NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate, according to a Republican with knowledge of the development. They will appear together Saturday in Norfolk, Va., at the start of a four-state bus tour to introduce the newly minted GOP ticket to the nation.
The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to disclose the decision.
In a statement issued Friday night, Romney's campaign would say only that the running mate would be revealed at 9 a.m. EDT at the Nauticus Museum. Berthed at the museum is the USS Wisconsin - which offered a hint about Romney's choice.
Any bets on how long until we see more ads with a Paul Ryan look a like throwing granny over a cliff?
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Depends....we could always wait and take a picture of him actually DOING that after the election. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Now how on Earth will Ryan bring so much of the budget to <4% GDP, when Romney has pledged never to let military spending get below, what was it, 3.5%? Will the Republican base even notice, or will they be too busy shrieking and cheering at the impossibilities of Ryan's budget?
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And by taxes you mean deficit, right? Because as everyone but economists and historians know, the way to solve a decifict problem is to just cut taxes.
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Jesus, have the united states actually gone completely insane? Sam is right- why and how does this base of people who are apparently capable of reality control exist?
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quote:Originally posted by SteveRogers: This could be Romney's best move or his worst. Either way, it's a bold one.
My thoughts exactly. A lot of Dems are celebrating, and its very premature if you ask me.
Ryan comes with a lot of faults, but conservatives love him.
On the other hand,he's the antithesis of Romney. Romney hates details, Paul is a wonk. Romneys no details plans are now Ryans hyper controversial very detailed plans. That's big...but not necessarily good. Obama is going to scare the hell out of seniors with Ryans medicaire plan.
Supposedly there's a New Yorker article coming out soon by someone who has been all over Ryan for a year, and he was shocked that Romney picked Ryan.
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I'm hoping that the various Tea Party movements' enormous unpopularity among the USA overall (upper 30s approval rating, I believe) instead of among the Republican base will offset a higher potential turnout of the base by a higher turnout of everyone else. Because holy hell I am well past sick of far right conservatives parlaying their high degree of organization and turnouts in primaries, followed by ticket-voting generals, into an attitude that they 'are' America.
Don't get me wrong, that's how the system works, so it's kosher for them to do that, but for quite a long time now the far right of the Republican party has been exercising polical power in this country far in excess of their actual support of the people. It's too much to hope for moderate Republicans or Democrats to grow spines and nip that in the bud, so hopefully the Obama campaign will be able to remind Americans, "Hey, you think these guys are freaking nuts, remember?"
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God, I hope so. But I wouldn't put it past the Democrats to somehow cough up the ball. And, before I get incorrectly labeled as some sort of Democratic partisan again, my hope there has as much or more to do with my disgust with the way the Republican party has willingly surrendered to its own furthest right base as with anything else. Like the last election, my vote for Obama has as much if not more to do with my antagonism for the GOP as it does disapproval of Romney* or approval of Obama.
*Though again, in another classic example of 'our outrage only matters when it's a Democrat', the actual government experience Romney is actually running on is...well, running an Olympics. I guess the exchange rate on that experience into governing ability is extremely high.
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Obama has run the most aggressive Democratic campaign since Bill Clinton. He'll do the math for us, and he'll ram it down Romney's throat in the debates, where a lot of people will make up their minds about the election.
Romney has simply made too many promises he can't keep. And so did Paul.
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Romney has simply made too many promises he can't keep. And so did Paul.
And so did Obama.
I think it was a pretty daring choice. Romney now doesn't have to sweat some of the budget stuff, he can simply adopt Ryan's ideas now.
I don't think Ryan was the best choice, but it is the choice that will probably energize the base the most, which is something Romney needs.
Rakeesh, not be nit-picky, but Obama had what, 2 years in the senate? That is hardly a lot of experience either. Running a state gives a lot more executive experience than being in a senate seat for two years.
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Obama has followed through on a couple huge ones, and there's a general impression that the stuff he couldn't do was largely because of opposition from Republicans. You can say that's not true, but the impression is there regardless.
Romney and Ryan, on the other hand, have some budget ideas that have absolutely no chance of becoming reality with aspects that are downright embarrassing once the specifics are spelled out.
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quote:Romney now doesn't have to sweat some of the budget stuff, he can simply adopt Ryan's ideas now.
Except that Ryan's ideas conflict with the few concretes that Romney has put forth already.
quote:I don't think Ryan was the best choice, but it is the choice that will probably energize the base the most, which is something Romney needs.
No, not really. The base was already planning to vote and vote for Romney, even if they had to hold their nose. I do, however, know a few Democrats that were disappointed with Obama and weren't planning to vote until the Ryan announcement. They now plan to get out and vote against Romney.
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Romney has simply made too many promises he can't keep. And so did Paul.
And so did Obama.
I think it was a pretty daring choice. Romney now doesn't have to sweat some of the budget stuff, he can simply adopt Ryan's ideas now.
I don't think Ryan was the best choice, but it is the choice that will probably energize the base the most, which is something Romney needs.
Rakeesh, not be nit-picky, but Obama had what, 2 years in the senate? That is hardly a lot of experience either. Running a state gives a lot more executive experience than being in a senate seat for two years.
There's a big difference between a plan that literally doesn't make sense, and a plan that's politically untenable.
Both Romney and Paul have plans that are mathematically impossible. Not to mince words, but, they're lying. They simply cannot do what they are promising to do.
Obama has plans on the other end of the philosophical spectrum, but they've failed to be implemented not because they don't add up, but because Republicans have refused to go along.
quote:Romney now doesn't have to sweat some of the budget stuff, he can simply adopt Ryan's ideas now.
Except that Ryan's ideas conflict with the few concretes that Romney has put forth already.
quote:I don't think Ryan was the best choice, but it is the choice that will probably energize the base the most, which is something Romney needs.
No, not really. The base was already planning to vote and vote for Romney, even if they had to hold their nose. I do, however, know a few Democrats that were disappointed with Obama and weren't planning to vote until the Ryan announcement. They now plan to get out and vote against Romney.
Problematic in a lot of ways.
First off, yeah, adopting Paul's plan is really risky. It doesn't really solve his problem because he was intentionally vague. Now he has to take on the mantle of a plan that the far right loves, more or less, but doesn't make any fiscal sense, and scares a hell of a lot of people.
At the very least, his plan clashes directly with Romney's on military spending. Romney has proposed some huge spending increases, and they're apart by several tens of billions of dollars. Then there's Medicare. Good luck wading into an entitlement reform fight.
Paul energizes the base, and scares the hell out of everyone else. Once the oooo and ahhhhh wears off and the analysis sets in, Ryan becomes an anchor. Romney's problem is that he's a moderate that has to pretend to be a hardcore conservative. But that means the far right doesn't trust him, and now centrists don't either. So he goes out and secures the far right? Unless he starts tacking to the center, it's really a terrible long term move.
I'm really interested to see what he does with Ryan's plan.
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quote:Rakeesh, not be nit-picky, but Obama had what, 2 years in the senate? That is hardly a lot of experience either. Running a state gives a lot more executive experience than being in a senate seat for two years.
Absolutely. But Romney is emphatically not running on his governorship. That would be, you know, problematic because then he would be forced to discuss all the ins and outs of how Obamacare was sweet when it was Romneycare and it was Romney doing it, but unspeakably stupid and evil when it's Obamacare and Obama doing it.
As for Ryan's ideas, I would *love* for Romney to openly adopt *some* specific plan (and if you dispute that,'you're welcome to point us to any actual specific major policy campaign ideas Romney has put forward). But as for Ryan's idea, which part of his completely unworkable budget do you like the most?
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: Obama has followed through on a couple huge ones, and there's a general impression that the stuff he couldn't do was largely because of opposition from Republicans. You can say that's not true, but the impression is there regardless.
Romney and Ryan, on the other hand, have some budget ideas that have absolutely no chance of becoming reality with aspects that are downright embarrassing once the specifics are spelled out.
Yeah so?
Romney also got quoted saying that Obama has raised the debt more than any previous president, and that he is going to save medicare from Obama defunding it. He is just lying through his teeth at this point. The people who are still going to vote for him have been conditioned to just put it out of their mind and not think about it.
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Medicare vouchers and privatized social security. Nuff said. Obama is getting this republican's vote.
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Ryan's plan for untying benefits from a guarantee of coverage: competition and choice will bring down the price enough that this won't ever be a problem.
Oh, well, that settles it.
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It might be instructive to keep in mind what the non-partisan CBO has to say about Ryan's plans.
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I wonder if he'd come out and say that he'd defund NASA. Especially right now. Or maybe he hasn't thought about that particular ramification of his plan.
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I think if you asked him the question ideologically, he would tell you the private sector can do it better, as evidenced by Space X. If you asked him as a VP candidate, Romney, whilst thinking of all the space related jobs in Florida and Texas would spear Ryan at the knees to shut him up. Lots of people are saying going to Mars is a waste of money, its an easy cut to satisfy the base, but it'd piss off the wrong people.
Still, there's no room in Ryans budget for NASA. Not even a penny. It's good though, once you eliminate the entire government, it gives people a chance to reflect on what parts of government they say they don't want but really do...which is a lot of it.
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Not that you were making an argument yourself, but it's important to note how much SpaceX owes NASA (a point which Elon Musk himself has made). I think it's generally true that the private sector can do certain things more efficiently, but in some cases, the public sector has to do them first.
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I almost attached that very same rebuttal to my post.
There are countless industries where private enterprise was only able to exploit an industry after government kicked down the door. You also have to consider all the secondary applications that NASA research tends to create.
I'm fine with passing off LEO to private companies. But I don't see any private companies rushing out to bid on billion dollar rovers, asteroid landings and other kinds of space exploration that pushes boundaries.
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The problem with the "Voucher" plan is this.
If the Government guaranteed everyone a Hershey Bar whenever they wanted one, then Hershey could increase the cost of their candy bar and people would still buy it.
The same thing is happening now with medicine. Since the government is guaranteeing that everybody gets the medical help they need, the people proving the medical help feel happy to charge higher and higher prices.
If the government stopped buying Hershey bars for everyone who wanted one, then people could decide for themselves if the prices Hershey charged were worth the chocolate goodness. If it was too expensive, they would not buy it.
So, it would make sense to some that if the government stopped guaranteeing us health care when every we needed it, it would be up to us to decide if the cost of the surgery was too expensive. If not, we get the surgery. If its too expensive--we skip the surgery--and die.
That will teach them to lower their prices.
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I bet NASA's inspiration of the next generation of scientists and engineers alone is worth the money we spend.
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quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: I bet NASA's inspiration of the next generation of scientists and engineers alone is worth the money we spend.
Tell me about it.
I've spent most of the last week wishing I'd gone into engineering or astronomy instead of history, though I've had that fantasy for awhile now. I even seriously considered switching to history of science to try and be involved with some policy-driven area of America's space program, but I just don't see a career in it.
Sigh. I love space. I just wish I was smart enough or driven enough to be involved with it as anything but a spectator.
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quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: I bet NASA's inspiration of the next generation of scientists and engineers alone is worth the money we spend.
The actual economic benefit of Nasa's various technological advances are literally incalculable, and they span such a massive swath of the consumer and industrial sectors, that trying to figure out any concrete numbers is pretty much ludicrous. But you can thank the existence of Nasa and US space exploration generally for the state of modern computing, telecommunications, material sciences (metallurgy, lenses, plastics, carbon fibers) , propulsion, energy (including battery technology), project management, astronomy, and a rather long list I can't begin to touch upon.
Virtually everything you do in your everyday life, every dollar you spend on anything, and every product you buy, is in an untold number of ways connected with what Nasa has produced in the last half century. Its influence is totally ubiquitous, across the whole world.
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: The problem with the "Voucher" plan is this.
If the Government guaranteed everyone a Hershey Bar whenever they wanted one, then Hershey could increase the cost of their candy bar and people would still buy it.
The same thing is happening now with medicine. Since the government is guaranteeing that everybody gets the medical help they need, the people proving the medical help feel happy to charge higher and higher prices.
If the government stopped buying Hershey bars for everyone who wanted one, then people could decide for themselves if the prices Hershey charged were worth the chocolate goodness. If it was too expensive, they would not buy it.
So, it would make sense to some that if the government stopped guaranteeing us health care when every we needed it, it would be up to us to decide if the cost of the surgery was too expensive. If not, we get the surgery. If its too expensive--we skip the surgery--and die.
That will teach them to lower their prices.
I've professed this many a times, there is no such thing as supply and demand in real healthcare (not the Viagra, weight loss drugs, etc. one). If you need a surgery to survive, you'll pay anything they charge. The only force of keeping the prices for skyrocketing is competition, but without supply/demand economics, it's only strong enough to limit the growth to ~15% a year.
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Who are you competing against? If you're talking about competition in insurance, rather than the problems at hospitals themselves, and the pay structure relationship between the two, that's like killing the mosquito after it's already transmitted malaria to the patient. It makes the overall situation a little better, but doesn't really cure the patient.
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Really, the closer you look at health care, the less it becomes suited to traditional supply and demand explanations. Very few people can really 'shop' for doctors-they've got a number of providers in their given area that are hopefully covered by their insurance, and generally they must pick on. Most of us are thoroughly trapped in our own pools of health care, and the only two things that really improve our access to mobility are wealth and better coverage.
In the very long run, more efficient and inexpensive medical care will sometimes win out, but again for almost every given individual they simply don't have time to vote with their dollars so to speak and apply those kinds of Darwinian pressures. Even if it's not critical, in order to avoid missed work or simply misery, they need to access health care and have their given problem treated sooner rather than later. So time as well as location is on the side of the provider.
Yet another way the usual supply and demand chatter doesn't apply is that with most goods and services, it's pretty instinctive to know what to do if you're getting the shaft from someone: you threaten to take your business elsewhere, and then you do it. Even if you can't actually find a better deal, the threat will act as an immediate spur sometimes to get a better offer. With health care, just how many people are well informed enough to even know when they're really being screwed, and by who exactly? Sure, most everyone recognizes, "Damn, that's a lot of money," but that's not a helpful piece of knowledge. Are they getting a raw deal from their insurance? The doctor? A hospital, the pharmacy, or even another party somewhere in the chain? There isn't a blue book out there one can consult to learn a standard value to treat an illness in a human in such and such a condition, in such and such a region.
The most frustrating thing about this is that I'm about as far from well informed on health care issues as it's possible to get without being completely ignorant. I read, and I loved to watch House, but really that's about it. It doesn't take a lot of thought at all to realize how poorly the usual economic ideas and pressures fit in a discussion about health care...but phrases like supply and demand and competition are substitutes for actual thought in so many people's minds.
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Blayne Bradley
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House teaches us that the government will pay to cure you of a life threatening illness or injury so long as it is sufficiently interesting to the Doctor on call.
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quote:I've spent most of the last week wishing I'd gone into engineering or astronomy instead of history, though I've had that fantasy for awhile now. I even seriously considered switching to history of science to try and be involved with some policy-driven area of America's space program, but I just don't see a career in it.
Sigh. I love space. I just wish I was smart enough or driven enough to be involved with it as anything but a spectator.
Hey, that's my plan.
I missed the science boat very early on-- as a child (perhaps I never had the right brain anyway). Now I'm tunnelling back in from the outside.
*
Supply and Demand lowering costs with health care is not only not terribly feasible, it's also not terribly desirable. You don't want to go to the cheapest doctor or dentist, you want high quality good service.
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Supply and Demand lowering costs with health care is not only not terribly feasible, it's also not terribly desirable. You don't want to go to the cheapest doctor or dentist, you want high quality good service.
Well, it depends. I mean in the developing world and parts of the US where there is no medical care, competition for low cost medical care could actually be desirable. Even in the developed world, you may want competition between different contractors for building a hospital or suppliers for a MRI machine if the money saved ends up going somewhere else in healthcare. In Ontario for example, I don't have much issue with the government leaning toward generic drugs to save money.
IMO, the problem with the US system isn't so much that competition doesn't work, the problem is that the ground rules have been laid in such a way that it is much easier to compete for ways to deny treatment or reduce treatment rather than compete for the best way of delivering a certain standard of care.
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Supply and Demand lowering costs with health care is not only not terribly feasible, it's also not terribly desirable. You don't want to go to the cheapest doctor or dentist, you want high quality good service.
But supply and demand doesn't lower all quality. People who want cheap but low-quality stuff will be able to get it, and people who want to pay more for higher-quality stuff will be able to get it too. Maybe some people do want to go to the cheapest doctor or dentist, just as some people will get LASIK for only a few hundred bucks per eye, while some will spend much more for better quality.
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Jon, that is assuming that 1)You can make that choice--hard to due when you are unconscious, 2) You have the money to afford the better quality. If not you get "Survival of the Richest".
The Pro-Market people are arguing about optional procedures like Lasik. The Anti-Market people are arguing about necessary procedures. Sure, you have time to shop for the best value for your baby's delivery or where to get that MRI. But what happens at an accident scene? Do you tell the Ambulance driver, "I'm sorry. I want to use U-Breath Ambulance Company, not your Save-Right Ambulance. I'll just wait and bleed out until they can get here. No, don't bind me up. I can't afford your bandage rates. I'll just hold it in until U-Breath gets here."
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Jon, that is assuming that 1)You can make that choice--hard to due when you are unconscious, 2) You have the money to afford the better quality. If not you get "Survival of the Richest".
I don't see how this contradicts anything I said. Teshi said that supply and demand will lower the quality of treatment. I said that the law of supply and demand does not necessarily do that. Different levels of quality don't cease to exist just because you're unconscious or can't afford the higher levels.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:I don't see how this contradicts anything I said. Teshi said that supply and demand will lower the quality of treatment. I said that the law of supply and demand does not necessarily do that. Different levels of quality don't cease to exist just because you're unconscious or can't afford the higher levels.
While I agree with you that in the long run, supply and demand will work to improve quality overall even in health care, the tricky thing about it is that if people cannot afford the higher levels of quality where they are, and there isn't a higher level of quality at a cheaper price they can actually get to and purchase, then it's very nearly a push.
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Blayne Bradley
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I loved Jon Stewarts bit, with Democrats and Republicans being united.
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quote:Originally posted by Parkour: Romney also got quoted saying that Obama has raised the debt more than any previous president, and that he is going to save medicare from Obama defunding it. He is just lying through his teeth at this point. The people who are still going to vote for him have been conditioned to just put it out of their mind and not think about it.
Well, yes and no. The debt has gone up 4.7 trillion (as of Jan 2012) since Obama took office, and it went up 4.9 trillion under Bush. So Romney is wrong as of January 2012. If you factor in the past 7 months and the rate at which the debt has been growing, it is more than likely Romney is entirely correct in saying that, though that depends on when he made the statement.
Admittedly most of that debt wasn't Obama's doing, and I do think it is dishonest to frame it as such.
As far as Medicare, honestly I would prefer an HSA type plan that I could invest in each pay period to help me with medical costs later in life. Right now due to government regulation the only way I can contribute to an HSA if I have a high deductible plan. I don't expect to get any benefit out of Social Security, so I invest in a 401(k). It would be nice to be able to put some money aside in the same way for health care later in life so I don't have to rely on the government.
I would like to point out too that Ryna's medicare plan is extremely close to what Congress has currently.
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