Even the not-so-liberal Politico describes VoucherCare 2.0, as “Christmas for Democrats.” I wonder why such a serious plan might be unpopular:
Paul Ryan wants to cut taxes for the rich, jack up defense spending so we can fight more unnecessary wars, and then throw the poor, the elderly, and those in need of healthcare out into the street. It’s just that simple- no matter what he says, those are his clear priorities. It’s right there in his plan. He’s a sociopath, and what’s worse, he won’t be standing over the corpse of Medicare crying as he finishes strangling it. He’s giddy to throw everyone overboard.
I’m sure that’s all music to Sullivan’s, Jacob Weisberg’s, and PolitiFact’s ears, but while you can fool all the pundits (and “fact-checkers”) all the time you can’t fool all the people quite so often. So thank you, serious people, for giving Paul Ryan enough rope to hang the entire Republican party.
Update. Lev from Library Grape recommends you give to the guy running against Ryan here.
Villago Delenda Est
Paul Ryan is a guy who wants, wants, I tell you, to take that tumbrel ride. He wants it so bad he can taste it.
jl
Add GOPWoE to GOPWoW.
Under the fold in newspapers and blogs is the GOPWoY, GOPWoU, GOPWoH, GOPWoB and GOPWoV.
So they have decided to fight a suicidal multifront war: on elderly, women, Hispanics, blacks, youth, and voters (at least the voters who are unlikely to vote ‘correctly’).
Does an implied Godwin qualify me for another nomination for a Moore Award?
My preferred acronym for the Ryan health care scam bill is KOP Bill (Kill Old People Bill)
Anoniminous
Paul Ryan and the Public Policy of Sociopathy:
If the sick, poor, and elderly cannot support themselves then they should die and reduce the surplus population.
trollhattan
This is a Serious Plan(tm) and an Opportunity for an Adult Conversation(tm) about how to finally screw the middle class once and for all.
I am John Jinglebells Galt!
I so don’t want to know what Sully thinks. I do want to know what appliance McMegan will buy in her excited state after reading this new kewhl plan.
Cat Lady
Also, on the Morning Ho roll out, Ryan and Joe Scar made the point that Rmoney, who pledged fealty to the Ryan Plan before will have to keep it as a campaign promise or else. Their blue eyed boy wonder, when asked if Romney would stay pledged to his Plan, said yes. Ryan said he thinks it will be bi-partisan, so that means he’s probably got Manchin cowering in the corner somewhere.
trollhattan
@jl:
Pretty sure O’Reilly has that copyrighted.
Soonergrunt
Ayn Rand in a bad suit took his “Cat Food, Dirt Roads, New Guns, Ships, And Planes, And Tax Cuts For The Rich” plan from last year, ran it through MS Word with a Search and Replace from “2011” to “2012” and submitted it again.
Does this surprise ANYBODY?
Frankensteinbeck
This has been the Republican plan for as long as I can remember, at least since the Reagan era. They weren’t dumb enough to SAY it. They tiptoed around the edge rhetorically, and even that was dangerous.
mdblanche
@jl: Too many confusing acronyms. Keep it simple and call it GOPWoA, the GOP War on America.
BGinCHI
And fuck Ron Wyden for giving this guy cover, too.
What the hell is wrong with that guy??
Frankensteinbeck
@mdblanche:
I like that. Catchy. It makes you feel like, whoever you are, the GOP is attacking you personally – which is true. Plus, ‘The Republican War on Women has become the Republican War on America’ rolls off the tongue, even if it’s an oversimplification as sound bites must be.
taylormattd
The serious question that must be asked by all true progressives is this:
Is Obama trying to secretly implement this plan by refusing to yell at Paul Ryan, in a loud voice with mean words in a live primetime fireside chat?
(It’s called leeedership, ok?)
chopper
@jl:
‘goopWOW’ sounds like an absorbent towel i’d expect to see advertised on one of those sites I swear to my wife I never visit.
Hunter Gathers
But I was told that Paul Ryan was a serious person who had serious plans for our country’s serious problems. His premium support plan is serious. Gutting programs that help the poor is serious. Keeping our military funded at mind boggling levels is serious, especially for those who are serious about killing the Browns. Anybody who doesn’t recognize Ryan’s seriousness is a deeply un-serious person, probably a hyper-partisan like our un-serious President. If only he would take the time and seriously sit down with the very serious Ryan and discuss our very serious problems while having a serious lunch we could reach serious solutions to serious problems seriously. Then, and only then, can we get down to creating serious solutions to the very serious and troubling situations created by pre-marital sex and the serious solutions that must tackled by our legislative bodies to combat the evil of young people fucking for pleasure.
jl
@mdblanche:
OK, GOPWoA it is. Thanks.
Edit: except, how should it be pronounced. I had a GOPWoP (War on People) in my mind, but Italian Americans would get riled.
If GOPWoA is rendered as ‘GOP Wowawh’ then Gingrich will demand an apology for anti white Southern racism. Maybe he will want a duel. I am up for that, except being back woodsy, I would warn’t to fit him wimme fists, mah dear suh.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Romney/Ryan 2012: Dear America: get in the crate, bitch, you’re going up on the roof. There aren’t any first class tickets on this ride.
burnspbesq
@Hunter Gathers:
You were lied to. Shocking, innit?
jl
Off topic, but I read someplace that 28 percent of whites in South Carolina voted for Obama. Trying to find it again. But that compares to mid teens for MS and AL.
People make fun of South Carolina, perhaps because it has a famous class and race traitor prominent in the media. But if that figure is accurate, South Carolina is a unique kind of place.
meander
Senior citizens must be really excited about the new opportunity to be ‘served’ by blood-sucking, money-grubbing and incompetent private insurance companies. Who can think of a better retirement than trying to get affordable insurance every year? Or to spend hours per week on the phone with your insurance company disputing their claim rejections?
And insurance companies must also be excited to be able to add a high-risk population to their risk pools.
Zach
I don’t see why everyone is freaking out about this now, but wasn’t saying the exact same thing for the past few weeks since Mitt Romney released his tax plan and said he’d pay for it by cutting Medicaid by hundreds of billions a year… I looked into this earlier: $4500 in healthcare cuts for the poorest pay for $150,000 in tax cuts for the top 1%.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jl: Pronounce it “GOPWoah”
catclub
@chopper: reminds me of gopPwoud – the lisping log cabin republicans
Lev
Hey Doug, great work as usual. I wonder if you fine folks might be interested in getting an ActBlue up for Rob Zerban, Ryan’s competitor in November. The right-wing Koch money is going to come flowing in to buck up that Randist turd, so Zerban needs all the help he can get.
https://secure.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/26901
liberal
@BGinCHI:
I was about to say the same thing—no rope if enough Wydens are around.
Haven’t really seen any reasonable explanation for Wyden’s actions (in terms of his past, his district, etc) even though it was what, a couple months ago at least?
BGinCHI
@Lev: I gave and have been getting emails from him for a while.
He’s a solid challenger.
jl
@Zach: IMHO, it because it slaps official GOP House GOP caucus’ name on insane and murderous schemes to harm various demographic groups in the US.
See earlier post today about latest gimmick to confuse public about what GOP presidential candidates actually stand for, and what GOP policies really are.
Even low grade hacks like the Mornin’ Joe crew called Santorum on his bamboozling on his personal version of GOP War on Women, once Rih realized how unpopular it was. So today he has his little wimmin (that is how their world works, right, the wimmins do what the he mens tells ’em to do at all times, right) come out in an attempt to assure gullible people that Rih does not mean what he has been saying for well over a year.
catclub
@Zach: The difference is that Ryan’s budget appears to have no numbers on the tax side, so this calculation cannot even be made from it.
All it does is a) promise to obtain 19% of GDP in tax receipts and b) cut rates by 30% from levels that are nowhere near obtaining 19% of GDP now, and c) cut unnamed loopholes to make it all even out as prescribed.
Prescribed is the key. The CBO evaluation points out that their analysis is based on the prescribed events occurring, no matter how unlikely they are in practice.
srv
Never been a question that Ryan is a sociopath.
But have we ever had a post that questions if Sully is a sociopath?
The Other Chuck
@meander: They vote in droves for fucking Republicans, so yeah, I guess.
Zach
@jl: “IMHO, it because it slaps official GOP House GOP caucus’ name on insane and murderous schemes to harm various demographic groups in the US.”
I suppose. I don’t see this as some huge advantage, though, since they’d already proposed and voted for the same plan en masse last year. Saying they voted for it this year doesn’t help all that much.
gnomedad
A lot of them have been on a Freedom-Loving Patriotic Bender since 2010 since they just know that We The People’s Hopey-Changey thing just isn’t working out and even the ones who voted for the Kenyan Muslim Usurper can’t wait to get rid of him! So, Whoopieeee! Cut ALL the taxes! Repeal ALL the healthcare! Bust ALL the unions! Cut off ALL the sluts from free sin-pills! It’s the Next American Revolution, bitchez! Also, Michelle is fat!
dmsilev
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Via the GOS,
So apparently 7 percent of the country is sociopathic.
Zach
@catclub: “The difference is that Ryan’s budget appears to have no numbers on the tax side, so this calculation cannot even be made from it.”
To be fair, Romney does promise that his tax plan will be revenue neutral. He just doesn’t say how it will be the case, so I assumed that the only way he’ll balance the budget is by cutting the one program he’s promised to cut that’ll offset a significant fraction of his tax cuts: Medicaid (per his budget, he’ll cut it by over $100 billion a year). Also, I only looked at 2013 (assuming a universe in which his tax plan goes into effect immediately), so the effect of his increased defense spending isn’t included.
Calouste
@liberal:
He is in his 60s and probably fed up with doing actual work in Congress so now he is positioning himself for a lobbying career.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@catclub:
When times are tough and ordinary household have to give up their numerals and get by with family budgets that have no numbers in them, why should the government be any different? Innumeracy is just another word for cutting back on the consumption of luxuries we can live without. I think President Obama should set a personal example for the nation and cut back his use of numbers by 50%. He could start by only using the numbers 1,2,3,7 and 8. The other numbers can be stored in the Strategic Numeral Reserve, for later use during a more prudent Republican administration.
Next up: The Alphabet. Do we really need all of those letters? Especially the whiny ones? Think how much faster, cheaper and more effective our educational system would become if we only had 10 letters rather than 26.
S. cerevisiae
@liberal: I’m in Oregon and I sent Wyden a strong but polite e-mail asking basically “WTF”. I got a fairly long reply back basically saying “relax, it’s all good nothing is going away”. I think Ryan is playing him.
eemom
@Lev:
Is the district seriously competitive?
jl
@Zach:
The average voter remember who proposed what and who voted on what from last year? I don’t think so.
The fact that an official GOP group puts their garbage down on paper, and creates a big debate, and (I hope) can be recorded as voting for killing old people (as part of their GOPWoA) during campaign season is very important for the election.
I cannot believe they would be this insane, but looks like they are. I guess they are counting on Politifact and mass media hacks to confuse things enough, but I doubt it will work. They have their 27 percent and are mistaken if they think a large part of any race, age, or ethnicity from the rest of the population, will be as easily duped.
The Other Chuck
@dmsilev:
I suspect 7 percent of those polled feel like fucking around with polls or just don’t listen to the question. I’ve been push-polled once, and I also answered “more likely”.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@dmsilev:
Or perhaps 7 percent don’t understand that the dog was inside the kennel at the time said kennel was roof-strapped, because the alternative is so out-there it never even occurred to the person being polled that he might have done something like that.
jl
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Think about it, the GOP hijacked innocent numbers and numerals and slapped them on a dishonest innumerate lying POS document. That is depraved.
What about the numbers? Think about the innocent numbers that have been debauched!
jl
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I don’t know. Some of that 7 percent might be particularly ruthless and vindictive cat people.
trollhattan
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
One way to tell: watch for respondents who dig out a pad and pencil to write, “Remember to put kennel on roof next trip.”
Some portion of the population will think it’s a Great Idea.
Zach
@jl: “The average voter remember who proposed what and who voted on what from last year? I don’t think so.”
The average voter doesn’t know about Ryan’s plan today, either. They’ll learn about it in campaign ads. A campaign ad against a vulnerable GOP Rep could just as easily reference last year’s vote as this year’s plan (and vote, if they even vote on it). I maybe can imagine an ad that goes something like: “In 2011, John Doe went to Congress and voted to end Medicare and to take thousands of dollars a year in healthcare from poor children in order to give rich people like himself hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in tax cuts. The people of Anywherville called Mr. Doe and told him this was wrong. [quote phone calls to his office] In 2012, John Doe got another chance. What’d he do? The same thing. Keep John Doe out of Washington.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@jl:
[shudder]
Then it is only a matter of time before we get to this:
Police Officer: Ma’am, once again, just for the record, why did you murder the postman, cut his body up into very small pieces, and bury them all underneath the foundations of your house, sealed inside tuna fish cans?
Crazy Cat Lady: Because Mr. Fluffykins told me to.
Anoniminous
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Th frst thng t d s gt rd f vwls. W’d sv bndl!!!!!!!!!
scav
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: You only really worry when Mr. Fluffykins starts talking to her through her teeth. Those are the sort that will vote for DogOnRoof as the entire political platform.
David Koch
Fuck the poor – Ron Paul 2012!
rikyrah
I wish you had put ‘ serious’ in quotation marks.
Paul Ryan is a ‘ serious’ fellow, you know.
Elizabelle
@Zach:
NYTimes:
Here’s link to DCCC site, with list of 41 targeted Republicans (among them Paul Ryan, Mary Bono Mack, Steve King) from California, Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado and a few other states.
http://dccc.org/blog/entry/medicare_march_dccc_launches_campaign_in_41_republican_districts_for_choosi/
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@mdblanche:
They hate us for our freedoms…