Romney/Ryan. Two of a kind.

The RNC Clown College has gavelled itself back into their usual unscripted incoherence again, and, to the surprise of nobody anywhere, Romney and Ryan are the nominees for God Emperor and Fisher King, and the Tampa strippers now go back to making subsistence wages.

There are actually many reasons why Mitt Romney would choose Paul Ryan for the VP spot, and only one of them involves the fact that Ryan's tax plan would have Romney paying less than one percent in taxes.

Ryan is like Mitt in many ways - he is also in the habit of making huge, sweeping statements about what he'll do, without giving any details about how he'll do them. For example, his vaunted plan to balance the budget? Well, what few details have been released have been described as "ludicrous and cruel."

But more than that, the details he isn't releasing are important. Forbes magazine, one of the most staunchly conservative of publications, point out that it isn't a plan, calling it "vacuously vague" and "all candy and no vegetables."

But he's very protective of that plan: back in April, when the president pointed out some flaws in it, Ryan went on the attack in a speech later that evening, saying "I seem to remember him saying that he was going to be a uniter, not a divider. Frankly this is one and the worst of his broken promises. We do not need a campaigner-in-chief, we need a commander-in-chief."

(Isn't that cute? "The president shouldn't attack me! Democrats can't fight back!" And then he gives a Bush quote but attributes it to Obama. And then he attacks Obama. You have to admire that level of hypocrisy.)

And in keeping with the Romney strategy, he doesn't just avoid criticism by never giving any detailed policies, he's more than happy to lie his ass off, just like Romney. His big speech at the RNC kept fact-checkers busy for days.

But remember, avoiding lies isn't a major priority of this campaign. It was Romney's advisor Neil Newhouse who said "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers."

Two men, defined only by their complete inability to tell the truth. They're made for each other.

Abortion, Women's Rights and the American Taliban: Paul Ryan

You might want to read this article outlining the new CBS Pittsburgh Interview with Paul Ryan. Brief as it is, it's quite revealing as a portrait of a man desperate to avoid engaging with or even acknowledging the implications of his own ideas.  Any sentient protein-based life form can see that there is no daylight between Paul Ryan and Todd Akin when it comes to refusing federal funding of abortion in cases of  rape and incest.  This is very important stuff.  I think that for too long, even feminist discourse has tended to trivialize the issue at hand – it isn't simply about "choice" in some consumerist "which product should I buy?" sense, it's about the stripping away of a fundamental right: the right of women to control their own destiny, at least to the extent any of us can do that  And if you can't do that, what the hell can you do?

In spite of the homey manner and the jeans on a fellow like Rep. Ryan, there's precious little daylight between the American Fruitcake Right and the Taliban when it comes to attitudes towards female integrity, autonomy and equality.  Read the article – in it you hear an anxious young man confronted with the abominable language initially included in a bill he cosponsored: "forcible rape" (aka "legitimate rape" in case you're compiling a lexicon of the stupid-idiot-imbecile things Republicans say), the sheer arrogance and oblivious madness of which he tries to quell by repeating the new post-Akin-debacle mantra, "Rape is rape. Rape is rape, period. End of story."  Nice try, asshole, but you're on record as an Akin man.

The Romney campaign has really stepped in it regarding this all-important issue of female equality and autonomy.  Governor Romney, in his usual wanna-be slickster way, is trying to sidle away from what every sane person knows is his actual position, but he can't: he's got Paul Ryan, who's been legislatively "palling around" with American Taliban types like Todd Akin, and of course he has the GOP platform itself, which seems to have been borrowed from the overseas Taliban.  (Perhaps the Taliban should file a copyright infringement suit over the pro-life extremist plank of the Republican Party.  I suspect lawyers would find whole paragraphs lifted verbatim from that odious outfit's Great Book of Hating Perfidious, Whorish Womankind.  Okay, I made the title up – but you get the idea.)  Even Mitt, an ethical and ideational Houdini if ever such was, can't get out of this one: his and his running mate's stated, in-print or on-video ideas speak against the two like wicked deeds on the Day of Judgment.

Finally, what I find awesomely arrogant about Ryan's interview is the segment where he dismisses any attempt on the Democrats' part to – well, you know, distract women from the real issues of the day: “And I don’t think they’re going to take the bait of all these distractions that the President is trying to throw at them,” says the candidate as quoted in the linked article.  Obviously, women's rights don't count in the Republican book as among those real issues.  No, they're just a cheap diversionary tactic to keep us from realizing that B. Hussein Obama is a Kenyan communo-fascist who swore an oath over chicken-blood to destroy the Great Satan from within.  And I think we can all agree, that's the only thing we should be considering as loyal Amurcans come election day.  At least those of us who can still vote – you know, WHITE MEN.