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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Zombie-Eyed Granny-Starver From Wisconsin
Charles P. Pierce at Esquire: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-romney-vp-pick-11562917
Make no mistake. In his decision to make Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, his running mate, Romney finally surrendered the tattered remnants of his soul not only to the extreme base of his party, but also to extremist economic policies, and to an extremist view of the country he seeks to lead. This is unimaginable to those of us who lived here under Romney's barely perceptible stewardship of the Commonwealth (God save it!). If he'd even hinted that he agreed with a fraction of a smidgen of a portion of the policies on which Ryan has built his career, Romney would have been hanging from the Sacred Cod by the middle of 2005. And it's hard not to notice that the way the decision got leaked in the dead of a Friday night, with the Olympics still going on, after two weeks in which Romney and his campaign had demonstrated all the political skills of a handball fairly dripped with flopsweat . . .
Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare . . .
The fact is that his "budget" will demolish federal spending on those very things, either directly, or by sending the deficit off in the direction of Alpha Centauri. But the quote illustrates something else about Paul Ryan: get him out of his comfort zone of being thought an intellectual by the likes of Louie Gohmert, and of being thought of as a bold thinker by half the buffet-grazers in the Beltway media, and he really is quite the political coward. (In this way, he is a perfect match for the man who picked him.) He does not have the raw balls to explain to the country that, no, he does not believe in government not the federal government, anyway, and not as it was originally conceived, as the fundamental expression of a political commonwealth. He's grandfathered his plan to chloroform Medicare so that, despite the deficit that he considers such an urgent problem, nobody alive today who might vote against him will be affected by it. For the same reason, he will not specify the cuts that he will make or the tax "loopholes" coughMortgageInterestDeductioncough that he will close. In any way that will come to matter to the people whose lives his policies will make harder and more miserable, Paul Ryan is still the high-school kid living off Social Security survivor benefits and reading Ayn Rand by flashlight under the sheets. Instead, he's a guy pretending to be something he's not, and doing so back in Janesville in a very swell Georgian mansion, which just happens to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Which, among other things, means that Paul Ryan, who lies awake at night worrying that The Deficit will come and eat our grandchildren, lives in a house overseen by the National Park Service, which means that he qualifies for a 20-percent investment tax credit for the house he lives in. Of course, his "budget" would largely decimate the NPS, but that would be only those parts of it enjoyed by other people. Yes, Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver, has done very well by the federal government that he seeks to dismantle. Come to think of it, so has Willard Romney, although we may never know exactly how well he's done by it. It turns out this is a match made in heaven, after all.
Of course, it still could be that they're just trying to give poor Paul Krugman a stroke.
read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-romney-vp-pick-11562917http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-romney-vp-pick-11562917
kentuck
(111,079 posts)Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,500 posts)have to live.'' God damn that's a beautifully frightening sentence.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)No more Mr. nice guys , so all the teabaggers can feel like 1%ers too.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)It is their states that derive the most benefits from the programs that the Ryan budget would destroy.
sad sally
(2,627 posts)Tea Party: people covered by Medicare who hate socialized medicine.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)That last line about giving "poor Paul Krugman a stroke" cracks me up. And now I can't wait to hear from Krugman on this glorious R&R ticket.
Overseas
(12,121 posts)coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)Toni Jo Talbot
(1 post)Interesting how Paul Ryan wants to gut the "entitlement" programs that allow not only the poor and the handicapped, but also the individuals who have worked for many years and paid into these programs (such as Social Security and Medicare) to be able to take care of themselves, even if at a bare subsistence level. Moreover, Ryan wants to deprive promising students from becoming productive, tax-paying members of society by eliminating Federal grants for education. (And how, pray tell, would they be able to "take online courses" if they could neither afford them, or the computer necessary to take them?)
What most people don't realize (and which should be brought home to the voters EVERYWHERE in the U.S.) is that Ryan, as a Congressman, can receive FREE, luxury-level medical treatment at Walter Reed Hospital - a Federal hospital originally built to take care of soldiers. Ryan and others of his ilk (Senators and Congressmen) have access to the private "Ward 72" on the seventh-floor, which is decorated with antique furniture, crystal chandeliers, and valuable art work.They also have access to the best of the Government doctors, and eat only the finest of food, while the soldiers have to make do with whatever is served to them.
Thus, the elderly, the poor, the handicapped, the suddenly unemployed will be "herd-thinned," while Ryan and his cronies will enjoy the fruits of Governmental services, all supplied by the "lower-echelon" taxpayers. (Meanwhile the $32 trillion dollars in super-rich offshore accounts will be gaining interest for its owners, exponentially, as I write this,,,)
PotatoChip
(3,186 posts)Welcome to DU!
Whisp
(24,096 posts)and some people are calling this thing 'attractive'?
omg, where's my puke bucket. Stat!
sad sally
(2,627 posts)Tx4obama
(36,974 posts)Whisp
(24,096 posts)he's got something pretty rare in that field.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)K&R
WorseBeforeBetter
(11,441 posts)I had no idea Ryan lives in a "house overseen by the National Park Service." Yet another hypocritical Republican mutherfucker.
And another great piece by Pierce.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)than Charlie. Biden will eat this silly fucker alive and pick his teeth with the bones.