April 13, 2018: Down Goes Ryan!, Down Goes Ryan! Down Goes Ryan!

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.

August 1, 2012: The Thrill is Gone, Purging of Moderates,

“The thrill is gone

The thrill is gone away

The thrill is gone baby

The thrill is gone away

You know you done me wrong baby

Gonna be sorry someday”        ----B. B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1)

Since the good people of this country have elected grid lock over progress the know-nothing, no-nothing Congress has managed to pass a mere 80 bills in the last session, the lowest on record.  Accordingly the Congress now has an approval rating now in single digits, lowest on record. Richard Nixon upon leaving office, Paris Hilton, used car salesman, all have higher ratings as this congress continues to ignore the problems facing the country as it votes now for the 31^st or 33 time (depending on the count) to repeal ObamaCare.  Today, as over half the counties in the entire United States are now declared disaster areas—mostly due to the drought—Congress went on recess to get back to the urgent business of getting their individual and collective backsides re-elected but not before tabling indefinitely the farm relief bill.

Such is the state of political life in these here United States.  The purging of “moderates” from the Rescumlican party continues unabated as the likes of Richard Lugar of Indiana are eliminated in primary challenges by the idiot wrong.  Today a clown named Cruz defeated Rick Perry’s lieutenant governor in the Texas Senate primary in a contest to succeed the retiring Senator Hutchinson.  Cruz won the race with heavy backing by the so-called “Club for Growth’ and other right-wing operatives and by openly accusing his opponent of the sin of moderation.  So far wrong has the base of the Rescumlican party drifted that they now have abandoned their attacks on liberals and are now vilifying moderates.  What is now emerging are a new class of would be freshman senators who openly ridicule and deride the very idea of compromise.  It’s now our way or the highway and the mischief th to the political and economic order are too frightening to contemplate.  If elected and if this wrong-ward drift continues to find validation at the poles, what will happen the next time the debt ceiling is reached?  Will we default on our obligations?  Already Moody’s has lowered the credit rating of the nation the last time the idiot wrong engaged in such economic brinksmanship.  What will happen to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, housing assistance, food stamps, education funding, highway bills, farm supports, etc.?  

The thrill is gone.  Gone are the day when Obama could campaign on hope and change, for, alas, the nation has seen hope and change dashed on the rocks of Rescumlican obstructionism.  Instead we are now facing a campaign based on fear.  Romney and his Rescumlicans will do what the Scums have always done: wage a campaign based on divide and rule, label the President the resident Alien, raise fears about the future, and intimidate and restrict access to the polls.  Obama and the Democrats are left with no alternatives now except to raise fear about the prospect of the king-hell Vulcher himself presiding from the oval office as we watch the operatives of Wall Street finish the job of picking our pockets clean.      

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(1) www.lyrics.com/thrill-is-gone-lyrics-b.b.king.html