s more! Four years ago at this time, also via PPP:

    8/20/08 – 8/22/08 – 1036 LV  

    Barack Obama     47%  

    John McCain      45%

    But the 2008 result was:

    Barack Obama   52.7%  

    John McCain    46.4%

    This would extrapolate 2012 to:

    Barack Obama     55.7%

    Mitt Romney      40.3%

    Goode/Johnson     4.0%

    As has been pointed out elsewhere, Obama gets 270 EVs with Virginia, Nevada and New Mexico of the battleground states. If Goode gets on the ballot in Virginia, I predict that the Romney campaign will “go dark” there by the 3rd week in October, a concession of defeat.

  17. creamer

       National polls of registered voters show a dead heat. The polling on McCain/Obama proably would not of shifted so much without the finacial meltdown. The hurricane might take the wind out of the GOP convention, but it also might take the focus off the extreme edges of their platform. It also might give the Obama chance to look bad on a disaster. Might remind people of BP as much as Katrina.

        This might still go to the wire.

  18. creamer

      I know Silver’s very good. I’m sure he’s somehow factored in how less early voting will lower turnout in some urban area’s. I’m really not a defeatist, but somtimes living in a country that elects Jan Brewers and Rand Pauls makes me cautious. Hell a ticket with Sarah “I can see Russia” Palin got 48%(46?) of the vote. And can you seriously picture hiring George W for any type of real job, we elected him twice. The unemployment rate is high, growth is low and a bunch of old white billionaires think they get to decide who wins.

     Like I said, Silver’s a smart guy, Romney’s still an ass and we elected W twice.

  20. Shaun Appleby

    Planted amidst the twisted logic necessitated by avoiding naming Romney’s faith in public Huckabee just noted, “…of all the four candidates running for presidential office only one of them is a self-described Evangelical,  Barack Obama.”

    One wonders throughout these lacklustre oratorical efforts to burnish Romney’s candidacy whether there is a subconscious will to sabotage his chances.  Just sayin’.

  22. fogiv

    …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. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

    The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

    {SNIP: list of most blatant examples}

    Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.

    This from…FOX NEWS…

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion…

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