The Tainted Cheesiness of Paul Ryan

I don't know who's worse:  pathological zombie politician Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, or the alleged intelligentsia who are cheerleading his "seriousness, courage and bravery".   I am still trying to recover from the David Brooks column in yesterday's Times that treated this two-bit hack like the second coming of Christ.


Read instead the running commentary of Paul Krugman in his New York Times blog for a piece-by-piece evisceration of the Ryan Manifesto of Death by a Thousand Cuts.  After Professor K called out Ryan's (via the Heritage Foundation) projection of only a 2.7 percent unemployment rate in coming years to vindicate his fictional deficit cure, it was mysteriously cut from the online Heritage Foundation version.  But Krugman has posted a screenshot of the original.


The obvious point of the Ryan plan is to Scare Us All To Death, as well as start a generation war between Millennials and their grandparents.  Ryan is fine with leaving Medicare alone for the 55-plus crowd around today, but if you're in the unlucky below-55 age group, you will only get a few thousand bucks to buy crappy junk insurance when you retire.  Meanwhile, you'll be paying to keep old geezers on life support through your payroll deductions. It's the tried and true "divide and conquer" formula all bosses and overlords use to keep their disgruntled workers and subjects in their places. Pit colleague against colleague, private sector versus public sector, young  college graduate minimum wage McDonald's hamburger flipper against the Grandma living in retired "comfort" on his FICA/Medicare deduction dime.  Destruction of the social safety net is the goal. "Family values" in GOP-speak is of the Corleone/Tony Soprano variety only. 

 It's also the old propagandistic bait and switch trick of cutting social programs in order to "save" them -- so as not to burden our children and grandchildren with our bills. We must die for our sins.  Come on.  The real burdensome crowd are the kleptocrats who want to keep their tax cuts for eternity and live off the rest of us like the bloated leeches they are.  It's the class war, stupid.  And speaking of war -- not a mention does Ryan make of our three (official) wars and their terrible cost in money, lives, limbs and mental health.

Ryan is a fall guy being paraded out by the Republicans to provide a sideshow. As my friend Kate Madison pointed out yesterday in her comment on Brooks, he is so despised in his native Wisconsin that he is not expected to even win re-election next year, let alone remain House Budget Committee chairman. 

The Ryan Show is like a Grade Z horror flick that's so bad, it's funny.  What the GOP is really banking on is the  possibility that their outrageous demands for a trillion dollar cut will so scare the spineless Democrats that they might even get a third of what they're asking for. Little Paulie a Whiz Kid?  Cheez Whiz is more like it  -- and that amounts to sacrilege in the Dairy State, the birthplace of labor unions. His artificial cheese product of a budget is held together by intellectual emulsifying agents that don't stand a chance when exposed to heat and light.  He has cheeted with the facts. His mendacious manifesto and his fellow Republicans are becoming as unglued as xanthum gum left out in the rain.

The Fierce Urgency of Town Halls and Political Galas

When President Obama popped in at yesterday's White House press briefing, he gave the impression he'd be personally involved in intense budget negotiations with Republicans to avert what many believe is an imminent government shutdown.

Hovering Above It All

But according to the official schedule released today, the president will be leaving town right after lunch - first, for a Town Hall event in Philly and then to a fundraiser for Al Sharpton in Manhattan.  I guess his "team" will be handling the crisis in  his absence.... the latest in a line of absences both physical and political.  As Kevin Drum of Mother Jones puts it: "Obama has long followed a strategy of letting other people fight pitched battles for awhile and then parachuting in towards the end to act as peacemaker."

But his re-election campaign beckons, so never let a crisis get in the way of a good town hall.  Obama plans to meet with workers at Gamesa, a Spain-based wind turbine company with a factory in Pennsylvania that constructed the Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm.  Since Hispanics will be a key voting bloc in 2012, the President is going a-courting now.  And then, on to his second foray into the Big Apple in less than a week, a political payback of sorts to Al Sharpton at the National Action Networks gala at the Sheraton Hotel.  Sharpton was initially a Hillary supporter, but made up with Obama before the convention.

The president arrives at Kennedy Airport at 5 p.m., just in time for the evening rush.  Local news outlets are treating the story as A Traffic Gridlock of Epic Proportions.  New Yorkers tend to get irate when a president breezes into town at  inconvenient times on an increasingly consistent basis.  But that's okay. Irate New Yorkers will get the chance to let off some steam next weekend (4/15) in what promises to be a gala mass demonstration in Union Square against the banksters and the kleptocrats.  Somehow I don't think any politician of either political party will be in town for the occasion.  

They call the presidential route through Manhattan a Frozen Zone.  And despite all the heated rhetoric coming out of D.C., the budget talks seem to be in the deep freeze as well, at least as far as Obama is concerned.  Here's what he said yesterday:

"The only question is whether politics or ideology are going to get in the way of preventing a government shutdown.  Now, what does this potentially mean for the American people?  At a time when the economy is just beginning to grow, where we’re just starting to see a pickup in employment, the last thing we need is a disruption that’s caused by a government shutdown.  Not to mention all the people who depend on government services, whether you’re a veteran or you’re somebody who’s trying to get a passport or you’re planning to visit one of the national monuments or you’re a business leader who’s trying to get a small business loan.  You don’t want delays, you don’t want disruptions just because of usual politics in Washington.

So what I said to the Speaker today, and what I said to Leader Reid, and what I’ve said to the two appropriations chairs, is that myself, Joe Biden, my team, we are prepared to meet for as long as possible to get this resolved."

Only, he'll be MIA for a total of 10 hours today.  His defenders, or apologists, will likely continue to say he's no-drama Obama, the only grown-up in the room, he likes to stay detached, he knows what he's doing.  In one respect, he's like an annoying helicopter parent, always hovering near the children's activities but never getting directly involved or, heaven forbid, getting angry or showing who's the boss.

Kevin Drum said he likes to parachute in at the last minute.  But I'm afraid that this time, he's merely bailed out.


** Update, 7:05 p.m.  The New York Times now reports that Obama will meet with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid  immediately upon his helicopter landing tonight at 8:45 p.m. I guess the three-minute quickie phone call he made to Boehner before blowing town earlier today didn't do the trick.

Talking Points for Obamabots

Now that thousands of you have already signed up for Obama '12 and are champing at the bit to work those phones a year and a half before Election Day, here's a script I just unearthed to help you connect one-on-one with the undecided folks in the heartland. If they tell you they won't be voting for Obama, here's what you say:

If you don’t support Barack, you’re enabling the Tea Party

People who criticize the president are racists.

He was a left a mess by Bush and he's doing his best to clean it up.  He’s been trying to drive the car out of the ditch. He has to deal with circumstances beyond his control, every minute of every day.  Give him a break. He’s only been president for 26 months and we’ve had 200 years of bad governance.

Lily Ledbetter, Lily Ledbetter, Lily Ledbetter.

If you don’t support Obama, then Sarah Palin/Newt Gingrich/Michele Bachmann will become president and the world will end.  Is that what you really want?

He was solely responsible for the repeal of DADT. He inspired the Egyptian Revolution. He had to give tax breaks to the rich to save the middle class down the road. Because of him, we will all, someday, have the privilege of buying private health insurance.

He is the only grownup in the room. Everybody else is a child. 

A third party candidate or primary challenger will just be a spoiler.

He is playing three dimensional chess, so give him the benefit of the doubt. You should trust him because he has a higher IQ. than you do.

He has to pander to the corporations now, so he can become the true progressive he wants to be during his second term.  He has to pretend to love Wall Street because without their money he couldn't get re-elected.  That's how politics works.  Can I put you down for $25?

Some people just don't appreciate nuance. 

Pragmatism is the greatest virtue ever invented.

He’s the only thing standing  in the way of a total fascist takeover of the Supreme Court.

Have I left anything out?