August 2012

Interesting details from Vice President Joe Biden's campaign trip today. From the pool report:

By the time Barack Obama visits the place in Louisiana where Hurricane Isaac hit on September 3, he will have made 7 campaign stops and held 8 campaign events since the storm first made landfall.

President Barack Obama again did not watch the Republican convention. This time, Obama, according to the White House, skipped out on the third and final day of the convention, featuring presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and Clint Eastwood.

MSNBC host Chuck Todd asked the co-chair of the Democratic party's convention, L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, why there are more Republican women and Hispanic governors:

Vice President Joe Biden mocked a Greek at a lunchtime stop in Ohio. "I'm Joe Bidenopoulos," said Biden, according to a pool report.

Tampa

The United States has some 68,000 troops fighting in Afghanistan. Over two thousand Americans have died in the more than ten years of that war, a war Mitt Romney has supported. Yet in his speech accepting his party's nomination to be commander in chief, Mitt Romney said not a word about the war in…

Mitt Romney's Republican convention address, as prepared for delivery: 

St. Petersburg, Fla.

Here are the prepared remarks of Newt and Callista Gingrich, which will be delivered together after the Ronald Reagan tribute at the Republican convention: 

Here are excerpts of the remarks Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to deliver this evening in Tampa, Florida:

Here are the remarks Marco Rubio plans to deliver this evening at the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida:

Tampa

Here's the front page for the New York Times's national edition, the day after Paul Ryan's speech at the Republican National Convention:

Last night, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan told the Republican convention, "College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.”

In remarks in Tampa, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow noted that Paul Ryan mentioned the phrase “tax fairness” in yesterday’s Republican convention address:

Spirit of America is a wonderful charity that helps provide equipment—or whatever else is needed—to help American soldiers complete their mission in Afghanistan. We last wrote about their successful campaign to raise money to get cleft palate surgery for two Afghan children, and WEEKLY STANDARD…

Shortly after Paul Ryan’s speech ended last night, the left wing blogosphere and commentariat launched an attack on the vice presidential nominee for his supposed mendacity. They attacked from many angles, but the most substantial assault was on Medicare.

It’s a floral smell at the presidential suite on the 10th floor of the D.C. Park Hyatt. It’s also citrusy and with hints of wood. Or the woods. As it turns out, it is a specifically designed scent, Le Labo's Bergamote 22, and it’s actually detectable throughout the hotel. But it’s most noticeable…

This is Mitt Romney's big night.  The people who understand American politics and make a living explaining its mysteries to the rest of us have said so, over and over, and it is hard not to agree. Governor Romney needs to go long with his acceptance speech and go into the campaign with momentum on…

Among the more trenchant lines from Paul Ryan's speech was this:

Tampa

On Friday, August 17, the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan ended, followed by Eid-Ul-Fitr, the “festival of fast-breaking” that usually involves three days of celebration. This year in Kosovo, Eid Ul-Fitr was accompanied by an impressive journalistic feat: a team of investigative reporters published…

The supporting cast did its job. Ann Romney and Chris Christie on Tuesday, and Condoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan on Wednesday, all came through with efforts that ranged from good to excellent. They've loaded the bases. Now it's Mitt Romney at the bat. 

Tampa

Tampa

Here is the text of Paul Ryan's remarks, as prepared for delivery: 

Rand Paul delivered a "humdinger" of a speech at the RNC moments ago, according to John Podhoretz. You can read Paul's remarks, as prepared for delivery, here: 

USA Today reports that viewership of last night's RNC speeches was up a little bit from the RNC convention four years ago: 

Excerpts released by the Romney campaign from Paul Ryan's address tonight to Republican convention in Tampa, Florida:

Over at Harper's, Jack Hitt has filed a report from the RNC convention, "A Troubling Chant on the Convention Floor." According to Hitt, nativist Republican delegates started chanting "USA! USA!" in response to a heavily accented speaker from Puerto Rico. Of course, racism had nothing to do with it,…

Our friends at the Washington Examiner reported briefly yesterday from the Huffington Post Oasis in Tampa:

During the primetime speeches last night by Ann Romney and Chris Christie, something peculiar did not happen. Barack Obama’s name was not mentioned. Why?

White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Obama "did not" watch the Republican last night. Instead, Carney said, Obama watched sports. Via the pool report: 

Here are excerpts of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell's address, which he'll deliver tonight at the Republican convention: 

At the convention, the quest for something to write about never ends and often yields stories that are as watery as prison soup. Politico, for instance, illuminates the proceedings with this:

On a hot mic, reporter David Chalian of Yahoo News said that Ann and Mitt Romney are "happy to have a party with black people drowning." Here's audio:

Tampa

A Foreign Policy Initiative event at the Republican convention in Tampa:

Tampa

The first day of the Republican convention had two highlights, one at its beginning, one at its end.

Here are New Jersey governor Chris Christie's remarks at the Republican convention, as prepared for delivery:

Here are Ann Romney's remarks at the Republican convention, as prepared for delivery:

David Brooks: Introducing the Mitt Romney.

Here are a few excerpts from House speaker John Boehner's upcoming speech at the Republican National Convention:

The Romney campaign released these excerpts of Ann Romney's speech, which she'll deliver tonight at the Republican convention in Tampa: 

The Republican delegates have voted in Tampa. And it's official: Mitt Romney is the Republican presidential nominee. 

Does it not sometimes seems as if the nation – and the media, especially – has become overly in awe of the president and that it might be time for whomever is in the White House to stick to running the government – when he is not running for reelection – and let people run their lives on the…

Two recent polls, including a new survey released Tuesday from Quinnipiac, show Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon of Connecticut slightly leading her Democratic opponent, congressman Chris Murphy. The Quinnipiac poll shows McMahon 3 points ahead of Murphy, 49 percent to 46 percent, while a…

Yesterday, I wrote a lengthy blog post taking PolitiFact to task for their shamelessly skewed "fact checks" on the Romney-Ryan health care plans. And as it happens, I woke up today and National Review has an excellent editorial on the same topic. It's worth reading in full, but this part was as…

A Foreign Policy Initiative event at the Republican convention in Tampa: 

Vice President Joe Biden cancelled his scheduled trip to the Republican convention in Tampa because of the threat of bad weather, but that has not stopped a local Hooters restaurant (in nearby Clearwater, Florida) from welcoming him to the area anyway. Here's a picture, which mocks Biden for…

Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic convention chairman, accused Republicans of "trot[ting] out a brown face or a Spanish surname":

Today brings us a Bloomberg column from Michael Tackett, "Hero Reagan’s Compromise Would Collide With Tea Party Certitude." It's rather unfortunate this particular talking point keeps making the rounds, as it requires arguing alternate history. Further, asserting that Ronald Reagan is significantly…

Tampa

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Tampa

The cab company employed by Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren claims that the Republican party employee who shot this video struck Warren's driver first.

After President Obama's remarks this morning on the tropical storm headed toward New Orleans, a reporter asked whether it's appropriate to continue campaigning. Obama did not answer the shouted question.

In response to a statement about the high unemployment rate for those with college degrees, Robert Gibbs, a surrogate for President Obama's reelection campaign, admitted that things are particularly bad for those without college degrees:  

After nearly four years of waiting, and a landmark Supreme Court decision, David Bossie, chairman of the advocacy group Citizens United, finally got what he wanted—the chance to make a movie that could change the course of an election. Tuesday at the Republican National Convention, Citizens United…

Tampa

St. Petersburg

TAMPA, Fla. -- When bleary-eyed reporters and convention delegates arrive at the Huffington Post Oasis just outside the Republican National Convention, Arianna Huffington appears almost like a mirage. Then, she snaps into action.

All hail the GOP's gold platform.

The passing of Neil Armstrong is a sad occasion in the history of our nation. But it is also a reminder of one of the most glorious achievements in American history and in the whole history of humanity. Moreover, it's a reminder of an era when the efforts of brave astronauts and brilliant engineers…

Tampa

An employee at a taxi company hired by Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said he had "no comment" on the assault on a Republican staffer committed by the Massachusetts Democrat's driver.

THE SCRAPBOOK was startled to receive this press release a few hours ago:

A spokeswoman for Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren says the man who repeatedly swatted at a camera held by a Republican staff member is not a Warren staffer but a taxi driver Warren's campaign had hired.

Tampa

Perhaps if we all ignore PolitiFact, they'll go away. But for the time being, the supposedly independent organization continues to crank out skewed and partisan work. There's no better example of this than the the current jihad the "fact checking" organization is waging against the Romney-Ryan…

From an undisclosed location in North Tampa

The Republican convention will highlight a debt clock, the party announced: 

An aide to Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, appears to have knocked the video camera of a Republican tracker after an event this weekend in Martha's Vineyard. Watch the video below:

On TV this morning, Chris Matthews accused RNC chairman Reince Priebus and Republicans of playing the race card, causing clear discomfort on the set of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

Tampa

Former vice president Al Gore previews the "new version of the slideshow" on climate change in an interview with TakePart.com. "[E]very night on the news now, practically, is like a nature hike through the book of Revelations," Gore says in the excerpt released this morning.

In the musical My Fair Lady, snooty dialectician Henry Higgins searches in vain for “purity” of expression in English; he winces at the Scots and the Irish, shudders at the Cockney London accent. His parting shot is, however, fired across the Atlantic: There even are places where English completely…

Whenever discussion turns to the causes of the Irish “Troubles,” the decades-long terrorist campaign of the Irish Republican Army to force the British government to relinquish Ulster as part of the United Kingdom, it inevitably focuses on the terrible events of January 30, 1972, known to both sides…

Manassas, Va.

Waukesha, Wisc.

Oxford, Ohio

Marriage is one of the great subjects—perhaps the great subject—of the novel. That is not true of the cinema. Movies end with marriages; they do not begin with them. Marriage is the ultimate fulfillment of the wishes and dreams of cinematic characters. It is not the ongoing condition of their…

In academia, few sins are as grave and unforgivable as criticizing the “studies” programs. Journalist/author Naomi Schaefer Riley found that out this past spring when she wrote a blog post for the Chronicle of Higher Education website describing Black Studies as “left-wing victimization claptrap.”  

‘Joe Biden,” wrote the editorialists of the Salt Lake Tribune four years ago, “is smart, articulate, and blunt.” Well, grant our Utah colleagues this much: One out of three is better than nothing. Joe Biden is blunt as a night stick, as he proved once more last week with his instantly infamous…

In the wake of Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, conservatives and liberals seemed almost equally happy. To the right, the pick represented a bold decision to make a forthright case against President Obama’s vision for the country and to champion solutions to the problems…

In the summer of 2009, President Obama and congressional Democrats faced a dilemma. In the midst of a severe economic downturn, and less than a year after the national debt had reached the 14-figure mark for the first time in American history, they wanted to launch a brand-new federal health care…

Philadelphia

The end of Medicare and Medicaid as we know them—through reform, the Ryan way, or -bankruptcy, the Obama way. The direction of the country—via the Romney-Ryan right track, or the Obama-Biden wrong track. Those are the choices, made stark by the addition of Paul Ryan to the Republican ticket.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the Department of Labor and now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute (as well as a former colleague of mine at the Hudson Institute), likes to tilt at windmills, and in her latest book she has an opportunity to do so—and at actual windmills, no…

Paul Ryan has an army. It’s also known as the House Republican freshmen, 87 strong and dedicated to the proposition that conservative reform is not only possible but achievable, so long as Mitt Romney is elected president.

For the past 10 years I’ve volunteered at the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, a pro-life Christian ministry in the troubled heart of Washington, D.C. Over this decade of listening to women in crisis, talking with them, helping them find the resources they need, praying with them, hugging them,…

I spent a good part of the last three weeks helping a young friend look for an apartment, and the experience was revealing. Among other things, it made me realize that so much has changed in the city where I grew up and have lived most of my life that I scarcely know it. The experience also showed…

‘Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize .  .  . is God’s gift to humanity.”

Plymouth Notch, Vt.

Vice presidential picks don’t matter. Except when they do. If John Kerry had chosen Dick -Gephardt instead of John Edwards in 2004, and had then parked Gephardt in Ohio during the general election campaign to make the Democratic case to working-class voters, Kerry might well have won the Buckeye…

Support for Republican Todd Akin’s decision to stay in the Missouri Senate race has cratered and so has his favorability.  Those findings come from two new polls conducted after Akin created a firestorm with his comment about “legitimate rape.”

In a fundraising email to prospective donors, President Obama says, "This is critical." Obama explains that he is being outspent in states likes Iowa by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 

Republican congressman Ben Quayle of Arizona may have received the most critical endorsement of his primary against fellow congressman David Schweikert. Black civil rights activist Reverend Jarrett Maupin of Phoenix has endorsed Quayle over Schweikert, the Phoenix New Times reports, with some…

Blogger Tom Maguire flags this passage in yesterday's New York Times:

President Obama used his most recent interview with the Associated Press, released today, once again to hit Mitt Romney for investing overseas. "[T]he small bits of disclosure that he has put forward indicate investments in the Bahamas, or Swiss bank accounts," Obama said of Romney.

Via Politico, here's the latest Obama campaign ad attacking Mitt Romney on Medicare reform:

Friends of former vice president Al Gore tell the New York Times that he "is mostly at peace these days with losing the presidency in 2000." The observation comes a dozen years after Gore lost the 2000 presidential election to President George W. Bush.

Sean Trende, writing at RealClearPolitics: 

Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke now has two reasons to disappoint those who are hoping he will use his speech next week at the conclave of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to launch the good ship QE3. The first is that the economy continues to move ahead, albeit at a slower…

Vice President Joe Biden was mocked at a fundraiser he held this evening with donors in the Hamptons. “Welcome to Joe Biden, unchained,” the person introducing Biden said, mocking the vice president for his recent controversial comments.

MSNBC panel reacts to Romney's birth certificate joke.

Elections can turn on many things; some of them beyond the abilities of mere spin doctors to manipulate. There are at least two very large possibilities looming over this year's presidential election: a possible Israeli attack on Iran and the failure of the Euro. According to one report, the Obama…

A new poll of the Massachusetts Senate race shows Republican Scott Brown opening up a six-point lead over Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. Forty-nine percent of respondents support Brown, the incumbent running for reelection, while 43 percent support Warren. Nine percent are undecided.

There’s a bizarre moment in John Cassidy’s short New Yorker item on Paul Ryan. It’s not when Cassidy likens Ryan to Michele Bachmann or even when he claims that, by choosing Ryan, Romney “has thrown in his lot with the most ideological wing of his party.” That’s just Cassidy’s analysis, and while…

The Republican National Committee is making big changes to the lineup of speakers at the convention next week in Tampa to ensure that broadcast networks cover Ann Romney’s speech. Among the changes most seriously under consideration: moving Marco Rubio to Tuesday night and having Mrs. Romney speak…

The guy's an embarrassment. Even Charlie Rangel says so:

Earlier today, Democrats announced that Costco CEO Jim Sinegal will be speaking at their convention in September. But while Sinegal has been a faithful supporter of President Obama, even holding a fundraiser for the president at his Washington state home recently, the choice of him as a speaker in…

A new ad from the liberal smear group MoveOn distorts Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's views on abortion. 

She says she's for President Obama this election because they have similar "values." As she told Haaretz, "The Democratic Party is more aligned with my values." 

The Democratic National Committee is hosting an "Obama Shabbat" tonight at its Washington, D.C. headquarters to observe the Jewish sabbath. 

Plagiarism is not a crime in any legal code, but among people who make their living with words, there is no deeper offense. The plagiarist has not just stolen the work of another writer; he has used it to disguise his own inadequacy. It is a symptom of -laziness, to be sure; but above all, it’s a…

Matt Continetti, writing in the Washington Free Beacon: 

In every presidential cycle, there is a debate about partisan identification in polling. Conservatives complain about too few Republicans being sampled; pollsters, journalists, and liberals respond by saying it is inappropriate to weigh polls by party identification.

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz explained to CNN's Anderson Cooper this evening that "it doesn't matter" whether she misrepresented Mitt Romney's views in a recent fundraising email. What matters, according to Wasserman Schultz, is that Romney has different views on abortion than she does: 

From the opening lines of First Lady Michelle Obama's remarks this afternoon at Bradley Tech High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

Jonathan Weisman and Michael Shear of the New York Times report today that Paul Ryan "co-sponsored a bill with Mr. Akin that aimed to restrict the definition of rape."

Bill Kristol, in his capacity as chairman of the Emergency Committee for Israel, has written the following letter to President Barack Obama to ask him to repudiate anti-Israel figures among the "Rabbis for Obama" group:

This is an actual article from GQ. There's no point in reading it, because the headline says it all:

It was reported this morning that weekly jobless claims are up for the second straight week, and this week's unexpected increase exceeded analysts' expectations. The numbers (372,000 jobless claims last week) don't suggest that the next unemployment report will be awful, but it's a safe bet that…

By the end of this year, the federal debt is expected to be $16.2 trillion, which is $6.2 trillion more than when President Obama first came into office four years ago. Moreover, new analysis by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee finds that, over the next 4 years, if Barack Obama…

Here's an audio recording of Barack Obama arguing as an Illinois state senator in 2002 against legislation protecting infants who had survived an attempted late-term abortions:

Earlier this week, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota joined Vice President Joe Biden for a campaign event in Minnesota. 

Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner reports:

Hmm. Mark Zandi is predicting boom times.  

Jobless claims rose by 4,000 for a second week to reach 372,000 in the period ended Aug. 18, Labor Department figures showed today ... The median forecast of 41 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 365,000. The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure, increased to 368,000.   This…

Wait: Wasn't the choice of Paul Ryan, with its attendant focus on the Ryan budget and Medicare, supposed to be a disaster for the GOP? That was the Democratic talking point for the first few days after the Ryan pick, and I think it was the genuine and confident belief of Democratic operatives. But…

Noemie Emery, writing in the Washington Examiner:

Michelle Obama, speaking yesterday at a campaign event in Florida:

This evening at the president's "NBA heroes" fundraiser in New York City, featuring Michael Jordan and Carmelo Anthony, Barack Obama was star struck.

Democrats are trying to use Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's bizarre and offensive comments about rape and pregnancy to smear GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. And many journalists are playing along.

The Washington Post reports that President Obama is running his reelection campaign as a "culture warrior," trying to cast his opponents as extremists on such issues as abortion in the case of rape and requiring religious institutions to pay for contraception. But could Obama's own extremism on…

Speaking at a campaign event today in Detroit, Vice President Joe Biden said that he's known three presidents "intimately":

The Washington Post reports that President Obama is running his reelection campaign as a "culture warrior," trying to put his opponents on the defensive over issues abortion in the case of rape and requiring religious institutions to pay for contraception. But could Obama's extremism on abortion…

This evening in New York City, President Obama will be fundraising with "NBA heroes," according to his spokesman. Those "heroes" include Michael Jordan (who is also a failed baseball player), Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, and, perhaps most interestingly, Carmelo Anthony.

The Washington Post reports that President Obama is running his reelection campaign as a "culture warrior," trying to put his opponents on the defensive over issues like requiring religious institutions to pay for contraception and the issue of abortion in the case of rape. But could Obama's…

When asked whether John Edwards has been invited to next month's Democratic National Committee's convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, a Democratic convention official had only one word for THE WEEKLY STANDARD: "No."

The Washington Times reports:

The reality is, look, the president has changed Washington. Has he changed it enough? Absolutely not. We’ve faced pretty big obstacles. --Stephanie Cutter Well, look, if Stephanie Cutter says it, then it must be so.  And have there been obstacles?  Absolutely.  This is an environment where people…

According to the conventional wisdom accepted by many in the mainstream media, women tend to vote Democratic more than men do because of the issue of abortion. Ramesh Ponnuru points out at National Review Online that the data do not support this belief. According to Gallup, about the same…

In its most dire warning yet about the fiscal cliff yet, the CBO said the economy would contract by 0.5 percent in calendar year 2013 if the Bush-era tax rates expire and automatic spending cuts are implemented. Unemployment also would rise from 8.2 percent in 2012 to 9.1 percent next year, it…

My advice, for what it's worth, to conservatives and Republicans desperate to see Todd Akin off the ballot in Missouri: You've made your point. You've bewailed and denounced and threatened. Now it's time to hearken to the words of Lincoln, in his great Temperance Address, delivered on Washington's…

The Huffington Post discovers that Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House, is a "madly" obsessed chocolate addict:

The Miami Herald reports on a suspicious mailer that seems to be tied to Marco Rubio ally David Rivera:

The al Qaeda-allied Somali terrorists of Al-Shabaab (“The Youth”), and the pirates that comprise their “navy,” have repeatedly gained world attention—and then been forgotten. In July, Al-Shabaab was blamed for homicidal raids in Kenya, as revenge for Kenyan intervention against the Islamist…

Earlier this week, we received final fundraising totals for the month of July – and the numbers were quite a shocker. The Republican side of the campaign (a joint effort between Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee) raised a total of $101.3 million dollars, and has $185.9 million in…

Since the 2008 election, American conservatism has been in a struggle to define itself. Now the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's vice presidential candidate is helping to resolve that struggle.

In the fall of 2011, the Obama administration revealed that American officials had discovered an Iranian terrorist plot against Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. Working through a local emissary, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers planned to hire members of a Mexican drug cartel…

On an MSNBC program yesterday, Democratic senator Kirsten Gillbrand promoted her website OffTheSidelines.org as a bipartisan pro-women-in-politics campaign, even though the website looks to be nothing more than a front for her own reelection campaign in New York. This isn't the first time, however,…

In an interview with Laura Ingraham, White House reporter Jake Tapper said that the media is failing the country. 

Vice President Joe Biden will be in Tampa during the Republican National Convention, a campaign official confirms. 

At a campaign speech, Vice President Joe Biden said, "I'm more at home in a train depot than anywhere else":

Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak mocked Vice President Dick Cheney while introducing Vice President Joe Biden at a speech today:

Yesterday, when speaking with the White House press, President Obama was asked about the now infamous pro-Obama super PAC ad that links Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney with a female victim of cancer. Obama tried to play down the significance of the ad by saying "it ran once."

Here's a press release just sent out by Missouri senator Roy Blunt's office: 

While campaigning today outside of Pittsburgh, Paul Ryan took a shot today at Barack Obama's 2008 comments regarding Pennsylvanians and small-town Midwesterners who get "bitter" and "cling" to their "guns or religion."

Newsweek's cover this week is decidedly not favorable to President Obama:

A poll by the Democratic firm PPP finds a 7-point shift toward Mitt Romney in Wisconsin since Romney added Paul Ryan to the ticket. In July, Obama led Romney 50 percent to 44 percent in PPP's poll, but PPP now finds that Romney leads Obama 48 percent to 47 percent (the exact same results of an…

The latest fundraising plea from First Lady Michelle Obama for Barack Obama's reelection campaign: 

President Barack Obama will play basketball tomorrow night at a fundraiser in New York City with "NBA heroes," according to campaign press secretary Jen Psaki. The "heroes," one assumes, is a reference to the "Obama Classic" starring Michael Jordan, Carmelo Anthony, Patrick Ewing, and Alonzo…

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

A big-time donor to President Barack Obama is also a financial supporter of Paul Ryan. Marc Benioff, a national campaign co-chair for President Obama's reelection campaign, donated $10,000 to Ryan's political action committee earlier this summer, in June, according to CNN.

When asked this morning about President Obama's response to the super PAC ad that ties Mitt Romney to a victim of cancer, CBS's Norah O'Donnell had this to say:

How America can stop what the New York Times calls “Israel’s March to War” is the hot topic this month. The issue—for the Times—is whether Israel is on the verge of bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, or can be persuaded to delay that decision and rely on the United States instead. This is what a parade…

A SurveyUSA poll conducted Monday finds that only 35 percent of Missouri adults think Akin should stay in the Senate race, while 54 percent of Missourians think he should drop out. Akin has until 5:00 p.m. Tuesday to drop out of the race.

Philip Klein: Why Todd Akin should quit the race.

The Pioneer Press reports: 

On MSNBC this morning, Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York promoted her website, OffTheSidelines.org, as a "campaign" to try to get "more women, Democrats, Republicans, all women, to again, hold their elected leaders accountable, vote, and hopefully run for office." Despite that…

Over the past few months, Iran has demonstrated a renewed willingness to carry out attacks targeting its enemies. From India and Azerbaijan to Cyprus and Thailand, recent Iran directed plots have targeted diplomats and civilians, Israelis, Americans, Saudis, and more. To execute these attacks, Iran…

In response to Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's bizarre comments about abortion and rape, conservative columnist Ann Coulter is calling on Akin to resign for the good of his country and the pro-life cause: 

Media bias consists of more than partial quotes, deliberate misreporting, and economy with the truth. Doubt that, and read the New York Times last week, reporting—on page one—“U.S. Reliance on Saudi Oil Goes Back Up: Security Concerns Rise With Gulf Imports.” If you think this has anything to do…

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign paid nearly $93k to hold a kick-off event at the Ohio State University in May. And, at the time, photos of the event showed large sections of the arena unoccupied, causing the New York Times to write that the kick-off event "had the feeling of a concert…

"Do you trust politicians?" asks Thomas B. Edsall in the New York Times this morning. And the answer he seems to be hearing is, of course, "Not much."

Campbell Brown, who has tried her hand in opinion journalism recently, is married to Dan Senor, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney. Today, writing for Slate, Brown explains that in fact she's able to have a thought that's independent from her husband. Indeed, several: 

Vice President Joe Biden is looking ahead to the 2016 presidential election, according to a new ebook by Glenn Thrush. 

According to a new ebook by Glenn Thrush, President Barack Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, had a spat with Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for the president's reelection campaign. 

According to a new ebook released today by Politico writer Glenn Thrush, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, is the most unpopular of all surrogates for President Obama's reelection campaign. That finding is the product of polling done by…

The story goes something like this: From Chaucer to Wordsworth, English poetry was marked by formal innovation. Shakespeare’s sonnets, Donne’s epigrams, Milton’s line, and Wordsworth’s lyrics were indebted to classical Greek and Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Italian forms, altered by the poets who were…

Forty years ago this summer, in July 1972, social liberals made their political debut at the Democratic National Convention. Gloria Steinem- and Gore Vidal-style activists were not shy about their goals. The women’s rights movement had secured two major victories that spring, Title IX funding and…

John Guy’s biography of Thomas Becket is a very good book—it is the work of a scholar (hitherto best known as a Tudor historian) at the zenith of his skill and completely on top of his sources. And how voluminous those are: 12 contemporary or near-contemporary biographies, including one in…

Neither our presidents nor our pundits should try to be hip. I still have not recovered from the chief executive’s slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon. Now comes Monica Crowley’s critique of the Obama administration, which is so hip it hurts. 

At the start of the Summer Olympics last month, the eyes of the world were upon London, and millions caught their first glimpse of the unruly blond thatch that is the trademark of Boris Johnson, the city’s recently reelected mayor. A portly, rumpled presence, he stood in sharp contrast to the…

In separate interviews, Arizona congressmen David Schweikert and Ben Quayle shake their heads and shrug their shoulders at their political predicament. The freshmen members are running against each other in a Republican primary for the House in what local and national observers alike have labeled…

August is supposed to be the time for vacations, but Israelis can’t relax this summer. Their Mediterranean beaches may be as inviting as ever, but when they look north, south, and east their world appears increasingly dangerous.

In 1978, a little-known law called the Indian Child Welfare Act was signed with the intention of keeping families together. Today, it’s being used to tear them apart.

The oddly convenient academic study has long been a weapon in the Democratic party’s arsenal of election-season demagoguery. Do you need to say that conservative policies would sink the republic? Here’s a paper by scholars from a respected university, published in a respected journal, and released…

Jon Lord began life—his public life, that is—as a rock god. He ended it as a composer of classical concertos. The time I met him, both strands of his work entwined with memories of mine.

The new comedy called The Campaign is supposed to be an up-to-the-minute satire of contemporary politics—a story about a mudslinging race for Congress in North Carolina between a blow-dried Democratic incumbent caught in a sex scandal and a wide-eyed naïf Republican recruited to challenge him by…

In 2010, the Alabama legislature went Republican for the first time in 136 years. In 2011, Republicans won the Mississippi statehouse and Louisiana’s legislature—for both, a first since Reconstruction. That leaves Arkansas as the Holdout State.

One of the startling cultural disconnects in studying Iran is how unimpressive the officials of the Islamic Republic usually are. Reading Persian history inclines one to expect Iranians to be highly cultured and nuanced, delicately balanced between a conservative religious faith and a love of…

The Scrapbook, as any reader can attest, stands foursquare behind civility. We like to think that we practice civility, and we value it in others. And while it’s a myth that the nation’s capital was a hotbed of civility until those terrible [Republicans/conservatives/Reaganites/right-wingers/Tea…

Science fiction is idea fiction, you often hear—and it’s true. In a way. But trying to describe how it’s true proves surprisingly difficult, for the ideas in science fiction are much more often about the fiction than about the science. The rootstock isn’t the technological flourishes; those are the…

Ephraim, Wisc.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes posts a video of Paul Ryan expressing support for a stimulus package in 2002. The video of Ryan endorsing a $42 billion stimulus bill when Bush was president is supposed to be evidence that Ryan is a hypocrite because he opposed an $862 billion stimulus package when Obama was…

Worth watching: Jeffrey Bell on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, making the (contrarian) case for the importance of social issues in this year's campaign. For more on this, take a look at his fine book, along with his recent articles in THE WEEKLY STANDARD: here, here, and here.

Bill Kristol, with Joe Trippi, Karl Rove and Evan Bayh, earlier today on the Fox News Sunday Internet-only aftershow:

Yesterday, when introducing President Obama at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, said that the president "led the mission that brought Osama bin Laden to justice":

I suggest in this week's editorial that the newly invigorated 2012 Romney-Ryan campaign may end up resembling the upbeat, forward-looking Obama 2008 campaign more than the dour Obama 2012 campaign does. Here's another straw in the wind: This week, President Obama derided Romney-Ryan economics as…

The Villages, Fla.

On the Today Show this morning, Mark Halperin said the media basically does what the Obama campaign wants them to do: 

Lanhee Chen, the Romney campaign's policy director, is circulating this memo (below). The memo seems similar to what Yuval Levin and Jeffrey H. Anderson have written about Medicare, Obamacare, and the 2012 election. 

In the short week since Mitt Romney announced Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice presidential pick, many are scrambling to figure out just what exactly is the Ryan budget plan.

U.S. Senator John McCain has endorsed Ben Quayle over David Schweikert in the Republican primary for Arizona's Sixth Congressional District. McCain endorsed Quayle, a House freshman and the son of former vice president Dan Quayle, in a press conference Wednesday in Phoenix. Dan Nowicki of the…

“America goes shopping again,” exulted one commentator. “The American consumer is back, big time,” chortled another. “Retail sales increase notably more than expected in July reflecting across-the-board strength in sales,” commented the more sober economists at Goldman Sachs, reporting a 0.8…

As John McCormack reported yesterday, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan had this to say about China: 

At a campaign stop in Virginia this afternoon, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan talked national security and Iran.

Berlin

Here's video of a supporter of Mitt Romney being spat on by a protester in Appleton, Wisconsin:

A group of protestors gathered this afternoon outside the Russian ambassador’s Washington residence to protest the jailing of the three Russian punk rock musicians from the group Pussy Riot. The musicians—Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29—were sentenced…

In Beirut last week, former Lebanese MP and cabinet member Michel Samaha was arrested and later confessed to “planning terrorist attacks in Lebanon at Syrian orders.” A longtime ally of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Samaha was apparently acting under the direction of Damascus to stir sectarian…

The Washington Examiner reports that "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pressed by her husband and a top Obama aide to consider replacing Vice President Joe Biden just a couple of weeks ago, claims the author of the New York Times bestseller 'The Amateur.'" Clinton, the report states, turned…

The Washington Post reports that Vice President Joe Biden appears to be a political liability for President Barack Obama:

“Old age puts more wrinkles in our minds than on our faces; and we never, or rarely see a soul that in growing old does not come to smell sour and musty. Man grows and dwindles in his entirety.”—Montaigne Before the sun had set on Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan, the Obama campaign was out with…

Following the boss's article in support of President Obama's decision to keep Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, American Crossroads has released this web video, titled "Run, Joe. Run."

I know those of you masochistic enough to pay close attention to media fact checkers aren't going to be surprised by this, but Media Trackers, a nonpartisan watchdog, combed through the personal Twitter feed of PolitiFact Ohio writer Tom Feran and found he's a pretty vocal liberal. You can review…

The price of gasoline is rising and may reach $4 a gallon, which is considered critical in the minds of consumers and political consultants worrying about how to seduce them. In an economy that is otherwise stalled in the weakest recovery since World War II – real wages in decline, job growth…

To gain access to top officials of the Democratic party at this year's convention, one must donate a large amount of money to the political party or raise money by encouraging others to donate, an ABC article alleges.

President Obama talked about colors, food, Chicago, and music in a hard-hitting interview on New Mexico's 93.3 KOB-FM:

President Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, sent an email this morning to Mitt Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, asking for Romney to release his tax returns. In an email back to Messina, Rhoades writes, "If Governor Romney’s tax returns are the core message of your campaign, there will…

David Feith, writing in the Wall Street Journal:  

What to make of Joe Biden’s apparent racial demagoguery this week in Danville, Virginia? Team Obama dismissed it as having nothing to do with race, but this is likely wrong: Biden certainly seemed to be referencing slavery, was doing so in a Southern dialect, and speaking in a city that is roughly…

President Obama is creative. He’s given up on a palpable falsehood about the Romney-Ryan plan to reform Medicare. But he’s retained a few old canards and trotted out a new one.

Ryan Streeter: "Ryan Will Be Formidable."

Almost exactly twenty years ago, when I was Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff, we faced an attempt by some aides to President George H.W. Bush to dump Quayle at the last minute. President Bush refused. Doing so, he thought, would be disloyal and dishonorable.

Warren, Ohio

Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says Barack Obama should stick with Joe Biden as the vice president. 

White House spokesman Jay Carney is adamant that the president's schedule today is "routine":

White House press secretary Jay Carney insists Vice President Joe Biden will remain on the presidential ticket: 

According to the White House schedule, President Obama had a meeting in the Oval Office at 10:45 a.m. with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

North Canton, Ohio

President Barack Obama's closest political adviser, David Axelrod, would not rule out dropping Vice President Joe Biden from this year's presidential ticket when asked about the rumors this morning on MSNBC. 

The people who didn't build their small businesses seem to think so.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

Kirsten Powers, writing for the Daily Beast: 

Rasmussen reports that Mitt Romney has gone from a 3-point deficit to a 1-point lead in Wisconsin:

Can the Romney campaign become a cause? Can a mere electoral effort become a broad political movement? That's what really successful campaigns do—think Reagan 1980 or Obama 2008. The last few days have suggested this possibility. And the Virginia small businessman who took a stand provides an…

The Washington Post reports:

Can you find the "MOST INTRIGUING SENTENCE" in today's Playbook from Politico? It's from these paragraphs:

Jonathan Martin of Politico reports that aides to Vice President Joe Biden have taken the unusual step of wrangling the press for edits to pool reports: 

Perhaps further fueling speculation that Barack Obama may replace Joe Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket with, say, Hillary Clinton, take a look at part of the president's schedule for today: 

Social Science Research editor Jim Wright is fighting to save his professional reputation. Wright is under fire from fellow sociologists and left-wing bloggers for publishing an article in June by sociologist Mark Regnerus, which concluded that children of parents who had engaged in same-sex…

Steve Hayes, with Kirsten Powers and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Oxford, Ohio

The presidential candidates should listen to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta when he reminds us that there is still a war being fought in Afghanistan. And we should remember what Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates, had to say about Afghanistan in 2010, too.

Latest swing state poll shows "small bump" for Romney.

Yesterday, after witnessing Paul Ryan make an electrifying campaign stop in Colorado, I made the case that his campaign skills and force of personality could turn the election. Well, I stress again that it's too early to get cocky, and Ryan still has a lot to prove. But when campaigns are clicking,…

The Associated Press came out with a lengthy and extremely tendentious "fact check" regarding the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate. I am on record as deploring the media fact checking phenomenon in pretty strong and detailed terms. And this fact check was so…

Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s housecleaning over the last two weeks—dismissing several top army officers and an intelligence chief and abrogating constitutional amendments limiting presidential power—has left observers trying to figure out the grand design behind Morsi’s actions. Some think…

Oxford, Ohio

Today the National Jewish Democratic Council released a short video featuring testimonies from ordinary Israelis thanking President Obama for his support of Iron Dome, an Israeli-developed missile defense system that’s been partially funded by the United States. Of course, nobody in the video…

This morning, an armed man shot and wounded a security guard at the Washington office of the conservative Family Research Council. The Washington Post reports:

The AP writes, "The recession that ended three years ago this summer has been followed by the feeblest economic recovery since the Great Depression."  It adds, "Since World War II, 10 U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years. An Associated Press analysis…

In a speech today in Virginia, Vice President Joe Biden seemed to forget we're in the 21st century:

UPDATE: The countdown clock now reads 21-days:

President Barack Obama has slightly more than 22 days to drop Vice Presidential Joe Biden from the 2012 Democratic presidential ticket, according to lawyers familiar with the party nominating process. That is, Democrats have until September 6 to formally nominate Democratic party members to be on…

One of the minor disgraces of this year's campaign is that the presidential candidates act as if the war in Afghanistan doesn't exist. We have 84,000 troops fighting over there in very difficult circumstances; they've had a tough few weeks, with 41 killed in the last month, but the candidates…

Last week the Treasury Department leveled sanctions against Hezbollah for providing support to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in his efforts to put down the 17-month-old rebellion meant to topple his regime. Since Hezbollah has already been designated as a foreign terrorist organization, this…

The death of Helen Gurley Brown two days ago has given every obituary writer a shot at disproving the adage de mortuis nil nisi bonum. The New York Times cracked, "She was 90, but parts of her were considerably younger"—alluding to Brown's pathological addiction to plastic surgery during her…

The conventional wisdom on the state of the 2012 presidential race is that, thanks to his endorsement of the House GOP Budget and his selection of Paul Ryan to be his running mate, Mitt Romney has opened himself up to one of the Democrats' favorite attacks -- fear-mongering over Medicare, or…

President Obama and the Democrats have been ambushed. They blindly walked into the political trap Republicans set for them on Medicare.

In an interview with Brit Hume on Fox News, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan talks about the economy, debt, monetary policy, Ayn Rand, Obamacare, Medicare, tax reform, and much more: 

Lakewood, Colorado

Joe Rago on the history of Paul Ryan's reforms.

Mitt Romney's latest campaign advertisement knocks President Obama for "[cutting] Medicare to pay for Obamacare." The Romney campaign appears to be addressing the Medicare criticisms that come with adding Paul Ryan to the ticket head-on. It's a strategy that's worked for Republicans before,…

We received another mysterious invitation in our mailboxes today. This one, addressed to William Kristol, reads: "The Supreme Leader for Life of the Democratic Republic of Wadiya Admiral General Aladeen Cordially compels you to attend the Blu-ray & DVD launch party for His latest Award-Winning…

Earlier today on the campaign trail, Vice President Joe Biden said, "I'd trade being vice-president in a heartbeat for having won Daytona." The comment was made to an owner of a stock car that won Daytona. Via the pool report: 

According to a poll from Rasmussen, Paul Ryan as 51 percent favorability with likely voters in Ohio, a crucial Midwestern swing state Mitt Romney may need to pick up to win the White House. Ryan, a Midwesterner himself from Wisconsin, has 39 percent unfavorability among likely voters in the Buckeye…

A new ad from the Romney campaign takes the Democrats' Medicare attacks on Paul Ryan head on. Watch the video below:

Earlier today, "President Barack Obama gave Mitt Romney a rare needling over the Republican candidate’s now infamous decision to put the family dog, Seamus, in a carrier and strap it to the roof of the car during a road trip to Canada," the Wall Street Journal reported. 

During an appearance Tuesday on MSNBC, former Democratic congressman Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania said that "Paul Ryan also believes we should ban all birth control as well. He voted for that." 

Paul Ryan has higher favorability ratings--and lower unfavorability ratings--than Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, or Joe BIden, according to a new Rasmussen poll.

A surprising anecdote from a White House pool report this morning:

I’m reassured—indeed, encouraged—indeed, buoyed!—by this morning's Politico article, "GOP pros fret over Paul Ryan." "GOP pros" are the stupidest part of "the stupid party." For one thing, they're not very professional—why are they using the press to take shots at the Ryan pick in the first…

In 2009, President Barack Obama conceded that 1/3 of Obamacare funding is taken from Medicare: 

Joe Biden, speaking at a campaign event in Virginia:

Not so hot, it seems. First, there is the simple matter of costs.  

America's second-best journal of politics and ideas gets it right:

Bill Bennett suggested on his radio show this morning that the Romney-Ryan campaign (or someone else) cut an ad to make famous these remarks (delivered a year ago at the University of North Carolina) about Paul Ryan by Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles:

In Iowa last night, a chant of "four more beers!" broke out for President Obama, and he offered to buy beers for 10 people, but not for a supporter of Mitt Romney. Via the pool report:

USA Today reports:

I might have lost track, but in this 4-minute clip I counted 10 instances in which CNN's Wolf Blitzer either points out, or asks DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to admit, that Paul Ryan's Medicare reform would only affect Americans who are under the age of 55: 

Yuval Levin writes:

Erskine Bowles on Paul Ryan: "Honest, straightforward, sincere."

A loyal reader writes in: 

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, has just sent out a fundraising letter criticizing her House colleague Paul Ryan, saying a Vice President Ryan would be a "nightmare" and that "we cannot afford to let this man be a heartbeat away from the presidency."…

Vice President Joe Biden invoked Paul Ryan's deceased father to question the Republican vice presidential candidate's values: 

President Obama's campaign uses its Tumblr page to introduce supporters to vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan: 

At 11:51, in a story titled, "Paul Ryan pick is less popular than Palin, Cheney selections, poll shows," the Washington Post reported:

Paul Ryan received a warm welcome home in Wisconsin last night at a rally in the city of Waukesha. Speaking without a script, Ryan was relaxed and at the top of his game. Watch the full speech at RealClearPolitics: 

Mitt Romney closed his Sunday rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, with a stirring account of patriotism from American speed skater Derek Parra at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Watch the whole speech below, but the story begins around 9:00:

Massachusetts's Democratic governor Deval Patrick has signed new legislation that will tax high earnings of medical doctors, Alex Vuckovic writes in the Boston Herald:

The Hill reports: 

When the I.R.S. and New York Times effect a merger, beware: truth suffers. On Saturday we were treated to this headline, strapped across the top of page one of the business section of our newspaper of record, “In Superrich, Clues to What Might Be in Romney’s Return.” Note: This is a news story, not…

In campaign remarks yesterday at the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, Illinois, President Barack Obama praised his adopted city, where he lived before becoming president of the United States. "Chicago is an example of what makes this country great," Obama said. His audience applauded. 

In the single most important test of his leadership prior to November 6, Mitt Romney chose the ideal running mate in Paul Ryan, who will now help Romney in a myriad of ways. Some on the left, however, appear giddy at the thought of running against Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms, which would keep…

Politico's Patrick Gavin reports: 

A new television ad from Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee looks at Barack Obama's history of opposing the 1996 reforms to welfare and promises a Romney administration will restore "work back in welfare." The ad begins by asking the viewer, "Do you support work for welfare?" Watch…

A recent federal trial court ruling has warmed the hearts of social conservatives and civil libertarians alike. A judge in Colorado on July 27 protected a Catholic-owned small business against the “free birth control rule”—which requires companies subject to the Affordable Care Act to offer their…

Last week, at the beach with my family, I deliberately ignored all newspapers. Not for the reason most people do—because print is dead. But because whenever I’m surrounded by salt -water, steamed crabs, and even mediocre fishing, I tend to hold that true happiness is having no idea what chronically…

If you are at all plugged in to the happenings of Hollywood, or have stood in line at the grocery store, or glanced at a newsstand, you know that the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes divorce has been almost omnipresent since the news broke two months ago. Everybody knows that the tabloid media are, at best,…

When CNBC’s Rick Santelli took to the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade on February 19, 2009, to launch a tirade against a government plan to assist homeowners with troubled mortgages, few could foresee that the Tea Party would come into existence and exercise such influence on political debates.…

Mitt Romney will have many opportunities over the next three months to demonstrate to voters that they should choose him over Barack Obama: his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, the three presidential debates, major policy addresses, and more. But it may be that nothing will speak…

It may not be a foregone conclusion that gay marriage will one day be a legal fact in all 50 states, but an awful lot of people seem to think so. The Republicans in the “inevitability” camp—and there are plenty, especially in blue states—tend to tolerate their party’s supposed backwardness on the…

The Scrapbook admits to a twinge of grudging sympathy for Joan Juliet Buck. Last week the fashion magazine writer published an apologia in Newsweek, “Mrs. Assad Duped Me,” trying to explain why she wrote a fawning and shockingly stupid profile of the Syrian dictator’s wife for Vogue last year.…

Jerusalem

On July 31, former Republican senator Bob Bennett made a bold pronouncement on the Fox Business Network. “I do feel that the Tea Party wave is receding,” he said, “and it’s not going to be nearly as big a factor in this election as it was in 2010.” There was a tone of hopefulness in Bennett’s…

He loved the past, hated the present, and dreaded the future.

Sam Rayburn famously divided lawmakers into two categories: workhorses and show horses. In an era when the most dangerous place to be is often between a lawmaker and a television camera, it is refreshing to read about two members of Congress who have made considerable achievements outside of the…

Next to Mitt Romney picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, the best thing that happened over the weekend was the USA basketball team capturing the gold medal at the London Olympics.

First Lady Michelle Obama, speaking earlier today at "Sunday of Fun" at pop star Gwen Stefani's house in Beverly Hills, made a plea for help:

The Bipartisan Policy Center helpfully explains how Paul Ryan's Medicare reform, which Mitt Romney has embraced, would change the program for Americans who are 54-years-old and younger (via Reihan Salam): 

First Lady Michelle Obama is at pop star Gwen Stefani's Beverly Hills home to take part in "Sunday of Fun," according to the report. The event is a fundraiser for President Obama's reelection effort.

Bill Kristol, with Liz Cheney, Joe Trippi, and Evan Bayh, earlier this morning on "Panel Plus," the Fox News Sunday Internet-only aftershow:

Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter defended President Obama's $700 billion cuts to Medicare: 

This morning on CNN, President Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, rolled liberal Oregon senator Ron Wyden:

On Fox News Sunday this morning, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed not to know the political affiliation of President Obama's super PAC, even after the host reminded the DNC chair that the super PAC chief used to work for the Obama campaign and in the White House.

Drudge has a link up to video of Paul Ryan dismantling the fraud that is Obamacare directly to President Obama’s face. Obama was dumbstruck and had no substantive reply to Ryan at the time. The transcript of the full exchange is printed below, but take a second to look at how much of what Ryan said…

David Axelrod tweets: 

Today, at 9:22 a.m., Obama campaign manager Jim Messina sent out an email blasting Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate, Wisconsin congressman and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan. "[Ryan's] plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting…

Last night on Twitter, New York Times blogger Nate Silver said, "I think Ryan pick ...indicates (a) bearish view from Romney campaign." Silver elaborates here, saying that Romney picked Ryan in part because he believes "he had a losing position" against President Obama.

The Romney campaign just announced a homecoming tomorrow night for VP candidate Paul Ryan in Wisconsin, with presidential candidate Mitt Romney at his side: 

Philadelphia

It has not even been 4 hours, and already the Romney campaign claims it has raised $1.2 million since announcing Paul Ryan as VP. From Press secretary Andrea Saul: 

The Romney campaign passes along George W. Bush's reaction to the announcement that Paul Ryan will be Mitt Romney's running mate: 

The Independent Women's Forum "applauds Mitt Romney's vice president pick," according to a statement from the group.

Democrats are responding to the Paul Ryan VP pick by calling him "the architect of the Republican plan to kill Medicare." A spokesman for the Romney-Ryan campaign responds:

Mitt Romney, the cautious candidate, wary of being specific, and counting on the bad economy to defeat President Obama – forget all that! The Romney who picked Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate is an entirely different person. He’s prepared to take the fight to Obama on the biggest…

[img nocaption float="center" width="640" height="457" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]19032[/img]

Norfolk, Va.

Here are the prepared remarks from Mitt Romney's introduction of Paul Ryan:

Here's the prepared text of Paul Ryan's address in Norfolk, Virginia:

UPDATE: Here's video of Paul Ryan's first address as Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate:

One of the first political events I vaguely remember (I was eight years old) is listening on the radio to John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address. When I woke up this morning, this passage was echoing in my head. It needs a bit of updating—but I think it captures the spirit of the Ryan pick:

The Mitt Romney campaign officially announces the selection of Paul Ryan as the Republican vice presidential candidate via its iPhone app.

The Romney campaign announces the VP pick is coming tomorrow: 

Elm Grove, Wisc. & Washington, D.C.

The right's getting uneasy about Mitt Romney again.

Via Ryan Lewis and Robert Costa, a private plane flew from Boston to Janesville today (stopping along the way in Chicago): 

Breaking news: someone read Fareed Zakaria. That person was Cam Edwards of NRA News who discovered that Zakaria's work sounded very similar to a piece he had read in the New Yorker.

On May 27, 2012, National Journal's Major Garrett told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that the super PAC aligned with President Barack Obama, Priorities USA, is ready to launch "incendiary" ads, including ones that relate to "suicides" and ones "too emotionally powerful to be used in television ads."

From the United States Constitution: Article 1, Section 8:

Regardless of one's precise political peccadilloes, most of us agree this is one of the most important elections of our lifetime. However, one gets the feeling the Romney campaign, and even the RNC, either aren't aware of the stakes or, perhaps, just not sure of the best way to convey those stakes…

Federally funded, low-speed train service Amtrak has launched a website to show its support for the gay pride movement and with the hopes of attracting additional clientele.

“After a spring and summer of weak economic indicators, a flurry of fresh data suggest key sectors of the economy might be gaining traction, just as the battle for the White House enters the final round,” Zachary A. Goldfarb & Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post. In some sectors of the media, it…

Mike Gerson succinctly lays out part of the case for Chris Christie:

Matt Continetti, writing in the Washington Free Beacon:

An eight-year-old girl's dreams were crushed when she was denied entry into an Obama event in Colorado. "Alana has Asperger’s and she doesn’t do well in the heat. So her dad waited until 4 p.m. to show up to the event because his tickets said the president would speak at 5:30," according to this…

Tomorrow will mark a milestone: It will be 1,200 days since Senate Democrats passed a budget, during which time Congress amassed $4.8 trillion in new debt.

Earlier this month, 48 Iranian Shiite “pilgrims” were abducted in Damascus. The Free Syrian Army claims they were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who have been dispatched to Syria to protect one of Tehran’s vital interests, Bashar al-Assad’s regime. It’s not the first time that…

A new study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce finds that, when it comes to “threatening or disruptive behavior,” union members have far more rights—or, at least, far more license—than their fellow Americans. The Chamber's study, “Sabotage, Stalking, and Stealth Exemptions: Special State Laws for…

In a short excerpt of an interview on NBC this evening, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was asked, "What do you want your [running mate] selection to say about what kind of president you're going to be?"

Three weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, union leaders are investing a significant amount of time and money on a “shadow convention” for organized workers, which will be held August 11 in Philadelphia, and called the Workers Stand for America rally. The International…

A Florida super PAC affiliated with a Democratic congressional candidate has a new ad criticizing Florida Republican Allen West. The ad depicts West, a freshman House member, as a boxer who "socked it to seniors" and "whacked women." The animated West punches an elderly woman, a younger woman, and…

As the New York Times reports, "The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday fined Google $22.5 million to settle charges that it bypassed privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser to show advertisements, and violated an earlier privacy settlement with the agency."

To Hell in a Handbasket

Jared Lee Loughner, who killed six people and injured thirteen others (including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) last year near Tucson, cut a deal yesterday: By agreeing to plead guilty to perpetrating the massacre, federal prosecutors in return spared the 23-year-old from the death penalty.

Bill Burton, a founder of President Obama's super PAC and former White House official, partied last night with "Reporters from nearly every outlet in town," the Washington Examiner reports.

As the super PAC aligned with Barack Obama is coming under fire for suggesting Mitt Romney might have been responsible for a woman dying of cancer, President Obama knocked Republican super PACs in a speech today in Colorado:

A new poll from WTOP in Washington shows Barack Obama and Mitt Romney statistically tied in Northern VIrginia, the state's most populous region. Forty-eight percent of voters support Obama while 46 percent support Romney in the Virginia region of the D.C. metro area.

A new list of non-Jews "who are most positively influencing the Jewish future" lists Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the top position. The list was created and compiled by the Algeimener, a Jewish newspaper.

Maggie Gallagher writes: 

The president of the largest trade union federation in the country told reporters Thursday morning that the union money donated to Democrats in the 2008 election was "worth it."

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…

John Hannah, writing about his recent trip to Israel:

In a fundraising email, Ann Romney seems to reveal that Mitt Romney's VP announcement will come in "a few short hours," or it could just mean that the winner of the contest will come in a few hours. 

This morning on MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough blasted the pro-Obama super PAC for running an ad that suggested Mitt Romney was responsible for a women dying of cancer.

The latest ad from Mitt Romney's campaign goes after Barack Obama for declaring "war on religion."

In an interview on March 22, two weeks before Mitt Romney would win the Wisconsin primary and effectively end the race for the Republican nomination, Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes asked about his embrace of Paul Ryan’s budget.

Barack Obama, media critic.

Scandinavia is boring. People living there apparently have little to do. And as European history teaches, when there is nothing much to do you may as well amuse yourself by attacking the Jews.

The Boston Herald today reported that the daughter of Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren chairs a non-profit group called Demos, which pushes state governments to spend taxpayer money to register welfare recipients to vote. The president of Demos, Miles S. Rapoport, has donated to…

NBC's political team reported this morning:

In addition to raising federal spending (by a whopping 13 digits), federal taxes, health insurance premiums, and overall U.S. health costs, Obamacare would cause the price of pizza to rise. Politico reports that Papa John’s CEO and founder John Schnatter conveys that Obamacare would “result in…

A new chart set to be released later today by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee details a startling statistic: "Over 100 Million People in U.S. Now Receiving Some Form Of Federal Welfare."

Seems that American's youth's long love affair with the automobile may be over:

The New York Times reports that "Obama Travels to Colorado With Appeal to Women."

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously said that the U.S. should negotiate with Iran without any preconditions. Obama’s notion of diplomacy with the mullahs was widely ridiculed at the time, including by his then rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. More than…

Kofi Annan's resignation from the United Nations mission charged with negotiating an end to the Syrian carnage confirmed what was obvious from the start: the effort was doomed to failure. Its endless rounds of futile talks were clearly destined to do nothing to stop Bashar al-Assad. The mission’s…

Joe Soptic is the star of the controversial Obama super PAC ad that suggests Mitt Romney's actions at Bain Capital are responsible for his wife's death in 2006.

Even the talking heads on MSNBC believe the new Obama super PAC ad is bad: 

The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan began on July 20 and will end on August 17 or August 19 (depending on lunar observations around the world). Muslims will donate for relief of the poor during Ramadan, but they will be especially generous after its end, during the first three days of the…

The conventional wisdom in the presidential race is that President Obama is a clear favorite. We hear this from the pundits in the press, we see it in the InTrade odds, and various predictive models built around the polling averages tell us this.

Conservative congressman Todd Akin has won a tough three-way Republican primary for Senate in Missouri, the Associated Press reports. In a race that had been close between Akin, businessman John Brunner, and former state treasurer Sarah Steelman, the seven-term representative from northeastern…

Former congressman Pete Hoekstra has won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, reports the Associated Press.

Byron York on voter fraud in Minnesota.

When you take your campaign cues from Harry Reid, then you surely are running short on inspiration.  But that is where Elizabeth Warren, who laid the intellectual foundation for the Occupy movement, finds herself.  She is now calling for her opponent in the Senate race for what was once thought of…

Seems that Jimmy Carter is going to speak (by remote means) at Democratic convention. And why not?  It'll be like old times with the economy in the tank, the government throwing money at renewable energy sources, and Iran tying the U.S. in knots and laughing in our face.  All we need is a killer…

In an interview with Black Enterprise magazine, President Barack Obama blames state and local governments, as well as Congress, for over 14 percent black unemployment.  

The Obama campaign  just sent out this email to supporters, asking for donations for a chance to play basketball at the "Obama Classic with Michael Jordan, Carmelo Anthony, Patrick Ewing, Sheryl Swoopes, Kyrie Irving, and Alonzo Mourning.

And when he gets to heaven,

One of President Barack Obama's top advisers, David Plouffe, took money for speeches from a company with ties to Iran, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

As the campaigns argue over welfare reform, following Mitt Romney's ad this morning that states, "President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform," it's worth remembering what Barack Obama said about Bill Clinton's reforms before he was in the national spotlight.  

In a series of tweets this morning, golf star Paul Azinger seemed to rebuke President Barack Obama and endorse Mitt Romney--while offering a little advice to the Republican presidential candidate.

The Obama campaign is known for leveraging its robust online following for all it's worth -- even when it appears to cross the line, such as in 2008 when the campaign accepted untraceable donations over the internet. More recently, the campaign released a mobile app that allows you to see which of…

As the boss said yesterday on Fox News, “If you look at Governor Romney’s schedule, he’s got events in Illinois Tuesday, Iowa Wednesday, a fundraising breakfast Thursday morning in New York – his calendar then is clear, so far as I can tell, Thursday afternoon and Friday. Then he begins a…

Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein last night hosted a fundraiser for President Barack Obama at his Westport, Conn. home. He had nothing but praise for Obama.

The Foreign Policy Initiative is accepting application for its 2012-2013 Future Leaders Program:

In an ad released this morning, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney goes after Democrat Barack Obama for being to the left of President Bill Clinton on welfare: 

Meet Stuart Stevens, the man behind Romney's campaign.

In for a penny, in for a pound: PJ Media's John Boot has an excellent piece on the five biggest conservative ideas smuggled into The Dark Knight Rises. Sample awesome: 

A great deal has been made—and is being made—of the fact that Wade Michael Page, the man who shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, was a veteran of the U.S. Army. The press appears to be searching for some pertinent connection between details of Mr. Page's service and…

Michigan Republicans head to the polls on Tuesday to select Pete Hoekstra or Clark Durant as Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow's GOP challenger. Hoekstra, a former congressman, was far ahead of Durant in the most recent public poll, which was conducted the last week of July. But the same…

A new poll from Gallup looks at how many 2008 voters say they will switch parties in the presidential race. According to the poll, more Americans who voted for Barack Obama will be voting for Mitt Romney than John McCain voters will switch to vote for Obama. Here are Gallup's results:

In a desperate plea for money, the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is telling potential donors that "Mitt Romney will sell America out if he becomes President." The Democrat is arguing that, in order to prevent this, one should make a donation.

During a recent visit to Malawi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dressed in local garb and began to dance:

The Romney campaign just announced the details of its upcoming swing-state bus tour:

The New York Times reports from Antakya, a Turkish town close to the Syrian border, that one of Turkey’s minority populations supports the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. “As Syria’s civil war degenerates into a bloody sectarian showdown between the government’s Alawite-dominated troops…

There've been many emails in response to our editorial in this week's issue, “Go for the Gold, Mitt!” Two were particularly noteworthy.

Earlier today, Mitt Romney's campaign announced raising a cumulative $101.3 million in the month July. Now, Barack Obama's campaign announces: "In July, 761,000 people donated to raise over $75 million for this campaign."

A major farm bill is now stalled in the House as members head back to their districts for their traditional break. This is a good thing. The measure approved by the Senate and by the House Agriculture committee with bipartisan support easily ranks as the worst major piece of domestic policy…

Joe Biden is taking another week off.

The State Department released its annual International Religious Freedom Report last week, and Hillary Clinton made some remarks on the subject at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that same day. Clinton's comments toed the standard line on the surface, but they are more interesting in…

A top aide to President Barack Obama pulled in $100,000 from a company affiliated with Iran, the Washington Post reports. The sum was paid to David Plouffe in 2010 for speeches in Nigeria.

The Romney campaign released its July fundraising numbers this morning:

In the eyes of the Obama administration, most Democratic lawmakers, and left-leaning editorial pages across the country, voter fraud is a problem that doesn't exist. Allegations of fraud, they say, are little more than pretexts conjured up by Republicans to justify voter ID laws designed to…

According to a new book that will be published later this month, President Barack Obama "quickly developed a genuine disdain" for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 

The AP reports: 

The Washington Post's Dan Balz writes this weekend on Mitt Romney's difficulties against Barack Obama as the campaign enters its final months:

A new television advertisement released today by Mitt Romney's campaign promises that "Romney will be a different kind of president—a strong leader who stands by our allies." 

President Obama will spend his 51 birthday golfing. From the pool report: 

President Obama devotes today's weekly address to the Summer Olympics. "I’ve got to admit I was a little jealous [Michelle Obama] got to go," President Obama tells the nation.

If the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy gurus hoped that Friday’s jobs report would give them solid guidance as to how to set future monetary policy they were sorely disappointed. The jobs situation neither deteriorated sufficiently to justify another round of easing, nor improved…

Where's the outrage on the Obama administration leaks?

A couple of readers have written in to respond to my mention of Paul Ryan in this post. First, a dyed-in-the-wool Romney supporter:

Kofi Annan resigned yesterday as the United Nations-Arab League Envoy to Syria after failing to bring an end to the internecine violence that has been raging in Syria since last spring.

Almost two weeks ago, I speculated on Fox News Sunday that Mitt Romney would announce his vice presidential pick early next week, on August 6 or 7. It was, if I may say, a reasonably well-informed forecast at the time. But I didn't take into account the existence and importance of the redoubtable…

In a statement posted to his Facebook page, Florida congressman Allen West calls President Obama's decision "to unleash his campaign cronies against our Military ... unconscionable."

In a recent campaign television ad, President Barack Obama states, "I believe the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class. Asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way." The last part--committing to pay down the national…

Yesterday, the Emergency Committee for Israel released this ad:  

President Obama likes to say that he inherited a terrible economy but has gotten it headed in the right direction. But the employment figures released today by the federal government’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics tell a decidedly different story.  During the final month of the 2008-09 recession,…

The New York TImes reports: 

Matt Continetti, writing in the Washington Free Beacon:

The unemployment rate increased to 8.3 percent, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Peter Sprigg writes this letter to the editor in response to Andrew Ferguson's article, "Revenge of the Sociologists," in the most recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

Over the last six weeks, President Obama has launched a sustained advertising blitz focused primarily in nine swing states – Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Everybody is wondering: has it moved the needle in his direction?

Just before breaking away for summer recess, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 26-3 to approve $61.3 million in spending to fix the Capitol Dome. Only 3 senators on the almost 30-person body voted against the measure. 

On the Senate floor right now, just before Congress breaks away for summer recess, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is imploring Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow the full Senate to vote on Obamacare. This is the fourth time McConnell has asked Reid for a vote since the Supreme Court decide to…

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Iranian government is expanding its ties to the Taliban and even allowing Mullah Omar’s organization to set up an office in eastern Iran. The arrangement works as follows:

A new Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS News poll, which shows President Obama handily beating Mitt Romney among likely voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, has sparked justifiable concern among some Republicans.  In the wake of that poll, it’s worth comparing the state-by-state polling from…

The Chick-fil-A controversy has no doubt been polarizing in some corners of the country, but the undeniable success of yesterday's nationwide rally to support the fast food chain means we're likely to remember August 1, 2012 as Silent Majority Day.

A memo released from the Republican Policy Committee in the U.S. Senate is suggesting that Barack Obama's White House is responsible for "yet another leak of sensitive intelligence information directed at bolstering the national security bona fides of the Obama Administration, as both Reuters and…

The Jerusalem Post reports that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again called for the annihilation of the state of Israel. "In a speech published on his website Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the ultimate goal of world forces must be the annihilation of Israel," reports…

Wednesday was Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, and Americans flocked to the fast food restaurant in response to criticism of COO Dan Cathy's opposition to same-sex marriage (as well as threats from the mayors of some major cities). The photos of long lines and traffic jams reveal the extent of the…

President Obama yesterday cited an "independent, non-partisan" economic study by the Tax Policy Center. The president used the group to buttress his argument against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's tax plan. (This, despite the fact that a former staffer for President Obama helped…

The Emergency Committee for Israel has released its latest ad, anchored by this line: "Next year ... President Mitt Romney in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel." Watch here: 

The Senate majority leader launched a charm offensive the other day and, among his other drolleries, said this:

Mitt Romney's hosting a campaign event at Jeffco Fairgrounds in Golden, Colorado around lunchtime today, and a quick scan of Chick-fil-A's website shows several locations within fifteen miles or so of the Romney event. So it should be easy for Romney to stop at a Chick-fil-A for a photo-op (and a…

Pastor Rick Warren reported last night on Twitter that fast food chain Chick-fil-A "set a world record" yesterday. His claim is based off a phone call he had with Dan Cathy, the COO of Chick-fil-A who ignited a culture war when he expressed his preference for traditional marriage. 

A savvy friend, a Romney supporter who has an excellent track record of reading election trends, emails:

Romney's running on issues Americans care about.

Congressman Steven LaTourette, a retiring moderate Republican from Ohio, voted "present" last night on the D.C. late-term aboriton ban. "LaTourette says the most significant piece of legislation to hit the House floor on Tuesday is emblematic of why he’s decided to step aside," reports Chad Pergram…

As customers flock to Chick-fil-A restaurants across the country today to support the company, a talk radio listener shared an idea to extend the demonstration. From Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families:

Someone fainted at an event for President Obama in Ohio:

For the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, Saudi women are being allowed by their ultra-conservative government to compete. As the Saudi athletes marched in the opening ceremonies in London, the women’s faces and open arms showed a joyful sense of emancipation from the yoke of…

Today is the day when the Obamacare mandate forcing employer-provided health insurance plans to provide "free" abortion pills, contraception, and sterilizations kicks in.

Dan Senor, a foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney, explained to MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell what the Republican presidential candidate said about the Palestinians and culture: 

President Obama "literally" made 19-year-old Lia Brunetti's dream come true this afternoon in Mansfield, Ohio. From the pool report: 

President Obama cited an "independent, non-partisan study" in Mansfield, Ohio earlier today: 

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters today that "statements" are not enough to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Last week, the constitutionality of an Arizona law banning late-term abortions was upheld by a federal judge, and last night the U.S. House of Representatives voted 220 to 154 to end District of Columbia's abortion-until-birth policy by prohibiting abortions from taking place 20 weeks after…

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:

Because conservatives are scrooges, the good folks at Americans for Tax Reform have gone through the fine print to find out what our Olympians will have to cough up to the IRS should they be lucky enough to win any medals in London.

After first insisting columnist Charles Krauthammer was wrong to say that President Obama returned a bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy when he first became president, the White House is now apologizing. Here's the letter White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer sent to…

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has a new ad running on Massachusetts television praising the Chinese government's investment in public works projects. The ad encourages the United States to follow the lead of the Asian Communist country and "do better." Watch the ad below, courtesy of…

The first ad released today by the Romney campaign is called "Dream." Here it is:

Senate candidate Ted Cruz is projected to win the Republican primary runoff for U.S. Senate in Texas. With 37 percent of precincts reporting, Cruz has won nearly 53 percent of the vote over Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, who has won just under 46 percent. Dewhurst won the four-way GOP primary…