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"

CONVENIENT MEMORY LOSS

ACTUALLY...... In an interview with Fox News, Paul Ryan tried to explain why his memory failed him.  The subject was stimulus funds for a local energy company in 2009 after voting against the Recovery Act.  I think he's a little young to blame senility, but here's his statement:  "It wasn't my intention to to send letters supporting the stimulus. I didn't know about those letters until very recently when they were brought to my attention."

It just seems rather odd to me that he forgot he signed these letters.  But here they are, all hand-signed by Ryan or one of his aides.  "Recovery Act" is prominently written in the very first line.

WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?

ACTUALLY....In my last post, I mentioned that I would have some information on President's Obama's 2009 stimulus package.  I have done some research and this is as close as I can get.  I'm the first to admit that this is indeed a confusing project.  This package was passed by the House in 2009,without the need for any GOP votes.

According to the administration, not that all the stimulus money has been spent; it has been committed for specific projects and programs. There’s still about $168 billion in stimulus money that has not actually been paid out. But it says nearly all of that money already is tied up in contracts with companies, obligations with states and local governments, promised taxpayer relief and commitments to government programs.

Raymond Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association has said "for states, much of that money for Medicaid and education has been worked into budgets, so if Congress took it back it could leave shortfalls that would be a serious problem because they’re depending on that money.”

According to  Liz Oxhorn, the White House’s spokeswoman for the economic recovery program tells us,  "these remaining dollars include funding for major high-speed rail, clean energy and other infrastructure projects that in many cases have already been awarded and just haven’t been formally put under contract.
Rescinding these funds could halt job-creating projects years in the making where preliminary work in some cases is already under way.”