It looks like Charlie Pierce’s life just got a whole lot easier. He was in good shape having lived in Massachusetts when Romney was allegedly governor [something the Mittster seems to be denying], and now Mitt the Twit has chosen “the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin” as his running mate. Charlie is in hog heaven wallowing in the muck.

It would seem that Romney felt he needed to balance the ticket with someone the Republican base and the Village seemed to like. So now the Republicans have two boring pasty-white men to lead their challenge.

The real problem is whether these two can attract enough votes to make stealing elections possible.

A few things are going on that are affecting the tropical weather.

The follow on wave that came off of Africa after TD 7 started to move to the Northwest, which put it over cooler water and into the envelop of dry air coming off the Sahara. If the waves don’t move due West and stay below 20°N they won’t develop.

TD 7 did that right, but it was moving too fast to expand, so when it encountered the wind shear near the Windward Islands, it didn’t have the inertia to overcome it.

Looking at the Sea Surface Temperature map for the Pacific shows that an El Niño seems to be developing off the coast of Peru, which would correspond with the wind shear that has been consistent in the Caribbean.

We may get a lot of tropical events this year, but the big ones will probably be at the peak in late September and October.

Marc Caputo of the Miami Herald explains what Paul Ryan’s selection does to Republican hopes in Florida.

Mitt the Twit has been avoiding being seen with Florida’s Fraudster-in-chief because of his subbasement poll numbers, but Ryan’s numbers are two levels below Scott’s among Florida’s senior voters.

So much for appealing to swing voters. After this choice the “fiscally conservative” thing to do would be to cancel the GOP convention and stop campaigning. Just concede and try again in four years.

TD Seven fell apart as it was approaching the Windward Islands this morning. It made the transit from the coast of Africa so quickly that it didn’t have the strength to combat the wind shear that it encountered when it approached the islands.