I watched all of the Republican Convention. One word..............LIES. Not only did they lie about the President but they didn't tell the truth about their policies.  We have to remember, they want to NOT allow a woman the right to choose, they want to deport all the illegal immigrents no matter how long they have lived here and contributed to this country, they don't believe in gay marriage and would outlaw it and don't even go to their fiscal policies.

Here they want to not tax the rich, but have the middle class pay higher taxes. They believe in the "trickle down" theory which along with deregulation got us in this mess in the first place. So, you want to spend more on defense yet not have a way to pay for it. They claim they won't touch medicare or Social Security ( only turn medicare into a voucher program which will cost our children and grandchildren $6,000 + more a year for healthcare when they retire ) but they will cut everything else. So if there is a natural disaster, where will the money come from to help those people? Medicaid will be cut, pell grants will be cut, and everything else across the board. According to the experts, his fiscal plan will ADD to the deficit, not close it.

What about the poor? Who will help them? Welfare is a stepping stone to something better. The President didn't, let me repeat that, didn't cut the work condition out of welfare. It was Republican governors who asked if they could have some leeway when it came to welfare, but the President said they still have to show and have a work mandate in their new plans.

It's also funny how the Republicans say he hasn't produced more jobs, when he put forth a Jobs Plan that the Republican House voted NO to. Yet, they say government shouldn't be the one that we look to when it comes to jobs. Which is it? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I listened, and I didn't like what I heard. Now on to the Democratic Convention and the truth.

Education

Did you know that the Romney/Ryan fiscal plan would cut 20% from education? That would mean a loss of 380,000 more jobs. This on top of the loss of teachers that we have had thanks to the Republican governors and the republican govt's that were put in place under false pretenses in 2010.

Education is the most important standard for moving forward in this country. We need better educated children so they can make the important decisions in their lives to grow and become prosperous. But the republicans want to take that away from us. Why should we have an educated people? Because then we can have more inovative thinking, more entrepreneurs , more inventors etc.

We need our children to be educated! They need to learn history, math, english, the arts, and yes even sports. We need to keep our qualified teachers in front of the classroom. We need the classrooms to be smaller so the children can get more of an individual education. We can't do that by cutting spending by 20% on education. That is the wrong way to go.

We need to invest in our children and their education. The way to do that is to keep our public education strong. Because of the changes in the path that our Republican governor has taken ( I'm in PA ) more parents are sending their children to Charter schools because the classrooms are smaller and the education is better. ( I will admit, that all charter schools aren't created equal, if you want to send your child to a charter school, check it out. )

But this is about Public Schools and how we need to strengthen them. Become involved. Go to the school board meetings, meet with your childrens teachers. You have to invest your time and yes money in your childrens' education. 

Please.

Here is the truth about the cuts to Medicare that Obama put in place

Obamacare, slows the rate of growth of payments to Medicare service providers by more than $700 billion over a decade. But no impact is felt by seniors themselves, whose benefits and costs remain the same.

Now, if the Republicans would tell the truth. But they can't because they want to kill medicare and turn it into a voucher program that will cost our kids and grandkids when they become our age ( over 55 ) $6,500 more a year in health care. Could you afford that now?  What makes you think your kids and grandkids will be able too.  Especially if they prioritze Social Security and the market crashes, what could they afford then?

An exerpt from Matt Miller Opinion Writer for the WPost

This is exerpted from Matt Miller Opinion Writer for the Washington Post:

(fiscal) murder.
Ryan is not a “fiscal conservative.” A fiscal conservative pays for the government he wants. Ryan never has. His early “Roadmap for America’s Future” didn’t balance the budget until the 2060s and added $60 trillion to the national debt. Ryan’s revised plan, passed by the House in 2011, wouldn’t reach balance until the 2030s while adding $14 trillion in debt. It adds $6 trillion in debt over the next decade alone — yet Republicans had the chutzpah to say they wouldn’t raise the debt limit! (I remain mystified why President Obama never hammered home this reckless contradiction by insisting that the GOP “raise the debt ceiling just by the amount it would take to accommodate the debt in Paul Ryan’s budget.”)
Ryan is an extreme “small government conservative.” Ronald Reagan ran government at 22 percent of gross domestic product when our population was much younger. Ryan and Romney want to run government at 20 percent of GDP even as the number of Americans on Social Security and Medicare doubles. Even if we slow these programs’ growth, it’s impossible to shrink the federal role in an aging society this sharply without eliminating vast swaths of what Americans have come to expect from government — not to mention shortchanging already lagging investments in research and development and infrastructure. Over time, Ryan’s “vision” would decimate most federal activities beyond Social Security, Medicare and defense.
When I asked Ryan last October why he thought — in his words — “the historic size [of government as a share of GDP], or smaller,” was sound policy when we’d shortly be doubling the number of seniors on the biggest federal programs, he replied, “Because we can’t keep doing everything for everybody in this country.”
Ryan says that on our current path we will “transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.” But I’ve never understood what hammock Ryan is talking about. If programs for seniors haven’t been a “hammock” until now, simply doubling the number of people eligible for them can’t turn them into a “hammock” tomorrow. We have an aging population challenge and a health-cost challenge. We don’t have a “hammock” challenge.
Ryan is not a truthteller. Ryan boasted on Saturday that he and Romney have “the courage to tell you the truth.” But political courage means telling your base things they don’t want to hear. The truth Ryan and Romney won’t tell — which explains the staggering debt in Ryan’s plan — is that taxes need to rise as the boomers retire. (The truth Democrats won’t tell is that raising taxes on the rich alone won’t suffice.)

Interesting article

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By CALVIN WOODWARD and HENRY C. JACKSON, AP
12 hours ago

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, ce...

WASHINGTON — In his debut as Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan promised "America's comeback team" won't duck tough budget issues, although the man standing next to him has kept his head low so far. Romney vowed the duo would "preserve" Medicare, an eye-popping claim considering Ryan wants to transform the program from the ground up.

Not all the rhetoric fit neatly with reality or with the record when Romney introduced his Republican vice presidential choice to the nation Saturday. A look at some of the claims by the Wisconsin congressman and Romney, and how they compare with the facts.
ROMNEY: "Unlike the current president, who has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion, we will preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security and keep them there for future generations."
THE FACTS: You could fill an arena with all the details left out in this statement. Ryan's reputation as a fiscal conservative is built on a budget plan that would overhaul the Medicare program and introduce a voucher-like plan that future retirees could use to buy private health insurance. Whether that results in a better or worse situation for Medicare recipients is a matter of debate. But under Ryan's plan, traditional Medicare would no longer be the health insurance mainstay, just one of many competing options.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the Ryan plan — which Romney endorsed in broad strokes in the past — would slow the increases in money for seniors. A typical 66-year-old would receive about 35 percent more than last year — $7,400 in 2011 dollars. Under current law, that person would probably receive at least 56 percent more in 2030, and quite possibly 75 percent more — $9,600 in 2011 dollars. The CBO said his plan grows spending for Medicare enrollees "at a much slower rate" than under current law or other policy scenarios. In Washington, a slower increase in spending is tantamount to a spending cut.
Romney's assertion that the team would preserve Social Security left out the fact that he proposes significant change. He would protect the status quo for people 55 and over but, for the next generations of retirees, raise the retirement age for full benefits by one or two years and reduce inflation increases in benefits for wealthier recipients. At least with this program, he has offered more specifics than President Barack Obama has in dealing with the entitlement's long-term financing shortfall, though neither has laid out a comprehensive solution.
As for his accusation that the president cut Medicare, Obama's health care law does cut billions from the Medicare Advantage program, hospitals and nursing homes, to pay for expanded insurance coverage.
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RYAN on Romney: "As governor of Massachusetts, he worked with Democrats and Republicans to balance budgets with no tax increases, lower unemployment, increase income and improve people's lives."
THE FACTS: For a Massachusetts governor, balancing a budget is a requirement of state law.
Ryan's claim that Romney didn't raise taxes to comply with Massachusetts' yearly balanced budget requirement is also misleading. While Romney didn't raise state income or sales taxes, he worked with the state's Democratic-controlled legislature to raise hundreds of millions of dollars through new or raised fees on marriage licenses, gun licenses and much more. Romney also closed what he called business tax "loopholes," raising between $350 million and $375 million annually for three years. Many in the Massachusetts business community said they saw the maneuver as a tax increase by a different name.
And while Romney himself didn't raise income taxes, he benefited from a huge $1.1 billion tax hike passed by Democrats the year before he took office. It was responsible for roughly half of the deficit Romney helped cut in his first year in office.
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ROMNEY: "We offer solutions that are bold, specific, and achievable."
RYAN: "The commitment Mitt Romney and I make to you is this: We won't duck the tough issues, we will lead."
THE FACTS: So far, vital specifics are missing from Romney as he pledges broad cuts in federal spending, but more money for the armed forces, and significant tax cuts. He proposes to cap federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product by the end of a first term, an ambitious goal that is not fleshed out with the painful choices that will be necessary for that to happen.
If current Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries are protected, domestic Cabinet agency budgets would have to take a hit in ways that could reshape government to its core. Health research, transportation, homeland security, education, food inspection, housing and heating subsidies for the poor, food aid for pregnant women, grants to local governments and national parks are among the programs that would be at risk of substantial cuts.
Romney promises to cut a wide swath of spending by 5 percent immediately, but independent analysts say the cuts would have to be far deeper to meet budget goals and would be certain to meet stiff resistance in Congress.
___
RYAN on Obama: "And in his first two years, with his party in complete control of Washington, he passed nearly every item on his agenda, but that didn't make things better. "
THE FACTS: Obama succeeded in achieving a stimulus plan, the automakers' bailout, his health care law, new rules in the financial services sector and more. But he had failures, too, a promised immigration overhaul and climate change legislation among them. Ryan's assertion that the Obama agenda "didn't make things better" is primarily a political judgment call. But no one seriously argues that the stimulus plan or the auto bailout made no difference at all. The question is whether such spending was worth the gains that were made.
Obama's $800 billion-plus stimulus, enacted in February 2009, created both public-sector and private-sector jobs, even if not as many as its sponsors had hoped. The director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, estimated that the stimulus saved or created more than 3 million jobs. Princeton University economist Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, estimated that the stimulus, together with the bank bailout started by President George W. Bush and continued by Obama, saved or created more than 10 million jobs. An earlier CBO analysis estimated that stimulus trimmed the unemployment rate by 0.7 to 1.8 percentage points.
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ROMNEY on Ryan_ "And throughout his legislative career he's shown the ability to work with members of both parties to find common ground on some of the hardest issues confronting the American people."
THE FACTS: Not exactly. Ryan enjoyed a reputation as a consistent, if occasionally plucky, conservative before Obama took office in 2008. Ryan was known for occasionally bucking his party on social issues and foreign policy. In 2007, for example, he voted with Democrats for a bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He has also enjoyed a lifelong friendship with former liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, whose father worked in the same office as Ryan's father in Janesville, Wis.
But particularly since Obama's election, Ryan's been something of a no-compromise-congressman: He's emerged as a leading intellectual force in the conservative opposition to Obama, joined unanimous blocks of Republicans in opposing Obama's biggest pieces of legislation and given little ground in negotiations over the budget and the deficit. Budget blueprints he released in 2011 and 2012 as House Budget Committee chairman were viewed as anathema to rank-and-file Democrats because of their cuts to social programs, not as carrots designed to get bipartisan consensus. In 2011, he criticized the work of a bipartisan group of senators, known as the Gang of Six, who were working on a budget compromise of their own.
Ryan did work with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon in 2011, on a proposal for changes to Medicare that would allow private plans to compete with Medicare. But Wyden was the only prominent Democrat to support that plan and, in the end, Wyden himself did not support Ryan's larger budget plans, which included the Medicare component, when they were released later in 2012.
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RYAN: "I'm proud to stand with a man who understands what it takes to foster job creation in our economy, someone who knows from experience, that if you have a small business — you did build that."
THE FACTS: Ryan, like Romney and scores of Republicans in recent weeks, has used comments Obama made at July 13 campaign appearance in Virginia against him. But the rhetorical jab takes Obama out of context. Republicans have seized on only part of Obama's quote — "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" — but the full quote makes clear Obama is talking about the conditions that help businesses and individuals succeed, such as teachers and infrastructure.
The more complete quote from Obama: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business — you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."
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Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report

For the students, this is some information I thought you would be interested in: