So Wait - Paul Ryan Presumes to Lecture Pope Francis?

It's almost too hilarious, too imbued with extreme chuckle factor to relate without rolling on the floor in a laughing fit. But evidently, the econ doyen of the Repukes - Paul Ryan - has actually sought to lecture Pope Francis on capitalism after Francis came out swinging against trickle down BS economics, e.g.  http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/bravo-to-pope-francis-for-warning-of.html

Francis, in an 84-page document known as an apostolic exhortation, headed "Evangelii Gaudium" of the Holy Father, made it clear that NO moral theologian could embrace "trickle down, or supply side" economics or the Pareto model that it's based upon.(E.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-economics-its-evil-basis-pareto.html )

Francis was blunt - too blunt for many conservos - as he proclaimed:

How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

And this was evidently way too much for Paul Ryan as well - he who formulated and presented his noxious 'Path to Prosperity' several years ago, based on more tax cuts, more military spending, cutting food stamps and replacing Medicare with vouchers (which a senior could take to an insurance company and hope to buy up to $10,000 a year in health care  -never mind if his cancer treatment costs $55,000).

This is germane given that today some 1.3 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits- growing to 4.8 million through the new year as the 26-week cutoff point rolls forward.  They can thank Rep. Paul Ryan. He took the lead in negotiating a pseudo-bipartisan budget deal with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray that revealed again the Dems have no balls, no moxie and don't know how to deal with Repukes. As the authors of 'Banana Republicans' put it - they "carry knives to a gun fight" (when they ought to be bringing UZIs and AK-47s)  On behalf of his party, Ryan held the line against continuing extended unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.

Those who are left out of benefits from today, and those affected in the weeks to come - and who are faced with hungry, crying kids-  can thank Paul Ryan for his dastardly imposition of harsh austerity while the military and Spy state grows fat  to the tune of over $800 b a year. Make no mistake, it is the preferential favoring of the military -spy state that is costing people food, warmth and likely the very roofs over their heads.

Anyway, in an interview Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

"What I love about the pope is he is triggering the exact kind of dialogue we ought to be having now. People need to get involved in their communities to make a difference, to fix problems soul to soul.”

Ah yes, the "charity solution". The one favored in the 19th century by philosopher Herbert Spencer who coined the term "survival of the fittest" (not Darwin!) and used it in his theory that natural selection could be applied to the human race to prune away "undesirables". He railed against government assistance - even for the disabled - and proclaimed that "if they are not fit to survive on their own then they should not survive".  Instead, he offered the chestnut of charity- if people only donated more time, money then all would be well and the poor would be raised up, ennobled. And without the government Nanny state!  Never mind, even with people today donating some $6 b a year it still falls short of the needs and demands - with 48 million people at or near the poverty level.

"Soul to soul" is nice - a kind of cuddly trope to warm the cockles of the Neoliberal heart-- once you're in heaven - assuming it exists! On this Earth, and without the government's assistance, you're still going to see millions of kids hungry, in rags, and people homeless.

As evident in the interview, Ryan still couldn’t suppress either his right-wing politics or his ignoble capacity for condescension as he chirped:

“The guy is from Argentina, they haven’t had real capitalism in Argentina. They have crony capitalism in Argentina. They don’t have a true free enterprise system.”

So wait....let me get this straight: because the Pope is originally from Argentina he's not free to comment on the U.S. Neoliberal capitalist system? The implication being he has to be ignorant (hence unqualified to comment)  if he isn't living here? Has Ryan ever heard of books, libraries, newspapers?  Does he believe Francis inhabits a vacuum or bubble like his Repuke - Tea Party clones?

The fact is that the Pope,  based on his experience, is probably much better qualified to discuss the limits and defects of capitalism than Ryan is, blinded as he is by Randite bunkum. Recall Ayn Rand's solution to helping others as she put it in her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness (p. 45):

The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one's own rational self-interest and one's own hierarchy of values: the time, the money, or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one's own happiness.

Now compare this to the biblical view: cf.  1 John 3:16:

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers."

One wonders whether Ryan, as a Catholic, ever had real occasion to study his Bible in depth (assuming he owns one).   In the same Rand book (p. 120),  we see how his idol compares those receiving Medicare to thieves "robbing a bank".  In fact, this harridan actually proclaims (ibid.) "the private hoodlum has a slight edge of moral superiority since he has no power to devastate an entire nation and his victims are not legally disarmed."

Are you shitting me?  So, please now, if Ryan is an acolyte of Randian econ how the hell can he also be a sincere Catholic and be enjoined to follow Francis' injunction to care for the poor and those tens of millions marginalized by Neoliberal market capitalism?  Never mind, Ryan has pulled another rabbit out of his cocked hat even as the Beltway morons of the Neoliberal corporate empire gawk and faun.

Ryan actually professed to an aide to BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins, that he is going to deliver an anti-poverty agenda as soon as the spring. “This is my next ‘Roadmap,’” Ryan told him, adding:

“I want to figure out a way for conservatives to come up with solutions to poverty. I have to do this.” 


Yes, indeed, he "has to" because his previous "Road Map" blew up along with all the Beltway buffoons that supported it and glorified it.  Recall that the previous incarnation of tomfoolery BS and bunkum busted out the deficit for years and didn’t balance the budget until 2040, thanks to its generous tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. In other words, the guy who impressed Ezra Klein as a serious, albeit deficit-obsessed budget wonk,  turned out to be terrible at math. Maybe Ezra needs some math retreading too, if he is going to be able to discern serious "wonks" from self-seeking assholes and fools.

In the meantime, I will go with Francis' take on capitalism, having already seen the extremes that trickle down can have on other nations, i.e. Barbados, when it was tried there in 1986.   As for "crony capitalism" I don't know what planet Ryan inhabits but the US of A is the hallmark and empire of cronyism. It is "pay to play" to the Googleplex power: the lobbyists and other scum bribe our officials with perks and money, and they deliver the 'goods' in the form of laws or policies in the money-changers' favor. Meanwhile, the 99 percent suck salt.....or shit, as the case may be.

A Church Rolling in Wealth - But Out of Touch With the Faithful?

It was during one of my Religion classes at Monsignor Pace High that I once more made Brother Stephen squirm with a question he wasn't expecting.  This had been in the context of the role of the laity in the Church and the economic problems often experienced, and reconciling this with the evident wealth at the Vatican. Anyway, my question to Bro. Stephen was: "How much do you estimate the net worth of the Catholic Church to be?"

Dumbfounded, he had to reflect for several moments as he placed a hand on his chin and you could almost see his computer-like brain doing the math. Then he replied:

"I would venture a guess at maybe several trillion dollars in today's currency but it could be more."

He was perhaps more than a little accurate, especially when - nearly 20 years later- all the scandals erupted at the Vatican Bank and many further details became known. (This was around the time "God's Banker" - Roberto Calvi - was found hanging under Blackfriar's  Bridge, London.)

The point here is that like a rotting fungus, the Church's immense wealth always lurks in the background of whatever other actions it takes, or doctrines it proclaims - especially via its Bishops. To the cynic, which I make no bones about being, there is the natural suspicion that the Church's legions of sexual mores are constantly pushed in order to protect its wealth. If the minds of the faithful can be kept focused on their shortcomings,  mainly sexual "sins" and failures - they won't be so preoccupied with the Church's enormous riches and what it's doing with them.

Consider as 'Exhibit A' the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops annual meeting in Baltimore. Now
look at the agenda items addressed to see where its priorities lay.  In this venue the bishops of the richest, most powerful (and increasingly unequal)  nation in the world, convened in a city wracked by generational poverty, and talked about pornography, contraception and gay marriage-   while incidentally addressing questions of minor liturgical importance. Poverty was not on the agenda. Why not?

Did they not pay attention to Francis earlier condemnation of economic inequality? See e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/bravo-to-pope-francis-for-warning-of.html

Did they not hear or process his warnings concerning trickle down nonsense integrated into modern Neoliberal capitalism? Or, could it be that once more they are confirming my suspicions of distracting attention from wealth-poverty-inequality  issues to belabor the faithful with pseudo-moral nonsense (compared to the major moral transgressions inherent in economic inequality)?

But a bit of history is useful. As brilliant and timely as Francis' message, it wasn't really original. In fact, this November marked the 27th anniversary of Economic Justice for All, a groundbreaking pastoral letter that condemned American poverty as a national moral scandal. Seen as a refutation of Reaganomics, the document received substantial media attention - along with severe conservative criticism-  when it was released in 1986.  The construction of the letter was remarkably democratic; economists and theologians were enlisted, drafts were released to the public.


A month later, the bishops of Maryland, the cradle of the Catholic Church in America, met at a soup kitchen in Baltimore to release a statewide plan intended to put its recommendations into effect. Tragically, Economic Justice for All proved one of the last pieces of social justice teaching of its kind.  At that time the Gini coefficient, a measure of economic inequality, was at about 0.37, compared to 0.49 now.

Concerned by its influence, and worried that “national churches,” or conflicting pieces of teaching, might develop if other conferences were left unchecked, the Vatican clamped down and clipped the conferences’ wings. By the 1990s, they could no longer publish pastoral letters that held “teaching authority” without near unanimity. From then on, things started to change around the bishop’s conference. More and more doctrinally conservative bishops were being appointed. The culture wars were raging. Then the sexual abuse crisis hit, and hit again, and the wagons circled.

By 1996, meanwhile, genuine liberals had embraced the message implicit in Charles Reich's Opposing the System, regarding the unfettered reign of coercive markets. As Reich put it. p. 22:

---

A free market produces results that favor the health of society as a whole, because an essential balance is maintained. But in a coercive market, the balance is destroyed, the earning power of work and the standard of living of workers declines, and society as a whole is devastated while those with economic power gain an ever more unbalanced share of the nation's economic wealth.

And nailing the consequences some pages later (p. 103):

When society itself comes to be modeled on economic and organizational principles, all of the forces that bind people together are torn apart in the struggle for survival.

Community is destroyed because we are no longer 'in this together' because everyone is a threat to everyone else

Indeed, an atmosphere of pervasive conflict encourages every form of racial, religious and class hatred as group is pitted against group; it encourages violence and crime and strips people of kindness and compassion as these qualities become disadvantageous in an ever more warlike atmosphere.

Reich went on to show that it is economics upon which much of modern morality pivots. When people therefore must fight over a few scraps to keep their family together, they often are also more likely to turn to crime, prostitution, drugs, the whole nine yards. Economic health begets moral health, in other words. (Not the other way around, as proto-Calvinist capitalists like Charles Murray, Bill O'Reilly and others claim).


Meanwhile, the Catholic Bishops grew more and more out of touch with the economic woes which have now reached a crisis point with 48 million people on food stamps, nearly 27 million under-employed or unemployed and a minimum wage that is nearly THREE whole dollars LESS than it was in 1968, in terms of 1968 dollars.  Imagine then if the bishops had flexed just half as much muscle for certain “liberal” causes, equally deserving of Catholic concern, as they did for pet “conservative” ones. Imagine if they spent one tenth the time on economic inequality and the toxins of Neoliberal market worship - as they have on porn, or contraception.

It is not difficult to see if they had, a powerful moral voice for systemic economic change might have arisen. A voice of ecclesiastical authority supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement, for example, which might have protected that movement from being literally under the guns of the national security state. But the Bishops, flustered at the  sex abuse charges - were too preoccupied shuttling priestly pedophiles back and forth between parishes at the behest of Ratzinger and John Paul II.

More recently, the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops has gone 'over the top' to display a disgusting economic conservative agenda in league with a backward morality on other issues. In 2010 they opposed the Affordable Healthcare Act, arguing that it might conceivably lead to federal funds for abortions. The year after that, in 2011, Paul Ryan’s budget came out, cutting $3 trillion from programs for the poor. Then-Chair of the Conference of Bishops, Timothy Dolan, sent a public letter to Ryan that many of us thought gave him cover for his budget. In other words, Dolan was aiding and abetting the further destruction of the poor.


Some might quarrel and believe this take is offensive and unjust, but they have pitifully short memories.  In the 2012 election cycle, Dolan went further, referring to Ryan as “a great public servant.” Prior to the election year, the Council of Catholic Bishops unanimously voted to declare religious freedom its 2012 strategic priority. In June of 2012 and 2013, periods of prayer dubbed the “Fortnight for Freedom” were held in response to perceived threats to religious liberty. Ah yes, "freedom and religious liberty" - perfect buzzwords for an agenda which, when translated, comes out: "FUCK the poor!"

Of course, the Neoliberal political atmosphere in this country didn't help matters, with so much media attention paid to the Obama "Deficit Committee" starring Alan Simpson and Ernest Bowles. Both were insistent on cutting Social Security and Medicare. While this committee may be moribund, its awful recommendations remain including a "chained CPI".  At the same time, the market worshippers have insisted there can be no increase in the minimum wage, and the Repukes have proposed $40 b in cuts to food stamps over ten years, while the Dems (who always choose the less offensive tactic) want $4b in cuts.  All this after the SNAP program was already cut by the sequester.

Can the Bishops still become changelings? Maybe, and perhaps also space aliens will finally land in D.C. and reveal their existence once and for all. What we do know, is that in June, a report was released detailing the emergence of a “small, but well-funded network” of conservative, Tea-party-like Catholic organizations pressuring bishops to gut the funds of community and anti-poverty organizations with any remote involvement to groups supporting same-sex marriage. Last year, meanwhile, a document entitled Work, Poverty and a Broken Economy, was scuttled when 85 bishops voted against it. 

Do these Bishops care more about the 16 million kids now going to bed hungry each night because of food stamp cuts, or more about the "evils of pornography"?

You be the judge!

 

 

 

Obviously, NO Real Atheist Can Be A Republican....OR A Libertarian!

Paul Ryan, Libertarian Randite with his Ryan Budget - he still hopes he can fob off on us in a "grand bargain". No atheist ought to have anything to do with this character or his ridiculous philosophy.

A recent article at salon.com ('Atheists Can't Be Republicans') see http://www.salon.com/2013/10/26/atheists_cant_be_republicans/

hits the nail on the head - given the Reepos are all about pushing heavy religion on its denizens, and using that as a hammer to also halt abortion, contraception, gay marriage and even state assistance to the poor ("If the poor had faith, then they wouldn't need welfare.") But the piece also nails the Libertarian crap, i.e. when stating:

"Atheists are secularists, and a secularist cannot be a member of today’s Republican Party. You’re either one or the other. You cannot be both. Now, I am acutely aware that a great number of atheists identify with the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, but this is comical. A lack of evidence is why atheists don’t believe in God. But to believe in libertarianism is in itself an act of faith, because libertarianism has not only never been tried anywhere, but an overwhelming number of economists reject the philosophy as little more than “capitalism with the gloves off” — a condition that would only exacerbate the winner-takes-all society we have today."

I can't dispute  this take which is why I have no truck or tolerance for Libertarian atheists, and dismiss Republican atheists like S.E. Cupp as essentially fakes. To me they're an anomaly like a two -headed,  walking carp.  Most Libbie atheists probably were drawn into their version of atheism by virtue of noting Ayn Rand's famous quote in her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness', p. 38:

"Faith is a malignancy that no system can tolerate with impunity, and the man who succumbs to it, will call on it in precisely those issues where he needs reason the most. "

But this is a minuscule support on which to build a coherent, "grown up" atheism.  The same salon.com article also notes that hyper-militant zealous atheists are equally immature, and give atheists a bad name to boot. A particular brand of these includes the likes of Sam Harris, and the late Chris Hitchens who pounded an incessant anti-Muslim theme in assorted writings.  As the salon.com piece observes, again accurately (and this was a topic brought up on Bill Maher's Real Time Friday night)the problem with these anti-Muslim zealot atheists is:

"rhetoric that not only ignores our long history of foreign policy blunders in the Middle East, but also echoes the neo-conservatives, the Israel lobby and the entire right-wing echo chamber"

Which was the exact same point guest Michael Moore was trying to make to Bill Maher, who echoed many of the anti-Muslim lines. Moore tracked our history in actually recruiting Bin Laden to our own ends - to make him our special "puppet" - to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan, as well as setting Saddam up as a separate puppet, to use against Iran. Oh, also toppling Iran's original President Mossadegh in 1953. Is it any wonder so many Muslims hate our guts? If you were pissed over at every turn, by a meddling nation full of hubris, wouldn't you not be exactly pleased? But this is the point the anti-Islamics miss.  Those who wish to see former security specialist Chalmers Johnson's take on it, can go here: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/09/have-americans-especially-thier.html

Where he supplies answers regarding 'blowback' and why too many Americans are totally in the dark. Maher and the anti-Muslim atheists ought to read that, as well as Johnson's book, "Blowback".

In his brilliant article Atheism Wars[1], the eminent economist John Gray, author of False Dawn- The Delusions of Global Capitalism,   argues that “evangelical atheism has so aligned itself with illiberal economic values that it’s joined forces  with the Christian fundamentalists in the Republican Tea Party.”

If this is so, why on Earth would I wish to make common cause, especially as I’m a 1960s-style Kennedy liberal who hasn’t moved one iota toward any specious “center”, especially since Kennedy’s murder at the plausible hands of a rightist-based conspiracy? Such affiliation, despite the much ballyhooed meme of “atheist diversity” is an insult to me.  Indeed as Gray notes, it would no more occur to Richard Dawkins that an atheist would reject liberal values than that he or she would take up witchcraft. But the unsettling fact is too many do!

As the 2012 political campaign revealed, the GOP budgetary doyen Paul Ryan (an ardent acolyte of Rand’s) basically sought to adopt her views in his Ryan Budget. This would have replaced standard Medicare with vouchers with which the elderly would seek their own medical assistance each year, as opposed to depending on a government secured co-payment. I can just imagine how I’d have fared in my HDR prostate cancer treatment last year if Ryan’s vouchers were the extent of  assistance available! With a $10,000 per year voucher allocation, I’d have ended up in major debt. Five figure debt!

 

So pardon me if I regard any self-proclaimed atheist who embraces the Ryan budget or his  minimal government (except for defense) politics as stupid, delusional or both. 

 
 

Beyond this, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz[2], “the upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year and control 40 percent of the nation’s total wealth”. Conversely, the bottom 80 percent of Americans own just 7 percent of the nation’s wealth. Stiglitz notes that “while the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall”[3]. By any measure this economic inequality is a corrosive, long term evil, given it reduces people’s choices and indeed can incept criminal acts for economic self-preservation.

This dovetails with the salon.com quote of Walter Bristol, an atheist interfaith activist, who wrote,

“Economic inequality is one of the most imminent issues facing Western society today. Any progressive movement that chooses to dismiss it is and will be rightfully dismissed themselves.”

Ouch! Any atheists paying attention? They had better be! Atheism in this view, and one shared by me in my new book, cannot be some mere abstract philosophizing position but must be in common cause with larger social justice movements  - and that by its nature- also excludes aligning with Reepos and Libertarians in economic policy issues. (Though one can strategically align with them when it comes to opposing NSA spying overreach - a subtle point Melissa Harris Perry was seemingly lost on in her show this morning.)

 

Since I am also foursquare opposed to laissez-faire capitalism and especially the Neoliberal variety that worships the global free market, there is really nothing I have in common with the new breed of pro-free market atheists.  We could as well be from different planets.  Reading John Gray’s excellent essay  showed me that my position is genuinely more implicit atheism, or what George Smith (The Case Against God, p. 9 ) described as agnostic atheism, than the more hard-edged variety of Ayn Rand, or Madalyn Murray-O’Hair. In Smith’s words:

 

 

The agnostic atheist maintains any supernatural realm is inherently unknowable by the human mind. And further - not only is the nature of any supernatural being unknowable, but the existence of any supernatural being is unknowable as well

 

 

After all, if one cannot truly know anything supernatural, then how can one arrive at a supernaturally –based morality? It is preposterous. One then must work very hard to fashion a natural ethics, which features test markers and attributes based in the natural world. This, of course, is the heart of my Materialist ethics!
 

The problem is that a libertarian atheist’s ethics aren’t likely to agree with mine, any more than his definition of Materialism will agree with my own. I had warned about this division of interests and ethics in my first book (The Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism).    As for S.E. Cupp, I don’t regard her as any bona fide atheist at all, but rather someone who’s been able to parlay a purely nominal atheism into becoming a high profile media person. She basically found her special media niche by being the ultimate conservative, religion-friendly atheist! As Ian Murphy so aptly describes her shtick, in an Aug 4, 2012 salon.com essay:

 

 

"Cupp’s self-loathing-token-atheist-in-the-conservative-media routine seems so geared toward delegitimizing atheism, and selling books to fundie Fox types, that is strains credulity"

 

She’s also disqualified from being an atheist I’d ever associate with by her comment, "I would never vote for an atheist, ever."

 

Murphy once more: "In an atheist integrity contest, she loses to Stalin by a mustache."

 

Is it possible the aggressive memes of dogmatic religions have called forth equally aggressive memes of non-belief to combat it? This is possible, but sadly hasn’t helped atheists win the battle for hearts and minds. In the meantime, atheists need to develop a more cogent, political dynamic that embraces the social justice aspect rather than ignores it.  To quote the salon.com article again:

 

"It’s time for the atheist movement to get off the political sidelines. It’s time to truly help this country become a better place to live for all its citizens"

 

---

[1] Gray: Playboy (60), 49.

 

[2] Stiglitz: The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Threatens Our Future, Chapter 1.

[3] Ibid.

 

Boehner and Ryan Admit Repuke Deficit Hysteria is a Hoax

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but as I’ve been writing over and over on my blog the GOP –fomented deficit crisis is all horse manure. It was invented by Right wing ideologues and billionaires as an excuse to justify gutting social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. This has now finally been openly admitted by both Boehner and Ryan on the Sunday Talk Show circuit.


Boehner finally came clean on yesterday’s edition of ABC’s “This Week” and admitted that “we do not have an immediate debt crisis.” (His admission was followed up by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who quickly echoed much the same sentiment on  CBS’ Face the Nation).

Boehner's confession finally revealed the fact that the GOP’s fiscal alarmism is not some natural reaction to reality, but a calculated means to other ideological ends, namely destruction of the social contract embodied in Social Security and Medicare. Since these rats couldn't do it for decades by way of the front door, they are trying to break through the back door using a deficit crisis. They are aided and abetted in this by the long time ideologue, Peter G. Peterson. ((To learn more about Peterson, his contrived campaign, and his millionaire CEO buddies, go to www.petersonPyramid.org)


TIME finance columnist Rana Forhoohar (March 18, p. 18) also observes that "if you combine cuts previously agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011, with the tax increases secured by Obama at the end of last year and add to that things like the associated interest savings and shifts in deficit expectations by the Congressional Budget Office, we are already two thirds of the way there ." (to the $4 trillion 'grand bargain' so many Neoliberals are ga-ga over.)

Indeed, two simple steps (ok, two and a half)  could get us all the way there, or netting the remaining $1.3 trillion: Cutting the defense side of the budget by the $600b allocated for in the sequester, and raising the income tax level to cover the $200,000 income level while raising the payroll tax threshold to the $200,000 level. With these accomplished, neither Obama or anyone else has to make draconian and 'superlative' cuts to Social Security or raise Medicare premiums.

Besides, as Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has pointed out, “Even if we do run deficits, federal debt as a share of GDP will be substantially less than it was at the end of World War II” and “it will also be substantially less than, say, debt in several European countries in the mid to late 1990s.” It is also lower than the 80 percent of GDP level that many economists say starts to put countries in a precarious position.

    But WHY be surprised at Boehner's dishonesty? Over and over I had related their tactics (and their history) along with their prime directive and objective, emphasizing that Obama had to be smart enough not to play into their game. However, as we beheld in 2011, Obama let his guard down by allowing himself and the nation to be taken to the brink by GOP –Tea Party economic terrorists in the debt ceiling crisis. Panicked, he signed on to a “sequester” which cut equally from the domestic and military sides. The official rationale was that neither party would actually be insane enough to let it go through, but again- he underestimated GOP ideology and insanity. They were prepared to let anything happen, even take the country down a dumpster, in order to cut social benefits.


Now that the GOOPr Deficit game has been exposed, it’s time for Obama to grow a steel spine and reject all their spending cut plans and schemes (UNLESS it’s for defense). If another debt ceiling increase appears like it may be blocked, Obama needs to do what he ought to have two years ago: invoke the 14th amendment! Amendment XIV, Section 4, stipulates:


"The validity of the Public Debt of the United States, authorized by law, includes debts incurred for payment of pensions ....and shall not be questioned."


It is clear to me that if the Republican Congress refuses to act to raise the debt ceiling (and thereby honor the validity of paying the Public Debt) then President Obama can and MUST exercise an Executive Order to override a putatively derelict Congress and invoke Article 4 of Amendment XIV to raise the debt ceiling. The alternative, of not doing so, would also violate Article XIV and be lawless while also violating Sec. 8 of Article I:

"The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises to pay Debts and provide for the common defense and General Welfare of the United States"


As for the GOP -Pentagon warmongers and their media hacks, who want us to believe Afghanistan and Iraq were real wars, this is bollocks. And the proof is in the pudding, i.e. of taxes (as opposed to tax cuts) to pay for them! Real patriots understand that wars have to be paid for out of the common public sacrifice - via higher TAXES. As my dad once told me before he passed away in July, 2009: Anyone calling for no taxes or tax CUTS during a putative wartime (as in WWII) would have been branded unpatriotic at best, and a traitor at worst. So you never heard anyone bitching, pissing and moaning when gas was rationed. Or when income taxes went up!

Not one person complained about heavy new taxes during the four years of the U.S. fighting in the Pacific theater, or in Europe, though we've seen no similar pay-go with over ten years in Afghanistan. Nor did people bitch in the immediate post-war period when the high taxes helped to finance the Marshall Plan - to help pay for the reconstruction of Europe. People were smart enough then to grasp that Europe's stability meant their own - and if they paid NOW (in higher taxes) they would be less likely to pay later in another war.


Indeed, many of those post-war taxes were still in place when the Korean War broke out. Despite ALREADY high taxes, congress passed new taxes in 1950 and 1951 to pay for the costs of the conflict. They had enough sense to know, unlike the useless miscreant tea baggers today, that if you engage in military actions - especially prolonged- they HAVE to be paid for! You can't keep signing a national credit card and expecting future generations to pay the debt!

If the Repukes want to continue to hide behind their phoney baloney deficit lies and obstruction, let them be the first to come out and either fess up that those two "wars" we've allegedly fought were phony wastes of blood and treasure, OR, they were real wars that now have to be PAID for! If the latter and they don't allow the taxes to be raised to do so, they are not merely dissemblers but traitors!

Ryan's "Creative War on Poverty" Would Destroy the Poor - NOT Poverty!

Defeated VP candidate Paul Ryan has had a novel brain fart,....errr...plan. He describes it as a "creative war on poverty" designed to vastly reduce the number of Americans on food stamps (46 million, or a "record" according to a lead story in USA Today, Dec. 5, p. 1A).

The piece focuses on one Ohio County (Miami County) which has seen "a sharp increase in poverty among children and the unemployed". More disturbing is that despite an unemployment rate that's among the lowest in the nation (5.8%) a majority of the families are on food stamps. According to these workers, the problem isn't being bums or looking for handouts, but rather not enough good (i.e. living wage) paying jobs that enable a family to get ahead and not merely survive. As one worker quoted in the piece puts it:

"Minimum wage stays the same but the price of food goes up, the price of gas goes up and the electric goes up. How do you pay all your bills with 40 hours a week at $8 an hour?" (The OH minimum wage is actually at $7.70/hr, while the federal level is $7.25/hr. To my way of thinking, with such LOW wage rates, the feds absolutely need to include food stamps just for fairness' sake!)

In answer to the Ohio worker's question: you don't! SO how does Ryan expect to fight poverty in such circumstances? He'd have to ensure price controls on all the rising commodities, from fuel to food, and then MAYBE he can enable a cutback in the access to food stamps. But that's not what he wants! As an old guard Ayn Rand- worshipping libertarian, the last thing Ryan would do is place price controls on anything. That means food and gas prices would continue to go up - leaving very little disposable income for groceries after key bills like mortgage and utilities are also paid, hence driving the need to access food stamps.

As one Ohio pastor (a real one) put it, "without those food stamps and the help of our churches the people starve, especially their kids".

Given Ryan's libertarian instincts this means his only "creative" solution to fighting poverty would be to foursquare eliminate the means of poor people to survive while in poverty! This would be analogous to a draconian dictatorship asserting it will manage a "creative war on overpopulation" but by exterminating one-sixth of the people!  Instead of providing good jobs and remuneration so the people don't have to reproduce so much, this sort of bunch takes the "axe" to the numbers directly!

The other intractable problem noted in the article is the absence of any upward job mobility in the area. That is, the inability of all the low paid workers to find new jobs that pay better. To try to overcome this problem, the workers would have to leave for "greener pastures"- maybe to another state. But to be able to leave, they'd have to first be able to sell their homes, and they can't. NO one wants to buy them! So they are stuck in place with no potential for job enhancement. Even going to school to improve skills requires money for tuition, etc. and they don't have it.

Coupled with this is another problem that neither Paul or his 'pukes mentions much: the offshoring of the GOOD paying service jobs overseas, to reduce labor costs. Approximately 663,000 such jobs have been outsourced to eastern Europe, China and Mexico since 2002 including: information technology, human resources, finance and purchasing orders ('More Service Jobs Go Overseas', USA Today, Dec. 7, p. 1B).  The jobs pay a respectable wage of about $16 an hour - more than double the pathetic $8/hr. of the Ohio workers. In other words, these jobs would have allowed those in the poor areas to have lived dignified lives as opposed to going to food stamps for assistance.

Worse, The Hackett Group, a consulting firm, projects another such 375,000 jobs will be offshored by 2016.  Again, these are from companies "with a least $1 billion in annual revenues" and which represent 75% of the market for offshoring jobs. How can U.S. workers win in such an environment which has engineered a race to the bottom as far as labor costs? The answer is they can't.

Yet Paul Ryan expects us to believe he has a "creative solution" to the war on poverty which now affect nearly 1 in 6 Americans and 21% of all children, nearly 15 million to be exact. (A family of 4 is considered poor if it has an annual income below $22,350. )

Would Paul Ryan, one of the original self-described "Young Guns" on Capitol Hill, take the bread from those 15 million kids in order to win his "war on poverty"? You had better believe it! This is also why Obama and the Dems can't give one inch on the "fiscal cliff" discussions - in terms of spending cuts if the Reeps don't cede REAL increases in tax RATES, as opposed to smoke and mirrors revenue increases via closing unnamed loopholes.

We cannot allow the reptiles to extract painful cuts, or raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 by letting them give up nominal revenue while the rich still get richer.

Liar’s Poker: Ryan’s Visit to Colorado Springs

A grammar school nun, Sr. Mary Vivina, that used to teach me in Milwaukee, would often remind the Religion class:

“If you start out by telling small lies, it becomes much easier to tell big lies.”

This could be applied to Paul Ryan, who we now know started out with a small lie, regarding the time for a marathon he once ran. For those who haven’t heard, he bragged he ran 26.2 miles at a blistering pace of “two hours and fifty something”.

The first hint of the lie was not being able to exactly state the time. As anyone who’s ever run any distance race can confirm (I once ran a 5 km race in Alaska) you never ever forget the time, just as you never forget where you were or what you were doing when JFK was assassinated, or 9-11 erupted. It’s emblazoned on the engrams. Former Mass. Governor Mike Dukakis, for example, also ran a marathon (the 1951 Boston marathon) and recalls his time as 3 hours and 31 minutes, placing 57th overall. This is after 60 years!

Now, thanks to ‘Runner’s World’ – the niche magazine that called him out- we know Ryan was a flat out liar on his marathon time. On digging into the Minnesota marathon he ran, the magazine found an official time of 4 hours 1 minute and 25 seconds. In other words, a whopper of a difference from his claimed time.

Does this matter? Does it matter if a guy lies about a race time? Well, let’s put it this way: Does it matter if a guy was never in service but bragged he fought in some war or other, whether Korea, Vietnam or the Gulf war? If a guy DID fight, say in the Gulf War (1991) but was never decorated, does it matter if he claims he won a Purple heart or some other medal? Does it matter if he buys actual medals, say from a pawn shop or off ebay, and wears them to back up his specious claims? Do THESE lies matter? If so, why should they matter more than Ryan’s marathon lie? Because they’re about the military and an “honor” meme rather than honor in life overall?

To me, this is an artificial distinction. Moreover, it makes it more likely if a guy has lied about a race time – and in a big way—he will do so about military decorations, or any other thing, including his policy plans, budget plans and oh yes….the other guy’s too.

In Ryan’s case, even before he arrived in Colorado Springs two days ago for a rally with the local reich wing morons, his primary lie on Obama’s “Medicare cuts” had already been exposed to the cold light of day. As reported in The Colorado Springs Gazette (Sept. 7, p. 1A), not exactly a liberal bastion, the Associated Press had received a text of Ryan’s planned speech and the claim that “Obama stripped $716 billion from Medicare”.

As the Gazette article noted:

“Ryan advocated the same move in the budget he shepherded through the House of Representatives, ‘and the $716 billion change under Obama didn’t affect recipients, but rather reduced payments to hospitals, health insurance plans and other service providers’.”

Not mentioned was that ALL those changes had been agreed to in advance, by all the above. This was part of the deal made with them given the additional millions of participants delivered to them via the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. None of this was mentioned by Ryan in the Springs, where he repeated his lie about Obama taking away seniors’ benefits.

No, even to the most dedicated Reep troglydyte, a lie about a marathon time may not mean much, but a lie about Obama taking away his or her benefits should! But to the level of morons that turned out for Ryan in the Springs, it didn’t matter. Even when the Gazette reporter brought the AP fact check and lie expose to light, none of these knot heads believed it.

One, Gordon England a “retired music professor” asserted he still believes “Obama is raping Medicare”.

Another, Gina King - a former dental claims processor - said “it didn’t matter” and she didn’t care. Why?

“He’s good with numbers and tells it like it is!”

Yeppers! He’s real good with fudging numbers and lying! As for 'telling it like it is', kindly pull your head from where the Sun doesn’t shine, lady.

Ironically, this moron admitted she was “on food stamps” – for which access and benefit she really ought to be on bended knee and thanking Obama, because if the Reeps get in and cut that program by one third – as they claim (to pay for their increased tax cuts for the rich) she will be sucking salt. Or maybe sand. And her 'star boy' Ryan will be the one responsible for her kids or herself becoming malnourished.

This incredibly dumb shit woman also added (ibid.)

“I want someone who will help me help myself”.

Really? And you think Paul Ryan is the one? The guy LIES! The guy plans to massacre programs on which you now depend! Do you think you will magically be off those programs once Romney –Ryan are elected? Well, you likely will if they cut them to the degree they say. But jobs? You aren’t going to get any jobs from their policies!

Ongoing job constriction – as a Bill Maher guest pointed out Friday night – has been going on for the past fifty years, starting with de-industrialization, automation and then globalization the past 22 years. Obama didn’t start that! Fuck, he was not even BORN when de-industrialization commenced in the late 50s! How STUPID can people be!

As the guest observed, this is what keeps our national discussion of employment, deficits and future prospects at a childish, uneducated level. Ryan is part of this childish discussion and debate, and feeds the childish, indeed infantile needs of his base as when he makes such remarks as:

“We simply have to stop spending money we don’t have!”

But that’s exactly what HE and Romney plan to do! Spend money they don’t have. They intend to spend $ 4 trillion for tax cuts for the wealthiest (why do you think so many billionaires, like the Kochs, are donating to Romney?) and also add $2 trillion to the Pentagon budget. This total of $6 trillion over one term is NOT balanced by all the cuts they SAY they intend, so that means either:

1) They are lying through their asses, and plan to run up deficits on their terms, or

2) They plan much more massive cuts than they’ve already stated, which means to Social Security as well as Medicare and to current beneficiaries not merely those “under 55”. In this case, they’ve ALSO lied, a massive lie of omission.

But in this alternative universe where lies are truth and truth translates into lies, anything can be believed. Another guy Randy Kroeger, supposedly a “retired engineer from the technology industry” – so one supposedly with an IQ over room temperature, gave three reasons he supports Romney and Ryan. In his words (ibid.):

“A, they have a plan”

Yes, it’s to fuck you over, you and the other birdbrains, in the biggest bait and switch ever.

“B, I believe their plan will work!”

Oh, I KNOW it’ll work! Once they implement it and add another $5 trillion to the deficit you will be lucky to have any benefits left.

“C, I’ve followed the shenanigans of the Democrats for years!”

Spoken like a true Ditto head. But the question is, have you followed the “shenanigans” of the Reepos? Evidently not!

At least one attendee, a former Army veteran named David Justice, did see through the haze of lies and bullshit. As he noted (ibid.):

“Ryan’s speech was a pack of lies. It’s overwhelming. He said the president doesn’t reach across the aisle, when he’s bent over backwards to accommodate the Republicans”.

Justice conceded he wasn’t a Reep but attended the meeting “out of curiosity”.

Still, he was amazed at the level of lies spewed out. He shouldn't have been if he's remotely followed Reepo tactics the last few election cycles.

I re-read the account of Ryan's Frolics in the Gazelle, and recalled the words of Sister M. Vivina concerning lies. If you can tell small lies, like exaggerating the time you ran a marathon by more than one fourth, it becomes much easier to tell whoppers later, like about Medicare, Obama, and your own budget!

Smart voters need to remember Ryan’s “small lie” come November

How and Why Social Darwinism is at the Core of Romney's GOP

As many thinkers on the left have observed (i.e. Susan Jacoby in her book, The Age Of American Unreason, Chapter 3: 'Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars') it is beyond astounding that so many fundamentalist and other Rightists can with one arm embrace Social Darwinism but with the other push away the actual science of Darwinian Evolution.

What is the difference? One - Darwinian Evolution - is based on natural selection and is a valid, testable science. The other, Social Darwinism, is a pseudo-science without a scintilla of empirical basis - which extends the principles of natural selection into the social, societal realm. In its own way, it is little different from the astrology that attempts to tie people's personalities to random arrangements of stars. In addition, one - Darwinian Evolution, was articulated by actual scientists, such as Charles Darwin and John Gould (it was none other than Gould who “immediately realized the extraordinary nature of Darwin’s Galapagos specimens and analyzed and described them first”, according to Frank J. Sulloway, in his essay, ‘Why Darwin Rejected Intelligent Design’)

Meanwhile, Social Darwinism was confabulated by a British philosopher named Herbert Spencer. Richard Hofstadter, in his Social Darwinism in American Thought, (American Historical Association, 1955) observes that Spencer rejected services for the poor and disabled as encouraging a fundamental weakness in the society which induced corruption, sloth and all the other vices. It was also Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest".

Given this, according to author Jacoby (op. cit., p. 70):

"Spencer preached the gospel of laissez-faire economics as the only way to ensure that the fittest would triumph in society through a process of 'social selection' equivalent to Darwin's natural selection".

Ms. Jacoby notes that Spencer's "first pedestrian musings about the universal laws of social selection" were actually published a full year before Darwin's On the Origin of Species (in 1858).

She adds:

"The British philosopher was unequivocally and fanatically opposed to all government programs that he viewed as obstacles to social selection, including public education, health regulations, tariffs and even postal service."

Incredible! An "Ayn Rand" before the time of Rand! (Maybe Rand was the reincarnation of the guy, if you subscribe to that stuff).

But think of this, the basic premise is the same one held by Romney and Ryan! If they had their way all public schools would go the way of dinos and be replaced by "charter schools". Also all health regulations would be removed - which Romney actually plans to do via executive order once elected, to free up the markets for bidness. And make no mistake, he has no use and neither does Ryan, his compadre, for any social services like food stamps and Medicaid! Hence, why they plan to cut those two by nearly one third in the first year alone.

Wal-Mart workers, you paying attention? Your managers may no longer be able to send you to get gov't assistance because they are too cheap. You may have to ask the Bozos from Bentonville to finally pay a decent, living wage.

May I remind readers here that laissez-faire economics is basically capitalist, markets rule -government "hands off" economics? Hence, we mustn't be surprised that The Rightist-corporate elite (including many of the ‘robber barons’) latched on to this as a kind of dogma. Indeed, Jacoby points out (ibid.) that Carnegie, Rockefeller and other wealthy hot shots were the same ones who put up the money to fund Spencer's "6,000 page" System of Synthetic Philosophy! (Errrr....."Synthetic" is quite right!)

Interesting too, are the names of some of the first "subscribers" that Jacoby delivers, including": historian George Bancroft, botanist Asa Gray and the former Harvard University president Jared Sparks.

Even more amazing was how many fundamentalists bought in! One of the first was the Rev. Josiah Strong, ca. 1885 with the publication of his book Our Country, Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, which is highlighted in Chapter 2, of Richard Hofstadter's book. One of his favorite sayings was from Herbert Spencer, referring to needy or disabled people that often begged at alms houses for services:

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die."

Hmmmm.......I guess that quotation might be the best loved one of Romney and Ryan too, if they were honest enough to admit it. But I doubt they are! Strong's other great "insight" which surely must have given the robber barons and their capitalist scum wet dreams was that the amassing of great wealth indicated Christian virtue. Thus, one's wealth immediately became a barometer for one's morality or spirituality. Those poor people over there? Well, they couldn't be very spiritual, better to just deprive them and let them die and go off to "Satan".

The question for our time now is how many working people, ordinary blokes, will realize before it's too late that voting for a Romney-Ryan ticket will be to basically give a vote for the vicious Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer. In that sense, it will also be a vote for their own demise. Because if social services are cut as the neo-Social Darwinists intend, no amount of caterwauling or imploring by Wal-Mart (to its low paid workers) will get them the gov't help they need. They will truly be on their own, to starve or at least be malnourished (for lack of food stamps) or perish in a nasty flu epidemic because Medicaid lacked the federal matching funds to survive in their state.

Will they be smart enough to make the connection? Or will they be so blinded by a skewed hatred of Obama (as a "socialist', sic) that they give up reason altogether. Maybe they need to start reading some of Spencer's works to see what Romney and Ryan really have planned for them!

Paul Ryan: Now Hoist on Multiple Petards

OOPS! He Must have smooched Ayn Rand! Or maybe her corpse!



Guys like Paul Ryan, now hailed as some kind of great thinker and leading light by the Reeps, have always been a dime a dozen. You most often see their kind on college campuses bloviating to their small groups of faithful, and usually extolling the virtues of deranged icons like Ayn Rand. (Ryan himself even admitted giving copies of Rand's novel, 'Atlas Shrugged' to his staff as a Christmas present, as reported in TIIME, Sept. 3rd, p. 36. One wonders what his staffers ever did with those copies. )

But now that he's in the spotlight - it's not even for telling eight straight lies in his convention speech about Obama. No it's about his Rand worship and claims to also follow St. Thomas Aqinas. Now that this much has come out, others are taking him seriously and fact checking.

When several Catholic groups, including nuns from the Leadership Conference for Women Religious, pointed out that Ayn Rand had nothing but contempt for religious faith, i.e. asserting 'The Virtue of Selfishness'', p. 38):


"Faith is a malignancy that no system can tolerate with impunity, and the man who succumbs to it, will call on it in precisely those issues where he needs reason the most. "

Ryan smugly responded (ibid.):

"I reject her philosophy. It's an atheist philosophy."

Which, of course, is bollocks. Her philosophy is called Objectivism and reduced to its basic message, devoid of bilge and baloney, comes down to people - when developing a self-sufficient economics - for example, relying only on objective evidence. Hence, faith or belief plays no role. Moreover, it's an extreme economics that issues from it, pivoting primarily on national and individual self-sufficiency.

Hell, as I noted in a blog last month, Rand in her pristine Objectivism doesn't even accept the military ought to be funded from the taxpayer's purse! Her solution (On Government Financing in a Free Society, p. 116) is for the Pentagon, law courts, police, firemen and others (who are fed off the taxpayer dime) to instead set up co-op insurance companies! In this way, she observes that: "Men would voluntarily pay for insurance protecting their contracts." She also allows for the military to use "lotteries" to get their money, though I can't think of a single person who'd wish to buy one of these tickets. I mean, what is the prize? One of the F-17 Stealth fighters that loses cloaking ability when it rains?

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan - while he plans to chop up Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, plans to use the money saved by going after "entitlements" to increase funding for the military. But this is EXACTLY the sort of "violence" (by taxes) Rand warned against!

As for the atheist part, while Rand was indeed a self-proclaimed atheist, her philosophy itself shares zero commonalities with atheism. For example, NO atheist I know insists we each become islands unto ourselves and pursue our own rational self-interest, even to the extent of weighing the value of another before even considering saving their life! (Virtue Of Selfishness', p. 45) Neither do any atheists I know demand the government be reduced to a mere onlooker in terms of governance, and let armies, police, citizens etc. set up "insurance" companies to get their funding, or lottos!

So, what Paul Ryan is really really saying in his denial, is that he loves Rand's gratuitous, selfish, anti-government economics but isn't buying the essential philosophy from which it's forged. Can we then agree this guy is trying to square the circle? Can we also agree he's full of shit? Especially when he himself doesn't even adhere to Rand's basic, enunciated economic principles in terms of "government funding in a free society"?

But the biggest howler and which petard is almost as large as the first he's hoisted on, is when he claims to be "following Saint Thomas Aquinas". (TIME, op. cit. p. 56). He claims (ibid.) he bases this on the fact that abortion is outlawed by the Church, and was by Aquinas, and hence legitimately he can oppose any abortion even if a 12 year old kid is raped by her uncle, or a young college woman is gang-raped by frat boys.

Maybe this joker needs to do a tad more reading, such as learning that a leading Church historian, John Connery, S.J. has documented that up to 1869 the Church permitted abortion, up the end of the first trimester! (See, e.g. Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan , PARADE, April 22, 1990 ) Clearly, the fact the Church already changed its doctrine on abortion shows it can do so again. And hence, one must question whether either of its positions (before and after 1869) embodies any kind of "absolute moral" position.

In his marvelous book, Infallible?, Catholic Theologian Hans Kung observes the following (p. 143):

“..no one, neither Vatican I, nor Vatican II, nor the textbook theologians, has shown that the Church - its leadership or its theology - is able to put forward propositions which inherently cannot be erroneous."

This makes sense, and is something I've always challenged Catholic padres on when I've debated them. The problem confronting all doctrinal absolutists is that their cognitive reach exceeds their grasp and they become hoist on their own petards. As the illustrious Ryan does on one big petard when he backed House bills dignifying the term "forcibible rape" and "non-forcible rape".

Kung goes on to note (ibid.):

"It is impossible to honestly deny objective errors committed by the Church's teaching office, both ordinary and extraordinary."

So why then are Catholics adhering to their Church's stupid, archaic rules so slavishly? Maybe because they've done it so long they no longer have the power to think for themselves. Or.....maybe they still buy into the "Hell" crappola, when the padres and Bishops (who never play when THEY are molesting altar boys or protecting the molesters) never play that card for their own misdeeds.

Moving on....

Ryan also claims- with a straight fact- this his "mission to reduce debt" issues from the Holy Father himself, Pope Benedict, who has charged that "governments and communities running up high debt levels are living at the expense of future generations."

That Ryan would cite a pope to justify his vicious budget is astounding, not to mention highlighting his own chutzpah! Because the truth is the CBO, Center for Tax Policy, and other budgetary cognoscenti have determined his own "Ryan budget' is nowhere near neutral in cuts and spending. While he makes brutal cuts to the social service programs (that most Catholics have always supported), such as food stamps, Medicaid - sending tens of millions into a limbo without health care, or enough food, he allows and enables $4.8 trillion in tax cuts for the 1%, and at least as much for the Pentagon's war profiteers. Most economists, e.g. Paul Krugman, estimate this will add at least an additional $7 trillion or so to the deficit. In other words, Ryan is actually INCREASING the debt as he demolishes social programs!

The man ought to be ashamed of himself, but after witnessing the bevy of lies he unloaded two nights ago, I believe he's totally shameless.

One thing we cannot do is let this lying scumball anywhere near the levers of power to try to implement his half-Rand, half-Aquinas bullshit agenda.