The geniuses of the Republican National Convention have installed a huge banner across the front of the Tampa Convention Center proclaiming "We Built That".

They unconsciously summarized the Obama speech that they are trying to mis-characterize. Even though the convention center sports a corporate sponsor's name, it really was built by government with union labor. The "branding" of public buildings with corporate names is really a subtle propaganda ploy to make people think that everything good is provided to them by their benevolent corporate overlords. Americans have been conditioned to believe things that come from corporations are free, and that government is expensive. This is the opposite of reality of course.

Mitt Romney stood in front of the battleship USS Wisconsin to announce his VP choice. It really was fitting that he stood in front of a ship that was obsolete and useless when it was built, just like the Ryan budget. Also fitting was that he stood in front of a ship that Ronald Reagan dragged out of mothballs and fooled away billions of dollars on. Reagan did this in order to mask the collapsing economy he was creating with his trickle down voodoo economics.

Reagan added 400 ships to the Navy built around the four Iowa class floating money drains to "confront the Soviets". He did this because the Evil Empire had secret nuclear submarines, according to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The CIA said no they didn't, but that only meant the Russians were keeping them secret.

According to the rocket scientists at NASA (and I mean that in the good way), we are at a point in climate change due to global warming that they were predicting in the '80s we wouldn't reach until the end of the 21st century. Not only that, but a phenomenon has developed that they didn't foresee.

Unusual weather events like extreme drought (think Dust Bowl in the '30s, 500 year floods) things that used to be rare, events only occurring 1 in a 1000 times, these extreme weather events are now happening 1 out of 10 times. The odds are that as more heat becomes available to drive these weather patterns, this will only get worse.

People who like to think of the US as number one in all things might take note of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac). They are poised to begin direct competition with Boeing and Airbus in 2016 with their version of the 737, and larger planes are already being developed.

The Republicans have trotted out an old talking point that you don't hear them use much with their taxes so low, but they think that you peasants should pay all the taxes. So here goes, "Say I start a business and so does my friend. His business fails and I succeed. Why should I be penalized for my success by paying income taxes, while he pays none?"

This almost sounds reasonable, and the knee jerk reaction is to try to justify taxes for all the good reasons we pay taxes. This is entirely wrong, that's what they want you to waste time on, while the basis of their argument continues to stand.