The Blecchh of the Irish

by Rich Miles

UPDATE: See at bottom of this post for info on Ryan's legislative record over 13 years in Congress.
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UPDATE #2 - This guy has attracted all sorts of negative attention in no time at all. In order to save time on him, take a look at The Paul Ryan Reading Guide: The Best Reporting on the Republican VP Candidate, and then share that link with the whole rest of the left-leaning world. And maybe even a few righties as well. Seriously, Ryan is proving to be every bit as much an a-hole as I thought Mittens was.  Mitt is nothing like as virulent as his running mate.

You know, they keep mentioning that Mitt is still the "presumptive" candidate for the Repugnicans - but he'd better watch his ass, because Ryan is MUCH more of a right-wing loony than Mittens. They might decide they like Ryan much more than Mittens. Can they do that?
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Update #3 - Words of Power Here is a most amusing, but also cogent essay on Ryan that I thought you might find informative. If you are much in the future, look for the Saturday August 11, 2012 entry.
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 Here is the original post:
 The Irish are known as a race with much compassion for the less fortunate in the world. In fact, if you websearch "most famous Irish-Americans" or simply "Notable Irish persons", you'll get more hits than you can handle, and lots of them will be philanthropists, or people who did philanthropic things in their chosen professions. In general, they're good people, and I suspect a large portion of this is because they were so sorely and cruelly persecuted in centuries past. Those tales are history, and are as easily websearched as their notable compatriots.

But then, along comes a feller named Paul Ryan. Among other things, he disgraces the whole concept of being Irish. I mean to say, the man is toxic!!

Let's go back to the start of his life, and see how his hypocrisy has carried over to the present day: Paul's father, Paul Sr., died when Paul was 16. A sad fact for any young man. But THIS young man received Social Security benefits as a surviving child, and used that money to live on, and later to go to college - thus surviving a tough time in his life because of government bennies.

But today, about 26 years beyond that time, Paul Jr. has decided to make it his life's work to dismantle Social Security so that no one else can benefit as he did. He hasn't managed it yet, but he has stated repeatedly that it's what he wants to do, and the famous Ryan Budget says so, too. Hell, it's part of the reason he was selected as the Mittens' running mate.

(BTW, speaking of his father's death, there seems to be a family trend afoot there - Paul's great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all died of cardiac disease in their 40's and 50's. Medicine is better today, and Paul gets the excellent benefits that go with being a congressdog, but is this a medical history we want a heartbeat away from the preznitcy? Normally, I would consider this a private matter, but "normally" and "running for VP" do not go together.)

Add to this the fact that Ryan has repeatedly expressed his desire to dismantle Medicare, and one sees an ideal Ryan futuretopia with dead old and poor people lying in the streets because they couldn't get or afford adequate medical care.

And he wants more tax cuts for the wealthy, and tax INCREASES for the middle class (read: anyone making under $250K)

He wants to cut veterans' benefits. He wants to cut Pell Grants, and food stamps, and probably every other program that actually helps PEOPLE, instead of corporations.

He wants to increase military spending, even as two wars are being wound down under Pres. Obama. BTW, military spending is the single largest contributor to our indescribable multi-trillion-dollar national debt. More than medical malpractice suits (HA!!), more than Medicare/Medicaid, more than Social Security, and so on and so forth. And who started the longest and most expensive war in the nation's history? REPUBLICAN George W. Bush, who you may notice no one is mentioning or consulting on the right. And DAMN sure not on the left!

 Let me just state upfront that I recognize that our country is in a helluva fiscal mess. I have pointed out before, and I will do so again, that I think the Repugs did this on purpose - made the fiscal mess we're in now - so as to make the Democrats look bad when they got elected, as they were, to fix the problem. And the Repugs have done their best to block everything the Democrats have done to try to fix it. The term "obstructionist Republicans" is not only true, it's redundant!

I say, try every Republican holder of public office on charges of treason - but only in courts presided over by genuinely non-partisan judges. There are probably 3 or 4 such courts somewhere in America!

But in any case, Paul Ryan is a disgrace to the Irish, and to America. And as soon as the aged among us hear the word "voucher" and the word "Medicare" in the same sentence, there may just be an uprising.

UPDATE: Just now on "60 Minutes" Romoney referred to Ryan as a "real leader". Given that Ryan does have some expertise in the budget process, he has been in Congress for 13 YEARS, and had authored TWO bills - one a renaming of a post office, the other a tax bill adding some 15 cents to the cost of an archery arrow. In 13 YEARS!

Is this the record of a "real leader"??