EDUCATING ROMNEY

ACTUALLY...... Mitt Romney is talking tough again.  This time it's about China.  I'm sure he's been advised by many analysts that anything he does with China could be more than disastrous and possibly start a trade war that would hurt both American consumers and workers. Romney contends that he would take a much braver approach to what he calls 'abusive' Chinese trade practices, than President Obama.  He has repeatedly said "one of his first acts as President would be to formally label China a currency manipulator and slap punitive tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S."  He said: "I want to make sure that if a nation cheats like China has cheated, we call them on the carpet and don't let it continue".

Romney's threat could damage the American economy.  I hope he's smart enough (?) to realize that China could retaliate by cutting purchases of U.S. debt and drive up our interest rates.  New tariffs on Chinese exports could increase prices for U.S. consumers.  His proposed actions would seriously damage our relations with the Chinese.  Daniel H, Rosen, an expert on Chinese economy said: "If a Romney presidency starts with aggressive new unilateral tariffs for China, then American firms from General Motors, to General Electric and Microsoft should all plan ahead for retaliatory treatment".

China's official Xinhau news agency said in a strongly worded English-language commentary  that "Romney's anti-China rhetoric, if converted into policy upon him assuming office, would trigger a catastrophic trade war and damage the already weak global economic recovery".

"It's rather ironic that a considerable portion of this China-battering politicians wealth was actually obtained by doing business with Chinese companies before he entered politics," Xinhua wrote.  "Such blaming-China-on-everything remarks are as false as they are foolish, for it has never been a myth that pushing up the value of China's currency would be of  litttle use to boost the chronically slack job market of the world's sole superpower, not to mention to magically turn the poor U.S. economic performance around."

Romney has repeatedly pledged, if elected, to get tougher with China on it's trade and currency practices, including to quickly declare China a currency manipulator.

DOESN'T HE KNOW THAT CHINA WON'T TAKE ANY CRAP FROM HIM ??

RYAN'S PEP RALLY

ACTUALLY....Republican vice president candidate Paul Ryan began his pep rally Wednesday night with this wife and three children on stage.  That was an admirable beginning to a speech full of  lies, dishonesty and anger.  He was there, of course, to accept the GOP's nomination for vice president or, in his own words, he "accepted the calling of my generation to help lead the county in tough times" and told the audience that Mitt Romney and he will make the difficult decisions needed to repair the nations economy. "We will not duck the tough issues, we will lead." Neither of the men has said how they would do that. WOW, why doesn't that give me a warm fuzzy feeling?
 
The National Catholic Reporter seems to think that Ryan's budget, fully endorsed by Mitt Romney, is taking out it's fiscal anger on the middle-class and poor, and asks where their deep seated anger comes from.  We all recognize that the federal deficit needs to be overhauled and that Medicare and Social Security could certainly stand improvement.  But the Ryan budget which the U.S. Bishops have called a "moral failure", is not the way to go.

Ryan hammered President Obama on a number of things.   His first hit was on, you guessed it, Medicare.  In a major section of his speech he tried to deflect Democratic criticism that he would slash Medicare benefits as part of his broad budget cutting plan.  Here is were he made one of his huge mistakes.  He said that President Obama made devastating cuts to the health care program for the elderly. Ryan said that the "president robbed Medicare of $716 billion".   What he didn't say that was Obama's Medicare cuts were to be over the next 10 years and in reimbursements to insurers and hospitals, not in payments to beneficiaries.  
Ryan ignored the fact that he incorporated the same cuts into budgets through the House in the past two years, using the money for deficit reduction.

Not everyone was pleased.  There was a woman who wanted to hear Republican leaders address foreign policy.  That was not included in Ryan's speech and she said obviously "this party isn't ready to talk about foreign policy".  (Perhaps it's because they don't know anything about foreign policy.)  Others noted that Ryan didn't say much about how he would cut spending and entitlement programs while preserving Medicare. There again, he probably doesn't have a clue.

He talked about the stimulus legislation that Congress passed at Obama's request in 2009 to help stabilize the economy.  What he didn't elaborate on was that he asked for some of that funding, which eventually went to two energy conservation companies in his home state.

Mr. Ryan spoke of other issues, many of which were based on deception and lies.  That topic is for another day.  As an unidentified woman said at the end of the evening:

"THE CONGRESSMAN'S SPEECH SKIPPED LIGHTLY OVER INCONVENIENT FACTS"