Since when is “junior” an insult?
I linked to it earlier in the thread, but RCP has taken Wisconsin back into the toss-up category.
So what do you guys think? Does Ryan as the VP pick make Wisconsin a purple state this year?
I believe the taxpayers supporting the school should get credit ahead of the students. Not that the students don’t deserve credit, but you can’t do well at school if there is no school.
The taxpayers have made the achievements of all the students possible. (Excepting, of course, the minority who chose their parents well - that is, chose parents who could afford to pay for quality schooling if there were no taxpayer-supported education.)
OK, now you’re taking an already stupid GOP talking point to the point of vacuity. The bus driver is providing an * opportunity *, but there’s no guarantee that anyone will make the most of that opportunity. Sort of like the internet that the government initially invested in provides opportunities for people to broadcast their valid, incisive political opinions, but your post demonstrates that not everyone is taking advantage of that.
Nate Silver is not impressed, fwiw. He thinks it’s risky with not a lot of reward. He thinks Portman or McDonnell would have been a better choice. He thinks Romney chose Ryan as a hail mary pass because Romney thought he was losing.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/
Silver still has Wisconsin as a sure thing for Obama. Probably too soon to know for sure, of course.
Being that he’s been in office since 1999, he’s obviously popular in his own district. In order to offer an opinion on your question, I’d have to know how the rest of the state feels about him. But I see that Nevada is a toss-up also, with Obama leading by virtually the same as in Wisconsin (5.3 points). Didn’t you imply earlier that RCP made it a toss up again specifically because of Ryan? Maybe it simply comes down to the percentages, and I see that the spread went from 6 points to 5.4 on the 8th of August.
ETA: This is just a long-winded way of saying that I don’t know why the vote in Wisconsin changed. Maybe because of Ryan, maybe not.
It appears that my crediting Mr Ryan with a progressive view on gay rights was spoken a bit too soon. Mores’s the pity, but there you have it.
I think it is the extreme condescension in context, it does not mean that the word itself is an insult. I had to learn that recently in GD, hopefully the ones that are actually juniors do not think that therefore they can cry foul every time the word is used.
This thread is about the selection of Ryan, not the out of context “You didn’t build that.” quote right?
Tomorrow comes a day too soon.
The narrative is something along the lines that leftists were morally bankrupted by the failure of the Soviet Union and had to devise a new nefarious plot to interfere with the sacred Capitalist doctrine of private ownership of the means of production. They invented the threat of “global warming” wholecloth in order to get their inefficient grubby hands in the gears of the machinery of the job creator with their inspections, regulations and taxation.
Oh, neglected to mention:
Has anyone looked for other warning signs? You know, taking the VO falcon out of its display case for cleaning, making alterations to his will?
I think it was pointed before that congress was the thing that has much less support than the president has, as Ryan is learning, his record in congress is indeed an issue:
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/dems-try-to-discredit-ryans-deficit-cutting-clout.php
If the election is about that (and now it is), they lose.
And does that give Obama a mandate to protect them?
Nobody credits the bus driver more. That’s stupid.
But the bus driver is still essential to the kid’s success, in a small way.
The campaign was already about the economy. It’s not like Romney has much to say on foreign policy, and the old Dems are weak argument went to the bottom of the sea with Osama’s body. What Romney has done is to change the focus from the economy and his amorphous solution to Ryan’s “let’s destroy the government” budget. Which Romney is already flip-flopping on.
The bus driver was already paid for his contribution. As was everyone else.
The difference between liberals and classical liberals is that liberals see everyone as part of one ‘community’, and that any success earned by an individual belongs, at least in part, to the larger community.
Classical liberals see people as free individuals who contract with other free people, and are therefore not obligated to the community at large. If I come up with a great idea for a machine, but I can’t weld, I must hire a welder. But I paid the welder an agreed-upon fee for his services, and therefore he has no further claim on me. If I then sell that machine for $1 million, it doesn’t matter that the welder only got $50. I may thank him for his help, but he doesn’t deserve a percentage of my profits unless my initial contract with him specified it.
Further, classical liberals do not believe that the larger community can impose a debt on individuals because of existing infrastructure. I had no choice in whether my great grandparents spent their money to build a railroad, and therefore I have no obligation to share the profits I may incur in part because I could use that railroad - I’m only responsible for paying the negotiated fare of use, or for paying the taxes required to maintain it. Once I have done so, my obligation to the larger community ends.
Except that Republicans want to cut funding. Which means bus drivers stop getting paid. Teachers stop getting paid. Come on, man, it’s not that hard.
That’s current US conservative thinking: that because the star student or the entrepreneur succeeded, then they would have succeeded with or without the infrastructure, and meanwhile the infrastructure is being used to prop up kids that aren’t succeeding. The infrastructure, therefore, is irrelevant or a drag on our pocketbooks, and needs to go.
Do you suppose that there’s a gene for “gratitude” that conservatives simply lack?
Well, Sam, as an American, I happen to think that there is something special about America and about my fellow Americans. It is something more than just the contemporaneous collocation of independent contractors.
I know you’re not American, so perhaps you and the other classic liberals just can’t appreciate it.
Reverse ageism is what I’m guilty of, then? I’m somewhat baffled by the intolerance of racism and curse words here, while allowing misogynistic and ageist remarks to go unchallenged. I have to wonder if Quasi finds the casual reference to dementia in the elderly as amusing as the person who used it? Or perhaps my humor switch got accidentally turned off this morning.