Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

A couple of other things….

Well…had to get out on the bike early today to avoid the possibility of heatstroke and I was amazed at all of the people out at 7 in the morning…but I still came back soaked through…might have to be the pattern for the rest of the week since it is so hot out there right now…that’s not what this is about, though…I just love the latest poll that shows that people are starting to tire of the obstructionism of the repubs with 71% feeling that the they are responsible for there not being a budget deal. Now, I just hope the Obama and his guys take this as a reason to stiffen their spines and stop giving away the store.

Then, we have Paul Ryan stating today, in essence, that he is completely willing to crash the economy if the repubs don’t get everything they want…can’t we all agree that this is nonsense and is not how American government works…and we have the Koch brothers to thank for this crap….they will not rest until they own the entire country and use it as their personal plaything….oh, that’s what they are doing now in Wisconsin…how did that work out for you up there?

One last thing….I think we need a “pledge” for the repubs to sign that when elected, they will have to take at least a 100 level economics course that will give them a rudimentary understanding of the economy and that it does work to the theories of Keynes and just because they don’t “believe” in them, it doesn’t make them invalid…I have had just about enough of ignorance that passes for depth with the repubs these days….

No politics right now…

Well…okay, I will have a little bit of a political commentary…I have never seen so much backpedaling happening since the last time I went to the circus…I should feel bad for Paul Ryan when even members of his own party are running away from his budget plan but I don’t…I have absolutely no feeling but contempt for these radical idiots who think a mid-term election win that is fueled by their base gives them a “mandate” to impose not just radical but stupid economic policies on the rest of us. This whole austerity nonsense is starting to show up in a marked slowdown in the economy and higher unemployment just when we should be putting our foot on the gas to ensure that the recovery doesn’t falter….and I would rather listen to a Nobel winning economist like Paul Krugman who has been taking these idiots to task….you can’t cut your way to prosperity, but that is becoming the accepted wisdom from the repubs….what “wisdom” they have which is not much…

Okay….it was political…but I didn’t mean it to be that way….I will be back with just some musings later….the trail is looking really cool and I have to tell you about that…

Poor Paul Ryan…

Well…you just got to love the rationalization program that is going on from the right this morning with the loss of one of their traditional house seats in New York yesterday. The best one came on Morning Joe this morning when Paul Ryan basically called the voters there stupid for voting against his brilliant plan…okay,that was a little sarcasm but he deserves it. This guy reminds me of ole Newt who does the same thing when people disagree with him, he denigrates the person, then uses the excuse that the opposition just doesn’t understand or they would agree wholeheartedly. But, Ryan also rolled out the repub ploy where he is playing different groups of people off against each other; saying that people over 55 were misled into thinking that these changes would affect them. My answer to rep Ryan is no….these changes won’t affect me but I still care what they will do to my children and other people that are approaching 55…and I have a true belief that we are all in this together and any plan that is just another giveaway to the insurance industry that bought the repub congress we now have is just morally wrong…I hope other people are having the same epiphany…

Just a short one to start the day…

Well… with all of the talk about the Ryan plan to gut Medicare and the repubs claims that it will lower costs and extend its life, a little read bombshell was dropped by the CBO yesterday…their non-partisan analysis of the plan blew all of the claims out of the water with the conclusion that Ryan’s plan would actually INCREASE costs by almost 40%. Yep, you read it right, but is it a surprise? This budget of Ryan’s was never about controlling costs; it was a blatant attempt to impose the repubs radical right wing agenda on the country, destroying the safety nets that the repubs have hated since their inception. But, I see hope that the country is finally getting tired of the repub agenda to take, take, take from the middle class and give to the rich…which Ryan’s Medicare proposal does.. it’s a reward to the insurance companies the gave the repubs 90% of the money they spent in the last election. I think the people are starting to see that the type of America that is Ryan’s and Walkers is not the one they want…at least the people in the congressional election in New York are getting it…in the special election yesterday for the house seat in a district that has been held by the repubs since 1960, a Dem won; running on opposition to Ryan’s radical budget….maybe Ryan can go away in 2012….geez…

Tim Pawlenty’s new leadership…

Well…I always have to laugh when I hear anyone of the supposed repub presidential candidates talk about the need for “new leadership” in Washington, and then go on to say they are the ones that should be leading. The latest of these idiots is the former governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, who chose to criticize the administration for it’s spending to get the country out of the worst recession since the twenties, and it’s lack of support gutting seniors healthcare that is proposed by one of the other “brains” of the repub party, Paul Ryan. What kind of leadership is he talking about? Leading the country back to the deregulation that caused the last meltdown? Leading the country back to the bad old days when the majority of our retirees lived a life of abject poverty after lives of hard labor? Leading the country back to the discrimination that blacks and gays have felt for many, many years? Leading the country back to the time when the middle class didn’t exist and all of the riches of this country are in the hands of the robber barons and labor has to beg for the scraps that are left? One thing we don’t need right now is any form of repub “leadership”, I think that is an oxymoron anyway…the repubs never lead, they just follow the instructions of their business masters to the detriment of the rest of the country…geez…

Still struggling…

Well…just thought I’d get a shorty out to let you know that I am working on getting another one going in my head but this whole day has been a weird jumble of things happening and I am so far off my normal routine that I haven’t even read the online papers yet…so I’m going to do that now and then come back in a while to finish this…

Okay, I’m back…had to run an unexpected errand and still haven’t found anything to write about….maybe the hurt feelings of Paul Ryan would be appropriate…I just had to laugh after Obama attacked Ryan’s radical budget proposal, with Ryan calling the speech “overly partisan”…oh, poor baby, you should be happy he didn’t call you the idiot that you are…well…he kind of did, and as time goes by and people other that the Heritage Foundation take a close look…we’ve learned that it does nothing to lower the deficit, yep, that’s right…nope, I can’t even fake surprise at this one….these guys have taken “voodoo” economics to a new high, and I am so happy they did it, finally letting the curtain fall on their agenda to end the social contract that has existed for the past 90 years. It is a little heartening to see the same kind of thing happening here in Michigan with gov Snyder losing support even from his own party where they still have some realists…..I can’t wait to see the ads for the next election where the dismantling of Medicare is going to be the subject…and it will make it easier to believe when the left says the repubs want to end Social Security, too….going to be interesting time over the next two years…strap in and hang on…

Breathtaking lies and other stuff….

Well….I know this is kind of obscure since not many of you know who Senator John Kyl is…oh, you do? Good, that might put this more in context….okay, a couple of days ago Senator Kyl went on the floor of the senate and made the assertion that 90% of the funding that Planned Parenthood gets is used for abortions; no matter that the the real number is around 3%, since you know that facts don’t mean much to the repubs…but, the breathtaking part is not the lie…nope, even better than that, the statement that his office put out later is….they put out a press statement saying that what he said on the senate floor was not meant to be factual…not meant to be factual? Then what was it meant to be? A recipe for cornbread? C’mon senator Kyl….at least try to hide your lies for a little while longer…you can use page 84 of the repub playbook, chapter 15 entitled “Say anything, it doesn’t matter”. Geez….

Just a short one for the other stuff….read an article this morning that dissected the Ryan budget proposal and it’s fiscal effects on the national debt…and compared it to the effect of ending the Bush tax cuts…guess what? Ending the Bush tax cuts has the same effect as all of the cuts that Ryan proposes that will fall on the middle class and the poor. Is there any question the Ryan has an ulterior motive? Reward the rich Ryan….has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? geez….

A new vision…

Well..one of the most striking things that I have taken away from the budget battles that have been going on for the last couple of years is the utter lack of vision that the dems have laid out to support their version of America….and I fault Obama for a large part of it…his tiptoeing around to not anger the repubs have gotten him what? Nothing but an emboldened opposition whose crazy ideas have gotten a huge voice without the counterpoint of rationality that the president could bring to the discussion, and his almost unfathomable reliance on bipartisanship, or the appearance of bipartisanship, is making him look so disengaged that those of us in the middle and on the left are sitting here shaking our heads. I hope that the budget plan that is coming out from the dem leadership later in the week will help to flesh out what they think America should look like and I think they have a golden opportunity to contrast with the Ryan proposal; one that gives more and more to the rich while taking the majority of the savings from programs that are designed to help the middle class and poor.

It was a good start when Obama said that the plan will include increased revenue from letting the bush tax cuts expire on the richest, and I think it is a reasonable request since those tax cuts never produced one new job or made America a better place to live; except for those super rich who benefited from the cuts. I also understand that there can be cuts and streamlining to major government programs to make them more efficient, but let’s make sure that the cuts are made to the inefficiencies, and maintain those few things that can help the American dream live on….

Voodoo economics is back…again…

Well….with all of the praise that Paul Ryan is getting for his budget proposals, you would think he was on to something new, since his plan has been deified in the right wing press as the heaven sent solution to all of our problems…okay, I made that last part up but I really think that has been the gist of the reaction from even mainstream media. To get a full explanation that is done better than I could do, check out Paul Krugman’s column in the NY times this morning…yeah, I know, I have been trying to not go there but it is hard to give up something that has been a part of my life for so many years. Now, back to the Ryan proposal, the cornerstone of this monstrosity is the re-invention of the voodoo economics of the Reagan administration; that is, that as you cut taxes, revenue to the government will rise…a theory that has been proven wrong every time it has been tried since the 80′s….if this stupid theory worked, the government would be awash in money and there would be no deficit problem since overall taxes are lower now that they have been on over 50 years. The only question that comes to my mind is prove it; where are all of these dollars they talk about?

The second thing that all of us should be quite concerned about is the inclusion in Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare into a private insurance scam that would give insurance companies the ability to make trillions more profit off people that have no place else to go. How can he stand there with a straight face and say that it will save money to change a program that has a 9% overhead to one a private one whose overheard ranges from 20-30%. Just another plan to reward the rich insurance companies at the expense of you and me. Aren’t you tired of this crap yet? Geez….

I want to write about good news…

Well….I do feel a little better so I thought I’d get this one out before I slink back to the couch to continue this slow, painful recovery. I have been having problems writing lately since it takes a lot out of me to be outraged all the time, and I do want to write about good news; there just hasn’t been any lately. That might not be completely true, there was an election in Wisconsin yesterday and the turnout by the people that want fairness restored to their political process was huge….maybe I was right that the repub thugs have overreached and misread the will of the people. No one but the rich could have voted for what gov Walker foisted on that state, or for what Paul Ryan is proposing on the federal level…that there will be no more social contract, that there will be no more shared responsibility, that the US will see the last 100 years of progress on social issues repealed. I just hope that we can keep up the outrage of the electorate now that the repubs have revealed their true selves….shame on us if we don’t…