I said I wasn’t going to post on the political conventions and I plan on sticking to that. However, I’ve got to say that I’m baffled by the commentary about the Republican National Convention. The blogosphere and media outlets are absolutely full of posts, articles, columns, etc. debunking Paul Ryan’s speech of last night.
I haven’t hear any of it but I have read snippets of the prepared text as well as some of the criticisms. Outside of the mendacity that I’d associate with any political speech but especially political speeches giving during national conventions I didn’t see anything particularly outrageous. What’s all the hub-bub, bub?
To my ear the reactions sound a bit desperate. Can somebody please interpret this stuff for me? I really don’t get it.
Update
Let me expand on my remarks above a little. According to the RealClearPolitics average, a composite of polls, President Obama leads by 1.1%. That’s not a very big lead for a sitting president.
Now, maybe Mitt Romney will completely fall on his face when he gives his acceptance speech tonight. Maybe President Obama will completely knock the ball out of the park when he gives his next week. I don’t expect either of those things to happen. I expect Mitt Romney to get a small bounce from the RNC and President Obama to get not much of anything from the DNC. He’s not exactly underexposed to the American people.
What does that mean? To me it means that the presidential election is too close to call, there’s still a slight likelihood that the Republicans will get a majority in the Senate, and, although it looks like it might be possible that Democrats will narrow the Republican lead in the House slightly, the Republicans are likely to hold the House. Which is, essentially, what I’ve been saying for the last year.
Partisans of both parties have unenviable chores ahead of them. Democrats must defend the indefensible. President Obama has gotten nearly everything he’s asked for and the economy is still in the toilet. We’re still in Afghanistan, bleeding lives and dollars every day. Pakistan destabilizes a bit more every day and our drone attacks are contributing to that, at least at the margins. Guantanamo is still open. The president continues to repeat that Iran’s getting nuclear weapons is “unacceptable”, whatever that means. The Holder Justice Department and the Geithner Treasury are just about as horrible as any of my memory.
Republicans must embrace the incoherent. Gov. Romney wants to shrink federal spending but he wants to expand defense spending. His tax reform plan, even if it were to be adopted, would not of itself heal the problems with our economy, at least not in the near term. And that it would suddenly produce 4% real GDP growth is beyond understanding.
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BTW
Some of the crescendos in Beethovens s Ninth? the violins? Now that’s jamming.
That’s the genius of the Army Corps of Engineers.
We were on the fringe of the path. Lots of small twigs and limbs down, two potted plants knocked over. The Norfolk pine blows over in any old wind, though.
The fellow up the street had some medium limbs down, but his trees often shed during thunderstorms.
Here’s a picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gonesouth/7896511522/
And Drew, I was reared in Dallas, Texas, but I’ve lived here for nineteen years.
And those overrun beds are my next project, to prepare them for fall planting. The garden was thriving before my husband took ill.
Help Wanted, indeed.
@Drew
… But it flummoxes me that an important port is well below sea level, and this has not been rectified in over a hundred years.
Geography. Getting ocean going ships much further up the river is costly at best. Between NO and the Gulf, some dredging needs to be done, but the river is not as deep further up the river. New Orleans is the natural spot where you would build a port, but with the coastal erosion, Baton Rouge may be an alternate choice.
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