PrairiePundit

IBD: ... He's been lauded far and wide and showered with honors — puzzling, since (Antonio) Villaraigosa may be the worst mayor in L.A. history.  During his tenure, thousands of businesses have fled L.A.'s mismanagement and soaring taxes, taking jobs with them.  The city has lost close to 140,000 jobs since the 2007 financial crisis. While other cities have rebounded, L.A.'s unemployment rate hovers well above 10%.  On the verge of bankruptcy, L.A. is a shell city with a shrinking tax base, Los Angeles City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana warned just last April. ... For a party accusing the other of have a war on women, they chose a womanizer  to lead their convention.  That maybe the one thing he is competent at .   What kind of party celebrates a man like this?  If LA wants to have a Hispanic mayor, surely they can find one who is a competent manager and can manage his zipper better.

Daily Mail: The New York boroughs of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn nabbed three spots on the list of the 10 most expensive cities to live in the U.S. -- while towns in Texas scored among the cheapest. Not surprisingly the island of Manhattan nabbed the top spot with the most expensive housing, according to a new report released by the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) which indexed the cost of living in 300 cities across America. While California cities were found to be equally pricey, locales down South fared among the least expensive. ... With metro areas and holiday hot spots among the most enviable locales, towns in the U.S. South were found to be among the least expensive areas. Harlingen, Texas, a border town on the southern tip of the Lone Star state, came in at the cheapest, with a cost of living index at 81.6 or 18.4 per cent below the national average. Two other Texas towns, Wichita Falls, in North Texas, and McAllen, near Harlingen, came in second and...

Guardian: Iran has doubled uranium enrichment machines – report Isolation has been an ineffective weapon in deterring Iran's nuclear ambitions.  One of the more ridiculous strategies I have seen proposed in an oped was to persuade them to adopt wind and solar, as if power generation was the goal and not a by product of their program.   BTW, I don't think that was a proposal supported by the administration, but it does give you an idea to the delusions some on the left have about the problem with Iran.

Reuters: Government shuts probe of controversial Arizona sheriff, no charges filed I suspect this case was part of the DOJ harassment of Arizona and its determination to deal with the invasion of illegals.

Fox News: With Mitt Romney trying to slingshot out of the Republican National Convention, Democrats are hard at work trying to set the stage for Charlotte, N.C. -- where they're about to kick off their weeklong tribute to the Obama-Biden ticket. The race is on, with each side hitting the ground in the days between the conventions, and the matchup Friday was between the No. 2s on the tickets. After a three-day blitz of speeches that portrayed Romney as a businessman who can free the markets and produce millions of jobs, Vice President Biden used a stop at an Ohio auto workers union hall to pan the GOP candidate as bad for business and bad for blue-collar workers. "What (Republicans) didn't acknowledge is Governor Romney's position was 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,'" Biden said, referring to Romney's opposition to the auto industry bailout under President Obama. Biden and the rest of the Obama campaign have kept up a drumbeat of criticism since Thursday ni...

Peggy Noonan: ... It started with Mike Huckabee. He is a performer, he knows how to do this, and he made the audience listen. But he is also a policy person and a veteran campaigner who knows the base. He addressed the Mormon issue without ever saying "the Mormon issue," and he hit hard on cultural issues. President Obama, he said, is the only "self-professed evangelical" in the race, yet "he tells people of faith that they have to bow their knees to the god of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls health care. Friends . . . let me say it as clearly as possible, that the attack on my Catholic brothers and sisters is an attack on me." That was electric. Every speaker afterwards got to bounce off the energy Mr. Huckabee left in the room.  Condi Rice was a star. She took the role of accomplished and knowledgable public instructor, boiling down the conservative critique of Mr. Obama's foreign policy. W...

Washington Times: A House panel is calling on the U.S. Department of Labor to turn over all records involving a half-million dollar contract funded through President Obama’s $831 billion stimulus program that paid for more than 100 commercials on MSNBC touting a “green jobs” initiative. The contract with McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations LLC in 2009 resulted in more than 100 commercials on cable shows hosted by Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman to raise awareness about the Job Corps program’s training in environmentally-friendly career areas. But spending reports showed that no jobs were created through the contract. The Washington Times first reported on the contract earlier this month, quoting one taxpayer watchdog who questioned not only the lack of jobs but why the commercials aired only on MSNBC, considered the most liberal of the major cable news outlets. ... The answer to my question is that this is the Chicago Way, summarized by Obama as rewarding your friends and att...

Mark Steyn: ... And so it goes with American racism: The less there is, the more extravagantly the racism-awareness lobby patrols its beat. The Walmart carding clerks of the media are ever more alert to those who "appear to be" racist. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared this week that Republicans use "Chicago" as a racist code word. Not to be outdone, his colleague Lawrence O'Donnell pronounced "golf" a racist code word. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell observed that Obama was "working to earn a spot on the PGA tour," O'Donnell brilliantly perceived that subliminally associating Obama with golf is racist, because the word "golf" is subliminally associated with "Tiger Woods," and the word "Tiger" is not-so-subliminally associated with cocktail waitress Jamie Grubbs, nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel, lingerie model Jamie Jungers, former porn star Holly Sampson, etc, etc. So by using the word ...

Washington Post: Former congressional aide accused of drugging and sexually assaulting women About ten paragraphs into the story you find that the accused has worked for several Democrats and no Republicans were listed.  Perhaps that is why his party affiliation is not mentioned.  It goes against the Democrat and media narrative.

Daniel Greenfield: DNC Erecting Creepy Giant Obama Sculpture It is not a flattering image, but is probably meant to be.  Who is this kind of thing supposed to appeal to?

Daily Caller: President Barack Obama was greeted with fleeting applause and extended periods of silence as he offered profuse praise to soldiers and their families during an Aug. 31 speech in Fort Bliss, Texas. His praise for the soldiers — and for his own national-security policies — won cheers from only a small proportion of the soldiers and families in the cavernous aircraft-hanger. The audience remains quiet even when the commander-in-chief thanked the soldiers’ families, and cited the 198 deaths of their comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan. The audience’s reaction was so flat that the president tried twice to elicit a reaction from the crowd. “Hey, I hear you,” he said amid silence. The selected soldiers who were arrayed behind the president sat quietly throughout the speech. CNN and MSNBC ended their coverage of the speech before it was half-over. ... The troops’ silence continued through several obvious applause-lines.  There was isolated cheers when Obama said his withd...

Reuters/Jerusalem Post: An adolescent boy and a young girl have been beheaded in two separate incidents in Afghanistan, local officials and police said on Friday, in the latest brazen attacks that have raised fresh questions about a splintering Taliban.  A 12-year-old boy was kidnapped and killed in southern Kandahar province on Wednesday, his severed head placed near his body to send a warning to police, said provincial governor spokesman Jawid Faisal.  The brother of the boy, neither of whom were named by officials, was a member of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a US-trained militia charged with making Afghans in Taliban strongholds, like Kandahar, feel more secure, Faisal said. "It's a Taliban warning to the ALP and to others who support the government," Faisal said of the killing, which happened in Kandahar's Panjwai district.  Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf denied the group was involved.  Separately, a 6-year-old girl was beheaded in eastern Kapisa ...

James Taranto: ... Obama's journalistic supporters live in a bizarre alternate reality in which a politician's actual words mean nothing. When the president says something foolish and offensive, he didn't say that. Meanwhile every comment from a Republican can be translated, through a process of free association, to: "We don't like black people." ... That seems to be a pretty fair representation of the approach of some journalist to the GOP convention.  By yelling race they hope to shut down any criticism of Obama.  Perhaps the appropriate response should be, "We didn't say that.  Someone else made that happen."

Walter Russell Mead: Illinois taxpayers are facing huge liabilities for their state’s bloated, poorly managed, and underfunded pension system, and public sector workers face an uncertain future, as taxpayers are unlikely to cough up the huge sums required to make good on the debt. Now everything is getting worse: S&P has downgraded Illinois bonds, meaning that the interest rate on the state’s huge debt is likely to rise, squeezing the state treasury even further. As  Businessweek   reports : Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said it lowered Illinois’ rating a notch because of “weak pension funding levels and lack of action on reform measures.” The firm also said the financial outlook for Illinois is negative, in part because the state’s temporary income tax is scheduled to expire in 2015. Illinois politicians agreed the state’s massive pension shortfall must be corrected quickly, but they blamed others for the delay. Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn said legislator...

Daily Mail:   Caesareans and pain relief for mothers giving birth ‘should be cut to save the NHS money That is government health care for you.  I don't know why the Brits are so proud of it.

Politico: Romney 2.0 succeeds By  ROGER SIMON  | 8/31/12 9:34 AM EDT Simon says the Republican nominee is what he is, not what he’s not. Now there is some cutting edge analysis.

Looking at this again, I like it better than when I heard it the first time.  His delivery is a little halting but the rift is actually pretty devastating to Obama and I think it is much more so than it would have been with just a straight speech.  It might make your day.

Washington Times: For most voters, the Republicans’ nominating convention has been filled with speeches about jobs, the economy, federal spending and President Obama’s record. But for Hispanic voters getting their news from the Spanish-language press, the view is very different — and decidedly unsympathetic to the Republican Party . Heading into the convention, English-language coverage of last week’s platform fights concentrated on abortion and gay marriage. But Spanish-language reports zeroed in on an immigration battle, which saw Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach win passage of a strict enforcement plank in the document. While the English press this week has wondered about which Republicans would mention Medicare , and who would play the attack-dog role for the GOP , Spanish-language media have been focused on what hasn’t been addressed: immigration. “The questions are, ‘Yeah, let’s talk about the economy, let’s talk about Medicare . But then why haven’t they talked abo...

Christine O'Donnell makes a very rational argument in the face of a determined effort to put words into her mouth.  She is clearly not the dingbat Democrats have tried to portray her as.

Washington Post: Just days before a  congressional deadline , the Obama administration is deeply divided over whether to designate the Pakistan-based Haqqani network as a terrorist group, with some officials worried that doing so could complicate efforts to restart peace talks with the Taliban and undermine already-fraught relations with Pakistan.  Early this month, Congress gave Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton 30 days to determine whether the Haqqani group, considered the most lethal opponent of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, meets the  criteria for designation  — a foreign organization engaging in terrorist activity that threatens U.S. citizens or national security.  If she says it does not, Clinton must explain her rationale in a report due to Congress on Sept. 9. Acknowledgment that the group meets the criteria, however, would probably force the administration to take action, which is strongly advocated by the military but has been resisted by t...

Chris Cillizza: ... * Marco Rubio: We knew the Florida senator was talented. But his speech on Thursday night showed that he is a MAJOR political star. Rubio’s speech was, without question, the best of the convention. He seemed entirely at ease in the massive national spotlight — compellingly telling his life story and mixing in jabs at Obama in a more-in-sorrow-than-anger tone that made the hits more powerful. (One example: ”Our problem is not that he’s a bad person. Our problem is that he’s a bad president.”) It’s uniquely possible that we will look back in four or eight years to this night as the time when it became clear Rubio had that something special that made him a force to be reckoned with in presidential politics. * Mitt Romney: Acceptance speeches are no easy thing. There are a million cooks in the kitchen, every one of them thinking they have the perfect ingredient to make it sing. And Romney is simply not the natural speaker that Rubio (or President Obama) is. All ...

NY Times: Attachment to Obama May Be Key to Election The challenge for Mitt Romney may be that even voters unhappy with President Obama remain emotionally tied to him. I suspect in some cases it is tribal affiliation.  Blacks have been unreasonably loyal to Democrats despite the damage done to their families by Democrat policies.  Hispanics for some reason are concerned about keeping non citizen Hispanics in the country and giving them rights. Both are self destructive in their own way.  Giving amnesty to illegals will send the unemployment rate in both groups even higher and they are already disproportionately higher than the rest of the country. The young who have also been devastated by the Obama economy and Democrat student loan policies that benefit the liberal one percent in academia who live high off of predatory loans to unsophisticated borrowers.  Persuading these people...

Washington Examiner: People of good will must be puzzled by the liberal media's obsession with race in this week's Republican National Convention. Presuming to understand the motives of strangers, liberal pundits manage to find bigotry in nearly every utterance by a Republican. Whether you were watching MSNBC or reading Harper's or Politico or National Journal or the New York Times -- or any number of other left-leaning outlets -- you learned that racist code exists wherever a Republican opens his mouth. For example, who knew that the word "Chicago" is a racist epithet? It is, according to MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "They keep saying Chicago," he said of the convention speakers. "That's another thing that sends that message -- this guy's helping the poor people in the bad neighborhoods, screwing us in the 'burbs." His guest replied: "There's a lot of black people in Chicago." And there you were, thinking Chicago was...

David Hirsanyi: Or as DG Myers  tweeted , “at least, a contestable proposition they are too lazy to contest.” Democrats are energetically attempting to create the perception that Republicans — specifically, Paul Ryan — are running around Tampa making stuff up about Barack Obama (as if that’s necessary). And when I say Democrats, as regrettably cliché as it may sound, I also mean the mainstream media. The following assertions, for instance, are true: Obama  did   cut  over $700 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare. The stimulus  was  a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism. The Janesville, General Motors plant  was  closed down under Obama (though Ryan made a more nuanced assertion that we’ll cover below) Obama  did  blow off the bipartisan debt commission. Obama’s waivers  do  allow for the relaxing of work requirements in welfare reform. Do some Republican speakers use politically hyper...

Byron York:  ... ... the most affecting moments of the evening happened long before Eastwood, Rubio, and Romney took the stage. The Romney campaign put together an extended narrative of Romney’s life, featuring testimonials from people had been involved with him in the four major aspects of his life: faith, work, the governorship of Massachusetts, and the Olympics. The portion of the program devoted to Romney’s religious service was enough to leave many viewers in tears — and with a higher opinion of Romney than they had before. In particular, the program featured Ted and Pat Oparowski , a couple who lived in Medford, Massachusetts in the 1970s. They knew Romney from church, and when their 14 year-old son David was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in 1979, Romney visited the boy regularly. “They developed a loving friendship,” Pat Oparowski said, recounting the many times Romney came to see her and her son. David Oparowski’s cancer was terminal. During one visit, Mrs. ...

Audrey Hudson: Energy issues are central to the country’s economic revival and will be a major focus of the presidential campaign, say political observers who predict Mitt Romney’s positions on the issues will be popular with voters. While President Barack Obama rails against fossil fuels and supports billions of dollars in new spending for experimental sources of energy, Romney and running mate Paul Ryan support the development of the country’s natural resources as the foundation for a growing and modern economy. “The Obama administration is the most hostile in history to the types of energy that are affordable and abundant right here at home,” said Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research in Washington, D.C. “The war on fossil fuels they have waged will take years to correct because they have carpet-bombed coal communities and put policies in place that will make it harder to produce oil and gas from taxpayer-owned lands controlled by the gove...

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Daniel Hannen from the UK talks about the importance of the debt issue as the profound problem for not only the US, but the world.

Congressman sets Piers Morgan straight on the Akin issue.

Kathleen Parker has an unfortunately titled opinion piece (Romney , Ryan running against themselves) that does make an important point about the crafting of speeches . ... Ryan, too, has tried to avoid being who he is. The budget guru to whom most Republicans defer on everything from debts and deficits to health-care reform has been tentative in defending his record and, in some cases, pretended it doesn’t exist. In his speech Wednesday night, Ryan denounced Obama policies and maneuvers that closely resemble some of his own and made several not-quite-complete statements that resulted in a day of criticism and gave Democrats an opportunity to question both his credibility and his intellectual honesty.  In one instance, Ryan criticized Obama for ignoring the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission. What Ryan didn’t say is that he served on the commission and voted against its proposals.  There’s nothing wrong with either of those facts except their omis...

This is the part of his speech I liked the most.

Slate: Sixty percent of Milwaukee’s black voters have disappeared. ... Wisconsin has same day registration.  I suspect that many of these "voters" were bused in from Chicago to help Democrats carry the state.  The story is about Democrat's search for missing voters, but 60 percent?  It is why we need voter ID.  The Chicago voters in Milwaukee just do not have the right IDs.  

This looks like an ad inspired by Paul Ryan's great speech.

Charles Krauthammer: There are few foreign-policy positions more silly than the assertion without context that "deterrence works." It is like saying air power works. Well, it worked for Kosovo; it didn't work over North Vietnam. It's like saying city-bombing works. It worked in Japan 1945 (Tokyo through Nagasaki). It didn't in the London blitz. The idea that some military technique "works" is meaningless. It depends on the time, the circumstances, the nature of the adversaries. The longbow worked for Henry V. At El Alamein, however, Montgomery chose tanks. Yet a significant school of American "realists" remains absolutist on deterrence and is increasingly annoyed with those troublesome Israelis who are sowing fear, rattling world markets and risking regional war by threatening a pre-emptive strike to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Don't they understand that their fears are grossly exaggerated? After all, didn't deterrence w...

Daily Mail: Iceland tourist unwittingly joins search for HERSELF after failing to recognise tour group's description of 'missing woman'

Guardian: Iran 'expanding underground nuclear capacity' They are also expanding their enrichment of uranium.  The negotiations have been an abject failure.  The sanctions have not deterred the religious bigots from their genocidal ambitions.

AP/Washington Times: Justice Dept. won’t bring charges over CIA interrogations This was one of those things Obama did to please the kook base of the Democrat party, but he knows that most voters think it a betrayal of people who were trying to protect us from terrorist attacks and whose works did just that.  To go forward with prosecuting them would have been a political disaster for Obama and the Democrats.

Guy Benson (no relation) reports on the meltdown: The Obama campaign is  lashing out  at Paul Ryan, claiming that his  fantastic convention speech last night was packed with falsehoods and lies.  Here's their hysterical response video: To the surprise of no one, the ad's "rebuttals" are misleading and wrong themselves.  Point by point: (1)  They begin with video of CNN reporters discussing accusations of Ryan's "lies." This is proof that the Obama campaign sent out a lot of angry emails, and nothing else. (2)   Medicare  - Sorry, guys, but it is  100 percent true  that Obamacare raided $716 Billion from Medicare to pay for itself.  It  does   cut benefits  to current seniors.  And Paul Ryan's plan took the president's Medicare "savings," and re-routed them  back into Medicare  to shore up the program.  Mitt Romney's plan would undo those cuts altogether.  Obama took th...

I think Gov. Martinez has a great future in the Republican party.  If Hispanics were more politically astute they would also become Republican politicians because that is where the real opportunities are.  They are being elected in Texas too.  This was a very good speech.  You will understand why she is a winner.

AP: A federal court has ruled against a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to cast ballots in November.  A three-judge panel in Washington ruled Thursday that the law imposes "strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" and noted that racial minorities in Texas are more likely to live in poverty. ...  This is a bad decision.  What they should have done was upheld the law and thrown out the Voting Rights Act to the extent it conflicted with a reasonable law to stop Democrat voter fraud.  It is absurd to suggest that this was an "unforgiving burden on the poor" when the ID cost them nothing and is available even after they vote.  That finding makes no sense.  Since minority voting actually increased in states with voter ID a central premise of the DOJ case failed.

Rudy Giuliani has teh correct response to question about Navy SEAL's book.

Miami Herald: Aunt says the daughter of Cuba’s vice president defected for love

Michael Barone: Romney Pins Hopes on Being Different From Obama It would be much harder if he were trying to be like him.

Henry Payne: With sales nowhere near the predicted 45,000-per-year, General Motors halted production of “Obamacar” — the Chevy Volt — here for the second time this year as its inventory levels lag the industry average. If that sounds like the general economic fits and starts of the last three years under Obamanomics, it’s no accident. Welcome to the Volt economy. Chevy’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant will suspend production from Sept. 17 until Oct. 15, idling 1,500 workers. As with its White House financiers, GM was quick with the excuses. “We are not idling the plant due to poor Volt sales. We’re gearing up for production of the new Impala,” a Chevy spokesman told the Automotive News. But the Volt’s 84-day inventory — above the industry average of 51 days (and far from the 10-day inventory of more popular luxury models in its price segment like the BMW X3) — helps to explain the production halt. Indeed, a spokesman for a Chevy dealer told Detroit’s Frank Beckmann Radio Show this morning...

Roger Simon: Racism is stalking the Republican Convention in Tampa. But it’s not from the Republicans. It’s from the mainstream media. First it was MSNBC treating convention speakers Artur Davis, Mia Love, and Ted Cruz like nonpersons. And now it’s Yahoo! Washington Bureau Chief David Chalian getting caught on an ABC webcast saying Mitt Romney would be “happy to have a party when black people drown.” Chalian, not surprisingly, was fired almost immediately when the word got out, but the climate in which he would make such an insane statement is very much alive and well. Why would anyone dream of saying such a thing in a semi-public situation if he didn’t feel safe and among friends? The left/liberal need to think Republicans and conservatives racists is more than just projection. At this point, it is nothing short of a mental illness. It is so far divorced from reality, it has to be pathological. No longer are these people able to observe reality with anything close to impartiality. W...

Jan Crawford, CBS: Mitt Romney's running mate Paul Ryan took the spotlight at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night in Tampa, Fla., delivering a scathing critique of President Barack Obama's policies, saying at one point in his speech, "With all their attack ads, the president is just throwing away money - and he's pretty experienced at that." It was a frontal assault on the president and his policies - the first direct assaults of the convention - and a message to disaffected voters that it doesn't have to be this way. "If you're feeling left out or passed by: You have not failed, your leaders have failed you," Ryan said. It was a speech full of vivid images, with some aimed at a young generation. "College graduates should not have to live out their twenties in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life," Ryan said. But he also delivered a mes...

John Cornyn: As our nation enters the final two months of another spirited election, Republican Senate candidates are on offense in states Democrats won in 2006. A record of broken promises coupled with an unprecedented attempt to push through an extreme liberal agenda has put Democrats in the unenviable position of being forced to play defense and facing daunting odds in areas where just a few short years ago they cruised to victory. Democrats including Jon Tester of Montana, Bill Nelson of Florida and Sherrod Brown of Ohio find themselves on defense because they promised to be independent voices for their constituents while committing to support a balanced approach to managing our country’s finances. Instead, they have amassed voting records that consistently side with President Obama and his far-left agenda, which includes passing a $800-plus billion stimulus program that has not helped our economy create the jobs Americans desperately need. The stimulus was found to be fil...

Washington Post: Personal coaches help Haitians try to get out of poverty Mia Love's story of how her family immigrated to the US with $10, but her father refused to take public assistance because he wanted to work to make a living for his family tells you something about the work ethic.  It is something she inherited.  Two young NFL players also exhibit that work ethic.  Jason Pierre-Paul of the New York Giants and Whitney Mercilus of the Houston Texans are intelligent hard working players who are ferocious pass rushers on defense. But the political establishment in Haiti has been relentless corrupt and inept.  They occupy half the island of Hispaniola, but their half is barren and poverty stricken while the Dominican Republic is prosperous and thriving.  The culture of corruption has had a devastating effect on the people of Haiti.  That is the culture that needs to be changed. BTW, I enjoy watching HGTVs House Hunter's Intern...

Frank Luntz explains why the Democrats will continue to hear about Obama's statement.  He also explains why it is better to ask questions than accuse Obama of lying.

Washington Post: Top GOP donors enjoy special perks and access The same headline would be appropriate next week for the Democrats too, but we are unlikely to see it in the Post.  We are also unlikely to be reminded how about 80 percent of the green energy loans went to Obama supporters, or that many of them wound up in companies that went bankrupt.  That is what I would call a real special perk.

John Podhoretz: ... The oratory was dazzling, as was the delivery — her voice trembled with nerves but she spoke her words with the fluency of a classical pianist playing octave runs. Most important, the speech was elevating, a call to national purpose — and a clear indication that Condoleezza Rice will soon re-enter public life in a big way.  There was no way Ryan’s speech could match Rice’s for dramatic effect. Fortunately for him, Ryan wasn’t aiming for uplift and he wasn’t swinging for the fences. This was a painstakingly designed effort to plant the flag of the Romney-Ryan ticket as close to the political center as possible.  He sought to make his conservative Republican political approach resonate with the undecided and independent voters who are clearly willing to give Mitt Romney a chance.  At the speech’s start, he made it clear he understood and sympathized with those swing voters who thought voting for Obama in 2008 was a good idea.  His hometow...