The Paul Ryan All Stars

Paul Ryan is battling Scott Walker for who can get in front a camera quicker. Unfortunately, while he is all over the news, the news has not been all over him. They have even called him “courageous”. Let’s take a look at a few people who have actually pointed out how foolish ryan actually is.

First we lead off with former Reagan budget director David Stockman:

It doesn’t address in any serious or courageous way the issue of the near and medium-term deficit. I think the biggest problem is revenues. It is simply unrealistic to say that raising revenue isn’t part of the solution. It’s a measure of how far off the deep end Republicans have gone with this religious catechism about taxes.

Batting second we have Paul Krugman of the NY Times:

Anyway, no, I don’t think the plan goes too far. I think it’s disingenuous and fraudulent. And the reason I think that is that I have actually done the math.

Batting third
is political prognosticator Bill Maher:

It irks me to no end that people keep calling him ‘courageous,’ the way the media never really looks into anything very deeply, they hear a buzzword, like ‘courageous’ attached to Paul Ryan, and now it’s conventional wisdom that Paul Ryan is courageous. Really? Courageous would have been going after defense and farm subsidies and corporations and rich people. His budget doesn’t do any of that, it goes after children, the poor, the jobless, the people who had the least and could least defend themselves, who had no lobbyists, this is courageous? This is picking on the weakest, smallest kid on the playground and getting called courageous for it.

Batting clean up is Wisconsin\'s own John Nichols. Nichols story is exceptionally important in popping the ryan love bubble. He tried to pretend to pass a “tea party” type budget bill that included cuts to sweeping government programs WITHOUT passing that money on to his corporate masters. Well he got played by the democrat members of the house who refused to play his game and the “tea party” budget almost passed. Paul Ryan(R-Wall St) proved who he represents when, as Nichols pointed out, ryan paniced when the vote was taken:

When it was clear there were enough Republican votes to block the bill—at a point where 120 GOP members have voted “no” to 119 who had voted “yes”—Ryan started screaming to the presiding officer: “Shut it down!”

Suddenly Paul Ryan became Big Brother.

The Budget Committee chair was desperate to close the vote before any more Democrats could switch from “no” votes to those declarations of “present.” (Sixteen Democrats were finally record as voting “no.” If just two of them had cast mischievous “yes” votes while the rest switched to present, the Republicans would have been stuck with a plan that made drastic cuts to government programs, but that did not so smoothly implement Ryan’s scheme for a further redistribution of the wealth upward.)

Next up is the father of the true \"tea party\" Ron Paul:

He said the budgets proposed by Rep. Ryan and President Obama wouldn’t put Washington on a path to limited government.

“Neither of those budgets will solve our problems, or even come close,” Paul said.

Next up is
The non partisan congressional budget office. They said the $8000 voucher, in lieu of Medicare is great, but what do the people do from February 14th through the rest of the year?

Followed by economist Dean Baker. who points out:

CBO projects that Ryan’s plan will add $30 trillion (that’s trillion with a “T,” as the budget hawks always say) to the country’s health care bill due to the fact that private insurers are less efficient in providing health care than the Medicare system. (in case you are wondering, $30 trillion equals $100,000 for every man, woman and child in America right now).

Then we have President Obama speaking truth to power on ryan\'s hypocrisy and insincerity.

“Eliminating the health care bill would cost us $1 trillion dollars,” the president said. “It would add $1 trillion to the deficit. So when Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he’s just being America’s accountant and trying to you know be responsible, this is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill — but wasn’t paid for. So it’s not on the level. And we’ve got to keep on you know, keep on shining a light on that.”

Finally the damage that Ryan has done to the 1st congressional district has not gone unnoticed. Local Businessman and county supervisor Rob Zerban has declared his candidacy against ryan for the 2012 election. Zerban has also started a new website:hands off my grandma.com.

Captain Courageous is really Mr. Outrageous!