Reminds me of: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Hey girl, let's get hella crazy tonight and sneak caffeine into Mitt's water bottle!</p>— Paul Ryan Gosling (@PaulRyanGosling) <a href="https://twitter.com/PaulRyanGosling/status/235446243030073344" data-datetime="2012-08-14T18:42:13+00:00">August 14, 2012</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I applaud Ryan for bringing forth the issue of government entitlement obligations. It is an issue that is now hitting quite a few American municipalities, some of which are filing for bankruptcy. However, his plan (to me) is to make good on these obligations for the next 25 or so years and then drastically cut back. Why? The biggest rise in healtchare cost in this decade will be a demand oriented rise caused by baby-boomer retirement. The year 1957 was the peak year of the baby-boomer births, and those peakers will turn 65 in 2022. According to current Social Security Administration figures, at that time in 2022, those peakers will have a 18 year life expectancy - in other words they are expected to live to 86. I would say somewhere between 2022 and 2040, the rise in healthcare cost due to baby-boomer retirement will peak - peaking with the peakers. Costs of course will continue to rise but will do so at a decreasing rate...and could come down all together if facilities are fully staffed with enough doctors and enough nurses for us all...parhaps. I think Ryan is trying to use a theoritical peak in healthcare costs in that time frame as a basis to "reduce benefits", i.e. lower taxes. I'm sure Romney did not chose Ryan to be to him as Paul O'Neill was to Bush, George W.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/opinion/ayn-rand-wouldnt-approve-of-paul-ryan.html?_r=1 Atlas Spurned By JENNIFER BURNS EARLY in his Congressional career, Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin representative and presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee, would give out copies of Ayn Rand’s book “Atlas Shrugged” as Christmas presents. He described the novelist of heroic capitalism as “the reason I got into public service.” But what would Rand think of Mr. Ryan? While Rand, an atheist, did enjoy a good Christmas celebration for its cheerful commercialism, she would have scoffed at the idea of public service. And though Mr. Ryan’s advocacy of steep cuts in government spending would have pleased her, she would have vehemently opposed his social conservatism and hawkish foreign policy. She would have denounced Mr. Ryan as she denounced Ronald Reagan, for trying “to take us back to the Middle Ages, via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.” Mr. Ryan’s youthful, feverish embrace of Rand and his clumsy attempts to distance himself from her is more than the flip-flopping of an ambitious politician: it is a window into the ideological fissures at the heart of modern conservatism. Rand’s atheism and social libertarianism have long placed her in an uneasy position in the pantheon of conservative heroes, but she has proved irresistible to those who came of age in the baby boom and after. They found her iconoclasm thrilling, and her admirers poured into Barry M. Goldwater’s doomed 1964 presidential campaign, the Libertarian Party and the Cato Institute. After her death, in 1982, it became even easier for her admirers to ignore the parts of her message they didn’t like and focus on her advocacy of unfettered capitalism and her celebration of the individual. Mr. Ryan is particularly taken by Rand’s black-and-white worldview. “The fight we are in here,” he once told a group of her adherents, “is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” If she were alive, he said, Rand would do “a great job in showing us just how wrong what government is doing is.” Rand’s anti-government argument rested on another binary opposition, between “producers” who create wealth and “moochers” who feed off them. This theme has endeared Rand, and Mr. Ryan, to the Tea Party, whose members believe they are the only ones who deserve government aid. Yet when his embrace of Rand drew fire from Catholic leaders, Mr. Ryan reversed course with a speed that would make his running mate, Mitt Romney, proud. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he told National Review earlier this year. “Give me Thomas Aquinas.” He claimed that his austere budget was motivated by the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which holds that issues should be handled at the most local level possible, rather than Rand’s anti-government views. This retreat to religion would have infuriated Rand, who believed it was impossible to separate government policies from their moral and philosophical underpinnings. Policies motivated by Christian values, which she called “the best kindergarten of communism possible,” were inherently corrupt. Free-market capitalism, she said, needed a new, secular morality of selfishness, one she promoted in her novels, nonfiction and newsletters. Conservative contemporaries would have none of it: William F. Buckley Jr. criticized her “desiccated philosophy” and Whittaker Chambers dubbed her “Big Sister.” Mr. Ryan’s rise is a telling index of how far conservatism has evolved from its founding principles. The creators of the movement embraced the free market, but shied from Rand’s promotion of capitalism as a moral system. They emphasized the practical benefits of capitalism, not its ethics. Their fidelity to Christianity grew into a staunch social conservatism that Rand fought against in vain. Mr. Ryan has attempted a similar pirouette, but it is too late: driven by the fever of the Tea Party and drawing upon a wellspring of enthusiasm for Rand, politicians like Mr. Ryan have set the philosophy of “Atlas Shrugged” at the core of modern Republicanism. In so doing, modern conservatives ignore the fundamental principles that animated Rand: personal as well as economic freedom. Her philosophy sprang from her deep belief in the autonomy and independence of each individual. This meant that individuals could not depend on government for retirement savings or medical care. But it also meant that individuals must be free from government interference in their personal lives. Years before Roe v. Wade, Rand called abortion “a moral right which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved.” She condemned the military draft and American involvement in Vietnam. She warned against recreational drugs but thought government had no right to ban them. These aspects of Rand do not fit with a political view that weds fiscal and social conservatism. Mr. Ryan’s selection as Mr. Romney’s running mate is the kind of stinging rebuke of the welfare state that Rand hoped to see during her lifetime. But Mr. Ryan is also what she called “a conservative in the worst sense of the word.” As a woman in a man’s world, a Jewish atheist in a country dominated by Christianity and a refugee from a totalitarian state, Rand knew it was not enough to promote individual freedom in the economic realm alone. If Mr. Ryan becomes the next vice president, it wouldn’t be her dream come true, but her nightmare. Jennifer Burns, an assistant professor of history at Stanford, is the author of “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.”
Ryan to campaign in Florida on Saturday using his mother as a shield Paul Ryan will campaign in Florida's largest retirement community on Saturday with his 80-year-old mother at his side, ABC News reports. Ryan did not accompany Mitt Romney to Florida during his bus tour, fueling speculation that Ryan was actually a liability to the campaign in the state with a large population of seniors because of his Medicare plan.
For being so awesome, he sure does have some crappy memory. Talking against the stimulus plan but requesting money. LOL
Just want to say, without getting into any kind of debate, if you're looking for a great biography of Ayn Rand and a thorough explanation her ideas, you should look to this one. It is completely neutral*, well-written, informative and interesting. *I was shocked at how even-handed this book is. Jennifer Burns should teach a course on objective jounalism.
I think Ryan can be against the stimulus, but still ask for money if it is going to pass without being inconsistent. Being against the stimulus means Ryan doesn't think the government should tax people, including his constituents, in order to pass that money along to other people. Asking for a piece of the stimulus means that if it is going to pass over his objection, then he wants some of that money to benefit his constituents.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2Aewj_IndN4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Ryan is what Obama fancies himself to be, an intellect
No he did not. Paul Ryan doesn't have an IQ of 150. He is not an intellect. He instead pursues subjects requiring thinking. = intellectual. Any academic is an intellectual. But Einstein was an intellect. Huge difference.
i have never posted on the forum correcting anyone's grammar because i don't give a certain 4 letter word about that stuff. The point is that Ryan is not the smart guy republicans make him out to be. Maybe he's smarter than most of them, but his thinking is so flawed and has so many holes in it that he really is more of a rube. Policy wonk? Hardly. He his medicare plan would lead to insolvency in 4 years and he doesn't even understand why. This is a guy who hasn't had a single accomplishment related to intelligence. What has he done? Named a post office? Drove an weiner truck? Took an extreme fitness program? What book has he written. What paper has he authored? What contribution to society or to the general knowledge of humanity has he made beyond writing a crappy budget? He doesn't have a graduate degree, just an undergrad in econ! He has never studied anything in depth, he's never really shown himself to be anything remarkable in his career but he is branded as a genius by you guys because your bar is so low its actually quite pathetic. I mean, this is the party that denies climate change, evolution, biology, scoffs at people with PhDs. Intellects can back up their IQ. This guy is a phony.
For the supposed crown jewel of the Republican party he sure hasn't accomplished anything in his career in politics. He hasn't accomplished anything in the private sector either... Other than being a serial flip flopping hypocrite, with a bachelors degree in economics and an odd fixation with Rand, we really nothing about him. Then again, the Republican the last 6-7 years love running out the empty suit, from Palin to Bobby J, to Herman C to Ryan.
He read the Fountainhead - by Republican standards these days that makes him more well-read than 90% of their base. Sadly I am probably making an understatement.
so he asked for money that was collected from tax payers around the country to benefit other people (ie his constituents)? saying/thinking and not doing = inconsistent/lying
