Paul Ryan (not Rand Paul)

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^^ I was asking coz you seem very passionate about it and I feel there is not enough ammo here.

It's more fun ... David vs. Goliath :-)! The problem is that I find the need to defend my views to every liberal post out there. When it really gets in the way of my work, I'll quit for some time. But I keep coming back so I can knock some sense into these idealistic, gov't loving whippersnappers.

[yoda]

You have selective vision. Why use GOD for "equality?" If GOD meant for everyone to be equal, HE would have created everyone equal. Why did HE not?

We are not talking about what GOD has done, rather what these politicians are saying in the name of GOD. Obama talks about equality (which we all can agree is a good thing) and the Ryan is talking about GOD in the context of defying the Supreme Court.

Regardless, it is all absurd, because there is no evidence of GOD in the first place. So whether one uses it as a core belief (as Ryan did) or as a political convenience (as Pres. Obama did), they are all equally wrong.

How did you conclude that Ryan's was core belief whereas Obama's was one of political convenience?

[ravishingravi]

Thanks for all the articles and videos cric. But here is the thing. I am an Indian in India and maybe aligned more towards the conservative side as I understand it. The natural of discourse in US pretty warped with everyone creating their own spin zone. I can post the links and videos that show Ryan in pretty bleak light. So, my interest is not in the left v/s right debate. From where I come from, its very simple. Is he a fiscally conservative reducing deficit politician that he claims to be ? Now in my position I have only way to check his records. His votes on some of the matters in last decade. And going by the quotes, his life, his social stands and the votes on some of these matters, he is typical hypocrite, who hates govt as long as he is not in one. Ayn rand is his ideal. Ayn Rand. If I was an informed conservative in US, I would distance as much as I can from the party of crazies.

[Clarke]

PAUL D. RYAN is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesnÃÕ alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon. Thirty years of Republican apostasy a once grand partyÃÔ embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. RyanÃÔ sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to ÅËob creators (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nationÃÔ economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse. Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford would have had no use for the neoconconservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving KristolÃÔ ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion ÅÅefense budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman. Indeed, adjusted for inflation, todayÃÔ national security budget is nearly double EisenhowerÃÔ when he left office in 1961 (about $400 billion in todayÃÔ dollars) a level Ike deemed sufficient to contain the very real Soviet nuclear threat in the era just after Sputnik. By contrast, the Romney-Ryan version of shrinking Big Government is to increase our already outlandish warfare-state budget and risk even more spending by saber-rattling at a benighted but irrelevant Iran. Similarly, there can be no hope of a return to vibrant capitalism unless there is a sweeping housecleaning at the Federal Reserve and a thorough renunciation of its interest-rate fixing, bond buying and recurring bailouts of Wall Street speculators. The Greenspan-Bernanke campaigns to repress interest rates have crushed savers, mocked thrift and fueled enormous overconsumption and trade deficits. The greatest regulatory problem far more urgent that the environmental marginalia Mitt Romney has fumed about is that the giant Wall Street banks remain dangerous quasi-wards of the state and are inexorably prone to speculative abuse of taxpayer-insured deposits and the FedÃÔ cheap money. Forget about ÅÕoo big to fail. These banks are too big to exist too big to manage internally and to regulate externally. They need to be broken up by regulatory decree. Instead, the Romney-Ryan ticket attacks the pointless Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, when whatÃÔ needed is a restoration of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era legislation that separated commercial and investment banking. Mr. Ryan showed his conservative mettle in 2008 when he folded like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout. But the greater hypocrisy is his phony ÅÑlan to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade. A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing. Yet the supposedly courageous Ryan plan would not cut one dime over the next decade from the $1.3 trillion-per-year cost of Social Security and Medicare. Instead, it shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting more Medicaid costs to the states will be mere make-believe if federal financing is drastically cut. Likewise, hacking away at the roughly $400 billion domestic discretionary budget (whatÃÔ left of the federal budget after defense, Social Security, health and safety-net spending and interest on the national debt) will yield only a rounding errorÃÔ worth of savings after popular programs (which Republicans heartily favor) like cancer research, national parks, veterans benefits, farm aid, highway subsidies, education grants and small-business loans are accommodated. Like his new boss, Mr. Ryan has no serious plan to create jobs. America has some of the highest labor costs in the world, and saddles workers and businesses with $1 trillion per year in job-destroying payroll taxes. We need a national sales tax a consumption tax, like the dreaded but efficient value-added tax but Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan donÃÕ have the gumption to support it. The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for ÅËob creators i.e. the superwealthy to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station. In short, Mr. RyanÃÔ plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldnÃÕ pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nationÃÔ fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity just empty sermons. David A. Stockman, who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, is the author of the forthcoming book ŵhe Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/paul-ryans-fairy-tale-budget-plan.html?_r=1 That's enough criticism for the election cycle and its been less than a week since the announcement.

[ravishingravi]

tQohUKieSEE&feature=plcp The host is obnoxious . But bear in mind folks. This guy Ryan qualifies as a conservative intellectual these days. As I said earlier, if I was a conservative in US I would want to be represented by omeone more intelligent.

[yoda]

tQohUKieSEE&feature=plcp The host is obnoxious . But bear in mind folks. This guy Ryan qualifies as a conservative intellectual these days. As I said earlier, if I was a conservative in US I would want to be represented by omeone more intelligent.

He is the best they got.

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He is the best they got.

I give you: At least Paul Ryan has a plan that can be critiqued. Let's see you defend Joe "they'll put y'all in chains" Biden.

[yoda]

I give you: At least Paul Ryan has a plan that can be critiqued. Let's see you defend Joe "they'll put y'all in chains" Biden.

Ryan is regarded as the guy who is supposed to re-ignite the Romney campaign and has a plan to save America from all of it's debts. Don't think the Dems are saying the same about Biden. :winky: On a side note, Biden seems to have become dumber than he was as a Senator.

[punjabi_khota]

No body claim Biden to be the most intelligent democrat. Ryan on the other hand, is being claimed as the messiah of the right. Lol the more scrutiny Ryan comes under, the more his built up fake intellectual image goes down. LOL@"Oh I came to know her philosophy later in life" AHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA

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No body claim Biden to be the most intelligent democrat. Ryan on the other hand, is being claimed as the messiah of the right. Lol the more scrutiny Ryan comes under, the more his built up fake intellectual image goes down.

WADR, that's utter BS. He was considered an absolute intellectual, esp. on foreign policy. You were prolly not paying that much attention in 2008. And what about President Obama? The guy has had numerous flubs and flip-flops, especially when he goes off the 'prompter. The sickening invoking of the Bible to define gay marriage back in 2008, and then the change in mind now? The "if I had a son, he would've looked like me" race-baiting, and to top it all - submitting a budget that got ZERO votes in the Senate (0-97). That's intelligence? Just because someone sounds really eloquent on TV with a 'prompter does not mean they are intelligent. As for Ryan, I am more inclined to believe this economics professor than I am some random leftie Limbaugh clone: http://www.cnbc.com/id/48639428

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Ayn Rand is to Paul Ryan is as _____________________________ is to Barack Obama. Answer??? Ix-AMYos0Js

I’ve known Reverend Wright for almost twenty years. The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met twenty years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church. They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs and if Reverend Wright thinks that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, well I may not know him as well as I thought either. Barack Obama

What the EFF? You spent 20 years in his church? And didn't know his philosophy? You're either blind, stupid, dishonest or all of the above.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/paul-ryans-fairy-tale-budget-plan.html?_r=1 That's enough criticism for the election cycle and its been less than a week since the announcement.

So, do I believe this or do I believe Erskine Bowles, the architect of the Bowles-Simpson plan and chair of the President's deficit-reduction committee? In any case, when a credible Democrat like Erskine speaks up, it should silence the critics here who question Ryan's intelligence. But it won't: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/14/erskine-bowles-paul-ryan_n_1775313.html

Erskine Bowles, co-chair of President Barack Obama's budget-deficit commission, had unusual praise for Paul Ryan at a 2011 event, shown in a video posted to YouTube on August 12. "IÃÎ telling you this guy is amazing," Bowles said in the video, reportedly taken at a 2011 University of North Carolina event. The past praise for Ryan and his budget plan is a stark contrast to his recent criticism of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's tax plan. Bowles also criticized Obama's plan at the time, saying nobody "took that budget very seriously": Ū always thought that I was okay with arithmetic. [Paul] can run circles around me, and he is honest, he is straightforward, he is sincere. And the budget that he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did, by $4 trillion... The President came out with his own plan and the President, as you remember, came out with a budget, and I donÃÕ think anybody took that budget very seriously. The Senate voted against it 97 to nothing. He, therefore, after a lot of pressure from folks like me, he came out with a new budget framework, and in that new budget framework, he cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years. And, to be candid, this $4 trillion cut was very heavily back-end loaded. So, if you looked at it on a 10-year basis and compared apples-to-apples, it really was about a two and a half trillion dollar cut.

I don't know, guys ... I live in NC and know Erskine Bowles to be an absolute giant. I'll take his word, thank you very much.

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400 economists endorse Romney's jobs plan. 4 of them even won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Ya know ... the same one that NYT Liberal Krugman won. http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000109473

The Romney-Ryan ticket gets another boost today when about 400 prominent economists from industry and academia endorsed his economic revival and jobs plan. We came across an advance copy of the statement which reads: "We enthusiastically endorse Governor Mitt Romney's economic plan to create jobs and restore economic growth while returning America to its tradition of economic freedom. The plan is based on proven principles: a more contained and less intrusive federal government, a greater reliance on the private sector…" The statement refutes many of the Obama campaign's loud claims that Mr. Romney's math doesn't add up. At least four of the signatories are Nobel prize winners, including Gary Becker, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell and Edward Prescott. Other highly respected economic thinkers on the list include Phil Gramm, Martin Feldstein, and noted supply-side guru Arthur Laffer. The scholars say they agree with the Romney plan's intention to "reduce marginal tax rates on business and wage incomes and broaden the tax base to increase investment, jobs, and living standards." Mr. Obama has lambasted the Romney tax cuts as a giveaway to the rich that will end up leaving the middle class carrying the bag. Economists Jim Carter and Glenn Hubbard, both of whom worked in the Bush White House, say they "are constantly adding more names." The purpose of the letter is to add scholarly gravitas to the Romney plan for rebuilding the economy. The economists' letter also takes a shot at Mr. Obama's economic strategies which they believe "only prolong slow growth and high unemployment." They specifically criticize the "stimulus programs," ObamaCare, the rise in the debt burden and the regulatory explosion imposed on small businesses. They warn that in a second term Mr. Obama is likely to "double down on the failed policies." No doubt there will be dueling letters as Mr. Obama rallies liberal economists to endorse his program. The difference is that most of those economists supported and even helped devise the Obama stimulus and other measures to combat the recession and drive down unemployment. Given the slow growth economy now, those economists may have lost a good deal of credibility. This letter helps Mr. Romney deflect the attacks that his plan is more of the failed policies of the past. Nothing has failed quite like Obamanomics.

[punjabi_khota]

So noted supply side economists support Romney's plan. Wow. Most unbelievable thing ever.

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So noted supply side economists support Romney's plan. Wow. Most unbelievable thing ever.

While obnoxious comedians who know nothing of economics tore apart Paul Ryan do a hit-job and earn praise for it. Any comments on the Erskine Bowles remarks, or is it too inconvenient?

[punjabi_khota]

While obnoxious comedians who know nothing of economics tore apart Paul Ryan do a hit-job and earn praise for it. Any comments on the Erskine Bowles remarks, or is it too inconvenient?

Dude, we have been there before. Neither you nor me are economics experts. For every economic expert who sides with republicans, there is one who is a democrat supporter.The great universities are filled with both sides. I am not going to debate conservative thought Vs democratic thought here. But I am going to debate personalities and what they have done. Given that Ryan voted for 2 wars, TARP, Medicare-B and every single thing that has created the debt crisis till Obama took over (when he suddenly turned the debt-eradicator-in-chief), AND took the stimulus money while publicly deriding it, tells me more about how much of a douchebag he is. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79688.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-romney-ryan-20120818,0,303695.story

[Clarke]

So, do I believe this or do I believe Erskine Bowles, the architect of the Bowles-Simpson plan and chair of the President's deficit-reduction committee? In any case, when a credible Democrat like Erskine speaks up, it should silence the critics here who question Ryan's intelligence. But it won't: I don't know, guys ... I live in NC and know Erskine Bowles to be an absolute giant. I'll take his word, thank you very much.

I'm not the one questioning Ryan's intelligence, far from it. You reckon Karl Rove was any less intelligent at what he did ? How did his intelligence as a major strategist for the previous administration work out for the country ? It just doesn't elevate the debate is what i've said earlier, if you're going to have the my way or the highway approach. BTW i'll take the word of a former politician who has no partisanship to worry about and has dealt with supply side economics over a current one who has to answer to his red state.

[punjabi_khota]

Here you go. Ladies and gents, the real Paul Ryan the intellectual. So much for the numbers guy BULLSHYTE. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/paul-ryans-budget-flim-flam/2012/10/01/b6625396-0be5-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop Paul Ryan’s budget flimflam PAUL RYAN wants to tell you about the wonders of the 20 percent cut in tax rates that he and running mate Mitt Romney propose. He doesn’t want to tell you how much it will cost. On Sunday, Fox News’s Chris Wallace asked the Republican vice presidential nominee this basic question four times, citing projections of a 10-year cost of $5 trillion. Four times, Mr. Ryan dodged, hiding behind a flimsy scaffolding of pseudo-wonkiness. “Look, I won’t give you a baseline with these because that’s what a lot of this is about,” he said. The $5 trillion figure derives from an estimate by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that the Romney tax cuts — without base-broadening offsets — would reduce revenue by $456 billion in 2015. Multiply by 10, and account for costs rising each year, and the $5 trillion estimate is probably low. If Mr. Ryan wants to hide behind jargon, here’s a relevant point. “Baseline” refers to the assumptions made about the budget if the Romney-Ryan tax cut isn’t enacted. The Tax Policy Center’s baseline is favorable to the Republican plan because it assumes the extension of all Bush tax cuts. A more realistic, or at least equally plausible, set of assumptions would add another $1 trillion to its cost. Mr. Ryan flings about terms such as “baseline” to obscure that painful fact. The Republican ticket says it could pay for its tax cut by eliminating loopholes. But the biggest loopholes are popular: the exclusion from taxation of employer-sponsored health insurance and the deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes. Pressed by the assiduous Mr. Wallace about which of these Mr. Ryan would limit, the nominee pleaded a lack of time. “It would take me too long to go through all of that,” he said. The GOP wants voters to think that only the rich would be affected by its loophole closing. “And don’t forget that the higher-income people have a disproportionate amount of the loopholes that they use,” Mr. Ryan said. Well, actually, no. Higher-income people reap a “disproportionate amount” of the benefit of lower rates on capital gains and dividends — households earning more than $200,000 a year receive 90 percent of the benefit. But the Romney-Ryan plan would leave that break in place. Most of the remaining major tax breaks flow primarily to households earning $200,000 or less. For example, more than two-thirds of the benefit of the deduction for home mortgage interest goes to those making less than $200,000 a year. Finally, if you heard a glimmer of responsibility from Mr. Romney lately, think again: Mr. Ryan pulled back on it. Mr. Romney has been saying that middle-class families shouldn’t expect their tax bills to go down very much, if at all, because their lower rates would be offset by, yes, curtailing deductions. Fox News’s Neil Cavuto pressed Mr. Ryan on that score. “Was he trying to brace us for some bitter news?” Mr. Cavuto asked. Mr. Ryan: “No, not at all. . . . Middle income taxpayers get higher take-home pay.” Mr. Wallace asked what Mr. Romney’s priority would be if his numbers didn’t add up and the reduction in tax rates couldn’t be done without losing revenue. Mr. Ryan didn’t flinch. “Keeping tax rates down,” he replied. In other words, revenue-neutral would be nice. Lowering tax rates is the Republican priority, deficits be damned.

[punjabi_khota]

Cricaddict's hero was decoded by Krugman in 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/opinion/06krugman.html THE FLIMFLAM MAN One depressing aspect of American politics is the susceptibility of the political and media establishment to charlatans. You might have thought, given past experience, that D.C. insiders would be on their guard against conservatives with grandiose plans. But no: as long as someone on the right claims to have bold new proposals, he’s hailed as an innovative thinker. And nobody checks his arithmetic. Which brings me to the innovative thinker du jour: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.” But it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce. Mr. Ryan’s plan calls for steep cuts in both spending and taxes. He’d have you believe that the combined effect would be much lower budget deficits, and, according to that Washington Post report, he speaks about deficits “in apocalyptic terms.” And The Post also tells us that his plan would, indeed, sharply reduce the flow of red ink: “The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan would cut the budget deficit in half by 2020.” But the budget office has done no such thing. At Mr. Ryan’s request, it produced an estimate of the budget effects of his proposed spending cuts — period. It didn’t address the revenue losses from his tax cuts. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has, however, stepped into the breach. Its numbers indicate that the Ryan plan would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you add these revenue losses to the numbers The Post cites, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, roughly $1.3 trillion. And that’s about the same as the budget office’s estimate of the 2020 deficit under the Obama administration’s plans. That is, Mr. Ryan may speak about the deficit in apocalyptic terms, but even if you believe that his proposed spending cuts are feasible — which you shouldn’t — the Roadmap wouldn’t reduce the deficit. All it would do is cut benefits for the middle class while slashing taxes on the rich. And I do mean slash. The Tax Policy Center finds that the Ryan plan would cut taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population in half, giving them 117 percent of the plan’s total tax cuts. That’s not a misprint. Even as it slashed taxes at the top, the plan would raise taxes for 95 percent of the population. Finally, let’s talk about those spending cuts. In its first decade, most of the alleged savings in the Ryan plan come from assuming zero dollar growth in domestic discretionary spending, which includes everything from energy policy to education to the court system. This would amount to a 25 percent cut once you adjust for inflation and population growth. How would such a severe cut be achieved? What specific programs would be slashed? Mr. Ryan doesn’t say. After 2020, the main alleged saving would come from sharp cuts in Medicare, achieved by dismantling Medicare as we know it, and instead giving seniors vouchers and telling them to buy their own insurance. Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s the same plan Newt Gingrich tried to sell in 1995. And we already know, from experience with the Medicare Advantage program, that a voucher system would have higher, not lower, costs than our current system. The only way the Ryan plan could save money would be by making those vouchers too small to pay for adequate coverage. Wealthy older Americans would be able to supplement their vouchers, and get the care they need; everyone else would be out in the cold. In practice, that probably wouldn’t happen: older Americans would be outraged — and they vote. But this means that the supposed budget savings from the Ryan plan are a sham. So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power — the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes. But they don’t. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.

[Clarke]

Lame stream media bias :beee: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhIaJKVNUvU]Paul Ryan: As a Conservative I've Long Believed There's Inherent Media Bias - YouTube[/ame] Heard that somewhere before ? [ame=

Palin: 'Lamestream Media' Are 'All Wee-Weed Up' About Santorum's Satan Remark - YouTube[/ame]