Paul Ryan Ready For Real People? Probably Not... But Tampa Should Be Fine

After having banned most Republican stars from the Tampa convention stage-- from Palin, Bachmann, New and Santorum to Ron Paul, who's retiring and practically begged Romney twice for a chance to say good-bye-- the Romney campaign announced yesterday that Chris Christie will give the keynote and that Marco Rubio will introduce Mitt. A Koch brother is a delegate and will mingle with his subjects. This is shaping up to be a real snoozefest-- although Tampa health officials are bracing for a possible outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases.

Prostitution in the Tampa Bay area is expected to increase during the Republican National Convention. But will that lead to the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases?

We asked that question of a county health official, a high-end escort, and an academic expert. The answer is complicated.

..."Mary" isn't taking any chances. The high-end escort from Tampa has a plan.
Before she even meets her clients, she has a good idea of who they are.

"I want to talk to these people. I want to know who I'm seeing, why I'm seeing them," she says.

But what a simple screening doesn't reveal is whether they have a sexually transmitted disease-- a risk factor that is not lost on Mary. 

"There is no safe sex, there's safer sex, I mean you can get sick from drinking after someone, let alone kissing them!”

It's a job hazard that has her taking steps to keep herself safe. 

"I get tested. And a lot of my girlfriends do too," she says.

But long before it even gets to that point, she protects herself. 

"Condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, female condoms, male condoms, dental dams, condoms…what else? Condoms," she says.

Back to that question-- do political conventions lead to the spread of STDs?

Researcher Scott Cunningham, a professor at Baylor University, says the risk seems to depend on the type of prostitute sought and who is seeking them.

"It would be like saying there is such thing as a car, and you treat the car market as if there is just one thing," he says.

First of all, clients at the RNC may be different than at an event like the Super Bowl.

"That's where the public health question becomes a little bit more complicated,” he says, “if you are bringing in a lot of young men who are drinking a lot to a sports event, I think you have more reason to think they might be transmitters of STDs.”

He says that’s because these men are more likely to contact higher risk prostitutes-- women who may take on more clients and be less likely to use protection.

Through his research, Cunningham has found that the clients at political conventions tend to be older men who are more likely to hire high-end escorts.

And Tampa's 50 strip clubs are expecting a bonanza from Republican delegates, who, the club owners say, drop three times more cash on hookers and booze, etc than Democrats do.

“The average was $150 for Republicans and $50 for Democrats.”

As further evidence of the clubs’ nonpartisan appeal, Don Kleinhans, the owner of the 2001 Odyssey, said when the Promise Keepers, a male evangelical group, came to town years ago, business was rollicking.

“We had phenomenal numbers all weekend, and they walked in wearing badges and name tags and weren’t shy at all,” he said.

There's even a Sarah Palin impersonator, Lisa Ann (from the popular porn flic, Who's Nailin' Paylin?), appearing at a top strip club, Thee Dollhouse on August 24 and 25. And the gigantic Republican closet case contingent-- from relatively open gays like Lindsay Graham, David Dreier and Aaron Schock, to deeply closeted freaks like Patrick McHenry and Trent Franks. Words of wisdom from Republican pedophile and former Florida Congressman Mark Foley:



But political junkies are much more interested in knowing what went on behind the scenes in Romney's terrible running-mate choice than what goes under between the sheets between hypocritical Family Values Republicans. For example, the NY Post reported that keynoter Christie could have had the VP nomination... if he was only willing to resign as governor. That doesn't ring true but Joe Hallett 's analysis/Op Ed in Sunday's Columbus Dispatch about how Portman lost the nomination does. Hallett, the dean of Ohio political writers, thinks Romney may have blown the election by passing over Portman for the more controversial Ryan.

[I]n bypassing Portman for Ryan, the Republican presidential candidate made a big mistake. Paul Ryan doesn’t get Mitt Romney anything he already won’t get.

Portman, after all, made so much more sense as the GOP veep candidate. He could have been announced during Romney’s bus tour through Ohio this week.

It appears, though, that Romney kowtowed to his party’s far-right flank, selecting Ryan to appease the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and the ultra-right-but-rarely-right William Kristol of the Weekly Standard. They pulled hammies last week doing cheerleading jumps for Ryan.

Romney, they opined, needs an uncompromising advocate for conservative principles such as Ryan to consolidate the GOP’s base and present an economic vision totally different from President Barack Obama’s. Never mind, they argued, that Obama would use Ryan’s draconian budget proposal to scare seniors-- he would do that whether or not Ryan was on the ticket.

Rest assured now that Obama will tie Romney to the budget Ryan proposed as House Budget Committee chairman, including unpopular cuts to Medicare, and try to demagogue his way to a second term.

Memo to Journal editors and Kristol: Romney doesn’t need a far-right running mate to consolidate the base. The base is consolidated. It is fired up. Obama does that for Romney. Get out of NYC and D.C., come to Ohio, and see for yourselves.

...Portman is not Mr. Excitement, but he exudes a warmness and competence that would have allured presidential-election voters. After evaluating his congressional experience and White House service under both Presidents Bush, voters would have felt comforted knowing that Portman is a No. 2 ready to be No. 1. Ryan doesn’t inspire that confidence.

The last time Ohio had a vice presidential candidate was in 1944. Republican Gov. John W. Bricker helped Thomas Dewey carry the state against Franklin D. Roosevelt by a 0.37 percentage point. Romney just might become president if Portman were to do that for him. Instead, Romney might have blown his best chance to win the most crucial state in the election.

Romney just made becoming president harder for himself.

Is Paul Ryan Sincere... Or Just A Well-Scrubbed, Grubby Little Crook?

Troha & Ryan-- only in DC does Justice come up with bribers without bribe-takers

Many low-info Americans had never heard of relatively junior Republican Congressman from southeastern Wisconsin, Paul Ryan, even though he had already established himself as the ultimate darling of Wall Street and even though they had mapped out a bright future for him. (Wall Street shills inside the corrupt Inside-the-Beltway Establishment, particularly Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen, Steve Israel and Joe Crowley had already set the DCCC on a path of giving Ryan, who represents a swing district, a career-long free pass. On behalf of the same Wall Street interests who have financed Ryan, Emanuel, Israel and Crowley have made sure Ryan would never have to worry about reelection.) The first most people heard of Paul Ryan was when one high-ranking Democrat publicly admired him by asserting he was “absolutely sincere about wanting to reduce the deficit,” though he quarreled with his approach. “I give him credit for at least being willing to put out there some tough choices." That wasn't Emanuel, Israel or Crowley. It was Barack Obama. Many of us have been working to discredit that perception ever since. Welcome aboard, Barack.

America might have been better served if, instead of talking about some bullshit "sincerity," he would have mentioned that Ryan is a sleazy, self-serving crook who's grown into a multimillionaire while working as a congressman. Obama could have pointed out, for example, that Ryan had-- and has-- ownership stakes in companies that benefit from oil subsidies while he was pushing $40 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil. How sincere is that? Aside from serving Wall Street as their top shill for the Bush TARP bailout for banksters, "in 2011, Ryan joined all House Republicans and 13 Democrats in his vote to keep Big Oil tax loopholes as part of the FY 2011 spending bill. His budget would retain a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.” For instance, it “calls for a $3 billion cut in energy programs in FY 2013 alone” and would spend only $150 million over five years-- or 20 percent of what was invested in 2012-- on energy programs." Not too sincere, huh? Especially not when you consider that Ryan “and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan,” the Daily Beast reported in June of 2011. “Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.”

Yesterday, Jerry Markton in the Washington Post pointed to another troubling aspect of Ryan's dishonest, self-serving grubby nature-- one that, in fact, comes straight from the amoral, adolescent Ayn Rand philosophy to which he is so enamoured. Like you, I had never heard of crooked Wisconsin businessman Dennis Troha either. Troha was indicted on campaign finance violations involved with an application for an Indian casino that Ryan helped him with the application process-- as well as with some shady dealings for his trucking company "that drew the interest of federal prosecutors because of the contributions Ryan and other congressman had accepted from Troha and his family." In return for all the help Troha had given Ryan almost $60,000 in bribes. Ryan was never indicted. Politicians rarely are.

The Wisconsin congressman was not found to have violated any laws, nor was he a target or key figure in the federal investigation, people familiar with the probe said. He was among more than 20 politicians of both parties who benefited from Troha’s largesse. Troha was convicted of funneling illegal donations to other politicians, not Ryan, and Ryan donated Troha’s contributions to youth programs when the businessman was indicted.

When a Troha associate pleaded guilty in the campaign finance scheme, the only political figure specifically named in court documents for receiving contributions from the associate was Ryan.

...Franklyn Gimbel, the lawyer who represented Troha in the criminal case, described him and Ryan as “friends” but said Troha “was a generous guy to people from all parties."

Between 1999 and 2005, Troha and his family members contributed $58,102 to Ryan’s campaigns, according to campaign finance records. At the time, he was seeking support for his proposal to open an $808 million Indian casino in Ryan’s district.

Although state officials had final approval, Ryan agreed to call the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was reviewing environmental impact studies. “He stated that his constituents are in favor of the application,’’ according to an e-mail written by a bureau staffer and obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which wrote extensively about the Ryan-Troha relationship.

In a 2006 interview with the newspaper, Ryan described the call as a routine inquiry on behalf of a constituent and said he was “neutral” on the casino project. But Troha said Ryan “made it very clear to me” that he opposed the project and felt it was “not appropriate” for the district. “I just asked him to make contact to see where things stood," he said.

A spokeswoman for Ryan’s congressional office, Smythe Anderson, said Saturday that Ryan, “just as he has done for tens of thousands of constituents in southern Wisconsin, placed an inquiry with a federal agency. It is a simple example of casework, and there was never any allegation of impropriety." [A typical lie from the Ryan camp; there were plenty of allegations, even if Ryan had enough protection that none were ever followed up on appropriately.]

In March 2007, a federal grand jury indicted Troha on charges that he funneled illegal contributions in violation of campaign limits through family members to Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Jim Doyle, in an effort to win approval for the casino. Ryan immediately announced that he would donate all contributions from Troha and his family to the Kenosha Boys & Girls Club. Troha pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges four months later and was sentenced to probation.

While Troha was under indictment, the Journal Sentinel revealed that Congress had two years earlier passed a measure that benefited his trucking firm, JHT, by allowing the firm to haul more trucks on each route. The paper obtained bank records showing that JHT had paid a consulting firm owned by Troha $107,238 after the measure became law, and the paper reported that such fees would continue until 2010 because Congress had passed the legislation.

The paper reported that Ryan had been one of several congressmen pushing for the legislation and had signed a letter in support. ...The then-U.S. attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic, issued a statement at the time saying federal investigators were looking into the legislation, along with donations from Troha and his family to Ryan and two other congressmen. Reached by e-mail on Saturday, Biskupic declined to comment, but referenced his earlier statements and court records.

It is unclear how far that part of the federal probe progressed, but people familiar with it said there was no indication Ryan was aware that he was receiving problematic contributions.

When John W. Erickson, a top Troha associate, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in September 2007, court documents said he, Troha and other alleged conspirators had directed illegal contributions to more than 20 candidates of both parties, including the president and the Wisconsin governor, although they were not cited by name in the documents. Troha and others had “identified public officials who supported Indian gaming and/or the relaxation of restrictions on interstate trucking," prosecutors wrote.

The only politician identified by name in the documents as having received contributions from Erickson was Ryan.

Don't forget, while they ruled the roost in DC, Ryan was a firm supporter of the organized crime syndicate at the top of the GOP ruled by Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff.

One year before DeLay was indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges, Ryan called the attacks "gutter politics at its worst," according to the Washington Post. And added: "You're going to see a big rallying around Tom."

For that remark, a columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal wrote that Ryan had "put his head in the sand." But Ryan only stepped up his defense of DeLay.

Six months before the indictment, Ryan called the investigation and ensuing public outcry over DeLay "an effort to 'lynch him politically,'" according to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Even after a Texas grand jury indicted DeLay on October 3, 2005, Ryan still refused to return $25,000 in donations from the then-former House Majority Leader. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Ryan said he would only return the cash if DeLay was convicted.

Soon thereafter, Ryan, like others in Congress, had to deal with fallout over his ties to Abramoff. In January 2006, the lobbyist pleaded guilty to charges that he committed fraud, tax evasion and engaged in a conspiracy to bribe public officials. Ryan donated close to $2,000 to charity-- the amount he received from a PAC for which Abramoff worked and from the lobbyist personally. Ryan said he wanted "to remove any shred of concern," the Journal Sentinel reported.

A few months later, Ryan began to cut his ties to DeLay. The Capital Times reported in April that Ryan took a $27,500 donation from DeLay's PAC and donated it to charity. Ryan said that he did so because one of DeLay's former top aides pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. "I believe it is appropriate to donate these contributions to charity, even though these contributions were perfectly legal and appropriate," Ryan said in a statement at the time. "I simply want to remove any doubt in this matter."

Criminal enterprises like DeLay's and Abramoff's don't thrive and take root without lieutenants like Ryan to validate them and fight for them. Ryan has been on the wrong side of every single battle he's been involved in since coming to Congress. And, as Ron Brownstein pointed out in the National Journal yesterday, it's all going to catch up with him now as he sinks whatever slim chance Romney ever had to win the presidency.

Though Ryan’s budget is often described as a deficit-reduction package, it is focused at least as much on fundamentally reducing Washington’s role in society. Ryan’s plan envisions continuing (though reduced) deficits until 2040, largely because it maintains the tax cuts passed under George W. Bush and seeks a further reduction in the top marginal rate for the highest earners to 25 percent-- the lowest level since 1931. (Romney has proposed cutting the top rate to 28 percent.) Simultaneously Ryan’s plan aims to significantly reduce long-term federal spending by converting Medicaid into a block grant, transforming Medicare into a premium support program, and squeezing domestic discretionary programs over time to levels unseen since World War II. Still, the Congressional Budget Office calculated in March that Ryan’s plan would shrink federal spending, as a share of the economy, to just 16 percent by 2050-- a level not seen since 1950, before not only Medicare, Medicaid and federal education aid, but the interstate highway system.

In broad strokes, that agenda generates enthusiastic support among blue-collar and older white voters who have grown increasingly resistant to government spending, particularly for transfer programs to the poor, and the taxes required to fund them. In the 2010 national exit poll, for instance, two-thirds of non-college whites said “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and people,” while only 29 percent agreed that “government should do more to solve problems.” In a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey last year exploring the contrasting attitudes among American generations, 62 percent of the aging white baby boom-and an even more resounding 67 percent of the older “silent” generation-said they preferred a smaller government that offers fewer services to a larger government that provides more. And in that same survey, a majority of both the baby boomers and seniors said they supported the repeal of the new Obama health care law, which according to other polls many of them primarily view as a welfare program for the poor. In the 2010 exit poll, nearly three-fifths of non-college whites also supported repeal.

But among both blue-collar and older whites attitudes about Medicare are very different. In March, the United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll offered respondents two options for the program. Just 19 percent of whites older than 65 endorsed Ryan’s approach, which said “Medicare should be changed to a system where the government provides seniors with a fixed sum of money they could use either to purchase private health insurance or to pay the cost of remaining in the current Medicare program.” Fully 74 percent of white seniors said instead that “Medicare should continue as it is today, with the government providing health insurance and paying doctors and hospitals directly for the services they provide to seniors.” Among non-college whites, 63 percent said they preferred the current system, while only 26 percent backed Ryan’s approach. (Ryan’s plan also drew opposition not only from 66 percent of college-educated white women-- consistently the most Democratic-leaning component of the white electorate-- but even 60 percent of college-educated men, an audience usually receptive to anti-government arguments.)

Generally surveys find white women more resistant to changes in the safety net than white men (although the specific Congressional Connection Poll on Ryan’s plan didn’t show that pattern.) If Ryan’s plan remains a central focus through the fall, it would not be surprising if that debate widened the gender gap-- potentially helping the Republican ticket with men most receptive to the sort of broad anti-government arguments Ryan unfurled in his announcement speech Saturday, but hurting it with white women.

At a Rick Santorum campaign event late last year in Marshalltown, Iowa, Carlene Illum, a retired credit-union loan officer, embodied the tension written in these polls. She cheered Santorum’s promises to retrench government entitlements for the poor and denounced Obama as “a socialist” for his health care plan. The budget deficit, she insisted, was rooted in “Obamacare and all those entitlement programs” like food stamps. But she blanched at the idea of converting Medicare into a premium-support plan or retrenching Social Security in any way. “I don’t think Social Security is an entitlement because I paid into it,” she said. “I feel the same way about Medicare.”

...[I]f Ryan’s dream of restructuring Medicare provides Democrats a beachhead for recapturing any meaningful number of voters like Illum-- particularly blue-collar women already displaying hesitation about Romney-that could enormously complicate the electoral math for the GOP. “The positions that [Ryan] has taken on Social Security and Medicare reform could alienate older white voters, and especially older white women, whose support is crucial to Romney's chances,” said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. “These older white voters don't care very much for President Obama, but they love their Medicare and Social Security benefits.”

If they ever find out that Ryan is also a self-serving crooked political hack, his miserable career would be as dead as it should have been without the intercession of Wall Street and their puppets in both parties.

Too Long For Twitter...

Republicans who hate Mitt Romney aren't the only ones delighted with the selection of Paul "the anti-Medicare guy" Ryan as his running mate. Everyone on Team Obama is probably kvelling this weekend as well. John Heilemann wrote in New York on Saturday about why Obama's people are so thrilled with the selection:

[T]hey knew full well that if the race was purely a referendum on Obama, they would likely lose-- but if bright lines could be drawn on values and visions regarding fiscal choices, that was the kind of election they could win. This was why Chicago was planning to hang the Ryan budget around Romney’s neck regardless of whether the congressman was on the ticket or not. Obama’s data jockeys have been polling and focus-grouping on this for months, and they are over the moon about what they have found... "President Obama’s lead against Romney more than doubles when the election is framed as a choice between the two candidates’ positions on the Ryan budget-- particularly its impact on the most vulnerable. The President makes significant gains among key groups, including independents and voters in the Rising American Electorate (the unmarried women, youth, and minority voters who drove Obama to victory in 2008)."

Paul Ryan Has A Goal In Massachusetts-- And The Victory Fund Is Working To Make Sure He And The GOP Get What They Want So, So Badly

Tuesday progressives in Florida and Connecticut will be battling conservative Democrats who are being financed by the destructive wreck that was once EMILY's List. But, as we pointed out last week, EMILY's List isn't the only group inappropriately assumed to have something in common with progressives that dupes and fundraises from liberals and then helps elect conservatives. At least just as bad is a sleazy bunch of Inside-the-Beltway gay careerists called the Victory Fund. As we mentioned last week, the Victory Fund, widely viewed as the single greatest reason for why Trevor Thomas was narrowly beaten by social conservative Steve Pestka in Grand Rapids/Battle Creek, is trying to defeat a 100% solid, lifelong straight ally, Rep. John Tierney, and replace him with a gay Republican with a sketchy record on gay equality. And Victory Fund candidate Richard Tisei isn't just a bad choice for the LGBT community because of his past, his future-- were he to ever make it to Congress-- looks pretty scary too. Tisei was recruited by Paul Ryan's and Eric Cantor and their sleazy SuperPAC, Young Guns, is-- along with the Victory Fund, financing his battle against Tierney. Watch:



Conservatives Routed In Paradise

Hawaii had its primaries Saturday and it wasn't even close. In the two major races-- one for the open U.S. Senate and one for the open seat in the 2nd district-- the progressive candidates, respectively Mazie Hirono and Tulsi Gabbard, beat their extremely conservative opponents, perennial Blue Dog candidate Ed Case and corrupt Mormon ex-mayor of Honolulu, Mufi Hannemann. It was Hannemann's third congressional run and his third loss. Case had already served in Congress (2002-7) where he was known as very lazy, very conservative, probably corrupt and a sure vote for the worst of the Republican agenda. He was a member of both the Blue Dog caucus and the New Dems. He's been running for Senator, Governor and to get back into Congress ever since and loses every time. In Saturday's Senate totals he took 94,289 41%) against Hirono's 132,855 (58%) and many hope he'll go find a job and stop trying to get into office again. In the 6-way race for the House seat Mazie was giving up, Tulsi Gabbard captured 55% and Hannemann only managed to persuade 34%.

Looks Like Ryan Has An excuse For Not Debating Rob Zerban Now... But What About Elderly Right-Wing California Carbuncles Buck McKeon And Ed Royce?

McKeon's hometown media outlets are mocking him and laughing at his avoidance of debates with Lee Rogers. After sparring with the media about what the meaning of a bribe is, McKeon managed to avoid committing to any debates at all... again. "McKeon," Mark Archuleta reported for KHTS, "said he might want three debates with his November 6 opponent Dr. Lee Rogers for the 25th Congressional district-- except he didn’t show up for the one scheduled before the primary election and wouldn’t make a firm commitment to any this election cycle." Read this exchange to see what an asshole McKeon-- who owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debts to organized crime boss and probable Red China operative Sheldon Adelson-- is. It helps explain why the local media has come to dislike him so much:

Mark Archuleta, Reporter, KHTS: Can we tell our audience that you will have an actual forum with your opponent Lee Rogers or a debate?

Buck McKeon: An actual forum or a debate?

MA: Yeah, because we tried to set one up before and there was some scheduling conflict. (A detailed look at the no-show by both the Congressman and his wife Patricia who was running for the 36th Assembly District, click here.) So, we’d love to be able to tell our audience out here that we’re going to have a forum or a debate or whatever format you would like so that we can hear you guys go back and forth on the issues. Can we tell ‘em that?

BM: You can tell ‘em that.

MA: So, you’re saying we will?

BM: No.

MA: Why not?

BM: I said you can tell them that.

MA: You’re being clever. Just say whether or not…

BM: No, I’m not. I’m being funny.

MA: Let’s just say it. Say it.

BM: Here, if somebody wants to put together a forum, usually like there’s League of Women Voters or…

MA: We had SCVTV, we had The Signal…

BM: Fine. Just give us notice and if I can be there I will be happy to be there.

MA: Can you give us a date and we’ll set it up. Because last time it fell apart.

BM: Well, maybe we would want a different forum. I don’t know.

...BM: But I’m not sure that’s going to…we’ll decide through the campaign. The campaign consultant isn’t here but we’ll decide how we’re going to do that…

MA: But you will do it?

BM: Pardon?

MA: But you will do it? I mean you will do some forum or debate? Because obviously it’s not to your benefit to do it.

BM: Really?

MA: So will you do it? Well, I don’t think…

BM: Why would it not be to my benefit?

MA: Well, you tell me. You haven’t done one.

BM: I’ve been busy.

MA: Well, that’s a good story, but the people in the community would like to hear…

BM: They’ve been hammering for it? They’ve been clamoring to hear us?

MA: Yeah, I think so.

BM: They have?

MA: They absolutely have.

Unidentified Reporter: You know, I have to agree with that. I think people would like to see it.

BM: And I think that they will. The campaign generally starts about Labor Day…

MA: Can you guarantee they will? They will see…

BM: No, no.

MA:…a forum or debate…?

BM: I can’t guarantee. I don’t know that he’s going to want to come up and see me.

MA: I can guarantee you he does.

BM: Oh, really?

MA: He’s told us many times.

BM: Really?

MA: Yeah.

BM: Well we’ll see. Hey, I’m not afraid to debate the doctor about…

MA: That’s what everybody wants to see.

BM: Great. They’ll have plenty of chances to see it

MA: Plenty? You’ll do more than one?

BM: Usually you do. What if I do terrible in one I might want to do two?

MA: Good. Let’s do it.

BM: Might want to do three.

MA: We’d love to see it. We would love to see it. So I can say…

BM: You can say whatever you want…

MA: Three debates coming up. Quote:…

BM: No.

MA: …Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon: “I’m going to do three debates with Dr. Lee Rogers.”

Bob Cochran, Congressman McKeon’s Chief of Staff: Okay, let’s move on to another question. I think we’ve gone over this. We don’t have much more time.

And all the way across L.A. County, one of McKeon's corrupt cronies-- another Countrywide crook-- Ed Royce is playing the same kind of games when it comes to debating his challenger, Jay Chen. Jay and Royce both accepted invitations to a town hall meeting in Rowland Heights at the senior center tomorrow evening. As soon as Royce found out Jay was going as well, he backed out. He "developed an inexplicable scheduling conflict," Jay told his supporters. "Once again, the voters of the 39th have been denied an opportunity to the answers they deserve. It seems unlikely that Royce will engage me in a live debate and have his voting record picked apart. With his record of supporting big banks and disempowering women, minorities, and the middle class, I can't blame him."

Remember What We Found Out About Miss McConnell Yesterday?

No, not about him being a closet queen... the part about him organizing the GOP to obstruct everything President Obama would try to do to help America get over the mess Bush and the GOP left him. This GOP (a song by Elliot Astur):

 

What Was Paul Ryan's Real Role In The 2008 Bush Bankster Bailout?

Even if the DCCC never saw it coming, Republicans have been growing increasingly worried that, Wisconsin's first congressional district, which voted for Obama in 2008 would probably swing back to the Democrats with Ryan running for vice president. Rob Zerban is a sincere and capable progressive and he will make a much better representative for Wisconsin working families than Ryan. As for Wall Street, they have plenty of representatives and losing Ryan won't be that big a catastrophe. Although... Ryan has been one of Wall Street's most devoted partisan's. We tend to mostly think of him as the "Kill Medicare guy" but let's go back a few years and look at the eye-popping, anti-Tea Party role he played in forcing through the Bush bankster bailout.

It's September 2008 and the GOP kleptocrats are winding up their last months in office. They wanted to deliver one more grand giveaway to Wall Street-- Henry Paulsen's bankster bailout. One problem: enough Republicans (133 of 'em) joined with Democrats to defeat it 205-228 when it was first brought up for a vote. Wall Street's best-paid shills, Boehner, Cantor and Paul Ryan, mobilized for battle. At the time Ryan, a relatively junior Member, had already taken $1,704,095 in legalistic bribes from Wall Street (a number that has now risen to $2,860,072). After the defeat in the House, Wall Street and the banksters went bonkers and pulled all Bush's strings and he and Paulsen easily got the monstrosity passed in the House of Lords and then went back to the House with a no less odious version of the bill that they had rejected a few days before. This time it passed 263-171 with not 65, but 91 Republicans joining in. Among the vote switchers who had had their arms twisted by Boehner, Cantor and Ryan plus the official registered Wall Street lobbyists:

Gresham Barrett (R-SC- $807,723)
Judy Biggert (R-IL- $1,675,717)
Charlie Dent (R-PA- $760,872)
Mary Fallin (R-OK- $336,576)
Jim Gerlach (R-PA- $1,670,352)
Pete Hoekstra (R-MI- $295,830)
Gary Miller (R-CA- $807,688)
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL- $928,068)
Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH- $458,449)
John Shadegg (R-AZ- $1,218,261)
Lee Terry (R-NE- $1,246,007)
Patrick Tiberi (R-OH- $2,438,284)

At the time some people wondered if teabaggers and fiscal conservatives would hold a screamingly hypocritical Ryan accountable at all. Yesterday's selection by Romney-- popular with the GOP base-- shows they didn't give a damn. At the time, Ryan was the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee and a member of the Ways and Means Committee. He' had assigned himself the job of spokesperson for fiscal austerity but he had already taken more money from the banksters than any other politician in the history of Wisconsin politics and, as we saw, he voted for the bank bailout not once, but twice. In fact, Ryan was one of the hypocrites exposed in Michael Moore's film, Capitalism: A Love Story:

In a section of the critically acclaimed examination of how Wall Street insiders diverted hundreds of billions of tax dollars into their accounts, Moore illustrates how the bailout happened. Democratic and Republican members of Congress who do the bidding of the bankers scared their colleagues and the American people into approving a massive bailout of the speculators whose misdeeds created the financial meltdown that shocked the nation in September 2008.

Ryan, the Republican congressman from southeast Wisconsin's hard-pressed 1st District, is shown playing the fear card by telling the House that it had to steer almost $800 million BILLION to Wall Street's sleaziest players.

"If we fail to do the right thing, heaven help us-- if we fail to pass this I fear the worst is yet to come," claimed Ryan.

The statement from the Wisconsin Republican who has positioned himself as a budget specialist in the House played a significant role in securing support for a bailout bill that had not been adequately analyzed and that included few protections against fraud.

Had Ryan used his reputation and his role on key committees to aggressively oppose the bailout, he might have blocked the rush to judgment that economists now say could end up costing American taxpayers trillions of dollars-- and a big chunk of their country's future.

Instead, the GOP establishment's favored point man on fiscal issues claimed-- without benefit of facts, figures or any grounding in economic reality-- that a failure to give the bankers everything they were asking for could bring on a depression.

"This is a Herbert Hoover moment," Ryan told the House, as he reached a fear-mongering crescendo. "(Hoover) made mistakes during the Great Depression-- let's not make those mistakes."

It was a virtuoso performance. Moore was right to highlight it.

The filmmaker has given Wisconsin taxpayers a dramatic illustration of how it came to pass that we are bailing out bankers and billionaires at the same time that auto plants are closing in cities such as Janesville and Kenosha-- both of which are in the 1st District. More importantly, Moore has reminded the voters of southeastern Wisconsin how key members of Congress such as Paul Ryan determined to take care of the speculators on Wall Street rather than working families on Main Street.

Ryan was overjoyed to bail out his bankster/paymasters on Wall Street but when it came to bailing out their victims who, through no fault of their own, were swamped with screwed up mortgages, he changed his tune... drastically. Ryan always stands up for corporations and never stands up for working families.

It's Paul Ryan: Sanpaku

Was it much of a giveaway when Romney announced last night he would be announcing his choice in Norfolk with the USS Wisconsin in the background? Did anyone think he might pick Scott Walker or Ron Johnson? As Fox warned when they confirmed the pick at 4AM this morning (minutes before that Romney VP app went off), "the announcement comes as some polls, including a recent Fox News survey, show the Republican presidential candidate losing some ground to President Obama." Will Ryan be able to deliver Wisconsin? Will Biden be able to handle him in a debate? What happens in the WI-01 congressional race? Will sales of Ayn Rand's adolescent dystopian books zoom into the stratosphere?

Dick Cheney says he worships the ground that Paul Ryan walks on-- his words (just watch the video below)-- and Paul Ryan says he feels the same way about Ayn Rand, a self-proclaimed anti-Christ (now watch the video way below). Ryan is Wall Street's dream candidate for a complete takeover of America. By forcing him down Romney's throat today-- even if it's going to turn out to be as failed a bid as it now looks-- Ryan will be set up as the GOP presidential nominee for 2016. The Big Business interests and Tea Party financiers who Ryan represents are getting exactly what they want... even if they have to sit through four more years of an ineffective neither-fish-nor-fowl Obama administration. Many GOP propagandists were beating the drum on Ryan all week-- especially since Romney's approval numbers are in the toilet nationally. But Republican columnist David Frum was swimming against the current in his own party-- even as Romney was hinting that Ryan was his man. Frum understands that the people who pushed Ryan on Romney don't like Romney, don't respect Romney and might not even care if he loses... as long as they're setting Ryan up as the next in line.

The clamor you are hearing for Paul Ryan for VP is not about helping the Romney candidacy. It's about controlling the Romney campaign-- and ultimately the Romney presidency. It's about forcing a platform on Romney, and then dictating the agenda for that presidency's first year. The platform happens to be suicidal, and the agenda impossible, but that does not matter to the Ryan advocates. They take the old Tammany Hall point of view: "Better to lose an agenda than lose control of the party."

In that sense, the Ryan proposal is a test of Romney's leadership. If he accedes, it's a big surrender of control-- and a surrender to many of those who most opposed (and who inwardly continue to dislike) his nomination.

John Nichols was, predictably, far more insightful into just what Paul Ryan is, than Frum. Like many in Wisconsin who have watched him most closely, Nichols understands that, at his core, Ryan is just a "hyper-ambitious political careerist-- who has spent his entire adult life as a Congressional aide, think-tank hanger-on and House member" who wants to keep on climbing until he's America's real life John Galt. He knows he could control a doddering fool of a puffed up CEO type like Romney as easily and thoroughly as Cheney controlled Bush. But there's a problem. As Nichols writes, "Vice presidential nominees are supposed to help tickets, not hurt them."

Romney clearly needs help. Just back from a disastrous trip to Europe and the Middle East, mired in controversies about the “vulture capitalism” he practiced at Bain Capital and his refusal to release tax returns that his dad-- former Michigan governor and 1968 Republican presidential contender George Romney-- said contenders for the Oval Office had a responsibility to share with the voters, Romney could use a boost.

But Ryan would be a burden, not a booster, for a Romney-led ticket.

Like Romney, Ryan is a son of privilege who has little real-world experience or understanding. He presents well on Sunday morning talk shows and in the rarified confines of Washington think tanks and dinners with his constituents—the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street-- but his record in Congress and the policies he now promotes are political albatrosses.

Some Republicans, perhaps even Romney, do not get this.

But the Obama campaign recognized, correctly, that Ryan’s positioning of himself as the point man on behalf of an austerity that would remake America as a dramatically weaker and more dysfunctional country makes him the most vulnerable of prominent Republicans.

Ryan scares people who live outside the “bubble” of a modern conservative movement that thinks the wealthiest country in the world is “broke” and that Ayn Rand is a literary and economic seer.

The House Budget Committee chairman imagines himself as a high priest speaking unfortunate truths about debts and deficits, the unforgiving foe of social spending who would gladly sacrifice Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the altar of debt reduction. Ryan has branded himself well within Republican circles, so well that he has parlayed himself into contention for the vice presidential nod. To get that nomination, however, Ryan must count on the prospect that the party that takes as its symbol the memory-rich elephant will suddenly suffer a spell of forgetfulness. That’s because the Republican congressman from Wisconsin, for all his bluster, is anything but a consistent advocate for fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets. He is, in fact, a hypocrite.

Or, to be more precise, a hypocritical big spender-- at least when Wall Street, the insurance industry and the military-industrial complex call.

Ryan has been a steady voter for unwise bailouts of big banks, unfunded mandates and unnecessary wars. Few members of Congress have run up such very big tabs while doing so little to figure out how to pay the piper. How has Ryan gotten away with his fool-most-of-the-people-most-of-the-time politics?

For the most part, he has until recently flown under the radar-- dazzling fellow Republicans with fiscal fancy footwork, while dancing around weak Democratic opposition in his home district.

Nichols, without slapping around the DCCC, also notes that Ryan has, until now, never had a legitimate reelection contest. What he's polite enough not to say is that the DCCC had no will to go after Paul Ryan. They-- or at least DCCC Chair "ex"-Blue Dog/ex-Center Aisle founder Steve Israel-- have told their big donors not to contribute to Ryan's progressive opponent, Rob Zerban. The DCCC has a long and shameful history of never opposing Paul Ryan and, in fact, of undermining Democrats in southeastern Wisconsin who wanted to defeat him in this swing district that Obama won neatly, 51-48%, and that sends plenty of local Democrats to Madison.

As we've been explaining for at least the last 5 years, there is no politician anywhere in the country more dangerous to American working families than Paul Ryan. He wants to destroy Social Security and Medicare and turn the country over to the tender mercies of Wall Street. If the DCCC had cared anything about protecting America-- or could even discern the nature of the existential danger Ryan poses-- defeating him would have been Priority #1 for them. Instead, Israel was committed to giving him yet another free pass. Blue America is a small independent PAC. Until today there were very few who wanted to work to defeat Paul Ryan. Will he run for reelection to Congress and for Vice President simultaneously, the way Lieberman did in 2000? I'm guessing we'll know pretty fast. [Yes, he's running for both positions.] We've been working to help Rob Zerban since he took the courageous step to go up against Goliath-- and we're doing our own independent work to elect him as well. You can help either or both efforts at the StopPaulRyan ActBlue page. Please do it now, before it's too late. (I know it sounds dramatic... but I'm speaking from my heart. This is the guy we need to defeat... for VP, for Congress, for 2016...




UPDATE: The Obama Campaign Welcomes Paul Ryan To The Fray

Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager: “In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy. The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid. His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes.” And then they released this:

Paul Ryan's Quest To Destroy Medicare And Social Security Is Coming To A Head

Buzz is heating up again that Romney's hail Mary pass in his failing presidential campaign may be to pick Ayn Rand fanatic Paul Ryan as his running mate. Right wing propagandist Byron York reminds GOP zombies that "The heart of Ryan’s plan-- controlling the terrifying growth of federal spending by transforming Medicare-- isn’t at the heart of Romney’s agenda."

Romney doesn’t emphasize overhauling Medicare in his stump speech, either. Creating jobs, getting the economy moving again-- those are the points he hits over and over and over.  Yes, Romney talks about bringing federal spending under control. But Ryan-like plans to curb entitlement spending? That’s just not something Romney emphasizes.

That would likely change if Romney picks Ryan. Should that happen, the Ryan plan would immediately become a far bigger part of the Romney campaign that it is now-- it would, in fact, move to the top of the Romney agenda.

That’s something that unnerves a number of Republicans. They respect Ryan and the work he has done, but they worry that putting him on the presidential ticket would brand the Republican party as the party of austerity at a time when more voters are more concerned about job creation than budget cutting.

Of course, Democrats are going to bash Romney on spending cuts and Medicare reform regardless of what he does. Since that is inevitable, say Ryan supporters, why not put the plan’s most articulate defender, Paul Ryan himself, on the ticket? One reason would be that Mitt Romney has shown no inclination to make the Ryan plan the centerpiece of his campaign. Perhaps that’s what he’s planning-- perhaps he planned all along to run on jobs until mid-August, only to pivot to entitlement reform for the rest of the campaign.  But that’s not likely.

Probably not but... all those Republican "jobs" plans do virtually nothing about creating jobs. That's not just my opinion; that's what most economists say.

For almost a year, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) have plugged their jobs package at every opportunity. They regularly bring it up at press events, during floor speeches and in statements in response to just about anything related to the economy. Boehner even carries around in his jacket pocket a 4-by-8-inch card that lists off their jobs bills, and he encourages his members to flash their cards at campaign events.

...The GOP jobs package, which currently includes 32 bills, represents Republicans' hallmark legislative accomplishment over the past two years. In the months ahead of the election, they will lean on it as proof of two things: that they are not the do-nothing obstructionists that Democrats paint them as, and that they are working hard to address the 8.2 percent unemployment rate.

But there's a problem with their jobs bills: They don't create jobs. At least, they won't any time soon.

In interviews conducted by The Huffington Post with five economists, most said the GOP jobs package would have no meaningful impact on job creation in the near term. Some said it was not likely to do much in the long term, either.

"A lot of these things are laughable in terms of a jobs plan that would produce noticeable improvements across the country in the availability of employment in the next four or five years," said Gary Burtless, a senior economist at Brookings. "Even in the long run, if they have any effect all, it would be extremely marginal, relative to the jobs deficit we currently have."

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, agreed that the bills would have almost no effect on job creation in the short term, though he was slightly more optimistic about their long-term prospects.

"These kind of changes will matter over a period of three to five years," Zandi said. "It takes that long before businesses can digest changes and respond to them."

He noted, though, that legislation as narrowly targeted as the Republican package is unlikely to do much for real job creation.

"For it to show up in a meaningful way in the natural economy, you can make specific changes that could affect a specific industry or a few companies, but it's not going to make a big difference in terms of the monthly job numbers," Zandi said. "It takes some very significant changes across lots of different industries to really make a big difference."

Carl Riccadonna, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank, said some of the bills could create jobs, but that they would amount to more of an afterthought in terms of achieving broader policy goals.

"They are very narrowly targeted, and it gives the impression that maybe some of this is special interest really pursuing these, not really taking a macro view but a very, very micro focus in what the impact would be," Riccadonna said. For most of the bills in the package, "jobs are a second- or third-order effect, not the main priority."

At the heart of the GOP jobs package is a push for rolling back regulations-- and gutting environmental laws that regulate clean air and water-- to spur job growth. The House Republican Conference website makes the argument that deregulation will "remove onerous federal regulations that are redundant, harmful to small businesses, and impede private sector investment and job creation."

But economists told the Huffington Post that regulation has had a minimal impact on the unemployment rate. Their claim is backed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows that just under 16,000 jobs, or 0.4 percent, were lost because of "government regulations/intervention."

...Ultimately, each economist was clear on one point: The GOP package is far more political than practical.

"It's game playing to try to pretend like they're doing something," said Jesse Rothstein, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "It's silly season, and so they know they have to put up something that has the label 'job creation' on it, whether or not it would work."

Over the weekend I listened to the National Venture Capital Association trying to disassociate themselves from Romney and to point out that the kind of predatory vulture capitalism that he practiced-- private equity-- was never about creating jobs. "We're the white hats," explained their spokesperson, leaving to the imagination what color Romney's hat was, but making it clear that venture capitalists create jobs by supporting fledgling startups whereas Romney's business model was about destroying businesses (and jobs) in order to create profits for investors. His model defines sociopath and was, clearly, a cancer on society.

Polling shows that only about a third of the public approves the Ryan budget (i.e., Republicans), In fact, polling shows that Obama’s lead over Romney doubles when voters learn of the Ryan budget. Educating voters about the budget will have a big impact in swing states around the country. By putting Ryan on the ticket, Romney would be playing right into the Democrats' ideal scenario. As Rob Zerban, the Democrat running for the House seat Ryan currently holds, told his supporters last week, "The more voters learn about Ryan's plans to kill Medicare, slash funding for Pell Grants and Stafford Loans and gut veterans' benefits, the more they realize that Paul Ryan and the GOP are only representing their wealthy donors, not the average American... Paul Ryan's budget is an albatross for the GOP, and educating voters on the budget is a winning strategy for us."

Meanwhile, the DCCC still hasn't put Rob Zerban in their Red-to-Blue program, although he's raised more money-- without their help (to put it in as kindly a way as possible)-- than most of the candidates they are backing. And, as we've discussed before, Rob in running in a district Obama won in 2010. So why won't "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel allow the DCCC to get behind Zerban? Israel hates progressives and is more interested in packing the House Democratic caucus with corrupt transactional hacks and conservatives like himself than in regaining the majority for his party, a virtual impossibility under his hideously flawed strategy of trying to resuscitate the Blue Dogs and New Dem conservative coalition that were nearly wiped out-- by the Democratic grassroots voters-- in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010.

Zerban is a Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt populist Democrats who stands up for working families, not for Wall Street and not for the kinds of corporate special interests that have helped Israel and his careerist cronies gain and maintain power, The DCCC isn't interested in helping candidates like that, no matter how badly the alternative impacts policy.

Ryan, for example, is the biggest threat to Social Security since the program first passed during the Great Depression.

That House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) supports the privatization of Social Security is well known. Ryan proposed $1.2 trillion in cuts and the partial privatization of Social Security upon taking control of the Budget Committee in 2011, and he has constantly warned about the supposed doom facing the program if major reforms aren’t enacted immediately.

But Ryan’s attempts to gut the most popular entitlement program in America go back quite a few years, as Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker profile of the conservative hero makes clear. Ryan’s fight against Social Security has been ongoing since he pushed President George W. Bush to privatize the program in 2005:

Under Ryan’s initial version, American workers would be able to invest about half of their payroll taxes, which fund Social Security, in private accounts. As a plan to reduce government debt, it made no sense. It simply took money from one part of the budget and spent it on private accounts, at a cost of two trillion dollars in transition expenses. But, as an ideological statement about the proper relationship between individuals and the federal government, Ryan’s plan was clear. [...]

Two weeks after Bush’s Inauguration, Ryan gave a speech at Cato asserting that Social Security was no longer the third rail of American politics. He toured his district with a PowerPoint presentation and invited news crews to document how Republicans could challenge Democrats on a sacrosanct policy issue and live to tell about it.

Bush ultimately went with a slightly less radical proposal that still failed in the Senate and caused Republicans massive losses in the 2006 mid-term elections. But Ryan, undeterred, told Lizza that the failure of privatization was simply due to marketing, not that the plan was unpopular:

What some might interpret as the failure of an unpopular idea Ryan insisted was mostly a communications problem. “The Administration did a bad job of selling it,” he told me. Bush had campaigned on national-security issues, only to pitch Social Security reform after reelection. “And... thud,” Ryan said. “You’ve got to prepare the country for these things. You can’t just spring it on them after you win.” The lesson: “Don’t let the engineers run the marketing department.”

Aided by the mainstream media’s spreading of the lie that Social Security is “going bankrupt,” Ryan has been able to thrust Social Security “reform” back onto the table, and it was embraced during the primary by virtually every Republican candidate.

What Ryan and his Republican colleagues continue to ignore, however, is how easy fixing Social Security would be if they weren’t so insistent on protecting the wealthiest Americans from a single tax increase. By lifting the payroll tax cap that currently limits Social Security contributions to the first $110,100 in income, Congress could ensure the program’s solvency for the next 75 years-- longer than the program has been in existence to this point.

That wouldn’t fit Ryan’s belief that the government doesn’t have a role in helping protect the financial security of the American people. But it would prevent millions of Americans from losing the much of their retirement savings, as they would have during the 2008 financial crisis had Ryan’s plan to privatize Social Security become law.

That's why Blue America has a special Stop Paul Ryan Page-- and why we've had it for years. Steve Israel-- another one not wearing a white hat-- will never help unseat Paul Ryan. But, please, don't let that stop YOU.

Has Romney Figured Out A Way To Win Without Florida?

This week's big news from Florida isn't really about poor ex-Senator George LeMieux dropping out of the GOP Senate primary or even about Romney's pathetic botch-up over the way he crossed off Marco Rubio from his VP short list. As NBC reported there’s "a little rule of thumb in American politics: If you have to say you’re vetting someone, is that someone really under serious consideration? Indeed, despite being the party’s rising star and a favorite of the GOP base, the signs always have pointed AGAINST Rubio being Romney’s pick. Why? For starters, he’s only been a U.S. senator for a year and a half, and he didn’t endorse Romney until late in the GOP primary season. Then there’s the opposition research out there on him-- something that the Romney folks who worked for Charlie Crist’s 2010 Senate campaign know pretty well: Rubio charged more than $100,000 to state GOP credit cards, had racked up nearly $1 million in personal debt, and had nearly had his home foreclosed on. No doubt that Rubio has plenty of assets (young, Latino, from Florida). But he also carries a lot of risk for the usually risk-averse Romney."

But there was worse news for Romney out of this must-win state. The Hispanic population of Florida isn't just a bunch of fascist-leaning Castro-haters. It's not even overwhelmingly Cuban the way it used to be. And the younger Cuban-Americans in Florida are far less Republican than their grandparents. As Trip Gabriel reported in the NY Times in April, Florida's Latino voters are wary of Willard. "Although," he wrote, "Cuban-Americans in South Florida favored the Republican candidate, John McCain, in 2008, President Obama won 57 percent of Hispanic votes in the state thanks to Puerto Ricans and immigrants from Latin America... Much of the fight will be waged in and around Orlando, a region where population growth led to the creation of a new Congressional district for 2012 in which Hispanics, many of Puerto Rican heritage, are 41 percent of the voting-age population. The new district is centered here in Kissimmee, the seat of Osceola County. Hispanics registered as Democrats outnumber Republicans by 35 percentage points." And the Democrats have one of their strongest and most admired congressional candidates anywhere in America-- Alan Grayson.

In the Republican debates, Mr. Romney had fiercely attacked a Texas Dream Act that allowed some undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition, calling it a “magnet,” and he alarmed Hispanic leaders with talk of “self-deportation,” which would induce illegal immigrants to leave voluntarily by making life more difficult through tougher enforcement measures.

Wednesday's Washington Post pointed out the 8 states where Latino voters could sink Romney's campaign and Florida was high on the list. Romney is worried that if he puts the ole etch-a-sketch into high gear, he'll lose the racist base of the GOP that is still excited about his tough self-deportation campaigning during the primary but, as Aaron Blake explained, "Republicans’ emerging problem with Latino voters looks even worse when you factor in the electoral college."

A look at Latino population trends in swing and key red states shows just how ominous the GOP’s future could be if it doesn’t do something about its current struggles with Latino voters.

We noted yesterday that nationwide population and minority voting trends paint a haunting picture for the GOP. But the problem is particularly acute because of the states where Latino growth has been strongest-- particularly several key swing states and red states that Democrats are hoping to put in play in the coming elections.

Almost quarter of Florida's population are Hispanics. It was just 18% when Bush was able to steal enough votes there to claim the presidency in 2000. And Hispanics are far less likely to support the virulently anti-immigrant Romney than they were the pro-immigrant Bush.

And all those creepy Rubio gaffes this week about whether or not Marco Rubio's shady record in Tallahassee is keeping him off the Romney VP short list, aren't the only disses Floridians are suffering at the hands of an increasingly inept Romney campaign. Romney is frantically trying to figure out how to deal with one of the most polarizing political figures in America, Florida's hated Governor Rick Scott.

Florida Governor Rick Scott keeps alienating the people he’s trying to befriend.

The Republican’s effort to win support from Cuban-Americans resulted in threats of a lawsuit. At a lunch to charm black lawmakers, he offended them. He turned a goodwill mission into comedy-show fodder when he greeted Spain’s king by asking about the monarch’s politically sensitive elephant hunt.

The governor’s gaffes, along with an approval rating that hasn’t gone above 41 percent in Quinnipiac University polls, may hurt his party’s presidential contender, Mitt Romney. Florida is one of the most competitive electoral battlegrounds, with the past three presidential races decided by 5 percentage points or less. Romney hasn’t campaigned with Scott.

“Rick Scott doesn’t seem to have any political skills at all,” said Tom Slade, the former co-chairman of Scott’s campaign and ex-chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. “I’d give him a B for governing. I’d give him an A for strangeness.”

...The governor’s approval rating is 39 percent, according to a poll today from Quinnipiac University. That’s down from 41 percent on May 24, his best in any 12 surveys from the Hamden, Connecticut school, and up from 29 percent a year earlier.

The state Republican party has tried to improve his ratings with nine weeks of television ads that started running in March in four cities, highlighting Scott’s record. The state party also has paid for recorded calls to voters, websites and Facebook ads promoting Scott since he’s been in office.

Scott’s unpopularity may help President Barack Obama’s re- election effort, said Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling in Raleigh, North Carolina
.
“Obama’s more competitive in Florida right now than I would have expected,” Jensen said in an e-mail. “The damage Scott has done to the Republican brand is part of that.”

Romney’s staff has concluded there’s no benefit in appearing with Scott, said two campaign advisers who asked for anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter.

“The safe thing is for he and Romney to go their separate ways,” said Slade, the former Republican official.

Scott is furious that Romney has vetoed his request to do a televised keynote address at the Republican National Convention in his own state. Romney has insisted that Scott keep a low profile at the convention. The Democrats haven't won the Florida governorship since 1994 but Scott's colossal unpopularity points to a Democratic win in 2014. Scott was counting on the glow of the GOP convention to help boost his sagging ratings. Instead all he gets is Romney telling him to stop highlighting job growth in the state during his public appearances.

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to tone down his statements heralding improvements in the state’s economy because they clash with the presumptive Republican nominee’s message that the nation is suffering under President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Scott, a Republican, was asked to say that the state’s jobless rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency, according to the people, who asked not to be named.

Unemployment has dropped for 11 straight months in Florida, though the rate is still above the national average, at 8.6 percent, and Scott has been touting the drop as good news. The Romney camp’s reported objection to this highlights the tension between GOP governors, who want to point to the recovery in their states, and the Romney campaign, whose chances depend on casting economic news in the ugliest conceivable light. We’ve already seen this tension on display with Ohio governor John Kasich, and Iowa’s Terry Branstad has even explicitly called on Romney to stop downplaying good news in his state.

And the upshot: President Obama has pulled ahead again in the most recent poll of Florida voters and now leads Romney 46-42%, largely because independents are leaning towards Obama.

In the presidential race, Obama's lead reflects the coalition that elected him four years ago. He carries women 49 - 39 percent, African-Americans 91 - 5 percent and voters 18 to 34 years old 55 - 28 percent. Obama also leads 48 - 41 percent among voters 35 to 54 years old. Men split 44 - 45 percent. Romney carries white voters 50 - 37 percent and voters over 55 years old 48 - 43 percent.

Independent voters shift from 44 - 36 percent for Romney in a May 23 Quinnipiac University poll, showing Romney ahead 47 - 41 percent overall, to 46 - 37 percent for Obama today. In today's results, Obama carries Democrats 88 - 4 percent, while Romney takes Republicans 91 - 5 percent.

What If Romney Doesn't Pick Ryan For VP After All?

Some say Romney wants someone less controversial and less tarred by the GOP effort to end Medicare and prosecute the vicious class war they've been waging against working families-- some nebbish like Rob Portman or Mitch Daniels-- both architects of the catastrophic Bush economic agenda, Portman having been, as U.S. Trade Rep the enabler for the worst job outsourcing in history and then as Director of OMB increasing the U.S. debt by $469 billion in just one year. Daniels was another of Bush's incompetent OMB directors (previous to Portman) and during his disastrous 2 year tenure the projected federal budget surplus of $236 billion declined to a $400 billion deficit, entirely due to the Bush Economic Team's purposeful failure to enact spending cuts to offset gigantic tax reductions for the one-percent. Either one sounds just as "good" as Ryan. And if Rob Zerban defeats Ryan in November, in the unlikely scenario that Romney becomes president, what better job for Ryan than... OMB Director or even Treasury Secretary-- something where he could do the most damage to ordinary working families in the glorious tradition of Bushism. This week Charles Pierce, author of the brilliant Idiot America, took a look at Ryan's political careerism. Ryan, he points out, lives with his family in the old Parker Mansion (as in parker Pens, which outsourced their manufacturing from Janesville to Europe). "[Z]ombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan," writes Pierce, is the "budget wonk in the Georgian mansion." Pierce interviewed Blue America-endorsed anti-Ryan, Rob Zerban.

"To me... he's a grossly out-of-touch Washington insider. From that aspect, to get re-elected, I would say that, for a long time, he talked a moderate game in the district and then become very partisan with his votes in Washington. He was able to hide it for a while, but now he's authored a budget that shows clearly what he stands for.

"The people of the First District can see where that budget impacts their lives. Their bridges start to crumble. We've got 16 bridges on federal highways alone in the district that have been declared structurally deficient and that doesn't include county and local municipal bridges. He's been neglecting his district and raising his national profile. We've had massive job losses in the district. A GM plant closed in Janesville. A brassworks plant closed in Kenosha. He's been supporting trade policies that allowed jobs to go overseas, and these are not policies you pursue if you're from this district."

..."He has a lot to answer for," Zerban tells me. "He has to defend the indefensible. I don't know where he gets his credibility on budget matters. I mean, he had a minor in economics. What experience does he have to say that he's the great budget oracle? None that I can see. As nearly as I can tell, he graduated and he went right to work in Washington, for a couple of senators and then to a think-tank and then he ran for Congress. He's the kind of 'budget guy' who doesn't have any real world experience. I had to write responsible budgets when I was running a small business.

"Those [Social Security] survivor benefits [that Ryan used to go to college], a lot of people I know wouldn't have been able to put that money aside for college. They needed it to survive. I know without Pell Grants and Stafford loans, I wouldn't have been able to graduate from college."

...The only time that some fudge appears in Zerban's confident spiel is when he discusses the support he's had so far from the DCCC, which has been criticized in many quarters for lining up behind more corporate-friendly Democrats and leaving people like Zerban, who is fighting an uphill battles against a legitimate congressional television superstar, twisting in the breeze. "It continues to develop," Zerban hedges. "Everything's a stage. We've hit certain levels and I'm certainly not unhappy, but there's always more that can be done."

We were tickled pink that Pierce linked to the Blue America billboard we're erecting in a very special location in Wisconsin's first district. We can still use some help getting that up, by the way. You can hit the thermometer above to help with that or just go here to our I.E. page and give what you can. This is the only Blue America page where there is no limit on what you can give. So if a drunk Koch brother is reading this and feeling randy... go for it, dude. Show us how big your bankbook is.

It's Kind Of Courageous Of The Republican Candidates To Associate Themselves With Marco Rubio

I doubt that even Rick Santorum, struggling to stay remotely relevant in Florida, would want an endorsement from spectacularly unpopular, even despised Gov. Rick Scott. No one else does. Teabagger junior Sen. Marco Rubio, on the other hand... they're all panting to get even a wink or a nod from him. But that's because the full Rubio story, the story of a degenerate party boy who thrived on corruption in Tallahassee, has yet to come out publicly. This week, though, Reuters did start the unraveling a tiny bit by explaining why Rubio will never be anyone's running mate, regardless of Gingrich's latest VP bullshit.

Rubio may not be as coveted as Gingrich or Romney would have it appear as they press for votes in Florida, where more than 450,000 Hispanics identify themselves as Republicans.

Despite his reputation as a watchdog over federal spending, Rubio, 40, has had significant financial problems that could keep him from passing any vetting process as a potential vice presidential choice, Republican and Democratic strategists say.

In some ways, the story of Rubio's finances is similar to those of hundreds of thousands of his constituents in a state where more than 40 percent of homeowners are "underwater," owing more on their homes than the homes are worth.

It is a crisis driven by falling property values and ill-advised home equity loans that drove up homeowners' debts.

Rubio owes far more on his $384,000 Miami home than it is worth. He bought the home in 2005 for $550,000 with a $495,000 mortgage. He soon had it appraised for $735,000 and took out a home equity line of credit for $135,000.

In 2008, despite earning a declared $400,000-- including his $300,000 salary from the Miami law firm Broad and Cassel-- Rubio failed to pay down the principal on his home for several months, according to Florida campaign finance disclosures.

During the same period he did not pay down the balance of a $100,000-plus student loan from his days at the University of Miami, the disclosures said.

Rubio's spending habits also have gotten attention in Florida.

Before joining the Senate last year, his name surfaced in an Internal Revenue Service investigation of the Florida Republican Party's use of party-issued credit cards. He frequently had used his party credit card for personal use, and later reimbursed the card company for about $16,000.

Rubio's handling of his personal finances contrasts sharply with the image of him on his Senate website, which highlights Rubio's efforts to prevent Washington from "piling up debt."

"We need a government that stops spending more money than it takes in," the website says.

Rubio's financial issues have led Florida Democrats to cast him as a hypocrite.

"Rubio campaigned on reining in government spending, but his own personal spending is out control," said Brannon Jordan of the Florida Democratic Party. "He says one thing but is doing another."

...Many Republicans believe the bilingual Rubio could help the party carry Florida in the presidential election by attracting support from Hispanics, who tend to vote Democratic.

Analysts say the party has good reason to be worried about its image in heavily Hispanic states such as Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, where Latinos now make up more than 30 percent of the population.

In a Latino Decisions tracking poll last year, 72 percent of Hispanic voters said Republicans either "didn't care" or were "hostile" to their community.

It is unclear whether Rubio is the right choice to fix the party's image. He has not endeared himself to Hispanic voters on several fronts, analysts say.

He opposed the so-called DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants, and he expressed support for a harsh immigration law in Arizona.

Rubio opposed President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, and more recently blocked the confirmation of another Puerto Rican, Marie Carmen Aponte, as ambassador to El Salvador.

He also opposed Obama's healthcare overhaul, which is popular among many low-income Hispanics.

"He's on the wrong side on every issue that matters to Hispanics," said Fernand Amandi with Bendixen & Amandi, a political consulting firm in Miami that has been retained by the Obama campaign. "He's going to have to answer to those positions."

Despite holding moderate views on immigration as a state legislator early in his career, Rubio's position toughened as he gained national attention.

For example, in 2003 he co-sponsored legislation to allow the foreign-born children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state college tuition fees.

Recently, however, he said, "If you're here in violation of the laws, you shouldn't benefit from these programs."

He says he would support such assistance for "a limited number" of undocumented students who had "exhibited good moral character."

Rubio also has urged the party to tone down its harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration.

"The Republican Party should not be labeled as the anti-illegal immigration party. Republicans need to be the pro-legal immigration party," he said.