Why Romney picked Paul Ryan, and Who Romney was Trying to Please by Picking Paul Ryan

     That Romney was over two weeks early in announcing his selection of a running mate was odd.  That much is a given.  To people who have seen political campaigns from the inside—such as I—it’s downright bizarre.

     Contrary to popular belief, the selection of a vice presidential candidate doesn’t help the presidential candidate.  It really doesn’t.  In fact, all it can do is hurt the candidate.  For that reason, most presidential candidates prefer to pick running mates who are virtually unknown outside their bailiwicks.  Even then, they make their picks known toward the end of the convention, when most of the excitement—and public interest—has died down.

     In my entire life, I’ve known only one occasion in which the selection of a running mate has helped the candidate.  Even then, it was for unconventional reasons.

     When George H. W. Bush was running for President in 1988, he publicly said that he would pick a running mate who would show the nation what high standards Bush was setting for his administration.  Instead, he picked an effete, over-privileged, bumbling oaf who, to this day, makes me wonder why dumb blondes are always depicted as female. 

     A political insider explained to me that the selection of Quayle was campaign strategist Lee Atwater’s idea.  Quayle was a rabbit for the Democrats to chase.  The Democrats spent so much of their time laughing at Quayle that they neglected to attack Bush, who was little more than a résumé wearing a suit. Lackluster Bush laughed all the way to the White House. 

     Mitt Romney’s strategists couldn’t possibly be so uninformed as to think that the early selection of a running mate would make him more popular with voters.  Who, then, did they expect to please?

     To answer that question, we need look no further than Romney and the “man” he picked.  Mitt Romney’s unconventional timing in his selection of Paul Ryan was intended to please Wall Street’s trillion-dollar embezzlers and other malefactors of great wealth.  It was an early signal that he is most certainly their man—one who will keep the cash spigot pumping our money to Wall Street, keep America’s wars of aggression going at full throttle, and complete the Bush/Obama agenda of shredding the Constitution and trampling American liberties.

     Paul Ryan has been almost consistently in favor of interventionism where America has no business, Wall Street embezzlement with no accountability, and a shredding of the United States Constitution. 

     As witness to this, take a look at how he voted on the following issues (Source: On the Issues) 

     May 2001: Voted YES on requiring states to test students. 

     October 2001: Voted YES on spending $99 billion of our money on an “economic stimulus” for bankers and other fat cats.

     October 2002: Voted YES on authorizing military force in Iraq.

     April 2003: Voted YES on spending $78 billion of our money for the fraudulent and illegal wars in Iraq & Afghanistan.

     March 2004: Voted YES on approving removal of Saddam, which was against international law.

     October 2004: Voted YES on adopting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, whitewashing the whole affair.

     February 2005: Voted YES on federalizing rules for driver licenses. The excuse given for this attack on American freedom is that it was intended “to hinder terrorists.”

     July 2005: Voted NO on deterring foreign arms transfers to China.  (Like, who needs Taiwan anyway?)

     April 2006: Voted YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight.

     June 2006: Voted YES on declaring Iraq part of War on Terror with no exit date.

     September 2006: Voted YES on allowing electronic surveillance without a warrant.

    January 2007: Voted NO on removing oil and gas exploration subsidies; that is, voted YES on continuing to subsidize oil and gas companies to the tune of up to $15 billion a year while the top five oil and gas companies were making profits close to $100 billion a year.  (Source)

    May 2007: Voted NO on redeploying US troops out of Iraq starting in 90 days.

    August 2007: Voted YES on removing need for FISA warrant for wiretapping abroad.

    November 2007: Voted NO on regulating the subprime mortgage industry, thereby helping to cause the subprime mortgage crisis and ensuing Great Recession.

     June 2008: Voted YES on retroactive immunity for telecoms' warrantless surveillance.

     June 2008: Voted NO on investigating Bush impeachment for lying about Iraq.   Actually, it was an incredible series of lies: weapons of mass destruction, connections to the CIA front al Qaeda, being accessories to 911, and so on.  The war, which was highly profitable to Bush cohorts, killed over 600,000 civilians and made refugees of 4,000,000 others.

     December 2008: Voted YES on $15B bailout for GM and Chrysler.  As one of the provisions of this bill, the corporations got a bailout, but hundreds of GM and Chrysler dealers lost their dealerships.  See the above video debunking GM's claim that they had repaid the  money "early and in full."  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOaS2SymjQ4

     January 2009: Voted NO on monitoring TARP funds to ensure more mortgage relief.  In other words, he voted YES on “no accountability for the trillions of dollars embezzled from the American taxpayers and sent to Wall Street.” Here's a video of Paul Ryan shamelessly begging Congress to pass TARP.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyJBZYz858M

     March 2009: Voted NO on modifying bankruptcy rules to avoid mortgage foreclosures; that is, if Wall Street wants your house, they’re entitled to it.

     July 2009: Voted YES on $192B additional anti-recession stimulus spending.  You didn’t see any of that money, did you?  The money didn’t go to the needy; it went to the greedy, on your credit card.

     March 2011: Voted NO on removing US armed forces from Afghanistan. 

     February 2011: Voted YES on extending the PATRIOT Act's roving wiretaps.

     September 2011: Voted NO on military border patrols to battle drugs and terrorism.  This essentially means that he voted NO on military border patrols. 

     On many issues, Paul Ryan voted quite reasonably.  It’s not the percentage of votes that counts, however.  What counts is the net result of the votes.

     Let’s say, for example, a congressman voted against 100 needless bills that would have had a total cost of several billion dollars, yet he voted for a half dozen highly dangerous bills that had a total cost of several trillion dollars.

     Let’s say he voted for dozens of bills that were consistent with our social or religious views, yet he voted for a few that presumed to authorize the government to spy into your email accounts, record your telephone conversations, and label you a domestic terrorist if you assert your constitutionally guaranteed rights.

     Let’s say he voted for dozens of cost-cutting measures but put us in debt to the tune of over thirty trillion dollars for the benefit of the big banks and the military industrial complex.  Let’s say he further voted against measures that would require accountability as to how those missing trillions were spent.

     There you have Paul Ryan.  You also have all the evidence needed to show who Mitt Romney was trying to please when he picked Ryan as his running mate several weeks before it was necessary.  However he may posture as an adequate substitute for Ron Paul, he's still very much in the pockets of the Wall Street kleptocracy.  Dan Quayle would have been an improvement.

Travel and Tourism with a Purpose

     A few months ago I requested and was assigned a class in Travel and Tourism English.  As I had expected, every available textbook at my students’ level offered a lot of vocabulary words to use in conversation about going on vacation.

     That’s important, of course, but I wanted more than that.  I wanted to broaden students’ understanding of other peoples and cultures.  I wanted them to see that environmental responsibility goes much further than demanding that governments force “somebody else out there” to accept responsibility for making the world a cleaner and healthier place.  And as the Christian song goes, “Let there be peace, and let it begin with me.”

     There are types of tourism that promote understanding among different groups of people and that promote awareness of our environmental responsibilities.  What I found, though, is that in most cases these forms of tourism don’t have a vocabulary that has traction.  Term such as new tourism and alternative tourism make these forms of tourism sound strange.  By contrast, the default form of tourism known as mass tourism sounds as though it’s more popular because it’s somehow better than “new” or “alternative.”

     I would need both a new approach and a new vocabulary for what I will teach.  I believe I have found both.  "Mass tourism" has become "glass bubble tourism;" alternative tourism is now "full contact tourism."  The video series is called Paradigmaclast.  BTW, all but one other Internet site spells the word "paradigmoclast," but I disagree with that spelling.  The Greek word for paradigm is paradigma, with an a.

     With a four-week trial offer of a video converter, I spent almost a month downloading hundreds of videos and converting them to WMV format.  I spent the next few weeks using Moviemaker to pick them apart to use as video resources.  Then I spent more than a month creating eight lessons in video format—107 minutes in all.  These lessons are intended to supplement the textbook rather than replace it.  Future video lessons should take much less time to generate, as they will be more in-depth—thus, the number of clips in each video will be fewer and longer.

     In several respects, my strategy involved a perilous navigation between Scylla and Charybdis.   I’ll spare y’all the details.  In the end, though, I took what appears to be a simple approach: showing them just enough about other cultures to cause some of them to want to know more.  Entertainment rather than logical suasion is the vehicle that drives this strategy.
     Below are the first eight lessons.  Just click on the link.

Lesson 1: What is Tourism?  

Lesson 2: Planning Your Vacation  

Lesson 3: (Tourism) Transportation 

Lesson 4: (Tourism) Attractions  

Lesson 5 (Tourism) Festivals and Other Events  

Lesson 6 (Tourism) Lodging  

Lesson 7 (Tourism) Food and Drink  

Lesson 8 Glass Bubble Tourism and Full Contact Tourism