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Sununu is running Romney's campaign? Yeeeesh.
Paul Ryan does an about-face on Ayn Rand
Two years ago Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said he regularly gave out Ayn Rand novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas gifts, but today he says he no longer espouses her beliefs.
“[T]he reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said in a 2005 speech to the Rand-devoted Atlas Society.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapt...=Google+Reader
Holy ing !
And you right-wingers think "57 states" is funnee?
Sununu is running Romney's campaign? Yeeeesh.
Conservative Icon Norquist: ‘I Wouldn’t Ask Ryan To Be The Reformer’ Of Defense Spending
We can afford to have an adequate national defense which keeps us free and safe and keeps everybody afraid to throw a punch at us, as long as we don’t make some of the decisions that previous administrations have, which is to over extend ourselves overseas and think we can run foreign governments….
Other people need to lead the argument on how can conservatives lead a fight to have a serious national defense without wasting money. I wouldn’t ask Ryan to be the reformer of the defense establishment.
http://thinkprogress.org/security/20...-not-reformer/
yep, drown shrunk govt in a bathtub, but MIC and its never-ending war busines isn't really govt (because it wildly enriches the 1%)
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/12/the_...rittle_heroes/Thus do we have Paul Ryan — Randian Super-Hero of Individual Self-Reliance and Working Class Warrior against government debt, waste, and intrusiveness — whose actual life is a testament to the precise opposite values. As Charles Pierce and Joan Walsh do ent, not only was Ryan raised in a rich family and not only has he spent his entire adult life on the public payroll, but he has relied, and continues to rely, on various forms of government help in climbing every rung on his educational and careerist ladder. His claim to fiscal conservatism is even more laughable, as he voted FOR virtually every program that has piled up debt over the past decade, including the Iraq War (not just its commencement but its limitless continuation), the Wall Street bailout, Medicare Part D, Endless War in Afghanistan, and — in the midst of all of that — Bush tax cuts.
Perhaps most ludicrous of all is the notion that he’s some sort of advocate for restrained federal government power. As Antiwar.com’s John Glaser do ented today, Ryan has continuously voted in favor of measures to expand all sorts of intrusive federal power, including making the PATRIOT Act permanent, enacting the Military Commissions Act to provide indefinite detention with no habeas corpus rights, implementing the Protect America Act to massively expand the U.S. Government’s power to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants, supporting a federal Cons utional amendment to deny same-sex couples the right to marry along with a law banning the ability of gay couples in D.C. to adopt children and the continuation of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, a Cons utional amendment to criminalize flag burning, and almost every proposed measure to restrict abortion rights.
The ACLU — which has been continuously scathing in its criticisms of President Obama’s civil liberties record — issued a report on the potential Vice Presidential nominees (including Joe Biden) en led “A Heartbeat Away from the Presidency, Light Years from Civil Liberties,” and said yesterday that Ryan has “uniformly harmful views on five key civil liberties issues including a humane immigration policy, LGBT equality, reproductive rights, torture and indefinite detention and fair voting access” (he did, however, vote against the NDAA’s indefinite detention provisions, signed into law by President Obama at the end of 2011, as well as for a bill to include “sexual orientation” in the list of factors that cannot be legally used in job hiring). Whatever one wants to say about Ryan’s record, it is the very opposite of constraining the power of the federal government to intrude into the lives of individuals; indeed, it’s a testament to massive expansion of intrusive federal government power in almost every realm.
This dynamic — in which the defining image of partisan icons is the an hesis of their personal reality — is, of course, also prevalent among Democrats: a point I note not to fulfill a both-sides-are-guilty obligation, but because it’s indisputably true. Obama supporters pretended that his 2008 campaign was some sort of populist uprising even as Wall Street overwhelmingly supported his candidacy. Now, especially with the selection of Ryan, they’re going to act as though his re-election is all about shielding Medicare from cuts even though, as Matt Stoller do ents today (citing this), Obama already tried to cut not only Medicare but also Medicaid and Social Security, and clearly intends more of the same with a second term (along with his ongoing empowerment of America’s most extreme corporatists). And, of course, the “chickenhawk” insult that was so popular among Democrats during the Bush years has completely disappeared, as they now celebrate the so-called Toughness of two political leaders — Obama and Biden — in their continuous willingness to use military force in other countries even though neither ever served in the military.
"both-sides-are-guilty"
Glenn left out the "equally"
lol thinkprogress
Ryan Took Stimulus Funds After Voting Against Them, GOP Runs Away From His Budget Plan
The do ents show that Ryan’s attempts to take advantage of the stimulus funds even after he voted against them was more expansive than previously reported. Ryan was criticized by some House Democrats in 2010 after the Wall Street Journal reported that he was among several Republican lawmakers who sought the stimulus money for their cons uents by, in his case, writing a letter in 2010 to the Department of Labor.
In addition to the appeals for stimulus funds, Ryan also received congressional approval for $5.4 million in earmarks — appropriations by Congress members for specific favored projects — in fiscal 2008, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. The requests included $3.28 million for bus service in Wisconsin, $1.38 million for the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, and $735,000 for the Janesville transit system.
Politico reports first that the GOP sent out a memo spinning furiously away from the budget:
“Do not say: ‘en lement reform,’ ‘privatization,’ ‘every option is on the table,’” the National Republican Congressional Committee said in an email memo. “Do say: ‘strengthen,’ ‘secure,’ ‘save,’ ‘preserve, ‘protect.’”
And another story reveals how the GOP is "fretting" and "panicking" about the pick:
"In more than three dozen interviews with Republican strategists and campaign operatives - old hands and rising next-generation conservatives alike - the most common reactions to Ryan ranged from gnawing apprehension to hair-on-fire anger that Romney has practically ceded the election.
This is sure going well for the Romney campaign!
http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-vie...tter693014&t=4
Picture Worth a Thousand Words: A Romney-Ryan Logo
http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-vie...tter693014&t=1
Ohhh I can post pics too. Just as meaningless.
lol alternet
Inside Job: Paul Ryan May Have Profited From 2008 Private Briefing by Dumping Stock
Seems that on September 18, 2008, while the rest of us were freaking out about our homes, our pensions, and our jobs, the congressman was huddled in a meeting with Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and others who warned that the banking industry was about to blow up, big time.
Ryan's office denies that he personally profited from the heads-up. But public records tell a different story. The Guardian outlines what really went down:
"On the same day as the meeting, Ryan sold stock in troubled banks including Wachovia and Citigroup and bought shares in Goldman Sachs, Paulson's old employer and a bank that had been disclosed to be stronger than many of its rivals. The sale was not illegal at the time.
Not long after the meeting, Wachovia's already troubled share price went into free fall. It plunged 39% on the afternoon of 26 September alone as investors worried the bank would collapse. It was eventually taken over by Wells Fargo for $15bn, a fraction of its former value.
Citigroup's share price fell soon after the meeting. In October 2008 Citigroup was among the largest beneficiary of the troubled asset relief program (Tarp), the taxpayer-funded bailout of the banking sector."
It comes as no surprise that Mr. Ryan gave a thumbs up to the TARP bailout -- in contrast to many of his fellow Republicans -- and that Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo rank among his biggest supporters.
Since the Richmonder blog broke the story, Team Romney has been hustling to kill it. But people are pretty damned tired of greedy public officials who line their pockets as their fellow Americans are suffering. This one may not go away.
As I reported on AlterNet some months ago, Ryan is not the only lawmaker who seems to pay more attention to serving his stock portfolio than his cons uents. Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama attended the same meeting as Ryan and he also ran straight to his broker, dumping General Electic stock, which took a nose-dive soon after.
In April, Barack Obama signed legislation that prohibits members of Congress and other federal workers from insider trading, and requires them to cough up details of transactions over $1,000. That's nice. The law makes it clear that the kind of behavior illustrated by Ryan is an affront to the public interest. But the fact that Ryan himself did not intuit this at a time when his country was in great peril speaks volumes about his character.
Looks like a snake has his sights on the White House.
http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-vie...tter693014&t=6
TB
Aint gonna be no "after Obama" for R&R.Ohhh I can post pics too. Just as meaningless.
lol alternet
TB
Like I said, bot. Just as meaningless. Lrn2read.Aint gonna be no "after Obama" for R&R.
TB
After Do ents Show Paul Ryan Secured $20 Million In Stimulus Grants, He Claims ‘I Never Asked For Stimulus’
On Tuesday, the Boston Globe and Associated Press reported on do ents showing that GOP Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan had secured more than $20 million in stimulus funds for a local energy efficiency organization.
According to the reports, the do ents showed that Ryan also brought in $5.4 million for local bus services. His requests came at the same time he was publicly calling the stimulus a “wasteful spending spree.”
However, in an interview with a local Ohio television news station, Ryan claimed he never secured funding through the program, saying “I never asked for stimulus.”
The Associated Press wrote a follow-up story to Ryan’s comments:
Ryan’s statement directly counters the evidence of four letters obtained by the AP which the congressman wrote to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, praising energy programs supported by the stimulus and requesting funds for initiatives in his district.
Ryan’s private praise for Department of Energy programs and his written requests for stimulus funds contradict not only his public criticism of the 2009 stimulus bill, but also many of the budget priorities he has laid out, including cuts to investments in green technologies.
Raising further questions about the vice presidential candidate’s claim today that he never sought stimulus money, Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck referred AP to previous explanations by the congressman’s office that by requesting funds Ryan was simply “providing a legitimate cons uent service.”
Ryan is one of dozens of Congressional Republicans who have actively lobbied the government for loan guarantees and grants for clean energy companies in their districts — even while many of them railed on the stimulus program in the press.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...-for-stimulus/
iow, Repugs (say they) just HATE big govt ... except when they use its funds to buy voters and campaign contributions.
I think that falls in the category of "if they are gonna off the money anyway, they might as well some of it off in my district."
Ok. So he's just a liar and a hypocryt.
Or a hypocrite.
He's a politician. Is this news to you?
If you look at the congressional polls, the approval rate of congress as a whole is very low. However, in each district, the approval rate of individual members is generally pretty high.
People want their congressional member to bring the pork home. They just don't want the pork going else where. Congress and pork is what the people want, and that's what they get.
Change the voters to be responsible and this would stop in congress.
Great. Then tell your cons uents and everyone else that it is his congressional right to bring home the pork for his cons uents and stop being a lying hipocrite.
What Wisconsin Journalists Want You To Know About Paul Ryan
One issue most journalists raised was that Ryan left Wisconsin at a young age and climbed the political ladder in Washington. One local scribe compared him to Cheney in that regard, stating both men rose to the top by focusing on D.C. connections and not in home state political circles.
"The way to understand him is he is Cheney, he is a guy who went to Washington as soon as he could, rooted himself in the establishment, got himself elected as soon as he could and became a major player," said John Nichols, an associate editor at the Capital Times in Madison. "He is Cheney with very good hair."
Other Wisconsin news people who have covered Ryan describe him as likeable and accessible to reporters, but something of an unknown even to local voters who re-elect him regularly despite his hometown being hit by hard economic times.
Scott Angus, editor of The Janesville Gazette, the daily newspaper in Ryan's hometown, described Ryan's fellow residents as having mixed views on their representative.
"The people of Janesville are probably as divided about Paul Ryan as the rest of the country," Angus said Saturday, hours after Ryan was announced as Romney's choice. "A lot of people would view [Ryan's opinions] as pretty conservative and pretty far to the right and that does not sit well with a lot of people in his district."
Angus, a 21-year editor of the paper, added, "He has lived here, but he has not worked here much, he has been in Washington working on his career path. I think a lot of people are surprised because he has always said his plans were not to rise to national office. He never had any elected office until he was elected to Congress."
But Janesville's recent past is also important, several reporters said, citing the town's difficult economic situation, sparked by the closure of a General Motors plant in 2009.
"Their unemployment rate is double digits," said Jeff Flynt, a news reporter at WTAQ Radio in Green Bay. "For a state that is trying to turn around the business aspects of the state the fact that Janesville unemployment continues to be pretty high and you have a guy who is known pretty well nationally and has not found a way to help the plant or put something in its place, that may catch" the national media's attention.
He added, "Paul's district has no big city in it. It is small cities, small towns and farms. He has had a congressional career that has gone largely under the radar."
"There are people in his district shocked to find out he was a big player on budget stuff. He has been able to define his own story.He didn't really spend any time in state politics and right out of college he went right into interning. While he is a Wisconsin congressman, he is not somebody who came up through the state ranks."
Columnist Dan Bice of the Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee, offered a similar view, saying "His hometown has been hurt economically, GM pulled out of there and some have said he has not done a lot to help out. The recession has hit Janesville as much as anywhere."
The Bureau of Labor Statistics data on Janesville finds unemployment ed to more than 15 percent when the plant closed and was above 10 percent as recently as February.
Bice cited several other elements of Ryan's past that could be of interest to the national debate. He noted ties to a Kenosha businessman, Dennis Troha, who pled guilty in 2007 to illegal campaign contributions to the Wisconsin Democratic Party and to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. Troha had funneled donations to those campaign committees through family members. Troha and his family and associates had also given more than $58,000 to Ryan's campaigns over several years.
Ryan donated the Troha contributions to his campaign to charity in the wake of the scandal according to the Journal Sentinel.
"People will look into the connection with his father-in-law who is pretty heavily into natural gas and several people have raised the issue of fracking and his support of that," Bice said about Daniel Little, Ryan's father-in-law, who owns interests in four companies that lease land for mining and drilling by energy companies.
Another piece of Ryan's life that was mentioned by several Badger State journalists is his praise for Ayn Rand, the controversial atheist author and her books, Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, which promote objectivism, the belief that individualism and self-interest is the key to success and happiness.
"There are things that are sort of known among the intelligencia that could become a little weird," said Nichols. "For instance, the Ayn Rand stuff. He has read Fountainhead, he has said it inspired him to go into politics, it is hyper individualist, no government at all. Ayn Rand was an atheist and you tie that kind of stuff to the vice presidential candidate and it is a lot to talk about."
Bice and Nichols both agreed Ryan's image back home is somewhat different than his D.C. persona as a fiscal hardliner.
"He is a deer hunter," Bice said. "He is not the sort of guy who is reading James Joyce. He is a smart guy, a clean cut guy."
Nichols agreed, stating:
"He is a genuinely nice guy who operates in almost an 18th Century, 19th Century view of partisan politics; a very old school, 'we are all Americans,' type arguing about fundamental issues but the hyper-partisanship has not really been a part of who he is. He is not thought of as the attack dog who makes the hit on someone."
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/08...now-abo/189288
It's a ed up society we live in. The politicians are damned if they do and damned if they don't, but the people who put them in office want the pork, so that's what they do even if they are against it. Otherwise its hard to get elected.
This is America. All life is negotiated through money. There is no higher value, no more important metric than money.
Politicians buy votes and contributions with pork.
Citizens buys pork and jobs with votes
Corporations buy politicians and (state) judges with money, jobs, etc, etc.
Ryan just another "small govt" Repug who is VERY BIG GOVT on vaginas
Paul Ryan: the small government champion who could force transvaginal ultrasounds on pregnant women
Ryan is considered by many a champion of small government. For women, though, the federal government that Paul Ryan envisions is big, intrusive and controlling. Paul Ryan would ban all abortions, with no exceptions, even in cases of rape, incest or the health of the mother. In other words, the mother could die as a result of complications from the pregnancy.
The Planned Parenthood Action Fund highlighted several other issues, among them, "his budget plan to dismantle Medicaid, jeopardizing the basic health care millions of women rely on, [and] his vote last year to end funding to Planned Parenthood, putting at risk the cancer screenings, birth control, STD testing and treatment, and other preventive care that nearly three million Americans rely on each year." The anti-choice National Right to Life Committee stated, "Ryan has maintained a 100% pro-life voting record." He is a co-sponsor of the Sanc y of Human Life Act, what critics call the personhood bill, now in Congress, that would define in federal law that:
"the life of each human being begins with fertilization … irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and cons utional attributes and privileges of personhood."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...men-ultrasound
Also, Gecko/Ryan definition of life as fertilized embryo would make some of Gecko's boys murderers since they have used (and discarded) IVF embryos. Just another "en lement" exception for the 1%?
Last edited by boutons_deux; 08-17-2012 at 12:41 PM.
4 Ways Paul Ryan’s Budget Would Devastate The Poor
1. CUTS FOOD STAMPS BY $133 BILLION: Ryan’s budget would send the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) back to the states as a block grant and cut the program by $134 billion. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “an average of almost 10 million people would have to be cut from the program in the years from 2016 through 2022 to achieve the required savings.” If the cuts were to come from benefits, rather than kicking families out of the program, “All families of four — including the poorest — would see their benefits cut by about $90 a month in fiscal year 2016, or more than $1,100 on an annual basis.” Ryan continually claims that the food stamp program is “unsustainable,” even though the numbers show that’s simply not the case.
2. CUTS MEDICAID BY 1/3%: Ryan would treat Medicaid in the same way: transform the exiting matching-grant financing structure into a pre-determined block grant that will not keep up with actual health care spending and send it back to the states. This would shift some of the burden of Medicaid’s growing costs to the states, forcing them to — in the words of the CBO — make cutbacks that “involve reduced eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP, coverage of fewer services, lower payments to providers, or increased cost sharing by beneficiaries—all of which would reduce access to care.” The reductions to Medicaid kick in right away: between 2013 and 2022, the budget makes $1.4 trillion in cuts to Medicaid —a 34 percent reduction. As a result, states could reduce enrollment by more than 14 million people, or almost 20 percent—even if they are were able to slow the growth in health care costs substantially.
3. 30 MILLION AMERICANS WOULD LOSE HEALTH COVERAGE: Romney and Ryan would repeal the Affordable Care Act, including the subsidies for middle-class Americans to purchase coverage and the expansion of the Medicaid program for lower-income Americans. As a result, more than 30 million Americans would lose access to insurance. The popular regulations that prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and rescinding coverage would also be repealed.
4. CUTS PELL GRANTS FOR 1 MILLION STUDENTS: Ryan consistently claims that increases in financial aid are driving up the cost of higher education, even though evidence doesn’t back him up. The budget Ryan authored, according to an analysis by the Education Trust, would eliminate Pell Grants entirely for one million students. In 2011, 74 percent of Pell Grant recipients had family incomes of $30,000 or less. These cuts would come despite the fact that the price of a college degree has skyrocketed 1,120 percent over the last three decades.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...ome-americans/
When Cruelty Is Cute
I’d been wondering how long it would take Republicans to realize that Paul Ryan is their guy.
He’s the cutest package that cruelty ever came in. He has a winning air of sad cheerfulness. He’s affable, clean cut and really cut, with the Irish altar-boy widow’s peak and droopy, winsome blue eyes and unashamed sentimentality.
Who better to rain misery upon the heads of millions of Americans?
He’s Scrooge disguised as a Pickwick, an ideologue disguised as a wonk. Not since Ronald Reagan tried to cut the budget by categorizing ketchup and relish as vegetables has the G.O.P. managed to find such an attractive vessel to mask harsh policies with a smiling face.
The Young Gun and former prom king is a fan of deer hunting, catfish noodling, heavy metal and Beethoven. He’s a great dad who says the cheese, bratwurst and beer of Wisconsin flow in his veins. He’s so easy to like — except that his politics are just a teensy bit heartless.
Rush Limbaugh hails Ryan as “the last Boy Scout,” noting that the tall, slender 42-year-old is a true believer: “We now have somebody on the ticket who’s us.”
For the rest of us, at least, Ryan is not going to raise our hopes only to dash them. Unlike W., he’s not even going to make a feint at “compassionate conservatism.” Why bother with some silly scruple or toehold of conscience?
Unlike some of the right-wing ayatollahs, Ryan doesn’t threaten with moral and cultural gusts of sulfur. He seems more like a friendly guidance counselor who wants to teach us how to live, get us in shape, PowerPoint away the social safety net to make the less advantaged more self-reliant, as he makes the rich richer. Burning the village it takes to save it, so we can avoid the fiscal cliff, or as he and his fellow conservative Cassandras ominously call it, “the debt bomb.”
Like Mitt Romney, Ryan truly believes he made it on his own, so everyone else can, too. He shrugs off the advantage of starting as the white guy from an affluent family, able to breeze into a summer internship for a Wisconsin Republican senator as a college student.
Only 16 and the youngest of four when he discovered his lawyer dad dead in bed from a heart attack at 55, Ryan had to grow up fast.
The Midwestern kid was guided by what David Stockman calls “Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites” turned neo-cons; Jack Kemp, the cheery supply-sider who actually cared about the disadvantaged, and by one of Kemp’s favorite authors, Russian émigré and cult leader Ayn (pronounced like swine, as she used to say) Rand.
“And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism,” Ryan said in a 2005 speech to the Atlas Society. He even gave copies of “Atlas Shrugged” to staffers at Christmas. He did not emulate Rand on everything, given that she adamantly opposed Ronald Reagan, saying, “Since he denies the right to abortion, he cannot be a defender of any rights.”
Ryan co-sponsored the Sanc y of Life Act enshrining a fertilized egg with the definition of “personhood” and supported a bill Democrats nicknamed the “Let Women Die Act,” which would have let hospitals that get federal money deny women abortions even in life-threatening cir stances.
And Rand would not have approved of Ryan’s votes in the House backing W.’s profligate spending on unwinnable wars, a bank bailout and a Medicare expansion. She would no doubt have been thrilled, however, that under the Ryan budget plan, the megarich Romney would go from paying shamefully as little as possible in taxes to virtually no taxes.
Ryan was drawn to Rand’s novels, with their rejection of “the altruist morality,” making narcissism a social virtue; her exhortation that man must not only strive for “physical values” — her heroes were hot — and self-made wealth, but a “self-made soul.” Like John Galt, who traces a dollar sign “over the desolate earth” at the end of “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand idolized the dollar. She wore a brooch shaped like a dollar sign, and a 6-foot dollar sign stood beside her coffin at her wake.
Although the Catholic Ryan told Fox News’s Brit Hume in an interview that aired Tuesday night that he “completely disagreed” with Rand’s “atheistic philosophy,” he said his interest in economics was “triggered” by her.
His long infatuation with her makes him seem even younger than he looks with his cowlick because Randism is a state of arrested adolescence, making its disciples feel like heroic teenagers atop a lofty mountain peak.
The secretive, ambiguous Romney was desperate for ideological clarity, so he outsourced his political iden y to Ryan, a numbers guy whose numbers don’t add up.
This just proves that Romney will never get over his anxiety about not being conservative enough. As president, he’d still feel the need to prove himself with right-wing Supreme Court picks.
Ryan should stop being so lovable. People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smile off their faces.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/op...gewanted=print
Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on Thursday reversed course and acknowledged lobbying the government for millions of dollars in economic stimulus money after twice denying he had done so.
The Wisconsin congressman said he had forgotten that his office sent letters — with his signature — to the Energy and Labor departments asking for money from the stimulus program on behalf of two companies in his home state.
"They should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that," Ryan said in a written statement released only after he again denied requesting stimulus funds Thursday in an Ohio television interview.
http://mobile.sfgate.com/sfchron/db_...l=true#display
Ryan, fully qualified REPUG as ALL LIES, ALL THE TIME
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