VP Debate: Ryan holds the fort, while Biden is buffoonish

Last week in the initial presidential debate, Romney’s win over Obama more closely resembled a 90-minute video game, with Obama having been stuck with the broken controller. It became a rout almost immediately, and you stuck around only to see how bad the final tally would be.

In contrast, this week’s Vice-Presidential debate was more closely contested, but was still memorable for two big reasons: demeanor and facts.

First, the facts. Biden started the evening off by pulling a Bart Simpson (“it wasn’t me!!”), essentially blaming our Intelligence Community for the Administration’s repeated lies about Benghazi.

From Commentary Magazine:

The vice president claimed that the story the administration put out about the terrorist attack on the consulate and the murder of the U.S. ambassador being part of the fallout from a controversial anti-Muslim video was the fault of the intelligence they were given. But rather than put the issue to bed, it raises even more troubling questions about not only about the security disaster but also about the lack of leadership shown by senior administration officials including the president. It also contradicts State Department testimony and other comments from intelligence officials that they knew it was a terror attack within 24 hours of it happening.

For Biden to put all of the blame for the lies about the video and the denial of terrorism on intelligence officials says a lot about the complete breakdown of administration counter-terror policy. His denial that anyone in Washington knew that the story put forward Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations wasn’t true seems implausible. Even if true, it speaks to administration incompetence.

“Smart Power“. It’s worked just awesome so far.

Joe being Joe, he was just getting warmed up. This from the Washington Free Beacon:

Vice President Joe Biden accused Rep. Paul Ryan of putting two wars on the “credit card,” and then suggested he voted against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“By the way, they talk about this great recession like it fell out of the sky–like, ‘Oh my goodness, where did it come from?’” Biden said. “It came from this man voting to put two wars on a credit card, at the same time, put a prescription drug plan on the credit card, a trillion-dollar tax cut for the very wealthy.”

“I was there, I voted against them,” Biden continued. “I said, no, we can’t afford that.”

[Actually], Sen. Biden voted for the Afghanistan resolution on Sept. 14, 2001 which authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”

And on Oct. 11, 2002, Biden voted for a resolution authorizing unilateral military action in Iraq, according to the Washington Post.

Further, if you re-read that quote, what the Beacon doesn’t single out is the “put a prescription drug plan on the credit card” part of Biden’s quote. His finding fault with that is curious, since he voted for it, too, along with many of its expansions.

Hey, maybe he forgot?

And now, and perhaps most importantly in the long run, the demeanor.

I have to assume that it was drilled into Biden’s semi-porous cranium that he had to attack, attack, attack the entire night. Well, if that was his goal, he succeeded. However, he also succeeded in portraying himself as an overbearing, contemptuous, insufferable creep.

I promise you: that is a charitable description.  

Biden's got the "arrogant know-nothing hard of hearing mathematically ignorant jerk" vote locked up.—
John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 12, 2012

Poor Joe, he's been talking to himself for 4 years, he doesn't know how to hold a conversation. #VPDebate—
Craig Carroll (@craigcarroll) October 12, 2012

I listen to Wallace every week, and he’s no partisan. He is, in fact, often much tougher on Republicans than anyone this side of MSNBC. His portrayal of Biden is accurate to a fault: Biden exhibited the manners of the drunk guy at your last office party, hectoring the bartender for “one more for the road”. I haven’t seen as epic an interruption (or in this case, a blizzard of them) since Kanye West and Taylor Swift. Virtually ever time Ryan spoke, Biden would begin yammering. The most recent tally that I’ve seen so far is Biden=82 interruptions, Ryan=6. If that’s even close to the official total (and I think it may be too low), that tells you all you need to know.

Biden wasn’t done. As Wallace intimated, even during the times that Ryan could string three sentences together without Joe “My turn! My turn!” Biden butting in, he amused himself by laughing. Snickering. Smirking. Openly guffawing. Rolling his eyes. And generally behaving like your 9-year-old when they argue with a sibling.

It was pathetic.

Feel free to watch all or part of it below. I’m warning you, though: within the first 30 minutes, you will have lost whatever remaining respect you had for our current VP. And the next 30 minutes is worse.

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Ryan was solid throughout, and presented himself as smart (we knew that), and in control of the facts (knew that, too). Ryan didn’t outright win the evening so much as Biden discredited himself from consideration with his churlish, clownish behavior. Among Independents especially, I think that will count against Biden far more than any policy points he may have scored.

Before the debate, I had initially decided against including this cartoon. Now it’s more than appropriate.

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UPDATE: Ed over at HotAir.com has video of Biden claiming to have voted against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, citing them both as the reason for the massive deficits we now face. As I mentioned, this is a complete and total lie.

Check out his post, and you won’t have to sift through the entire debate video (above) to see it.

Hiding the ‘Big Lie’ by ….accusing your opponent of Lying

You’ve gotta hand it to the Libs: they show world-class commitment to their lies.

The mantra from the Left regarding the General Motors plant in Janesville, WI  which Paul Ryan referenced in speech his RNC speech has basically been, “Paul Ryan lied, Lied, LIED”. Over and over, and over again, this has been repeated ad nauseam. They simply will. Not. Let. It. Go.

In this day of politicians rolling over at the first hint of push back, it’s impressive and admirable that Ryan hasn’t so much as flinched in the face of this contemptible slander. And, of course, Ryan has something going for him in this argument: he’s telling the truth. 

We discussed this last week, and since this has been proven incontrovertibly false, you’d think the Left would just lick their wounds on this and move on.

When will we learn.

On the Today show, Matt Lauer grilled Ryan yet again over this:

“There are some people who are claiming that you played a little fast and loose with the truth on certain key elements. And I’m not just talking about Democratic analysts, I’m talking about some independent fact checkers. Would you concede that while many of the things you said were effective, some were not completely accurate?”

Ryan responded patiently yet firmly, as if he was explaining to his 10-year-old why running with scissors really wasn’t such a hot idea: 

“No, not in the least, actually. What they’re trying to suggest is that I said that Barack Obama was responsible for our plant shutdown in Janesville. That is not what I was saying. Read the speech. What I was saying is the President ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After our plant was shut down he said that he would lead an effort to retool plants like the Janesville plant to get people back to work. It’s still idle, people are still not working there.”

You can see the whole Today Show clip here. By the by, I’ve found that when I’m watching Lauer, keeping an airsickness bag near-by often comes in handy.

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Now I’m just a guy with a blog, but if I could do the 5 seconds of research to find the video (below), then presumably Matt has an intern or six that he could dispatch to bring this same video to him. The only reason he wouldn’t is that he already knew the truth, he didn’t want to know it, ….or Lauer was simply lying.

Here’s the video; you decide:

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UPDATE: From Newsbusters, this will come as a shock to exactly …nobody.

Although the press has decided that every statement of Paul Ryan’s, no matter how provably true, is cause for days of dissection, when it’s one of their darlings like Elizabeth Warren, they can let wild assertions go unchallenged…even when the statements are cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs level crazy.

Shocked, I’m telling you; shocked.

(click on the image to connect to the story)

Regarding Paul Ryan: You called down the Thunder!!

Ever since the formal announcement on Saturday morning that Paul Ryan would be Mitt Romney’s VP, the web and the TV talking heads have been on fire with articles and opinions about Ryan’s selection, alternately praising and castigating it. The Left seems to be acting especially happy, which I am taking as the political equivalent of “whistling past the graveyard”.

As soon as I heard the news, I had the immediate flash in my brain of Wyatt Earp on the train platform in ‘Tombstone‘:  ”You called down the thunder!…..“, and it seems that it occurred to more folks than just me.

I think I know why, too.

Ryan has already made Obama look foolish on national TV, while coming across as the non-threatening-yet-brainy boy-next-door. The Left responded as they always do, telling lie after lie about Ryan, which after three years has had zero effect …other than to make them look shrill and desperate.

With the addition of Ryan, the choices are more stark than ever:

• The free market Capitalist, cut spending so we can grow the economy and reduce the deficit guys in one corner, and
• the Statist and quasi-Socialist, spend-like-a-five-year-old-with-his-very-first-nickel guys in the other corner.

Oh, yeah: I’m gonna definitely need more popcorn for this.

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UPDATE: For those of you who are coming late to this party, here are some links for you that pertain to or include Mr. Ryan:

• Path To Prosperity.
• Paul Ryan vs. the Titanic.
• Pro-Growth Tax Reform.
• Paul Ryan on the hidden spending in Obamacare.
• Paul Ryan and Truth.
• How to save Medicare.

Admittedly, we’ve been on Ryan’s bandwagon for a long time now. He’s not a perfect man, just a good one …but he’s just about perfect for this particular place and time.

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan Comments on Jobs Report at House Hearing - 6/1/12

Reblogged from Unedited Politics:

http://www.youtube.com/v/2Xrbm2oZ2Gg

A completely honest analysis in three short minutes.

Paul Ryan and Truth

“You can’t HANDLE the truth!”

Jack Nicholson didn’t really mean that.  What he meant was that the truth would make him look really bad, and probably cost him his job.  That’s often the case when obfuscation is claimed to be a concession to the other guy’s weakness.

But what about when a brave truth-teller, like Paul Ryan (see my brother’s recent posts), is lambasted for telling it like it is?   Saying that he lacks compassion for the poor, that cutting government-subsidy programs like Food Stamps is condemning a hefty share of our population to starvation, may or may not be true.

Paul Ryan vs. the Titanic

I was reading my sister’s piece on the Titanic again, and it got me thinking. Me being me, I started thinking politics, rather than nautical disasters.

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Stick with me for a moment.

Paul Ryan has been warning of our dire financial situation for years now. You can say this about Ryan: he has the courage of his own convictions. He’s one of the few folks in Congress who can articulate the true nature of our financial plight, and he rarely wastes an opportunity to voice that concern. From his now-famous videos on the Path To Prosperity, to various exchanges with his political opponents about the disastrous Obamacare, the man exudes charm, sincerity and raw certitude of his subject matter.

Like the early warning system that the Titanic never had, Ryan continually exhorts us to address-and-avoid the impending financial doom that sits directly in our path. Dismissing his warnings by calling them “mean” is simply to misstate the obvious: we can’t spend money we don’t have. You also can’t do it by printing money (aka: monetizing the debt), and you can’t borrow money indefinitely. These realities are unpleasant to consider, but to avoid considering them BECAUSE they’re unpleasant brings a certain phrase to mind:

His most recent article (discussing Obamacare and its dangers) in The American Spectator is classic Ryan:

The President’s health care overhaul is emblematic of the wrong way to address the problems in health care and Medicare. The law raids Medicare by nearly $700 billion to fund a new, unsustainable, open-ended health care entitlement. It creates a government panel of bureaucrats with the power to impose price controls on providers in ways that would result in rationed care and restricted access to treatments. It vastly expands an already unwieldy administrative state by creating 159 new boards, commissions, and government programs. It is built around the flawed assumption that bureaucrats, if given power over the marketplace, can curb rising health care costs by expertly determining prices and dictating treatment options to doctors and patients.

Ultimately, this approach transforms the relationship between citizen and state, leaving individuals increasingly passive and dependent on their government. Further, it substantially diminishes the quality of and the access to care, as future policymakers cut costs to meet budgetary bottom lines rather than patients’ medical needs. There is no way for “experts” in Washington to know more about the health care needs of individual Americans than those individuals and their doctors know, nor should bureaucrats second-guess how each individual would prioritize services against costs.

Read the whole article. Ryan is worried that Obamacare takes a bad situation and manages to make it even worse. However, he also consistently says that his approach is not the ONLY way out; it’s simply A way out. If we can use it to have an actual discussion about HOW to address our financial ship, perhaps we can avoid our iceberg better than a certain ship did a hundred years ago.

Speechifyin’……

After his second consecutive budget just went up in Phoenix-quality flames (414-0) last week, you might imagine that President Genius would have something better to do than hurl rhetorical rocks at folks that are trying to get some ACTUAL WORK accomplished.

But, no, such days of political restraint are sadly long gone. So we have seen him recently give speeches basically threatening the Supreme Court, and repeatedly castigating the Republican budget that passed the House. He also spent a couple days trying to make a joke of his “open mic” problem with Russian President Medvedev. 

Heck of a week, Sparky.

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Of course, if you have seen ONE of Obama’s speeches, you just might have seen them ALL.

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And, if you have NOT had a chance to watch Rep. Paul Ryan explain the debt crisis in which we are currently ensconced, you owe it to yourself to be at least passingly familiar with his argument. The Republican budget solutions will always get short shrift in the Boston Globes and on the NBCs. Assessing it for yourself is the ONLY way to be intellectually honest…….if that sort of thing is important to ya’, of course……

As you watch one of his vids for the Path To Prosperity, just remind yourself that THIS is the guy that Obama is trying to paint as “extreme”.