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Pierce writes: "Here's the thing, kids. Paul Ryan wants to end Medicare. Period. He has a philosophical objection to it. He doesn't think it's the government's job. However, he can't go for an up-or-down vote on this because he would lose about eleventy-bajillion-to-one. So, he's put together a plan to let Medicare 'die on the vine,' the strategy proposed by current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich so pithily back in 1995."

Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and other conservatives have long favored replacing the current healthcare system, 10/18/11. (photo: Riccardo S. Savi/WireImage)
Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and other conservatives have long favored replacing the current healthcare system, 10/18/11. (photo: Riccardo S. Savi/WireImage)



Lyin' Paul Ryan and the End of Medicare

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire Magazine

12 December 11

 

ombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is having a tough year. First, he comes out with a plan to "reform" Medicare in the same way that an iceberg once "reformed" the White Star shipping line. Many people including (at the time) Newt Gingrich laughed at his mighty brain. (Why do they all laugh at my mighty brain?) Then bad things happened to some people who thought Paul Ryan had a good idea. Then, everyone in the world who could work an abacus looked at his plan and noticed that, yes, the plan added up to an actual elimination of Medicare even though Ryan planned to spray-paint "Medicare" on an old railroad bridge in Janesville and point to it and say, "See? Medicare is still there." People came to his town halls to talk it over with him, and so many were so eager to talk to him about it that he felt obligated to charge them for the privilege. People who couldn't afford the tickets thought they'd drop by his district office to chat. He wasn't there, but he made sure the cops were.

Here's the thing, kids. Paul Ryan wants to end Medicare. Period. He has a philosophical objection to it. He doesn't think it's the government's job. However, he can't go for an up-or-down vote on this because he would lose about eleventy-bajillion-to-one. So, he's put together a plan to let Medicare "die on the vine," the strategy proposed by current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich so pithily back in 1995. (I don't think Newt's objection was so much philosophical as it is political. Medicare is a political boon for the Democratic party so Newt wants it destroyed.) Those people who like to talk about Paul Ryan's "bold solutions" to the Medicare situation, and his "courage" in "taking them on" should look back at what Gingrich tried to do and realize that Ryan's big ideas are the same moth-eaten ones the Republicans have been peddling for 20 years.

Luckily for our hero, though, here came PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-garlanded self-appointed arbiter of honesty in our politics. It has nominated Democratic criticism of Paul Ryan's plan to eliminate Medicare for its "Lie of The Year" for saying that Paul Ryan doesn't want to eliminate Medicare but simply change it. You can go through PolitiFact's case yourselves to see just what suckers they're being. (For example, a great deal of their argument in calling the criticism a "lie" depends on Ryan's contention that his magic Randian conjuring word "competition" will magically ensure that the health-insurance companies behave themselves in the future like good corporate citizens, and not like the greedy, grasping, price-gouging, price-fixing passel of wild hyenas that we all know them to be.) As part of their year-end festivities, PolitiFact has asked its readers to vote on what should be named Lie Of The Year and bold, brave Paul Ryan is asking his flying monkeys to freep the PolitiFact poll.

It's hard to imagine anything more pathetic than trying to rig an online poll so that you'll have some little bronze medal awarded to you by a bunch of professional rubes to wave around next fall when whoever's running against you makes an issue of the fact that you want to destroy Medicare. And, it forces the blog to bring out (again) its official Paul Ryan correspondent, Doyle Lonergan ...

Ye're not just a cheat, ye're a gutless cheat as well.

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