AP SOURCE: ROMNEY PICKS RYAN FOR RUNNING MATE: Drudge

Is his family ready?

AP  "Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate, according to a Republican with knowledge of the development. They will appear together Saturday in Norfolk, Va., at the start of a four-state bus tour to introduce the newly minted GOP ticket to the nation."  

How Paul Ryan became the intellectual leader of the Republican party  "And yet Ryan is smiling. It’s not the phony grin of a politician seeking votes, or the half-smirk of a charlatan putting one over on a group of rubes. It’s a real smile—the eager smile of someone excited to share important news. Paul Ryan believes he has the solution to these problems. And after a long and often lonely fight to convince his fellow Republicans that they should be talking about these issues, Ryan is succeeding." 

Smearing the Tea Party; Left-wing opportunism and the Sikh-temple shootings

The murderer

Michelle Malkin  "The feds engaged in scare-mongering about unnamed groups and individuals “antagonistic toward the new presidential administration” and “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.” Code words for the stimulus-opposing, bailout-protesting tea-party movement. Duh. For good measure, the report tossed in vague references to pro-lifers, Second Amendment activists, and border-security advocates, too."....
"In the warped world of James Rainey, MSNBC Neanderthals, and George Soros operatives, every conservative is a right-wing terrorist. But there are no left-wing terrorists — only misguided kids whose social-justice agenda simply went awry. The bias reeks like an Occupy camp in the dog days of August." (emphasis added)

DNC Planning Document: We Need To Find A Gay Soldier Who Helped Save Life Of Straight Soldier During Firefight For Our Convention…

Via Weasel Zippers :

Politico  The most innovative — and harshest — element of the preliminary program is a nightly “social contrast” in which two people describe their personal experience with a hot-button issue — one person lauding the president’s actions, the other taking Romney to task.

....

"But the plans show organizers intent on steering clear of controversy as well. For the gay marriage social contrast, for instance, the documents state the participants should be “not a gay couple” — but a “parent and gay son or daughter.”

"Other examples: “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: Gay soldier and fellow (straight) soldier who served together in Iraq or Afghanistan (ideally the straight soldier was helped by the gay soldier, i.e., medic, in fire fight) … Planned Parenthood: Husband who talks about how a PAP smear saved his wife’s life and his spouse … Immigration: Two young people from the same family, one who was born here, the other a few years older who was not … .”

More gender silliness; Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton ……

.. and the next war will be lost in the “gender neutral” toy department of Harrods.
Crusader Rabbit   "In the pictures the place looks like fairy land, but we don’t live in fairy land we have to grow up and live in the real world which is often quite a harsh place.

Gender neutrality is a modern heresy – boys need to grow to be men and girls to be women. But the moderns think that gender is a “social construct” and we are entirely interchangeable rather than designed to complement one another.

"If boys are not bought up to be men when the going gets tough and masculine virtue is required and found to be a rare commodity it is the end."

Harrods opened the doors to its first gender-neutral toy department    Also here.

Apparently Harrod's has been listening to these people. This author is a college freshman, er...fresh, um, person, which indicates to me "just out of high school"

Satire: Grimace Eliminated by McDonald's, No More Gender Neutral Characters  ".... McDonald’s issued a statement saying that “gender neutral characters are not going to be part of the McDonald’s family in the foreseeable future.” In addition, all gender specific characters will be given updated identity makeovers to enhance gender specific traits." 

Is there no limit to liberal silliness? Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen

"The idea is that the government and society should tolerate no distinctions at all between the sexes. This means on the narrow level that society should show sensitivity to people who don't identify themselves as either male or female, including allowing any type of couple to marry. But that’s the least radical part of the project. What many gender-neutral activists are after is a society that entirely erases traditional gender roles and stereotypes at even the most mundane levels.

'Obama has steadily diminished both himself and the office he holds'

Pat Buchanan: THE COST OF WINNING UGLY  "Mitt Romney gave up leadership of Bain Capital in 1999. The steel plant was closed in 2001. Soptic lost his health insurance, but his wife was still working and had hers. She lost her job and insurance in 2003. Her illness and cancer were discovered in 2006, when Romney was ending his fourth year as governor of Massachusetts.

"Was this ad the work of a rogue super PAC over which the Obama campaign had no control? Did the White House denounce the ad as unethical and malicious and wash its hands of it?

"By no means. The White House, through its cynical silence, has been complicit in this moral atrocity as it reaps the benefits of it.

....Mr. Hope and Change, the figure who once inspired millions, died a long time ago. In his stead stands a Chicago pol who barnstorms the country calling Republicans political lap dogs of millionaires and billionaires who refuse to pay their fair share of taxes.

In this campaign, Obama has steadily diminished both himself and the office he holds. Remarkable what a fear of defeat and a loss of power can do to a man.

Democrats in Congress, this one is for You

http://www.worldmag.com/editorialcartoons/

Unreal… Now the Far Left Is Trying to Tie Mitt Romney to El Salvador Death Squads

Krauthammer: The case against reelection (with a Rush Limbaugh update)

Rush Limbaugh; Hosanna! Krauthammer Gets It! Ideology!  

"It was before it really got ginned up, and I'm not going to mention any names because it won't matter.  Virtually every one of them that I spoke to said, "We gotta go after Obama's policies, Rush! We can't go after him.  We have to go after his policies," and that's what Romney is doing.  We're going after his policies (as Krauthammer says, his "stewardship"), because -- you're, right, Snerdley -- they were afraid (and still are) to go after Obama as what he really is." 

Charles Krauthammer  "There are two ways to run against Barack Obama: stewardship or ideology. You can run against his record or you can run against his ideas.

http://www.usnews.com/cartoons/barack-obama-cartoons

"The stewardship case is pretty straightforward: the worst recovery in U.S. history, 42 consecutive months of 8-plus percent unemployment, declining economic growth — all achieved at a price of an additional $5 trillion of accumulated debt."

Krauthammer then moves on to the prospect of running against Obama's ideas:  "If Republicans want to win, Obama’s deeply revealing, teleprompter-free you-didn’t-build-that confession of faith needs to be hung around his neck until Election Day. The third consecutive summer-of-recovery-that-never-came is attributable not just to Obama being in over his head but, even more important, to what’s in his head: a government-centered vision of the economy and society, and the policies that flow from it. (emphasis added)

"Four years of that and this is what you get.

"Make the case and you win the White House."

http://www.usnews.com/cartoons/barack-obama-cartoons

The Onion imagines Obama’s next attack ad: Did Romney kill JonBenet?

Hot Air  “I think this is a fair ad, and I think Mitt Romney owes an explanation to the American people as to why he murdered JonBenét Ramsey,” said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, who called the commercial’s black-and-white reenactment of Mitt Romney carrying a kicking and screaming child to her death “accurate.” “Ultimately, voters need to know who they’re getting with Mitt Romney: a job- and child-killing businessman who is so deceitful he won’t release his tax returns or admit to a senseless murder that shook the nation to its core.”…

The Onion; 'Romney Murdered JonBenét Ramsey,' New Obama Campaign Ad Alleges

"Added Morris, “This ad very effectively reminds us that no child murderer has ever been elected into the White House.” "

The Romney Foreign Policy Team

William Kristol;  "Here's an intelligent if speculative piece by Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin about what a Romney administration foreign policy team could look like. Full disclosure: Yes, I was one of those with whom Josh spoke for this article. (Unlike everyone else, apparently, I didn't insist on speaking off the record—I suppose Josh didn't want to embarrass all the other shrinking violets by quoting only me by name, and that's of course fine.)

Former senator Jim Talent is widely regarded as the top choice for defense secretary in a potential Romney administration. …

For secretary of state, most advisors interviewed for this article said that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is under serious consideration at the top levels of the campaign. An "independent Democrat," Lieberman, who hasn't endorsed any presidential candidate this cycle, was almost chosen by Sen. John McCain to run as vice president on his 2008 ticket. …

Despite Team Obama's bluster, Romney’s foreign trip won’t show up In attack ads

Once a soldier, always a soldier

From the Facebook site, Support-The-British-Army

Our name-caller-in-chief

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/08/branco-cartooon-whos-robbin-whom/

http://netrightdaily.com/2012/05/spotless-record/

Wartime tasks split: US to smash Iran’s missiles, Israel tackle Syria, Hizballah

Iran's Fateh-110 missile

DEBKAfile; "This task is not as formidable as Iranian spokesmen would have the world believe. Tehran’s entire stock of those missiles is no more than 30-40. That quantity is not nearly enough to take on the entire gamut of potential wartime foes, the United States Middle East bases, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Turkey. They would quckly be picked off by American Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Systems and Israeli Arrow guided interceptor rockets, which are synchronized through the advanced US X-Band radar systems installed in the Israeli Negev and southeast Turkey.

"In any case, it is hard to believe that Iran would empty its entire ballistic missile arsenal in a single blazing assault at the start of war. “They are too canny to leave themselves without some Shehabs in reserve for crises even more acute than the outbreak of war,” said the US military source."

About Iran's Fateh-110   ..."On 6 September 2002 Iran successfully test fired the Fateh-110 A ballistic missile. State-run Tehran television said the Fateh-110 A missile was "one the most accurate surface-to-surface missiles manufactured in the world." No details were given on when or where in Iran the test was conducted nor was the missile's range revealed.

"Some reports claimed that the Fateh-110 A missile might have been based on the Chinese DF-11A missile, which had a range of 186 to 248 miles and was capable of carrying nuclear warheads."  Via Alan Caruba, Facebook.