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Subscribe to RSSLAKELAND, Fla. – Paul Ryan dismissed claims Friday afternoon that he is not being properly utilized on the campaign trail as Mitt Romney’s running mate.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a major advocate of Ryan being tapped as VP, told a Milwaukee radio host earlier in the day the Romney campaign needs “to use him [Ryan] out on the trail more effectively, they need to have more of him rub off on Mitt.”
Ryan said he disagrees with the claims made by his fellow Cheesehead, saying he is “absolutely” being utilized enough.
“Oh, he [Walker] is just a good backer of mine. I feel really good about it [his role]. Look, I am doing the things I want to do,” Ryan said inside “Walker’s Produce” -- a local fruit stand. “Look at what we are doing, we are talking to local people, going around the country talking to local press. I am excited about my role. I feel very comfortable with it.”
The quick stop outside of Tampa came just a couple hours after the GOP presidential nominee released his complete 2011 taxes – something Republicans and Democrats alike have been pressuring Romney to do for some time. Romney paid more than $1.9 million in taxes on income of about $13.7 million and donated about $4 million to charity, although he only claimed a deduction of about $2.25 million from those donations, according to the campaign.
Bill Haber / AP
Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, R-Wis., appears at an AARP convention Friday in New Orleans.
Ryan reacted to Romney’s “unique” tax situation.
"I think that what this shows is that the Romneys are extremely generous people,” he told reporters. “They gave away 30 percent of their income to charity so Mitt Romney has always believed to whom much is given, much is required and he is living proof of that and this just shows you how generous the Romneys are as people."
The seven-term Wisconsin congressman, who walked thru the outdoor market in the Sunshine State with his 78-year-old mom, Betty, who is a Florida resident, held his only public event earlier in the day when he addressed the AARP convention in New Orleans. Ryan received a very unfriendly welcome by the crowd but it was nothing he didn’t expect.
“Entitlement reform has unfortunately been made very partisan by partisans and so I have gotten that kind of reaction and unfortunately it's what we've come to expect because the politics of reforming entitlements has become very bitter,” he said before heading to attend private fundraiser in the area. “It's very unfortunate because if we let the politics get the best of us-- these problems are going to get out of our control. We've got to fix Medicare before it goes bankrupt."
According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday, the Romney-Ryan ticket trails President Barack Obama in terms of how voters believe each ticket would deal with Medicare: 47 percent of voters surveyed believe Obama would better deal with the program compared to just 37 percent who believer Romney would handle it better.
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You know, it never really dawned on me until seeing that photo that Paul Ryan looks like a deranged lunatic. I've always figured it was just his speaking. But it's actually the whole package. Wow.
Romney seems to be a heartless sleaze already. Why rub off some of Ryan's self righteous callousness on Romney? Ryan could work as a warm act for booing Romney.
Ryan feels really good? Well, he should. Obama ran on a campaign of "Hope and Change" and " Yes we Can." That's changed to " Fear and Blame" and " No we Couldn't
Lyin' Ryan learned a lesson today... our seniors may have slowed down a bit, may not hear or see quite as well as they once did, but they damn sure aren't stupid. Insulting their intelligence was not a good move since the over 65 demographic is the ONLY demographic that you
havehad a lead with.it was the catholic pope Gregory and Urban ll that began the crusades, i.e. holy wars, and invaded Jerusalem. the catholics and their allies, the Christians are simply not to be trusted. no one should trust any other man who claims to know what God's will is for YOU! Hell, most people do not know what God's will is for anyone or anything? was or is it gods will that we are killing all the black rhinos in order to promote penile function?
how is it that Ryan enjoyed the boos from the AARP crowd, supposedly the gop bastion, hmmm, i hope he choked on that one. hanging out with a few farmers in the general store simply shows Ryan where the lack of intelliigent criticism can be found. he needs to go where he is definitely not liked and preach his stream of conservative, tea party bull@!$%# and speak from his gut - we want to privatize EVERYTHING? There will be no more government involvement in your lives, that is, until we need more people in the military to help us while we fight Syria, Iran, Somalia, Pakistan, and Iran/ thats when we will come and conscript your poor sons and daughters while our kids stay in school at the Ivy league level.
the R and R dog and pony show is very much akin to the old western Drummers coming into a new town and selling snake oil - good for anything.
obama/Biden 2012
Paul Ryan, on January 20th 2009 pledged to filibuster and stop anything President Obama is for. Ryan and the rest who made that pledge are traitors to this country and should be hung from the nearest tree!
THEY PUT PARTY AND AN RYAND POLITICS OVER THE COUNTRY. TGHEY WANT TO PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE AND MEDICAID. THEY COULD CARE LESS ABOUT WHAT JESUS SAID IN THE BEATITUDES OF LOVING THE LEAST OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
HANG HIM!
His comments today about Medicare remind me of the burglar who informs the homeowner that his wide screen was stolen.
He is going to be a lobbyist when he grows up.
LOL. Thanks... needed that laugh.
Ryan thinks that we are all going to buy the BS that they are the champions of medicare, pay no attention to what we said before and our core beliefs, everything old is new again, don't pay attention to what we even said a couple of weeks ago, our campaign will always be changing, since Romney can't make up his mind, and has no real core beliefs.
Hey in the future seniors will love having vouchers, of course it will cost them a lot more out of their own pocket, and they will have to shop around and figure out which insurance co will bilk them the lest, but hey they are retired what else do they have to do? Hey everyone loves dealing with Insurance Co's, good times!
O&JOE
rom;nuts and lyin' ry;an: the two biggest liars in the Republican party. Which puts them in the running for biggest liars Worldwide.
There's nothing left for Obama to cover his ass. He run out of lies.
See ya! Obama.
Sounds like Obama got the idea of Foward from his playmates in the WH.
Obama said said everything is going whoreward.
White House Linked to Prostitution Scandal?
The Obama hate,race, war on women and calss warfare he has promoted for the past 4 years makes him hated not just in America but around the world.
America has already kicked him to the curb. Just waiting for Nov 2012 to make it official.
Keep up the good work Ryan.
Obama is finished. America says so. See you on Nov. 6, 2012.
I knew a guy who had a dog named Lucky once. Lucky had 3 legs, 1 eye and 1 ear. Lucky got fed one small meal a day and you could see his ribs.
As pitiful as he was, Lucky still wagged his tail when his master approached because he just didn't know any damn better.
Lucky wasn't very smart either.
in 2 YEARS, he hasnt paid as much as MOST of us have in 1 year. Then he hides most of it. You would have to be insane to vote for this person. Silver spoon guy. He has no clue what most of us do on a daily basis.
*BREAKING NEWS*
Courtesy of PlanetPOV.com
Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, announced today at a gathering of high profile Republicans and Wall Street executives that the GOP is formally divorcing reality on grounds of irreconcilable differences.
Priebus explained, “This was a difficult decision, we’ve been married to reality for over 150 years but we’ve just grown apart. We rarely go out together nowadays and we never seem to be able to agree on anything anymore. We’re constantly at odds over little things, over big things and frankly, I think we’ve just outgrown reality.”
Among the many reasons given for this split up, Priebus admitted that there was jealousy on the GOP’s part over Progressives’ familiarity with reality. “We believe in the sanctity of marriage which is why we are filing for this divorce,” Priebus stated with a straight face.
“Since the Nixon years, things just started to go downhill in our relationship. It had gotten to the point that whenever we spoke on talk shows, aired campaign ads or gave stump speeches, reality would get into a conflict of some kind with us. I mean, you just can’t go on like that indefinitely,” said Priebus. “When we were younger, it was easier and though we’d have our little disagreements, for the most part we got along. People sometimes change over time, we’re not who we were and we found that we were just becoming incompatible.”
Asked about what the final straws were that drove the GOP to this divorce, Priebus mentioned that reality wouldn’t be polite to their friends. “We’d have Paul Ryan and his budget over for dinner and reality would act as if it was an imposition. Recently we had been invited to attend a big fundraiser for Mitt Romney and when Romney spoke, there was an empty seat next to me, reality wasn’t anywhere to be found in the room.”
“When we’d talk about where we wanted to go, like to the White House and The Senate, we could never agree on how to get there,” Priebus complained. “When you’re in a marriage, you need to know that the other is right behind you, supporting you no matter what. Yet for years now, whenever we’d go on Fox News or talk about economics, reality wouldn’t be there for us.”
Priebus was remarkably candid about the relationship. “There hasn’t been any real intimacy between us for years, the passion for reality just isn’t there any more for us. Look, we haven’t been saints, we’ve gotten into bed with deception before the divorce but by then, the marriage was already over. The thing is, reality just didn’t understand us. Deception knew exactly where we were coming from, for us it was like finally meeting our soul mate.”
The GOP and deception have been together since the GOP’s separation from reality and Priebus claims that the GOP has never been happier. “Everything’s easier now, we can express ourselves dishonestly and be on the same page, we never argue or have any conflicts, things just feel right now,” Priebus beamed.
“Of course, there’s the custody issue we’ll have to deal with now, who will get the American public. We know that typically, reality would be awarded custody but we’re going to fight tooth and nail to get sole custody. We’ve hired Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers to argue the case for us and with the support of deception, we feel very confident that we could prevail.”
Priebus said that the GOP doesn’t harbor any grudges against reality. “We wish reality all the best in the future and even though we will never be together again, we will never forget the many good times we had together. However, where we’re at now is looking to the future and appreciating the relationship we’re in now with deception. In fact, we hadn’t planned to announce this publicly yet but we have already become married to deception!”
The issue of bigamy was discounted by Priebus, “We may have been cheating on reality but in our minds, we’ve been divorced from reality for some time and whether that is formally recognized or not, it is the truth. So our being married to deception isn’t a betrayal of reality because we’re no longer connected to reality.”
Reality was asked to comment on the divorce and simply replied, “Que sera, sera.” In response to being asked how it felt about having stolen the heart of the GOP away from reality, deception replied, “I didn’t, really. It was Obama’s fault.”
The GOP and deception are now happily married and living together in what deception describes as “a golden castle in the clouds where money rains down from the sky and everyone is happy and healthy…and all Americans can move there if they just vote for Romney.”
Congressman Ryan was booed at the AARP speaking engagement - wonder why?
Obama's Greatest Hits
Page 1: Osama bin Laden
Page 2.
A timeline of the Obama administration reads like the
autobiography of a baby born on the Titanic, who hitches
a ride back to Europe on the Lusitania, only to catch a
flight to New Jersey on the Hindenburg and transfer onto
the sinking deck of the Andrea Doria.
Obama went from handing the keys to the treasury out to
the cell phone monkeys on Wallstreet, to allowing the
call center mortgage manhandlers to foreclose on a fifth
of the homeowners in America, to dumping a dead solid
perfect victory out on the streets of Baghdad,
to selling AK47s to the Drug Lords of Mexico, to waiting
month in and month out without doing a damn thing for
British Petroleum to turn the Gulf of Mexico into a
sludge pool, to dumping 500 million tax dollars down the
Solyndra sump hole, to letting the Taliban back stab the
American military through America's supposed allies in
the Afghan Army, as Obama and company stood around with
their hands in their pockets while an idiot excon started
a new Jihad with a minicam.
Obama's one highlight has been a popup, gift wrapped by
the CIA and caught for him by the Navy Seals.
This administration has pitched from one disaster to
another, and not one Democrat is willing to suggest that
it might be the fool at the helm. While Americans moon
over Obama's pretentious vocabulary, they all pretend
they are not watching the Kaiser lead Germany to its own
annihilation. How many strikeouts do you give Steve
Erckle before you put in a pinch hitter?
Thanks for your well thought out and presented comment. I would just add one or two more supressors of humanity to the list.
Adolph Hitler and his brown shirt squad, and Vladimer Putin retaining his powerful position through cohersion and threats, not to mention a pluthera of broken promises. Hummm... sounds familiar.
This comment is in reference to an article I read that stated "AARP" leave Ryans' presentation. I am 71 years old and I for the life of me can not understand how these old folks (AARP members and others) do not understand that Obama will drain the U S Tresury, put their Grandchildren and the next two or three generations in so much debt, that they will be doing well if they can feed themselves. After the treasury starts going broke (I.E., no one that will loan us money, no "rich" people to employ tax paying citizens, etc) everyone should ask themselves. where will the Government get the money to continue? Easy, remember when they moved the Social Security fund out of its own interest earning pot into the general fund with the promise to keep it funded. So much that BS. You, the AARP members, are giving away future benefits for the here and now. Wake up folks. The Governernment (Obama) has no intention of providing for you. Only long enough to get your vote.
Who drained the US treasury? Who put this country into sooo much debt? Let's look at the figures:
George W. Bush started with a national debt of $5.7T. His last budget expired in Oct, 2009 and left the country with $11.9T in debt. That's a grand total of $6.2T.
Current debt is $16T. Obama's spending has led to about $4,.1T additional debt. Much of that is due to revenue loss and spending hikes from the Bush admin that Republicans will simply not allow Congress to repeal.
So, if that $16T debt really bothers you, realize who is really responsible for it:
George W. Bush, aided and abetted by a Republican majority in both houses of Congress for 6 out of 8 years, is responsible for about 40% of our current national debt.
Barack Obama, left with a trashed economy and hindered by a Republican majority in the HR and a Republican minority in the Senate that has used the filibuster more than any other session of Congress, is responsible for about 25% of our current national debt.
So, if you have trouble understanding "these old folks (AARP members and others)", maybe it is because they understand the economic realities of the situation and you do not!
Romney picking Ryan, a disaster picking a disaster.
I heard an interview with Ryan's high school science teacher, even he is voting for Obama
There is another story right now on NBC about seniors at an AARP speech walking out on Ryan.
If exlax ETCH-A-SKETCH'S "president", religious HYPOCRITE, LIAR, GUNSLINGER, MAMA'S BOY "feels really good" he has to be REALLY STUPID! He can't see what a MORON he is! The AARP let him know how stupid he is to think that he could BUFFALO them with his BULL$HIT! Picking on the ELDERLY for VOTES! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO!!!!
99% American People, VOTE & vote 100% STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC and let's rid our selves of their BLATANT CORRUPTION once & FOREVER!!! The lives you save WILL be YOURS & your CHILDREN!! BELIEVE IT, nothing could be TRUER!!
He must be feeling good -- especially since he got that nasty old 47% to walk out of his speech to the AARP. Then he could concentrate on the wealthy, racist, bigots who were enjoying his speech (and his color).
I suspect like most people, he will write a tell all book after they lose. I mean its so bad I forgot what his name is. He campaigned one weekend and you haven't heard him mentioned in three weeks until yesterday.
Why in your right mind would you go to AARP who makes there money selling insurance and see's vochers as a nice way to bypass there insurance business and make a speech about Medicare. This makes zero sense.
He should have had his fanny in Florida preaching to seniors about how in Jan 2013 their loving social security checks go down by $131 dollars a month due to ObamaCare. And almost that much again in Jan 2014.
Isn't there an old adage, if your going to go to a gunfight, best to take a gun with you. I mean with the high taxes proposed in January and ObamaCare kickin in there are a million bullets here neither he nor Romney are using.