Paul Ryan and Why You're a Sucker

As the US of A continues its downward spiral into third world irrelevance, I feel it necessary to point out -- again -- how the partisan slugfest holds no bearing on anything. Case in point, Paul Ryan --

I can haz deficits?

This Eddie Munster-looking twerp is performing a number you've seen a dozen times by now. He's pitching the great big austerity package that just passed in the House and is due to be shot down in the Senate. More importantly, his masters are expecting it to get shot down, that's why they chose a Wisconsin nobody to deliver this turkey. When this bill fails, whatever shovelhead gets the nomination in 2012 will get to throw it into their stump speech, decrying the Democrats disregard for serious deficit reduction.

This has been the Republican strategy for years now -- cry like babies over all the Big Gub'mint spending, demand cuts to welfare programs that have become more sacred than Jesus, then posture when it doesn't happen. The last time anyone was dumb enough to try and do it for real was Bush Jooner's push to privatize Social Security, which pushed back hard enough to make him a lame duck less than half-way into his second term. For all their noise, the GOP will never defund these programs because anyone with any sense knows their elderly white base is wholly dependent on Federal money -- as is every industry in this country turning a profit but that's for later.

This latest big-distracting-thing is grotesquely cynical even by existing standards because it adds 4 trillion to the deficit in further tax cuts to the ultra-rich while explicitly forcing the X and Y generations out of Social Security and Medicare but still requiring them to pay for the Boomers' golden years. How could such a mess of fiscal irresponsibility and generational theft be hailed as so revolutionary, especially as it boils down to a retread of the past 20 years of GOP partisan rhetoric?

Because you keep falling for it. The continued existence of the Republican Party is the best argument against democracy on this planet -- after routinely running up record deficits since the 1980s, the GOP still enjoys the public perception as the party of fiscal responsibility. The only logical conclusion is that self-described conservative voters are so fraking stupid you could sell them beachfront property on Mars.