Sarah Palin puts a brave face on it:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will not speak at the Republican nominating convention in Tampa later this month, she said in statement on Sunday.

“This year is a good opportunity for other voices to speak at the convention and I’m excited to hear them,” Palin, who was Senator John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 election, said in a statement on Gretawire, the blog of Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren.

“Everything I said at the 2008 convention about then-candidate (Barack) Obama still stands today, and in fact the predictions made about the very unqualified and inexperienced community organizer’s plans to ‘fundamentally transform’ our country are unfortunately coming true,” Palin said.

President Obama is drawing the lines of the political conflict for the next few months, identifying Paul Ryan as the “ideological leader” of the Republican Party.

CHICAGO — Just over 24 hours after Rep. Paul Ryan was tapped for the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket, President Obama today welcomed the Wisconsin congressman to the race, branding him the “ideological leader of Republicans in Congress.”

Addressing donors at a campaign fundraiser on the south side of Chicago, Obama slammed his rivals’ belief in “top-down economics” as a solution to the nation’s economic woes, insisting the approach has been tried and failed.

“This kind of top-down economics is central to Gov. [Mitt] Romney and it is central to his running mate,” Obama told roughly 1,000 donors huddled inside the Bridgeport Arts Center.

“Just yesterday, my opponent chose his running mate, the ideological leader of  Republicans in Congress, Mr. Paul Ryan. I want to congratulate Mr. Ryan.  I know him. I welcome him to the race,” Obama said.

Some members of the crowd began booing at the mention of Ryan, but Obama cut them off.

“He is a decent man, he is a family man, he is an articulate spokesman for Governor Romney’s vision, but it is a vision that I fundamentally disagree with,” he said.

There’s a lot of talk about negativity in this campaign, but here Obama is laying out a clear and positive statement about a difference in policies, and that’s what politics is supposed to be about. Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan is a clarifying moment in this election.

Here’s the first 360° panoramic view of Gale Crater from the Mars Curiosity Rover, with the mountains of Mars visible in the distance and the Curiosity itself in the foreground.

The Obama campaign actually released this new ad yesterday, so soon after the Ryan announcement that they must have had it ready.

Practically in the same sentence as his announcement of Paul Ryan as his VP pick, Mitt Romney threw Ryan’s ridiculously extreme “budget” under the bus… but in an amazingly rapid reversal, now he’s back to saying he “would have signed” it.

Just moments after Mitt Romney announced Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his vice presidential nominee on Saturday, his campaign tried to distance itself from Ryan’s signature House budget. Although Romney has admitted he would sign the Ryan budget if it crossed his desk, calling it “marvelous” and an “important step”, the campaign’s internal talking points were careful to avoid endorsing the Republican blueprint: “Gov. Romney applauds Paul Ryan for going in the right direction with his budget, and as president he will be putting together his own plan for cutting the deficit and putting the budget on a path to balance,” they argued.

But a day later, the campaign switched tactics and went back to embracing the document, insisting that Romney would have happily signed it into law.