Lyin' Ryan: Why the GOP goldenboy, is a hypocrite.

One week, it's been one week since the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's VP choice, and just like Sarah Palin, it seems Ryan has not been well vetted.

Which is why videos like this have been showing up lately.

Videos like these show how much Ryan was railing for stimulus during the last Administration to help his own district. There have also been letters to the energy department where Ryan asks for money from the stimulus to help create jobs.

I thought Paul Ryan hated stimulus. Apparently only when Barack Obama does it.

There are numerous articles and videos of Paul Ryan calling Keynesian economic measures a failure, and waste. Yet because of these measures and despite the debunked myths spread by the right. the economy dug itself out of a free-fall.

These Republicans just keep getting more brazen in their absolute hypocrisy. Yesterday Paul Ryan even made a nice trip to Florida to speak to some seniors, seemingly guaranteeing their Medicare benefits while throwing everyone under 55, under the bus. That is a Mitt Romney style pander, he learned from the best. What is worse about this, and Chris Hayes pointed this out on his show, that Medicaid under Romney/Ryan would be massively cut, and those same seniors he pandered to today, often rely on Medicaid to cover what Medicare does not.

Fail.

Paul Ryan is hypocritical in others way too. He once touted Ayn Rand as someone who got him into politics and helped form his belief system, as well as having his Catholic beliefs influence his policies. Both of which are absurd. Ayn Rand, was an Atheist, no problem there right, except that Paul Ryan is a Catholic, who believes that his religious morals should be a bigger part of government. Especially on matters of abortion and contraception. Which is completely the opposite of Rands view on religion.

Rand even states that, “[Faith] is a sign of a psychological weakness. . . I regard it as evil to place your emotions, your desire, above the evidence of what your mind knows.  That’s what you’re doing with the idea of God.”

When people began to point him out on his hypocrisy Ryan began to run from Ayn Rand, saying that he didn't know her philosophy until later and complete disagrees with her objectivism.

So what about his Catholic beliefs? You know the moral center of his policies. Like feeding the poor, clothing the naked blah blah blah. Surely he calls for increased benefits to help the poor like food stamps and unemployment insurance and medical care right? Except he doesn't. His plan cuts 62% of funding for programs that actively help the poor, and shifts the money into....tax cuts for people like Mitt Romney, who would pay a whopping 0.82% tax rate on his $20 million fortune.

Oops!

His budget is so out of step with the beliefs of the Catholic church that there are a group of Nuns,  have called his budget "immoral".

Go get him nuns.

So if Paul Ryan doesn't lead by his faith in the Church, or his so called admiration for Ayn Rand, who does he work for?

Those who pay him. The Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, and other super rich people who have nothing better to do than figure out ways to make more money off the backs of the poor and middle class.

At least there's good news for Paul Ryan, he has made a friend of Mitt Romney, who he shares so much in common with, at least after they both lose badly in November they'll have plenty of time to go Jet Ski-ing together, hell maybe Ryan can get Romney on the P90X program. Move over Arnold, here comes Muscle Mitt.

Mediscare? GOPs new lie

We all know the senior vote is extremely important, especially in key states like Florida. And we all know that there is one thing seniors left or right care about. Medicare.

One of the most popular of the new deal programs in existence. A long with Social Security, Medicare has always been in the forefront of issues with senior citizens. It's popular because it works. Since its inception medicare has always been a guaranteed benefit for those who have worked hard all of their lives and have been old enough to qualify.

With the inclusion of Paul Ryan on the Romney ticket the campaign has refocused onto "entitlement" spending, most notably Medicare.

What astounds me about this is that Romney and Ryan see this as their winning issue.

Huh!?

Yes, it's true. Romney and Ryan are now casting themselves as the saviors of Medicare, protecting it from the evil Obama and his socialist "Obamacare". Never mind the fact that Medicare IS socialism, but I digress. The thing about the Romney/Ryan plan for Medicare is nothing short of completely changing it, not for seniors of course but for people like me who are not yet seniors.

To back up their role as the saviors of Medicare they have sent out surrogates, like Tim Pawlenty and John Sununu (that is a fun name to say) to spread the new talking point that Obama stole $716 Billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare.

Without even touching on the racial angle of this obvious lie, I want to explain first why it is such a boldface lie.

Sununu says that it takes from seniors and cuts their benefits. Yeah, not really. Instead this $716 Billion is from projected cuts in the amount of over-payments to hospitals insurance companies that would have been made. The ACA actually limits over-payments and instead makes insurance companies and hospitals take less in Medicare reimbursement. They agreed to this because of the influx of new patients from the Mandate. But those pesky details never get in the way of a good lie.

So let me say this again, no reduction in benefits, decreased spending from no longer overpaying insurance companies and hospitals for your care, and other small cuts to eliminate waste.

On the other hand you have the Ryan Plan that turns Medicare into a voucher system (for those under 55) which will shift the burden of costs onto future seniors, like me.

I sincerely hope the current crop of seniors consider their grand kids on Nov, 6th, and send Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan a little message

Libertarians: GOP drones minus the culture war

It was only a matter of time until I came after the Ron Paul revolution. It's kind of sad because in quite a few ways libertarians are an ugly breed of both Liberals and Conservatives, shunned by Liberals and existing as the red headed stepchild of the conservative movement and yet, people my age seem to find them so endearing.

Libertarianism marries the best of the free thinking Liberal ideas of gay rights, anti-war, pro drug legalization, and get rid of big brother watching you and stay out my business sentiment. Because what Liberal enjoys being watched by the Government and harassed for no reason right? It also combines the worst of conservative top-down economics that have killed our economy, stalled wages, and polluted our air and water (see fracking) for 30 years.

The Libertarian premise is simple, cut taxes, cut government, let everyone do what they want, and somehow magically everyone becomes responsible, altruistic, wealthy and super happy.

Really?

Libertarianism is actually quite a selfish doctrine. The main tenet is about advancing the self and nothing else, no collective roads or bridges, everyone is out for themselves. If you Fuck up then its your fault, your responsibility, and if you need help that's just too bad because why should I give up what's mine to help you? Taxes are considered a punishment on everyone, and therefore should be as low as possible, for everyone.

Yeah, just what Exxon Mobil needs; another tax cut.

Libertarians believe that you alone have the power to make your own destiny as long as you work hard. If you succeed you did so because you were awesome, you work harder then others, you were smarter, and you had no one to thank for your success but you.

Let me a blow a hole in that load of BS

You do have the power to succeed, but you only learned what you needed to know to succeed by going to a school, maybe a public, maybe a private school. But you had a teacher that also went to school, spent his or her money on college to learn the things they ended up teaching you. Sometimes those teachers used their own money to provide supplies, sometimes they spent time with you after school to help you with those pesky geometry problems you had a hard time with. Sometimes they even inspired you.

Now we also cannot forget the school itself, built with the pure evil that is socialism. Its socialist buses picked you up from your house for free. The school had free water fountains, and heating in the winter. If you were poor you had free lunches. Remember those monkey bars you played on all the time? Socialism.

Odds are you lived on a street with a paved road that allowed you to get to your first job. You had electricity from power lines laid by the government, you had clean running water from public aquifers that you could drink and bathe in. You had inspectors making sure your food was not toxic or infected with E. Coli. If you own a business that uses the Internet, you should thank the Federal government for laying the foundation for it.

All of that stuff helped you survive, and thrive, so you could focus on learning and working hard to get where you are today. It's a collective effort, everyone gets the same basic foundation in which to succeed, of course people are more successful due to the effort they put in but we all have to pay for these simple things like roads, bridges, schools, firefighters, cops, teachers, food inspectors, power lines and all the other infrastructure we use.

The argument from Libertarians is "Why punish people for being successful." I ask, how is paying more taxes on having more money a punishment? If you have more money you're already better off than someone with less, so if we take a fair amount from someone with a larger income, and use it to help someone who has less live a better life, or become successful himself then what's the harm. It's not as if we ask millionaires to give up all their wealth in taxes, they're entitled to a large share of the wealth they earned.

But, and here's the but, the wealthy have more, and have used more resources to get wealthy. So why shouldn't they pay more? If you ask someone who makes 20 million a year to pay 5 million, they still have 15 million, that's an incredible amount of money. More than enough to survive extremely comfortably. Even if you ask them to pay 15 million out of 20 million in taxes, they still have 5 million. Compare that to the guy who makes $60,000 a year. That is over $4.4 Million a year more that the rich guy still has compared to the middle income guy. That is roughly 73 times more money a year that the wealthy person makes in the same amount of time. And that is even after taxing the shit of the rich guys initial 20 million.

Let that one sink in

After seeing those numbers I don't understand how anyone can see that a progressive tax system on the wealthy is punishment. Hell I wish I was rich, I'd gladly take that punishment if it meant I made 73 times more than a middle class wage earner!

Libertarianism is nothing but a right wing tool to bring in those people who uncomfortable with the GOPs culture war but want to continue the economic policies of more tax cuts for the wealthy and more deregulation. So why are so many kids my age enthralled at this? It's all about messaging, you tell these young college kids that they're awesome because they worked hard and tell them that they'd be rich if only the government would get out of their way. Throw in some stuff about Pot, and why they shouldn't have to help the lazy (poor) or the people who didn't save for retirement (seniors) and you get all these 20 somethings who can't wait to willingly fuck themselves over in the future because they think they know it all.

Well played Ayn Rand, well played.

Let the Medicare attack ads begin

Now that the Ryan pick has been confirmed, like I said last night Liberal pundits are high-fiving each other all over the country. Ushering in a direction to this campaign with Romney saying that his campaign will be focused“American aspirations and American ideals.”

It's a big change from talking about Bain and the economy, or hiding from his tax returns. It's no secret the Obama campaign has been hitting him on his time at Bain over and over, like the Joe Soptic ad that talked about his wife dying from cancer because they didn't have health insurance, as well the many good paying middle class jobs that were lost while Romney and Bain walked away with millions.

The Ryan pick in my opinion is the result of a desperate need to change the narrative in the media, to Medicare, where they can hit Obama back for his supposed $500 Billion in cuts to Medicare in the ACA which is crap that easily debunked the non-partisan CBO. It does make for some good politics though, going after the Tea Party "get your gubmint hands off my Medicare" crowd, which is ironic at its best.

Another reason I think for the Ryan pick is that it shifts the focus off of Romneys tax returns, after today few people will be talking about what is in his returns because they will be so focused on this VP pick.

That's not to say this isn't important, choosing Ryan like I mentioned will change the narrative, whether it works in Romneys favor is yet to be seen, but Ryan like Romney has a bunch of baggage that can and will be scrutinized.

Lets start with the fact that Paul Ryan used Social Security to help him get through college, and now he wants to privatize it so that Wall st. can get richer. Wow, big surprise. He wants to turn Medicare into a coupon that does not automatically change in value if healthcare prices increase, that's not saving Medicare that is shifting the cost the seniors while giving them lip service. We'll continue that Paul is Ayn Randian follower who gave out copies of Atlas Shrugged on Christmas. (Thank goodness I'm not on his Christmas card) Ayn Rand is famous for being a staunch libertarian but not so well known for taking Social Security and Medicare benefits near the end of her life. How fucking hypocritical are these assholes? Talk about burning bridges.

The Ryan plan cuts government spending, by a lot. It also repeals the Affordable Care Act, which has been gaining popularity since the supreme court decision upheld its constitutionality. Like I mentioned it changes Medicare into a coupon, privatizes Social Security, lowers corporate taxes, and promotes drill baby drill.

The plan is awful, it takes from the poor, and the elderly, and gives it to oil companies and corporations.

Lastly I think the Ryan pick is there to excite the conservative Tea Party base. Ryan has been a rising Tea Party star in the House and is the perfect person to unite the Teabangelical base with the moneyed establishment. It also gives the Romney campaign some help overcoming the trust issues conservatives have with Romney. Before the Ryan pick conservative voters only backed Mitt because he was the anti-Obama, they never trusted the one who implemented Romneycare in Massachusetts which then became the model for Obamacare. They never trusted the "I will be to the left of Ted Kennedy on LGBT issues" Mitt Romney, and the Romney who was in favor of not overturning Roe v Wade, combine that with the fact that 68% of independents polled say that Mitt Romney represents the rich.

This is why both sides are thrilled about the Romney/Ryan ticket, it gives the Obama team ammunition to use (and lots of it) while giving Romney a chance to change the narrative as well as excite the base and help ensure high turnout on Nov. 6th