Paul Ryan Checks Out
and he's supposedly a good Catholic. His school must have studied a different catechism than mine did.
One cannot be a follower of Ayn Rand and Jesus Christ. Either of them would consider Ryan to be a fool, but Rand would be nasty about it.
Ryan is no different from Ayn Rand in accepting government money.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/12/how-donald-trump-upended-paul-ryans-plans-217989
This was “Paul’s deal with the devil,” a phrase used by several of the speaker’s confidants in the days following Trump’s shocking triumph. Reince Priebus, his old friend and the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had told Ryan on Election Day that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency, and Ryan was prepared to give a speech soon afterward divorcing himself—and the party—from Trump once and for all. Instead, the speaker found himself staring down a Faustian bargain. Republicans had seized total control of Washington. And he might, over the next two years, have a chance to pursue the legislation of his dreams: repealing Obamacare, rewriting the tax code, reforming entitlement programs and rebuilding the military. But it would be possible only if he partnered with the very man whose offenses were so manifest that Ryan disinvited him from his own Wisconsin congressional district a month before the election.
one of the things that bugs me about the pundits is that they can't do things like bring themselves to point out what a thoroughly terrible person Paul Ryan is. All this analysis, and they just skip over that elephant in the room and act like he's some kind of virtuous person who just got caught in tough circumstances.
he got what he deserved. he's never been a person of principle. he's always been a dishonest fraud, pursuing a distinctly cruel set of policies.
ml1 said:
one of the things that bugs me about the pundits is that they can't do things like bring themselves to point out what a thoroughly terrible person Paul Ryan is. All this analysis, and they just skip over that elephant in the room and act like he's some kind of virtuous person who just got caught in tough circumstances. he got what he deserved. he's never been a person of principle. he's always been a dishonest fraud, pursuing a distinctly cruel set of policies.
Agreed. They love calling him a "policy wonk" even though he completely failed at nearly every significant policy he tried to implement. And he spent far more time attacking Obama than trying to work with him.
his "policies" failed the most basic tests of arithmetic. How anyone could have fallen for his fiscal plans that relied on magical thinking is beyond me. The laziness of political writers, and their obsessive desire to seem "centrist" is a big part of what is ailing our political process.
LOST said:
One cannot be a follower of Ayn Rand and Jesus Christ. Either of them would consider Ryan to be a fool, but Rand would be nasty about it.
Commentator on Ryan from a couple of years ago -
"I recoiled when I learned that Ryan had encouraged his staff to read Ayn Rand. I am sure that Ryan is a smart man but reading Ayn Rand is not a smart use of one’s time. It is precisely the kind of thing the extremists like about him. Ryan has tried to distance himself from Rand, but he has been clumsy about it. Like many libertarian Catholics, he says he accepts Rand’s ideas about the economy, but rejects her underlying anthropology and, specifically, her virulent anti-religious sensibilities. The problem is, of course, is that divorcing core ideas about the human person from the economic ideas that are derived therefrom is easier said than done. And, if Ryan truly has abandoned Rand and embraced Aquinas, can he point to a single instance of how such a seismic shift in philosophic approach has altered a particular policy?"
ml1 said:
mfpark said:thinking a program is not helpful certainly doesn't mean a person should refuse to benefit from it. But you might think the reverse might have happened with someone like Ryan -- his lifelong dependence on programs like Social Security, a government paycheck and a government pension would bring him around to understanding their value. But nope. A pretty good indication of the emptiness of Paul Ryan's soul.
Saw this on Facebook: In two years, at age 50, Ryan will start receiving $79,000 a year for life in defined benefit retirement payments. Funded by the same taxpayers whose Social Security he has been trying to cut or privatize his entire career.
Rand and Wendell Wilkie both accepted Social Security.
if you think a policy is wrong, you're under no obligation to refuse its benefits. However, you'd think a guy like Ryan would have enough humanity to understand how much other people would benefit from the system that helped him get a leg up. But of course he doesn't likely have a soul or an ounce of humanity, so he doesn't.
The obvious answer is that he truly has not "abandoned Rand and embraced Aquinas." He's got Randian selfishness deep in his bones, and he'll seamlessly pivot from "we have to slash entitlements because they're takers" to "we have to slash entitlements because people have become dependent on them, poor dears."
The axis he revolves around is making the rich richer and the poor poorer; all that changes is the rationale. And he never, ever will have to explain the magic asterisk.
tjohn said:
Maybe as his kids grow up, it is becoming too difficult to explain that he is a spineless, unprincipled whore.
They already know that, like trump's monsters.
That is just what he says. Mere words. He does not beleive it. Neither should you. You haven't figure out the gop use religion to fool.
Hell, trump won the bible belt
ml1 said:
and he's supposedly a good Catholic. His school must have studied a different catechism than mine did.
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thinking a program is not helpful certainly doesn't mean a person should refuse to benefit from it. But you might think the reverse might have happened with someone like Ryan -- his lifelong dependence on programs like Social Security, a government paycheck and a government pension would bring him around to understanding their value. But nope. A pretty good indication of the emptiness of Paul Ryan's soul.