Abbreviated Pundit Round up: already bored with Ryan edition

Yes, I'm aware that one extremely rich white guy made the oh-so-brave and surprising choice of selecting as his special best friend the one guy most dedicated to rewarding extremely rich white guys. Shocking. And yet, there are things that are far more important. Such as...

Christopher Schwalm, Christopher Williams, and Kevin Schaefer have a message about the extreme weather and severe drought that has gripped much of the nation since the start of the year. That message? Get used to it.

Until recently, many scientists spoke of climate change mainly as a 'threat,' sometime in the future. But it is increasingly clear that we already live in the era of human-induced climate change, with a growing frequency of weather and climate extremes like heat waves, droughts, floods and fires.

...

Future precipitation trends, based on climate model projections... indicate that droughts of this length and severity will be commonplace through the end of the century unless human-induced carbon emissions are significantly reduced. Indeed, assuming business as usual, each of the next 80 years in the American West is expected to see less rainfall than the average of the five years of the drought that hit the region from 2000 to 2004.

At this point, everything we do while failing to address climate change is no more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and politicians who contribute to this failure are directly responsible for the loss of homes, farms, fortunes, and lives.

So... okay. Now back to that other stuff.

David Firestone looks at Romney's tax plan and finds that it mainly taxes credulity.

Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, claims his far deeper tax cuts [than those under George W. Bush] would have a price tag of exactly zero dollars. He has no intention of submitting his tax plan to the committee or anywhere else that might conduct a serious analysis, since he seems intent on running a campaign far more opaque than any candidate has in years. ... Mr. Romney wants to keep all the Bush tax cuts, then cut taxes much further, particularly for the rich, but he says the plan won't grow the deficit by a dime. He won't say how he will accomplish this ' there are no real numbers in his plan beyond a vague pledge to eliminate some loopholes.

...

Following Mr. Romney's plan would mean ending popular deductions for mortgage interest and charitable contributions, which would wind up raising taxes on the middle class, while the rich would still enjoy the benefits of an income-tax cut larger than the deductions they would lose.

Wait did I say that Paul Ryan was Romney's new best pal? Scratch that. Romney is still clearly planning to stay loyal to his BFF -- his enormous stack of cash.

And when it comes to Ryan...

The New York Times says that adopting Ryan clarifies the mysteries of Romney-nomics.

Mitt Romney's safe and squishy campaign just took on a much harder edge. A candidate of no details ' I'll cut the budget but no need to explain just how ' has named a vice-presidential running mate, Paul Ryan, whose vision is filled with endless columns of minus signs. Voters will now be able to see with painful clarity just what the Republican Party has in store for them. ... At a time when state and local government layoffs are the principal factor in unemployment, the Ryan budget would cut aid to desperate governments by at least 20 percent, far below historical levels, on top of other cuts to mass transit and highway spending.

Those are the kinds of reductions voters of all income levels would actually feel.

Drinkable water, breathable air, and safe streets are luxuries we can't afford under the Ryan plan. Republicans have somehow become convinced that the best way to feed a first world economy, is by giving it a third world government.

Ross Douthat says that Ryan has cute kids and has proved his political chops by actually voting for all the things that he claims to be against. So he could, maybe, be of some help to Romney.  And then he dithers for a couple of paragraphs. And then he stops, which is the best part.

Kathleen Parker rushes to the aid of benighted caucasian males, who are clearly never given a fair shot at political office in this country. But buried deep in the middle of wishing that Romney and Ryan were something that they're not (i.e. competent and clear), you can see Parker actually calling on Republicans to consider raising taxes. You have to squint, but it's there.

Dana Milbank provides a break from the Ryan-centric coverage. Instead, he focuses on how Romney has already abandoned all pretense of running a campaign of ideas and sounded a giant dog whistle.

he released an ad that abandoned the high ground, falsely claiming that Obama had 'quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform.' It went on: 'Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.' I covered welfare reform in 1995 and 1996 as a congressional reporter for the Wall Street Journal, so I have followed the issue closely. And Romney's assertion is, as has been widely documented, nonsense. ... Why Romney is doing this is fairly plain. Romney polls best among white, working-class men, and he needs them to turn out in large numbers.

Millbank also slides to the "Post-Partisan" chair to give his opinion on that other millionaire life-long politician on the Republican ticket and discovers that Paul Ryan not only has cute kids, he also works out a lot. But he's still an ass.

Hey, I've been away a long time. Maybe I should consider breaking my ban on George Will imposed for the simple reason that George Will has a singular gift for taking the dead events of history and making them deader. Just taking a quick peek...ban reinstated.

Not all NASA craft had a good week.

NASA's Morpheus planetary lander was lovingly prepared at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida for its first untethered test flight on 9 August - and then it crashed and burned. ... After blasting off using its methane and liquid oxygen-fuelled engines, the lander experienced a "hardware component failure" that prevented it from maintaining stable flight, said NASA.

In any case, it's much better for NASA to have these failures here rather than at the the other end of a 300 million mile trip.

If you're looking at this in the overnight, go outside. Tonight it the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. Get out there. As in now.