Yesterday somebody actually asked me how I, as a
vegetarian, could eat
tacos. In the spirit of Olympic diving, this merited the rare double-barrel-and-a-half-turn eyeroll.
I saw that
Mitt Romney tapped his
veep today, and it was
Paul Ryan, an upright and likable
Wisconsin Congressman. Although I know some fans of small government who swooned over this pick, it doesn't sway me any. The problems at the top of the ticket are never healed by a veep pick, and there are some quizzical things about this one. Firstly, all signs were that Romney was going to wait another week or more before announcing this choice. Pushing it up, apparently in response to falling poll numbers, shows weakness -- as does, to some extent, the selection of a red meat fiscal and social conservative, a necessary sop to a GOP base which unsettlingly still mistrusts the candidate who just managed to scale to the tip of the ticket after six years of continuously running for it. On the other hand, this likely inches Wisconsin towards contention, and may help some in neighboring states as well ,
Minnesota,
Iowa,
Michigan, and maybe even
Indiana and
Ohio. Perhaps the more interesting angle here is that the selection of a Catholic veep means that for the first time ever, the GOP ticket will have no traditional
Protestant on it. And, depending what you believe about
Barack Obama and his church (or affiliation with one), that may well mean that neither major party ticket has a traditional Protestant, ironically leaving that role to
Libertarian candidate
Gary Johnson.
----
In auditing news:
Jack is done!! As for the rest:
artman2003 --
on page 7 of 10
Jet-Poop --
on page 4 of (slightly smaller gasp!!) 27!!
Dannye --
on page 3 of 20. Well, that's not so bad.
etouffee is in the
queueueue.
Blessings, all!!