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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPaul Ryan
In April, 2011, shortly after the near-shutdown, Paul Ryan released his budget, the most radical policy blueprint to come out of official Washington in a generation. It simultaneously shredded the social safety net, swept away the country's seed corn of investments in the future, and adopted discredited supply-side economics. Even Gingrich called it 'radical right-wing social engineering.'
.In this first version, Ryan privatized Medicare entirely for those under fifty-five.
Jonathan Alter; The Center Holds: Obama and his Enemies; Simon & Schuster; 2013
Was it a sign of mental deterioration, as my son insists? Or can be be attributed to the cable news reports on the shared failure of Ryan and Trump to deliver as promised? Either way, while watching a report on Ryan, I said that there was an important paragraph in Jonathan Alter's book, on page 165. Instead, the above quote is found on page 163.
This was shortly after Ryan had expressed report for what President Obama had referred to as an Ike budget. Ryan clearly has no conscience. I find it offensive every time he talks about his ancestors immigrating from Ireland at the end of the Great Starvation. He is nothing if not the unethical heir to the landlords who ruled the Old Sod with cruelty.
President Obama responded in a speech at George Washington University, by saying Ryan's proposal wasn't serious, and pointing out that it would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we've known. (Alter; pg 165)
The battle over health care certainly isn't over. It's important that citizens at the grass roots level continue to speak up, and inform their elected representatives Democratic and republican that the Ryan-Trump plan is unacceptable.
furtheradu
(1,865 posts)Thank YOU.
H2O Man
(73,528 posts)Ryan is such a repulsive person.
dalton99a
(81,442 posts)H2O Man
(73,528 posts)disliking Ryan more today than yesterday.
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)When Obama was President I didn't give this guy Paul Ryan much thought. I knew his budget proposal was wacko but I didn't know anything else. Or care.
Now that he is front and center and I'm learning about him I think he is a disgrace to the Irish everywhere. Protestant or Catholic.
I wish we could force people of Irish descent who act like privileged assholes to change their names.
I've been reading about Martin McGuinness this week. And thinking about the way the Irish were treated in Ireland and how it caused the IRA to be created. And how after Bloody Sunday the IRA had a surge in their ranks that ultimately escalated "The Troubles" to the point that the British were forced to negotiate peace.
I'm taking my musings even further to imagine an America where ugly people like Paul Ryan prevail. How it would feel to have no rights. And how in that case it might be me joining a group like the IRA, wearing a ski mask and carrying a machine gun.
Because I would totally do it if anyone messed with my social security.
H2O Man
(73,528 posts)The difference between Ryan and him is the difference between shit and sugar.
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)to know when peace was possible. And that peace was worth working for -- no matter how long it took.
Ryan is just a rabidly angry man who thinks anyone who has less than he does deserves to die.
I love how you get my loyalty to my Irish Catholic roots. This is why you will always be my brother.
H2O Man
(73,528 posts)inhabiting this house find Ryan offensive. (My daughters do, too, though they aren't here. I told you that Darcy is studying there next semester?)
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)Trinity College? Or elsewhere?
Well wherever she'll be that is wonderful. I know she will love it. The Irish have a special way of making you feel welcome.
I'm jealous of her. Will you be visiting?
H2O Man
(73,528 posts)planning to drop over and hang out with her. She starts working at a Boston law firm this summer, on immigration, and so her trip is almost "work-related."
Darcy is hounding me to complete the dual citizenship, so that she can get her's. Maybe we will all end up there!
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)Alice11111
(5,730 posts)two who have gotten Irish citizenship. Then , we would have EU privileges. What an irony...the return of the Irish.
H2O Man
(73,528 posts)I talk with relatives in Ireland all the time on Facebook. My boys visited there a few years back, and my brother goes there.
My clan is from the southwest. Where were your's located?
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)I am going to do a DNA test. One couple I know did that to get citizenship. My grandmother's family lived around Cork. I've been there a few times. I should go again.
spanone
(135,816 posts)H2O Man
(73,528 posts)a day, hasn't it?
spanone
(135,816 posts)i shake my head.
Miles Archer
(18,837 posts)...Republicans controlling the Senate, and a Republican President who would have rubber stamped anything that made it through the House and Senate.
I do not believe for a minute that he's going to be given the opportunity to lead the charge on whatever new health care legislation, if any, emerges from the Trump presidency.
Trump moaned about the fact that he got no help from Democrats on this (largely because he did not ask, but even if he did, what Democrat would want their name attached to Ryan's "better way" plan?)
There will be no "help" from Democrats as long as healthcare reform involves a $2.8 billion payday for millionaires and up.
First step for healthcare reform under Trump, if that is even possible, is to take Ryan completely out of the picture. And the only reason Trump would do that is that the egg on his face today was laid by Ryan.
I think we're going to see one train wreck after another, and then, in 2018, we're going to take back the House and Senate.
Hugin
(33,120 posts)I don't see him finishing out the year after the Obamacare R&R failure. He's pretty much "Boehnered" himself.
I wonder if the possibility of the scale of collapse we've just witnessed occurred to him when he was drinking out of kegs.
H2O Man
(73,528 posts)I think the republicans in DC will turn on Trump, as they must recognize he is a ball-and-chain that will severely limit their prospects for competing in the 2018 races.
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)slightly puzzled about how it happened.
Reading on DU that the protests from their constituents kept many Republicans from voting for the bill.
Then I'm reading on MSM that the more conservative faction of the GOP rejected the bill.
So which was it? Or was it both?
H2O Man
(73,528 posts)it was the synergy of those two, plus one more factor: the republicans recognize that the Trump presidency is badly damaged. That damage includes most everything he has tried to do, and very importantly, the Russian influence issue.
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)is delicious
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)group who call themselves the Freedom caucus, but a more apt name is the Koch caucus. (Aha!?) If they please their backers, they get to come back next term. If they don't, their backers will replace them with someone who will.
Because of that, the party leadership has virtually no control over the Koch caucus.
Nor do their constituents, who have been trained to vote for any Republican on the ballot over a Democrat. It just takes some money infusion at election time to bury any primary opposition and get their constituents out to vote against the Democrat in the general.
Charles Koch, and therefore the giant kochtopus, was against this bill passing because--he said--it wasn't a big enough step toward total destruction of this government program. So it didn't pass. He and his people have a plan B (maybe several) for sure, and whatever that is is already in the works.
As for the other Republicans who wouldn't support it, it's a horrible bill that would replace a good law designed to serve all Americans and all healthcare-related industries well with one that failed everyone. The more hard-core among them were concerned about possible blowback from business and from voters in 2018. Some others were also concerned about blowback but also genuinely deplored a bill so bad that it actually threatened the economy.
What I'd love to have explained is how Ryan, a libertarian every bit as extreme as the Kochs and someone they once pushed on Romney for his VP, ended up being someone they might take out in plan B. Is it more evidence of incompetence in Ryan that he couldn't somehow get them in line? Or did he shrug off their leash for some reason? Or?
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)It is interesting that the "Freedom" caucus, having gotten the leadership in both houses to agree to their current demand so that it could go forward, then immediately upped their demands to a killer that simply couldn't be agreed to: gutting the section that provided benefits like coverage for preexisting conditions, no annual or lifetime limits, and a lot else precious to voters.
Why'd they do that? Just ultraconservative idiots making their own decisions but only able to obstruct--the way most media portray them? Or a piece being played in a more complex game?
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)I'm wondering the same.
What would cause the Freedom Caucus to raise the stakes to an impossible level like that? They had to know they would lose. Perhaps they wanted to serve up a devastating defeat to Trump.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)included trying to come through on some of his promises to his voters, plus spend, spend, spend on military and infrastructure? And/or Ryan? This from Vox:
That political base, of course, is sold on the idea of Obamacare reform because theyre sold on Trumps promises that they will have better, cheaper insurance than they have right now.
The Freedom Caucus's actions are here diametrically opposed to its voters' wishes.
Wonder what's happening with the Koch alliance. Jane Mayer reported that, after Obama's election, over 700 centimillionaires and billionaires attended their next big meeting. Huge leap in size. Supposedly the Freedom caucus is having something of an "identity crisis" now that they don't have a Democratic president to oppose. Is a large part of the alliance?
Have a nice one.
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)If they voted YES, and some wouldn't if they voted NO, some couldnt decide between the two- lose/lose choices.
Paul Ryan wanted to save them from devastating losses in 2018.
DT played chicken, until time was out. They pulled the bill to avoid the Repubs voting, which would have been even worse for 2018.
dchill
(38,468 posts)by OUR bootstraps, and either can't or won't see it. Or maybe he thinks nobody else sees it. Just one more amoral ideologue with a stunted, juvenile intellect. (Libertarian.)
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)moral principle that outweighs any that might or might not make it onto their list: personal freedom. Altruism, willingness to sacrifice anything for others, is weak to nonexistent in their natures.
I figure that'd explain Ryan's callously ruthless goals for "freeing" people from the burdens of caring for society. He's not deliberately cruel, just a clear-eyed and high-minded visionary who sees
A gloriously simplified society where people are released from the slavery of supporting others.
A truly free society where strength is encouraged and weakness discouraged...
A healthier, more energetic and productive society...
A younger one...
No passing 3 or 4 dialysis clinics in strip malls while just running errands...
All of us maximally free to take care of ourselves and succeed, or not, keeping that 30%+ of our incomes that's now whisked out of our pockets before we even see it. Eliminating that anchor alone will surely help some of us be winners...
Squint your eyes to eliminate peripheral vision and perspective, and you can kinda see the appeal.
Stuart G
(38,414 posts)Alex4Martinez
(2,193 posts)I'm as grateful as can be for it but we mustn't lower the standard, the goal, the ultimate objective.
Obamacare is, at best, halfway to where we want and to be.
We should be grateful for winning these battles but let's never lose sight of how much further we have to go.
Thank you, H2O Man.