Paul Ryan: A One-Man Fiscal Cliff?

Paul Ryan demonstrating his patented "Budget Karate Chop"

There were a couple of funny hashtags trending on Twitter the day Romney announced Paul Ryan as his choice for Vice Presidential running mate. Republicans were giddy about the prospect of a Romney/Ryan ticket, and together with horrified Democrats, they propelled the #RomneyRyan2012 hashtag to the number one spot for at least a full 14 hours. One excited tweeter cited the top-trending status as proof that Romney had knocked it out of the park, to which I felt obliged to reply, "Yes, haven't seen this much excitement since McCain picked Palin."

The thrust of the #BidenDebateLines thread seemed to be that Biden was a doddering fool, and that the silver-tongued Ryan would give him a sound thrashing in a debate. My contribution to the campaign is this debate line: "My opponent is on record as wanting to dismantle Social Security and Medicare... I think we're done here." Go ahead, Joe. That joke is on the house (pun intended).

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We've found a witch! May we burn her?

Scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

Writer and editor David Okrent's famous observation (also referred to as "Okrent's Law) is that "The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true."  As much as progressives rant about Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, et al, there's little doubt that this "false equivalence" phenomenon is far more corrosive than such overtly biased reporting and commentary.  One of the more recent and arguably most egregious examples of this is the unaccountably evenhanded coverage of Mitt Romney's blatant lies about the Obama campaign's Ohio lawsuit.  George Zornick of The Nation sifts through the crap and unambiguously breaks it down in this recent article.

Only Nixon Could Invent ObamaCare

Brent Budowsky of The Hill nails it:

"[T]he totality of the healthcare law as enacted closely tracks healthcare proposals offered in the 1970s by President Nixon, offered in the 1980s and 1990s by senior Republicans in Congress, and enacted into law in Massachusetts under a governor whose name I cannot remember, who stood next to Ted Kennedy celebrating passage of the state law that became the model for current federal law. Isn't it strange that Republicans now demonize plans that were originated by Republicans"

Shocker: Right Wing News Editor Seriously Misinformed About Breast Health

I know, I know. I hate article titles that begin “Shocker:” too, but after reading the idiotic Townhall.com piece by idiotic news editor Katie Pavlich, “Shocker: Susan G. Komen Pulled PP Funding Because They Don’t Perform Mammograms,” I simply couldn’t resist. Now, Townhall has never been known for its intellectual rigor, but even in that notoriously obtuse shed, Pavlich isn’t the sharpest tool. Even so, she manages to plumb new depths of ignorant asshattery in this ponderously dull-witted piece. Now that Komen has apparently reversed course on Planned Parenthood, Townhall has “updated” Pavlich’s article with a cut-and-paste statement from Komen’s website, rendering the original article following the update as an object lesson in rhetorical face plants.

Incontinent Marines Are Unintentional Anti-Heroes

I posed the question recently, more or less seriously: “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one uploads the video, does it make a sound?” The infamous video of four American Marines urinating on the dead bodies of (presumed) combatants, uploaded to LiveLeak.com… (live leak, get it?), has certainly resulted in plenty of noise, much of it unintelligible.