The Nature of Things

In this blog, I typically write about whatever I happen to be thinking about on that particular day. Thus, the blog serves as a kind of diary, and it is interesting from time to time to look back at what was on my mind five years ago, six years ago, etc. Today, I'm looking back five years and I find once again that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Five years ago, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was being lauded by the Washington Beltway press as the serious, intelligent, wonky Republican, a "Young Gun" savior for a party that seemed to be veering out of control. The basis of all this dewy-eyed "analysis" was the budget that he had just presented. When he introduced his "budget," he said that it was not a budget but a cause. As details of his opus became clear, it was obvious that the cause was Ayn Randian . Ryan remained true to his primary political influence.  As House Speaker today, he still remains true to it and he's still presen...

First it was Paul Ryan blaming the Republicans' loss on "urban" voters . Wonder who he could have been referring to? No doubt all those people who listen for "dog whistles" understood him very well. Of course, Ryan neglected to mention that his ticket  also lost predominately white and rural states like Iowa and New Hampshire, and underperformed in Midwestern states, but then the flimflam man has never lived in a reality-based state.  Speaking of the state where he does live, Wisconsin, he lost that, too, AND he lost his own home town !  Then along came Ryan's partner in losing, Mr. Romney. Speaking this week to donors to his campaign, he blamed the loss on President Obama giving "gifts" to various segments of voters . Here's just a snippet of his insulting remarks about "those people" who didn't vote for him; you know, that irresponsible 47 percent. Except it turned out to be 51 percent. With regards to the young people, for ins...

Paul Ryan is a liar. He lies glibly about even the most unimportant things, like the time he ran in a long-ago marathon. Moreover, his math doesn't add up.  One or two observers of the political scene have had the prescience to point this out repeatedly over the past few years. For their efforts, they have been derided and verbally abused by the Very Serious Pundits of the Washington Beltway. But those truth tellers have been right all along and, recently, a few of the much-maligned (and richly deserved, too!) mainstream media have begun to notice that Ryan is really, as Paul Krugman famously dubbed him, a "flimflam man" and to actually point out his prevarications and lack of substance.   Then, of course, there was that little debate last night where Vice President Joe Biden repeatedly called him out on his lies and essentially laughed him off the stage. I didn't actually watch the debate, but I did check in on the live-blogging of it throughout the hour-and-a-half...

Paul Ryan has been the darling of the Beltway pundits for years now. Dazzled by his flashing blue eyes and chiseled physique, they simply melt into little puddles when he looks their way and they never bother to vet what he's saying to see whether it is actually true. To them, he is a Very Serious Person, an honest fella who is just trying to find long-term solutions to financial problems which he and his party say are about to swamp the country. Nobody ever checks to see whether his numbers actually add up, and nobody bothers to ask  why, if he's so concerned about the deficit, so many of his votes in Congress over the years, particularly during the Bush years, have been votes for programs that added to the nation's deficit; e.g., two "unfunded" wars that were kept "off the books," a drug program for Medicare recipients that mainly benefited the drug companies and also was not paid for, disastrous tax cuts that provided the most benefits to the wealthi...

So now we know who all the candidates will be in the November presidential election. It's Obama-Biden for the Democrats and Romney-Ryan for the Tea Party Republicans. Three months of listening to the Randian Ryan and the robot Romney. It's going to be a long autumn. The two seem made for each other really. The inauthentic, espouse-any-position-to-win Romney and the phony baloney deficit fighter Ryan. Neither of them is a friend to truth. Paul Krugman has written extensively over the last couple of years about the Ryan budget and about the phony math which drives it. He had another post about it on his blog today, wherein he opines that the selection of Ryan as vice-presidential candidate was really about " exploiting the gullibility and vanity of the news media, in much the same way that George W. Bush did in 2000. " "...it’s because many commentators want to tell a story about US politics that makes them feel and look good — a story in which both parties are eq...

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."                                                                                        - Rep. Paul Ryan (R - Wisconsin) This Paul Ryan quote came from a 2005 gathering in Washington that honored the author and libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand, the woman who he acknowledged had had an enormous impact on his life and his career. The woman whose philosophy had, in fact, inspired him to go into politics and to try to remake the world in her image. Ryan was famous for requiring his interns to read Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, and for giving the book as a Christmas present every year.   In countless interviews, he was very open about h...

"It's not a budget. It's a cause," said Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisconsin) when he introduced his so-called budget a few days ago. In that statement at least he was honest. Nothing else about his "budget" appears to be. He claims that it will reduce the federal deficit over a 10-year period. In fact, every economist who has taken a serious look at the plan, including the economists at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, have said that is a lie. (They may have said it more politely than that, but their meaning is clear.) This budget cum cause has as its clear aim the transfer of money from the poor and middle-class population to the wealthiest members of the population, both individuals and corporations. I clearly am no economist, but even I can understand that when you are setting out to destroy the social safety net, programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that so many poor and middle-class people depend upon, and you intend to trans...