• The president recalled the GOP convention as a look backward. “It was a re-run — we’d seen it before,” he said. “You might as well have watched it on a black-and-white TV.”
Vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has been forced to admit that he lied in an interview with conservative columnist Hugh Hewitt when he said that he once completed a marathon in under three hours. According to Huffington Post, Ryan’s campaign has admitted to Runner’s World magazine that the congressman’s claim to have finished a marathon in “two hours and fifty-something” minutes was a fabrication.
In a prepared statement, Ryan blamed a faulty memory of the event. He claimed to have been corrected by his brother, rather than by reporters from Runner’s World, who began asking questions about Ryan’s claim when they could not find any record of Ryan running a three-hour marathon in Wisconsin or anywhere else.
[rawstory]
• One interesting thing about Clint Eastwood’s bizarre appearance at the Republican National Convention, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said on Up With Chris Hayes Saturday, was that Eastwood explicitly mentioned the U.S. war in Afghanistan, something the party’s presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, didn’t discuss at all.
• Melissa Harris-Perry: “What is riskier than living poor in America? Seriously, what in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it’ll be a good school and maybe it won’t. I am sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No! There is a huge safety net that whenever you fail will catch you and catch you and catch you. Being poor is what is risky. We have to create a safety net for poor people. And when we won’t, because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness! We cannot do that!”
• Oh dear, oh dear. If the IRS rules that KKKarl Rove’s Crossroads GPS superPAC is taking part in political campaign activity, not only will they be on the hook for a 70 percent tax bill, they might have to disclose their donors, too. On the bright side, they will be on the hook for a 70 percent tax bill, and they’ll have to disclose their donors!
• Mitt Romney went to Louisiana yesterday in the wake of Hurricane Isaac, and The New York Times tells me that this is supposed to make me believe he feels people’s pain. But it doesn’t make us feel he understands people’s needs and concerns. It makes us feel he’s laboring to persuade us that he understands people’s needs and concerns. Romney has to stop trying to look like a guy who cares, because all he does is look like a guy trying to look like a guy who cares. Instead, he could try (a) actually caring and/or (b) telling us what he’d actually do as president (besides repeal Obamacare and FREEDOM!!!1!!) that he believes would make our lives better.
F.D.Brightly
White House Beer!
Shorter Question Everything
• Inside the White House: Beer Brewing. Ale to the Chief: White House Beer Recipe. [PDF]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dygQrX8FI3Q
• The president recalled the GOP convention as a look backward. “It was a re-run — we’d seen it before,” he said. “You might as well have watched it on a black-and-white TV.”
• ‘Mitt Romney: A Human Being Who Built That,’ as Narrated by Leonard Nimoy
From the light hearted to the light headed:
• Romney staffer, Social Media Director Bill Murphy, promotes in a retweet ‘Black-on-White Race War,’ still has job
• Paul Ryan cannot even be honest about how fast he can run. To be more accurate, Paul Ryan lied about how fast he could run twenty years ago. In fact, his own brother called him out on his lie and mocked him relentlessly.
• Ryan claims faulty memory behind marathon lie:
• One interesting thing about Clint Eastwood’s bizarre appearance at the Republican National Convention, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said on Up With Chris Hayes Saturday, was that Eastwood explicitly mentioned the U.S. war in Afghanistan, something the party’s presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, didn’t discuss at all.
• Will the Supreme Court weigh in on voter ID laws before the election?
• Melissa Harris-Perry: “What is riskier than living poor in America? Seriously, what in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it’ll be a good school and maybe it won’t. I am sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No! There is a huge safety net that whenever you fail will catch you and catch you and catch you. Being poor is what is risky. We have to create a safety net for poor people. And when we won’t, because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness! We cannot do that!”
• Take a little bit of madness and mix it with a steady diet of Fox News, and you’ll get David Kappheim. A Florida man “obsessed with Fox News and the Republican party” felt that his girlfriend was too “liberal” — so he decided he had to kill her.
• Oh dear, oh dear. If the IRS rules that KKKarl Rove’s Crossroads GPS superPAC is taking part in political campaign activity, not only will they be on the hook for a 70 percent tax bill, they might have to disclose their donors, too. On the bright side, they will be on the hook for a 70 percent tax bill, and they’ll have to disclose their donors!
• Mitt Romney went to Louisiana yesterday in the wake of Hurricane Isaac, and The New York Times tells me that this is supposed to make me believe he feels people’s pain. But it doesn’t make us feel he understands people’s needs and concerns. It makes us feel he’s laboring to persuade us that he understands people’s needs and concerns. Romney has to stop trying to look like a guy who cares, because all he does is look like a guy trying to look like a guy who cares. Instead, he could try (a) actually caring and/or (b) telling us what he’d actually do as president (besides repeal Obamacare and FREEDOM!!!1!!) that he believes would make our lives better.
• So your New Orleans House is flooded. Big deal! Just go to your lake house or your house on the shore and call 211 from there. Who has only one?