Paul Ryan's Pants Are On Fire... Again

Paul Krugman is such a gentleman! Whenever Ryan gets caught lying his ass off in the pursuit of the goals he and his Wall Street financiers are pushing, Krugman merely says he's "talking nonsense." But Ryan is a practiced liar who lies with a purpose.

Politifact has now updated its work on the claim, universal on the right-- and repeated often by Paul Ryan-- that discretionary non-defense spending is up 80 percent under Obama.

It’s completely false. As anyone who knows how to read federal statistics should have known, the real number-- including the stimulus-- is 26 percent. And it’s now in the process of falling off.
The discretionary spending falsehood is a key part of the claim that Obama has presided over a vast expansion of government; as I’ve tried to explain, the only real area of rapid growth has been in safety net programs that spend more when there is high unemployment.

So, two questions.

First, why wasn’t this obvious to everyone? I mean, where are those huge new government programs?

Second, why did I have to be the one pointing out this falsehood? Doesn’t the White House have any kind of response team? Or are they so eager to be bipartisan that they don’t want to point out that Ryan is talking nonsense?

Earlier today, at DownWithTyranny, we posed a question about whether the good folks of southeast Wisconsin are ready to toss Ryan onto the garbage heap of history, just the way they did in 1940 with another fascist liar they had sent to Congress, Republican Hitlerite John Schafer. From Glen Yeadon's fantastic book, The Nazi Hydra In America:

One fascistic congressman was Republican John Schafer from Wisconsin. His congressional record was one of complete opposition to any defense measure. In speaking with Carlson, an investigative reporter posing as a pro-fascist, Schafer spoke of a revolution against democracy: "The Bloody kind. There will be purges and Roosevelt will be cleaned right off the earth along with the Jews. We’ll have a military dictatorship to save the country."

Oak Creek helped end the disgraceful political career of John Schafer. Is Oak Creek ready to end the disgraceful political career of Paul Ryan? If you'd like to help replace Ryan with progressive Democrat Rob Zerban, please visit Stop Paul Ryan... and do what you can.

Neither Kathy Hochul Nor Jane Corwin Were All That Important Tuesday-- Paul Ryan And The Republican Agenda Were

Tuesday's election results in western New York were all about independent voters telling Republicans across the country to step on the brakes or suffer the consequences. Paul Krugman used the word "Buffalo" eight times in his Wednesday morning post-- and that was just in the headline!

The obvious point is that Republicans, having run in 2010 largely by scaring seniors with tales of death panels, are now horsed on their own pet aardvark, or something.

The difference is that whereas Democrats were not, in fact, trying to impose death panels, Republicans really do want to dismantle Medicare – and that’s the truth no matter how many times Very Serious People reach for their smelling salts when Democrats say that. And you would think that would make Medicare an even more potent weapon for the Dems than it was for the Rs (unless they go out of their way to ignore what the electorate is really concerned about.)

It’s now starting to look like a real possibility that we will have had three electoral waves in a row-- a Democratic sweep in 2006-2008, a Republican countersweep in 2010, and a countercountersweep in 2012 as voters realize that the GOP is the same as it always was, only more so.

Within hours of the disavowal of his vision for turning seniors' healthcare over to his financial backers at the predatory health insurance companies, Ryan was desperately trying to salvage what's left of his credibility-- with his own paralyzed caucus (remember Boehner and Cantor had tricked them all into backing Ryan's crazy plans). He was tweeting up a storm Wednesday morning with every kind of excuse for what a great big misunderstanding his plan to turn Medicare into an inadequate private voucher system has been. He tried ducking responsibility by blaming the Democrats... of course.


But even after Jane Corwin's approval numbers began tanking when she blundered into admitting that she would have voted for Ryan's budget, Ryan never showed up in Buffalo to defend her. The Republicans there and in DC were at least savvy enough to know that his presence in the district would have meant instant death for her campaign. Instead they invited Boehner and Cantor to defend her. That amounted to a slow drawn out death.

The slap in the face to Ryan didn't exactly go unnoticed back in Wisconsin. His opponent for reelection, Kenosha County Supervisor Rob Zerban was out with a statement Tuesday night:

"Tonight it is clear that Representative Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare is the wrong choice for our families, and we will not stand for it. Voters in New York's 26th Congressional District rejected Paul Ryan’s backward vision of America that puts our seniors at risk. If New Yorkers don’t want Medicare replaced with a voucher plan, you can be sure that families here in Wisconsin's First District will have something to say in the next election. Wisconsinites put our trust in Paul Ryan only to be sold out to special interests.

"I’d like to congratulate New York’s new Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Hochul for winning this strongly-held Republican district. We have our work cut out for us to put our nation back on track, but ordinary people have spoken up tonight to say, 'Hands off our Medicare, Paul Ryan'."

Mike Tate Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party backed up his messaging against right-wing over reach the next morning:

"In the face of overwhelming opposition, Republicans have been stymied in their attacks on our seniors.
 
"In the Legislature, Republicans furiously reversed their own plans to gut SeniorCare only after six GOP senators now face recalls this summer and thousands of Wisconsin citizens signed petitions to save the successful program that helps seniors pay for prescription drugs. They claim that they will, for the moment, spare the program.

"And as New York's Congressional election shows, Paul Ryan's attempt to end Medicare is being rejected even by Republican voters.

"Both Republican legislators and Paul Ryan promise that they will preserve SeniorCare and Medicare, but we know these promises are an absolute sham.
 
"It's time for Scott Walker and his rubber-stamping Republicans to stop playing politics with SeniorCare, for Paul Ryan to stop his plans to end Medicare and for all of them to stop paying for tax cuts for the rich and huge corporations on the backs of Wisconsin's seniors."

Norman Solomon, one of the Blue America candidates running on a Medicare-for-all platform in next year's congressional races, looked at the race in NY-26 and said it proves that "Democrats can win uphill battles by really putting up a fight instead of splitting the difference with the extremist Republican Party. The reality is that the GOP is committed to dismantling Medicare and a wide range of other humane government programs. We should not give an inch when the lives of children, the elderly and other vulnerable people are at stake."

Paul Ryan is the biggest danger middle class families are facing to their children's future. Wall Street and Big Business will stop at nothing to get him and his toxic agenda into the White House. There is only one way to stop him-- and that's with direct action. And right now that direct action means electing Rob Zerban to the seat Ryan has been sitting in. It won't be easy, but it's not any less possible than the race in NY-26 was. In fact, President Obama won WI-01 in 2008, and the district is filled with fired up Democrats and newly awakened independents. Can you help Rob's campaign? Ryan's budget and his vision and his entire political career were inspired-- as he freely admits-- by deranged anti-Christian novelist Ayn Rand. Wall Street adores her too... and would love her simplistic and extremely dangerous ideas dominating our politics:



Replacing Paul Ryan with Rob Zerban will mean instead of harboring a Wall Street shill hell-bent on destroying the middle class for his corporate masters, WI-1 will have a congressman joining defenders of working families like the men and women in the video below. You can contribute to Rob's campaign at StopPaulRyan through Act Blue.



(Read the full post at Down With Tyranny)

Krugman Reiterates: Ryan Is A Flimflam Man

Yes, this morning he brought back his classic description of Ryan from August, 2010: The Flimflam Man. Back then he was mortified that Beltway pundits had bought the Wall Street spin that Ryan was "intellectually audacious" and pointed out that it's just "the audacity of dopes" and that he wasn't offering food for thought but "serving up the leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce."

[W]hy have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power-- the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes.

But they don’t. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.

This morning's column is Flimflam Part II: Ryan's plan, he begins isn't noble; it's "a self-serving piece of junk. It doesn’t add up-- in fact, it would probably make the deficit bigger not smaller. And far from representing some kind of sacrifice of political interests in the service of the greater good, it’s a right-wing wish-list on steroids: sharp tax cuts for corporations and the rich, savage cuts in aid to the poor, and a gratuitous privatization of Medicare. And again, it’s technically incompetent along the way. ... Ryan and his colleagues expected to float through on a cloud of pundit love, which would allow them to bypass the public’s fundamental dislike of everything they were proposing."

This is very much how Ryan's Democratic challenger, Kenosha County Supervisor Rob Zerban, sees it and it's basically what he was saying after the spectacular series of lies that made up Ryan's Meet the Press appearance on Sunday. "Paul Ryan tried to promote his radical budget plan on Meet the Press yesterday by falsely claiming that the alternative would lead to rationed care when the truth is the exact opposite. By forcing seniors into private healthcare with a voucher of diminishing value as their only assistance, many would forgo treatments and new technologies because the costs would be out of their reach. Paul Ryan knows that by gutting our current Medicare plan, seniors will face drastically higher out-of-pocket costs. This helps big insurance companies, not Wisconsin's seniors. What the taxpayers of southeastern Wisconsin need is a plan that would shore up our existing Medicare system without gutting it and forcing our seniors to figure it out on their own." Maybe Zerban was being too polite to mention that Big Insurance has showered far more cash on Ryan ($713,003) than on any other Wisconsin politician in history.

Please consider helping Rob Stop Paul Ryan with even a $5 or $10 contribution to his campaign.

Dreams Shattered, Ryan Faces Reality And Pulls Out Of Senate Race

Ryan, who has publicly admitted that his devotion to the dark, dystopian ideas of Ayn Rand were the inspiration for his political career, said his "cause" was embodied in the budget that has been overwhelmingly rejected by the public and threatens to sink the Republican Party. It has also sunk Ryan's real "cause." He's always told intimates that his quest for the White House ran through the Senate. Herb Kohl's retirement was exactly what he was looking for. Until his budget bit him in the ass.

This morning he started telling supporters that he's facing reality and giving up his Senate dreams... at least for now. Tommy Thompson, who was once popular in the state but would probably lose a tough primary, let alone a serious general, is running. Ryan is not.

Ryan began informing close friends of his decision Tuesday. Three GOP sources tell National Journal as soon as Ryan officially announces he won't run for the Senate, former Wisconsin GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson, is expected to announce his candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl, who recently announced he was retiring.

Thompson, who served as President George W. Bush's Health and Human Services Secretary, has told GOP officials in Wisconsin and D.C. he intends to run if Ryan passes up the open Kohl seat. Ryan has made it clear in recent days he prefers his perch as chairman of the House Budget Committee-- where he believes he can influence, if not drive, the debate on fiscal policy-- to a seat in the Senate.

In other words, it will still be up to Kenosha County Supervisor to end the political career of the worst dangerous for American working families face from DC. You can help Ron at Stop Paul Ryan.

UPDATE: Krugman Kicks More Dirt In Ryan's Face

This shouldn't surprise anyone who follows the Nobel Prize winning economist's blog or columns but this morning reiterated that "Ryan turns out to be an empty suit, parroting the usual line... there’s no there there (and there never was)."

The Whine Of Desperation

This morning, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman observed that Ryan's most recent sniveling and whining about class warfare "is the sound of desperation." Krugman goes on to reiterate that "the big problem with the Ryan plan isn’t the unfairness-- although there’s plenty of that. It’s the fact that the plan is a fraud."

Please consider helping Kenosha County Supervisor Rob Zerban right a long overdue wrong. Small contributions add up fast-- even against Ryan's $3.5 million in blatant bribes from Big Business. You can contribute to Stop Paul Ryan here through ActBlue.