Paul Ryan Deserves a Thumping -- and Gets One. So What?

"I've got the dog whistles for my district and party. I'm a lock. The shit I can pull now!"

Paul Ryan's latest "Path to Prosperity" federal budget is always a fun sign post on the road to slashing and burning the welfare state -- the actual agenda of the "help the poor by denying them money" set. There's nothing like the annual unveiling to remind people that whatever Ryan might whistle in the wind, he's humming the same tune past the graveyard.

If Paul Ryan had his way, we'd all be on our own with no safety net, no "hammock." This puts him deep in the pocket of the Koch brothers and other admirers of the unfettered road to wealth acquisition and expansion, through inheritance or, in Ryan's case, a Social Security-funded education. (But that wasn't a safety net!) And really, what would Ryan want to find in the pockets of the Koch brothers? Could it be what all politicians are constantly hustling?

I'll let Michael Tomasky give Paul Ryan the thumping he deserves for his brazen attempt to be for poor people before he was against them:

Remember how last year Ryan was reinventing himself as the true friend of “the poors,” as we ironically say in liberal blogland? Aside from being stunned that all those skewed polls turned out to be exactly on the money and he and Mitt Romney lost, he was also, we were told, chagrined and maddened that he came away from the 2012 campaign with a reputation as a pitiless Randian with a hole where his heart used to be.

So he set out last year to prove us all wrong. He hired a disaffected ex-Democratic wonk as his top social-policy guy. He was getting the great press you’d expect out of Politico, which loves Republicans Who Confound Liberals (“The new Paul Ryan,” last December 10; “Is Paul Ryan the GOP’s Next Jack Kemp?”, December 12; someone was asleep at the wheel on December 11 I guess). America would soon see the revealed truth: Government keeps poor people poor, bleeds them of the pluck and spunk needed to liberate oneself from the dependent-American community. St. Paul would save them.

Then came the CPAC conference a month ago, and he tells one little story, about the kid who didn’t want a free lunch, just a normal brown bag like the other kids, and he gets it wrong, and the real and true version of the story doesn’t remotely prove the point he wants it to prove in his retelling, and he gets hammered over it for days, and boom, he throws in the poverty towel. To blazes with those poors. Kicking them was pretty fun after all.

Funny thing is that Paul Ryan's dog whistle -- poor people are lazy blacks -- plays well in his bailiwick, so he'll keep blowing it. Stupid as it might sound, can you say Speaker Ryan? I bet the House can. Hope not, but it's not like they have a deep bench.

Note. Could someone please tell me something Paul Ryan HAS ACTUALLY DONE? Didn't think so.

Update. Yahoo! features an AP story of the House Budget Committee's passage of the Ryan budget, pointing out that the GOP can use it to "polish their budget-cutting credentials." Neat trick, and I do emphasize trick:

Ryan's plan would wrestle the government's chronic deficits under control after a decade, relying on deep cuts to Medicaid, highway construction, federal employee pension benefits, food and heating aid to the poor, and Pell Grants for college students from low-income families. It would eliminate health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act while assuming the government keeps $1 trillion worth of Obamacare's tax increases, and retains a 10-year, $700 billion cut to Medicare that Democrats drove through in 2010 when passing the health care law.

See that there? Ryan slashes aid to the poor -- whom he spent weeks pretending to care about -- and repeals all of Obamacare except for the tax increases and Medicare cuts contained in the law. So he "polishes [the GOP's] budget-cutting credentials" with pure smoke and mirrors. It's like he's not even trying to be honest. Oh wait. When has he actually been honest?

To his credit, he's probably being honest about his contempt for the poor, so let's let him have that. But other than that, WHAT HAS HE EVER ACTUALLY DONE? And don't tell me get the nomination for vice-president. I'm a retired high-school teacher who could easily figure out a way to run for something and lose. I suppose, though, it takes talent to run for something really big and lose, but I'm just saying it's not an accomplishment. Being a high mucky-muck is one thing, doing something with it is another. God, is he annoying...