It’s a Romney/Ryan GOP ticket…
Paul “Eddie” RyanSince late last night we’ve known Romney’s Veep choice: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
Ryan is of course best known for his draconian budget plan, which proposes an end to Medicare as we know it… replacing it with ‘vouchers’ and ‘letting’ you pay your own medical bills. Social Security is next on the chopping block. A GOP wet dream.
The Gilas-On-Parade have tried since 1935 (its inception) to kill Social Security, and since 1965 (its inception) to kill Medicare. Ryan is in the forefront of this Republican effort to disenfranchise older Americans and those with disabilities.
“Willard”The traditional ‘Third Rail’ of American politics*. Why? Beyond the argument over whether SSI is a ‘socialist’ program (it is), it directly concerns the most reliable voters in any election…
So let’s see, more taxes on the middle-class AND a gutting of Medicare?
Oh, It is ON!
* ‘Third Rail’ refers to subway or ‘underground’ public transit systems which typically use a 3-phase electrical scheme. The center or ‘third’ rail is the positive or ‘hot’ terminal. Touch it while in contact with either ‘ground’ rail and you FRY. Quickly and completely.
it’s how to buy Wisconsin and an attempt to placate the Teabillies rally the union busters and bring back slavery as an equal opportunity program.
Comment on August 11, 2012 @ 7:23 am
Poor Wisconsin! The failure of the Walker recall indicates it may already have been bought and paid for… Many unhappy cows.
Of COURSE the Ryan choice is a sop to the teabilly far Right. But Ryan is a pretty smart guy for all his medieval policies, so it wouldn’t do to dismiss him out of hand.
On the upside, this makes the election about a stark CHOICE between two very different ‘visions’ for the future rather than the ‘referendum’ on Obama which the GOP had hoped for. It also ties Romney irrevocably to the Ryan budget plan.
Overall, I think it bodes well for the Dems.
Comment on August 11, 2012 @ 7:59 am
Excellent comments Sky.
Comment on August 11, 2012 @ 11:17 am
They went Super-Dark, didn’t they? Holy Cow.
Comment on August 12, 2012 @ 11:43 am
just had the weirdest not so weird notion.
this election is like CivilWar II. The rebels always swore they never really surrendered. So some really smart pissed-off bigoted losers started a secret war through politics after they accumulated a few billions. They really went on the offensive when a nigg** became President. They want to make slaves out of everyone in revenge.
Comment on August 12, 2012 @ 6:17 pm
A kind of 21st century ‘the South shall rise again!’ scenario?
From Reconstruction up until the 1960′s, (it pains me to say) it was bigoted Democrats who dominated the Jim Crow South. Remember, Lincoln was a Republican!
Comment on August 13, 2012 @ 12:35 am
Yes, however it’s not really any specific party that I refer to as the die hard rebels – the party name makes no difference, it’s the politics and wherever or whomever they can co-opt a naive system. It is just co-incidental and ironic that it happens to be the Republican party that became the tool.
Comment on August 13, 2012 @ 3:38 am
Yes. In many ways, the GOP and the Dems have swapped places politically. In our lifetimes, the GOP has drifted ever-farther to the Right, and likewise but to a lesser extent, the Dems to the Left.
There USED to be real live LIBERAL Republicans!!
Comment on August 13, 2012 @ 10:12 am
And now for something completely different –
Comment on August 13, 2012 @ 3:06 pm
Has to be up there with “The Greatest Eulogies Ever”!
Did you know that all the Pythons each have an asteroid named after them? Graham’s is 9617 Grahamchapman.
Comment on August 13, 2012 @ 3:44 pm
OK, Nice euology, but back to Ryan:
I have been doing the happy dance all weekend, as this signals Romney’s complete surrender to the teabagger freakshow. Which means, his total panic and desperation. The results are all good for the dems, and the rest of the election will be simply shooting fish in a barrel. With hollow-point bullets stuffed with plastic explosives. True Ryan is not a pinhead retard like Michele or Sarah or either of the Ricks, but that doesn’t make him more of a danger. He is a true, dyed in the wool ideologue, a theory fetishist who thinks only in the abstract and instantly dismisses any real-world evidence that contradicts his mad, AynRandian fantasy world. And, completely opposite Romney, he takes great pride in his ideological purity. The beauty of this is he will not hesitate to back down, prevaricate, flip-flop, hide his views, or scrub the ethc-a-sketch the way Romney consistently has; rather he will (must!) take on the Dems in a straight up battle of his “intellectual” stance against Obama’s. And since 1) there is no factual basis for any of his his positions, and the press is more than willingn to point this out; and 2) his ideological stances are supported by a small minority of the US voter, the now completely moribund Republicans have just handed the eleciton over, lock stock and barrel. Exactly as the minute of Grampa McCain’s VEEP selection represented the end of the election, so this one too.
Praise Barcalounger!
Comment on August 13, 2012 @ 5:12 pm
Ayn Rand – myopic ‘visionary’
Washington Post: What Ayn Rand says about Paul Ryan
Young Ms. Rand (her real name was ‘Alisa Rosenbaum’) was from a prosperous Jewish family in St. Petersburg, Russia. When the 1917 Revolution came, she and her family were suddenly on the outs, as prime examples of the ‘bourgeoisie’… The Bolsheviks confiscated her father’s business and forced her family to flee for a time. After attending Petrograd State University, she was ‘purged’ before graduating. At 21, Ayn was able to get a visa to visit relatives in the U.S. in 1926. She had no intention of returning to what was now the Soviet Union and became a U.S. citizen in 1931.
You can read a short biography here: Wikipedia: Ayn Rand
Suffice it to say, Ms. Rand’s attitude toward ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ was (probably reasonably) poisoned from the beginning. So she got as far from that political pole as she could. Namely, she became a radical ‘laissez faire’ Capitalist… a brand of what would later be called ‘Libertarianism’. She seemed to see socialism as an all-controlling bureaucratic nightmare of gray mediocrity.
Cat-eyes is our resident philosopher, so I won’t presume to explain or even claim to fully understand Ayn Rand’s ‘objectivist’ philosophy. I can say that it’s been (superficially at least) popular from time to time. I too read Rand’s “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” in High School… I didn’t think it was so ‘deep’. I much preferred Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov!
Our ‘Fed’ Chairman for so long, Alan Greenspan, was also a disciple of Ms. Rand’s politico-economic viewpoint… championing the de-regulation of Wall St. and banking and corporations in general… until the whole shebang blew up in 2008. When called on the congressional carpet to explain what the hell happened… a forlorn looking Greenspan admitted (to his credit) that “I was wrong”. He sure was. What Alan did constantly during his 20 year stint as Fed ‘Gumba’ was to push for deregulation of EVERYTHING… including the repeal of Glass-Steagall. One would think that by NOW the ‘invisible hand of the free market’ was NOT the trustworthy equaliser that Adam Smith had postulated.
Ayn Rand was WRONG in the 1940′s and 50′s and she’s STILL WRONG.
“Corporations are people, my friend” – Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney
But people aren’t ‘perfectly’ anything, are they?. It is an absolutist fantasy.
Such a view celebrates the ‘winners’ and leaves all the ‘others’ to their own devices. Sound at all familiar? This is ‘social darwinism’ at its fascist finest.
Comment on August 13, 2012 @ 9:36 pm
Science has thoroughly debunked the myth of humans being rational agents – we can be although it is not our default mode of operandi. We are social creatures another well documented fact. And no one seems to understand Adam Smith’s philosophy of economics because they make two key and false assumptions: 1) it is a stand alone work (referring to the “Wealth of Nations”); and 2) he refers to any business other than a sole proprietorship (employees notwithstanding). The “Wealth” is the second book in a two book series of his philosophy. The first is titled a “Theory of Moral Sentiments” in which he outlines and defines his grounds for an ethical individual. His second work – “Wealth” assumes the definitions he has given for behaving morally from his first work as the given behavior of for “rational agents” of his economic theory. Without that assumption his invisible hand has free reign – and as we have witnessed it pays no attention to the assumption.
Ayn Rand – eee gads – she’s not generally even considered a legitimate philosopher in most academic circles. The works cited are fiction with a very directed POV and never ever even touch on addressing criticisms. That is not philosophy. She ran a cult not a school. Nuff said as far as I’m concerned.
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 7:03 am
@ Begemoyta – careful there are more libertarians than you might think.
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 7:08 am
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 7:25 am
Good one! Some more general observations of the Right from the always apoplectic Lewis Black:
P.S.: pretty sure ‘PWNS’ should be ‘OWNS’. Love Lewis!
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 8:00 am
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 8:18 am
BTW: I snipped #16 from a diary at DailyKos featuring the delightful Stephanie Miller. This quote seems apropo:
Some might say that this is too deadly serious a time to be indulging in comedy, but another POV is that mockery can be a deadly political weapon in itself. I suspect that it was the mockery of Sarah Palin that buried McCain’s ticket more than her obvious lack of qualifications. Most Americans don’t like the idea of the person who could be representing us on the world’s stage as a laughingstock. Another reason that Romey’s foreign policy photo-flop tour was so devastating.
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 8:22 am
re: comment #12. Cat-eyes is right again. We are decidedly NOT ‘rational’ agents. Yet another misplaced conceit. She also wisely points out that Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” was intended as PART 2 of his larger opus. PART ONE attempted to define what human ‘altruism’ and ‘reason’ were about. He was well-meant but largely WRONG there too, I’m afraid.
This illustrates the fallacy of the ‘invisible hand’ far better than I could:
PBS/NOVΛ: Mind Over Money
P.S.: Right about Ayn Rand’s pseudo-philosophy too methinks!
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 8:36 am
One reason we are not rational agents is because our conscious mind has incredibly feeble processing power relative to that of the unconscious. Some of the neuroscience stuff I’ve been reading of late makes a big point of this (eg: Damasio, Self Comes to Mind). It’s a common misconception that the conscious mind is the part that does all the heavy lifting such as making decisions in our daily life. It’s not at all true. Most of the cognitive work by far is done by the unconscious and we’re not even aware it’s happening. Since the conscious mind is out of the loop most of the time, the decisions we make our based on a sea of memories, learned behaviors, things we’ve read, genetically pre-programmed ‘animal instinct’ and of course propaganda (especially for Fox News viewers). The good news is that the unconscious can be cultivated by conscious effort. That’s what principles and integrity are all about.
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 8:50 am
I think that the brighter plastic artists beat the egg-heads to that realisation by nearly a century. Think Dada and Surrealism.
We LOVE to imagine that we’re ‘rational’. And, as Cat & Max point out, we occasionally ARE. But it’s the exception rather than the rule. Especially when personal risk is involved. We are emotional beings and find all sorts of wondrous ways to ‘rationalise’ to ourselves that we make ‘rational’ decisions!
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 8:55 am
Ha Ha. Old people are funny when they get beat up.
Paul Ryan believes in Soylent Green.
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 9:43 am
Tee-hee. “I hope he’s taking his blood-pressure medication” [chortle]… “Feed him to the Machine, boys!”
I wasn’t aware that Ryan brought his own Brownshirts to his Rotary Club appearances!
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 9:49 am
The smarminess of Ryan is a serious character flaw that is going to bite him in the ass – I hope. It’s fine for ingratiating yourself with already like-minded supporters, but he already has their votes regardless. Real independents are going to find that just a bit off-putting. Again, I hope. My hopes have been dashed plenty of times in the past. Never underestimate the vast gulf of stupidity and gullibility in the heartland. See GWB.
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 10:06 am
re: #18 > another point in fact -most of what we do to stay alive is not consciously done. The easiest way I can point to the average person clearly no demonstrating strictly rational (logical) thinking is to ask them to write a simple program – they cannot break it apart into the necessary steps because so much of how we do it is automatic – we have to consciously make an effort to dissect the process – and then, trying to account for all the possible actions (chaos) that will or might result in an error is really hard – especially the more complex the program. Go ahead, write the program to run the global economy, I dare you (you= average politician, citizen, any teabagger, economist, even mathematician or software expert) then we (we=all the NW bloggers) here will beta test it to find the billions of error conditions. Ha!
re: #16 > in the caption line although it could be a sort of pun I don’t think that was the intent; it should read “Coming to a Republican led . . . ” not “Coming to a Republican lead . . . ” – I also think it should read Brought to you by rather than the coming to . . .
JMHO
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 10:10 am
Yes, I noticed the caption clumsiness myself. Ya just can’t get good help these days…
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 10:13 am
They’re apparently using ‘lead’ as we would say/spell the past-tense of ‘read’?… or maybe pronounced as the heavy metallic element Pb: lead.
Cat: You raise an interesting but little known fact: Our vaunted ‘consciousness’ is only rarely ‘in play’ as it were. We’re largely meat ‘robots’. I’m not knocking it. If we were to engage in an epistemological self-debate when a car was careening toward us, or a tiger was eyeing us for lunch… there would be far fewer of us around to consider the ‘nature of reality’!
Or, on a less existential level, consider playing a difficult piece on a musical instrument: If you had to consciously consider each note and how to play it… you’d never get past the 2nd bar! You’re ‘neural pathways’ are what ‘really’ learn to play a song. The accomplished player knows when to pay attention and when to simply ‘get out of the way’!
John Coltrane once said something to that effect:
“You spend hours and weeks practising… then when you go on stage, you forget all that shit and just PLAY!”
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 11:10 am
Meanwhile –
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 1:19 pm
I love T the AC!
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 9:01 pm
I find him condescending and rude… and I don’t care much for the cat either!
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 10:42 pm
From tonight’s show.
I love Rachel Maddow.
BTW: VP Joe Biden started a bit of a tiff at a campaign stop Tuesday by mocking the GOP goal of ‘unchaining’ Wall St. – saying that would put people “back in chains”… this to a largely black audience. Naturally, Romney and his surrogates immediately cranked up the ‘outraged’ response machine. This is totally, completely FAKE outrage, of course.
This also is reminiscent of Cat-eyes’ comment #4. Only a few days after his VP choice and Romney’s whole operation is coming unhinged! Romney’s campaign is doomed.
Comment on August 14, 2012 @ 11:35 pm
Rachel’s always so coherent, so thoughtful. Great mind — and on the Telly! How’d that ever happen?
Fiscal Conservative = Misery Is Good.
Comment on August 15, 2012 @ 7:43 am
She’s always great, isn’t she? Sharp as a tack and well spoken too. ‘Incision’ is a word I would use to describe her political reasoning. I first heard her on the erstwhile “Air America” radio network and it was love at first phoneme.
What made me sit up straight last night was her parallel (to our weam) zeroing in on Ryan’s long-term infatuation with Ayn Rand’s reactionary cult of personality… and the inherent contradictions of his ‘conservative’ ideals.
… “and if that counts as ‘fiscal conservatism’ to you… You don’t speak English.”
Hear! Hear!
I can only groan in disgust when I hear Rep. Ryan described as a ‘Conservative INTELLECTUAL’ – my GAWD…
‘great minds’… I guess.
Comment on August 15, 2012 @ 8:31 am
Comment on August 15, 2012 @ 4:51 pm
Excellent. Dwight was no ‘died-in-the-wool’ Republican and no political ideologue. As Truman’s term was coming to a close, both parties solicited General Eisenhower to be their candidate. After 20 years of Democratic control of the Executive branch, most were ready for a change… So Eisenhower went with the Republican offer. And won in 1952. Probably his biggest mistake was in picking a weasel for a running mate. Eisenhower never liked (nor trusted) Richard Nixon. It would become manifestly clear why in subsequent years.
By today’s badly skewed standards, Eisenhower would be run out of the GOP for being a dirty (gawd forbid) Liberal, or maybe even a Pinko Commie sympathiser!
Just before Ike left office, he felt the need to issue this warning to the nation:
Obviously, and sadly, he was roundly ignored. But I liked Ike!
Comment on August 15, 2012 @ 6:23 pm
Speaking of Truman (obliquely), this column in USA Today posts a hopeful analogy:
Is Romney the next Dewey?
Comment on August 16, 2012 @ 4:20 am
The Romney-Dewey comparison is a bit of a stretch. Truman really was very unpopular through much of his tenure, but people came to respect his plain spoken bull-dog tenacity. And Dewey’s camp was overconfident and underestimated Truman.
BTW: I just watched Romney surrogate from Virginia Barbara Comstock on CNN. She came only an inch short of accusing Fredricka Whitfield and CNN of being biased against her candidate. Very brittle. Shrill even. And this is only the middle of August…
Comment on August 16, 2012 @ 4:51 am
In my fave tradition of cutting and pasing great internet comments, this one is from an article on TPM about the RNC & Romney’s mixed messaging on Obama:
I think that last one is all the teabillies need. I think they might be more effective if they just simplified the message to a nice bumpersticker length.
Vote Romney – the other guy is black
Comment on August 16, 2012 @ 6:40 am
[chortle] the race thing is (usually) kept to metaphor and ‘dog whistle’ coded references.
The dust up over Joe Biden’s campaign stop “he’ll put y’all back in chains” comment is yet more absurd Right wing FAKE ‘outrage’. The irony of the Far Right complaining about a SLAVERY reference is RICH!
I don’t think Biden made a ‘gaffe’ at all. I think he said exactly what he meant to say. Yes, it was provocative… and was meant to be!
Joe IS prone to occasional attacks of ‘foot in mouth’ disease, but not this time (IMHO). In the context of his talk about Wall Street reforms (or lack of same), his comments made perfect sense. The people present, black and white, certainly ‘got’ the slavery reference, but understood it in the context of Wall Street’s unconscionable control over typical American’s lives… and were NOT offended.
I say keep it up Joe, you’re doing fine!
Comment on August 16, 2012 @ 1:08 pm
Randi Rhodes talks… and LISTENS…
[Randi Rhodes I also came to know through 'Air America' radio.]
Mike from Wisconsin bewails to Randi what happened in the failed Recall election back in June… and WHY:
RR: American from Wisconsin
This is pretty fucked up right here! The poor guy is obviously sincere and hurting… but that’s really irrelevant. The POINT is, he is RIGHT! And it CAN happen here! And now it HAS happened here!
In our ongoing “War of the Gila Monsters”, those slithering evil beings bent on the utter destruction of America while wrapped in the good ol’ Red-White-and-Blue have ALREADY rigged the game… and have persuaded through clever propaganda a significant portion of the electorate that the obscenely RICH are somehow here to HELP US. Of course, NOTHING could be further from the truth!
The general Gila game-plan hasn’t changed much over the years, but was given an immeasurable boost with the SCOTUS ‘Citizens United’ travesty/decision of 2010. Unlimited anonymous cash from ANYWHERE really makes a MOCKERY of ‘democracy’. That’s what happened in Wisconsin. And what they’d LOVE to see in November.
And there is evidence that the 5/4 decision was ‘fixed’ by ‘gifts’ to various Justices who should have then recused themselves… but didn’t.
I hate to sound like a ‘conspiracy theorist’, but it is what it IS.
We are SO fucked.
Comment on August 16, 2012 @ 4:27 pm
Rachel Maddow for 16 August 2012.
In this installment, Maddow examines Congressman Ryan’s two-faced approach to the economic stimulus… which he loudly decried and voted against and vowed not to accept any funds from but, as it turns out, did indeed request (and got) funds anyway… And here, he is methodically NAILED for his hypocrisy and LIES.
Go Rachel!
Comment on August 17, 2012 @ 2:05 am
Comment on August 17, 2012 @ 6:48 am