Israel Matzav

Saturday Night Live on the Ryan-Biden debate

Here's the debate (not the entire debate like it says, but the debate) between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden. It's pretty funny.

Let's go to the videotape.

Labels: Campaign 2012, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan

Proverbs on the Ryan-Biden debate

Here's what the book of Proverbs has to say about the Ryan-Biden debate.

King Solomon (the author) was a wise man, wasn't he?

Labels: bible, Campaign 2012, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan

Arrogance: Biden cackles while Ryan speaks at debate

One of the complaints about President Obama's performance in last week's debate was that Obama didn't treat Romney as his equal.

Joe Biden did the same thing to Paul Ryan on Thursday night.

Let's go to the videotape.

Labels: Campaign 2012, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan

In VP debate, Ryan rips Obama-Biden on Iran (with video)

In a debate in which, according to one count, Vice President Joe Biden interrupted Congressman Paul Ryan 82 times in 90 minutes (Hat Tip: Bad Blue), Ryan ripped the Obama administration for its handling of Iran.

"The Administration has been been blocking sanctions for years," charged Ryan. " When Barack Obama was elected, they had enough fissile material -- nuclear material to make one bomb. Now they have enough for five. They’re racing toward a nuclear weapon. They’re four years closer toward a nuclear weapons capability."

Ryan added his view that the Iranians were heartened by Obama's mistreatment of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The ayatollahs " They see this administration trying to water down sanctions in Congress for over two years.see the US wanting more space with our ally Israel. They see President Obama in New York City the same day Bibi Netanyahu is and he, instead of meeting with him, goes on a daily talk show... When they see us putting daylight between ourselves and our allies in Israel, that gives them encouragement."

Biden responded that sanctions imposed by the US and other Western countries have been "the most crippling sanctions in the history of sanctions," and that Obama's strategy has led to the international community presenting a united front on Iran. "Imagine had we let the Republican Congress work out the sanctions. You think there’s any possibility the entire world would have joined us, Russia and China, all of our allies?"

Well, except the Republican Congress - and the Democratic Senate - did work out the sanctions, and then forced the Obama administration to impose them.

The bottom line is that Biden didn't do what he had to do. He didn't win.

CNN polling following the event showed 48 percent of respondents believed Republican candidate Paul Ryan won the debate, while 46% believed Democrat Joe Biden won. Opinions of undecided voters may have been affected by Biden's body language, as the vice president smiled and laughed sarcastically at points during the 90-minute debate in an apparent effort to dismiss Ryan comments.

More on Biden's rudeness and sarcasm here (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Here's video of the entire debate (I'll have a few highlights in later posts for those who don't have the patience). Let's go to the videotape.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan

Ryan: Middle East under Obama looks like Tehran during hostage crisis

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan told a rally in Lima, Ohio on Monday that the Middle East under Obama looks like Tehran during the 1979-80 hostage crisis.

Let's go to the videotape.

Indeed. But do American voters see it yet?

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, Iranian hostage crisis, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan

Emergency Committee for Israel cuts an ad for Paul Ryan (and Mitt Romney)

This is the first Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) ad that I can recall that refers specifically to Paul Ryan. In fact, it's mostly about Ryan.

Let's go to the videotape.

Labels: Campaign 2012, Emergency Committee for Israel, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan

Adolph Hitler finds out Paul Ryan is the Republican nominee for Vice President

Over the weekend, someone told Adolph Hitler - who is of course an Obama supporter - that Paul Ryan is the Republican nominee for Vice President. Hitler wasn't too happy about it.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Jack W).

Labels: Adolph Hitler, Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, humor, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan

Ryan a 'defense hawk'

Although my guess is that the main reason that Mitt Romney chose Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wi) as his running mate was to shift the focus of the campaign to President Obama's poor handling of the economy, there's a bonus in the pick for conservatives in general and Israel supporters in particular. Ryan is a defense hawk, who visited Israel in 2005 and has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Jewish state.

In recent months, Ryan has been receiving briefings from Elliott Abrams, George W. Bush's former Middle East director at the National Security Council, and Fred Kagan, one of the architects of the military surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, as first reported by Weekly Standard reporter Stephen Hayes on Twitter. Another conservative foreign-policy specialist who has briefed Ryan said the Romney campaign in Boston has arranged for briefings with a parade of former government experts on foreign policy in recent weeks.

Abrams told The Daily Beast on Saturday that he found Ryan’s views in line with the mainstream of the Republican Party today, saying Ryan was "relaxed, serious, funny, very smart, and knows more about foreign policy than people may think, in view of his concentration on the economy."

...

Danielle Pletka, the vice president for foreign- and defense-policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, also praised the Ryan pick. “Unlike a lot of fiscal conservatives, one of the great things about Paul Ryan is he is not omni-directionally a budget cutter,” she said. “He understands the primary role of the federal government is the national defense and not the handing out of food stamps.”

One reason why the Ryan pick is seen as a win for foreign-policy hawks is because of the Romney campaign’s choice of Robert Zoellick, a former World Bank president and bitter foe of neoconservatives inside the George W. Bush administration, to head up the process of selecting national-security and foreign-affairs appointments if Romney wins. Writing in The Washington Post, conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin points out that many hawks within the GOP have already complained about the choice of Zoellick to head what the Romney campaign calls the “readiness project,” noting that Zoellick has favored more engagement with China.

...

One hint to Ryan’s overall view on foreign policy can be found in his 2011 speech to the Alexander Hamilton Society. In that speech Ryan sounded a theme first coined by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer that the decline of America as a world power is a choice not an inevitability.

Ryan, however, differed from many foreign-policy hawks in his speech by identifying America’s mounting debt as a threat to the nation’s ability to field the military necessary to remain a world power. “A safer world and a more prosperous America go hand in hand,” he said. “Economic growth is the key to avoiding the kind of painful austerity that would limit our ability to generate both hard and soft power.”

I have video of that speech for you.

Let's go to the videotape.

Ryan visited Israel in 2005, and is described as an enthusiastic supporter of the Jewish state.

Republican Vice Presidential contender Paul Ryan came to Israel in 2005 as part of a large Republican Congressional delegation hosted by the American Israel Education Foundation, a charitable organization affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. On the trip he met with a wide array of Israeli political leaders, led by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, and visited strategic sites in Jerusalem and Israel's borders with Syria and Lebanon.

Republicans Abroad in Israel co-chairman Kory Bardash, who had breakfast with Ryan at a Republican summit in Park City, Utah, in June, called him "very enthusiastically pro-Israel and a political "superstar."

Bardash said Ryan was impressed when he told him that he knew many immigrants to Israel from Wisconsin who would be voting in the US election.

"He was very excited to know that I came to the summit from Israel, and he was very supportive of our organization's efforts," Bardash said. "He has co-sponsored pro-Israel legislation, he is very strong against pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, and he is very critical of Hamas, which he called 'an Islamic terrorist organization.'"

I hope Bardash is right, although in most cases, the Vice President has very little influence on foreign policy. Ask Joe Biden.

Labels: Campaign 2012, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan