I guess the selection of Paul Ryan as the Vice Presidential candidate to run with Mitt Romney caught the Obama team by surprise. The announcement came at 9AM and I did not receive the email about this video until 6PM. 🙂

Here is the email I received about this video.

The Agenda Project Action Fund presents: Romney Girl.

The Nation of Change has republished the Robert Reich column Erasing W.

Republicans want to obliterate any trace of the administration that told America there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and led us into a devastating war; turned a $5 trillion projected budget surplus into a $6 trillion deficit; gave the largest tax cut in a generation to the richest Americans in history; handed out a mountain of corporate welfare to the oil and gas industry, pharmaceutical companies, and military contractors like Halliburton (uniquely benefiting the vice president); whose officials turned a blind eye to Wall Street shenanigans that led to the worst financial calamity since the Great Crash of 1929 and then persuaded Congress to bail out the Street with the largest taxpayer-funded giveaway of all time.

And when we try to remind people of recent history, the Republicans try the old saw, “Isn’t it time to stop blaming George Bush?”  Have we stopped blaming Herbert Hoover yet?   Perhaps when Republicans forget Jimmy Carter, we can forget George Bush.  Although the damage George Bush did far exceeds anything Jim Carter can be blamed for, so that might not be a fair trade.

The Washington Post has the story Biden: McConnell decided to withhold all cooperation even before we took office.

Grunwald has Joe Biden on the record making a striking charge. Biden says that during the transition, a number of Republican Senators privately confided to him that Mitch McConnell had given them the directive that there was to be no cooperation with the new administration — because he had decided that “we can’t let you succeed.”

Here’s the relevant passage, from page 207:

Biden says that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any cooperation on many votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, `Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ he recalls. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’” Biden says.

The vice president says he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along these lines.

Now is it clear enough that the lack of bipartisanship in Congress does not come equally from both parties?

Do you suppose that when Scott Brown went to the Senate that Mitch McConnell didn’t tell him about the plan?  Yet, Scott Brown tries to make out that he is the neutral voice in the war between two extremes.  He actually stands in the middle between one extreme and moderation.  That still puts him way toward the extreme.

Does this make you even angrier at Obama for bending over backwards to get Republican cooperation when his administration was told in no uncertain terms that there would be no cooperation?

boston.com has the story Romney names Paul Ryan his No. 2.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tapped Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his vice presidential running mate on Saturday, turning to the architect of a conservative and intensely controversial long-term budget plan to remake Medicare and cut trillions in federal spending.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says “This is a major unforced error by Mitt Romney.”