Yesterday
House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he will not be seeking
re-election to the House. The Speaker is, at the end of this
congressional session, stepping down.
His
announcement proved a bit awkward. Saying that his children, all now
in their teens, are now at an age when they don't want to spend a lot
of time with their father, Ryan nevertheless stated a compelling need
to spend time with his family. A politician never leaves office for
quality family time, and Ryan looked perfectly ridiculous in
posturing like a concerned and caring parent.
Indeed,
there are several much more compelling reasons for his impending
departure.
First,
he can cash in. He has already somehow parlayed a rather modest
congressional stipend into a minor fortune, but with the withdrawal
from this year's race he can pocket the campaign contributions
already given him—including a cool half a million dollars from the
Koch (Crotch) brothers. Moreover, one will find come next spring our
now departed congressional leader not home with family in Madison
Wisconsin but flying to and fro, from Wisconsin to Washington, as a
newly minted corporate whore lobbying his former colleagues.
But
perhaps the most compelling reason he is 'retiring' from the most
powerful office in Congress is that he is looking down the barrel of
not only his party losing its majority in the upcoming Democratic
tidal wave, but losing his own seat in the tsunami. The Scums are
scurrying about the decks like rats jumping ship as more than a score
of congressmen have already announced their need to find a new
career. Suffering staggering loses in deep red territory in Alabama
and Pennsylvania and following the loss of a State wide Supreme Court
election in Ryan's own Wisconsin, Ryan could finally read the writing
on the wall. It is the first word to be carved into his
consciousness since the halcyon college days spent masturbating to
the lurid pornography of Ayn Rand. Exit, stage wrong.
Ryan,
like his hero Rand, has always been a fraud. His 'best' days in the
House were spent as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee,
responsible for spending bills and budgeting. Here he would
regularly crank out rank nonsense in which draconian budget cuts and
huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans would somehow produce
budget surplus. Never mind that these 'surpluses' were always to
magically appear some distance out—often a decade or more. The
fact is that these 'Budgets' were always nothing more than window
dressing for greed. Nevertheless the press fell for it, presenting
Ryan as some kind of policy 'guru', a policy 'wonk' that some held to
be the most knowledgeable man on the hill. It was, and remains
complete nonsense.
With
the departure of John Baehner (pronounced Boner) as Rescumlican House
Speaker late in 2015, Ryan was thrust into the Speaker's chair in the
hope of marshaling the contentious and raucous Rescumlican caucus
into some kind of governing, if not entirely rational, contingent.
In this, he has largely failed.
He
had railed against the Democrats for years about deficit spending.
Ever the deficit-hawk, he parlayed his 'concerns' about deficits and
the growing national debt into a movement to savage the welfare state
as well as programs that support the now dwindling middle class.
Citing the need to balance the budget, Ryan led efforts to repeal
ObamaCare, savage regulations on banking, cut spending on social
programs, roll back environmental protections. Then when his party
came to power, taking control of the White House, Ryan delivered his
greatest act of vandalism, the tax cut of 2017, a law in which—within
a decade—a full 82% of the benefits will go to the top 1%,
producing huge deficits (a trillion dollars a year by 2020). The
political prostitute had turned his tricks for his corporate johns.
When
it came time to exercise real leadership—for it takes no courage
and indeed takes little effort to cut taxes on the wealthiest among
us—Ryan fails the test. Where was he when tRUMP insulted women,
minorities, working people, the press, the FBI, the intelligence
agencies? Where was the push-back when Disgustus came to the defense
of American Nazi's? Not only did he remain silent, but put in place
and supported Devin Nunez' wholly transparent efforts to not only
place a fig leaf over the private parts of Caesar Disgustus but to
sabotage the ongoing investigations. When the history of this period
is written Ryan will be viewed as a lick-spittle apologist and
enabler of the greatest vandal ever to walk across the national
political stage. That is Ryan's legacy, and it is no profile in
courage. Ryan is, in fact, a profile in cowardice.
Nevertheless,
I fear we haven't hear the last of our little Eddie Munster.
“An'
Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”
Impeach
and Imprison.
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