I was just writing to Reed Richardson, Eric Alterman’s unpaid lackey over at The Nation. Without trying, I think I wrote something semi-brilliant—which is my normal approach to brilliance. Reed just wrote an article Brilliant Disguise. This in itself is a disturbing development because it means that Alterman’s obsession with Bruce Springsteen is rubbing off on Reed, but who am I to judge (other than someone with very, very good taste in music)? In the article, he points out that Paul Ryan isn’t really a policy wonk. But of course, you already know that because I’ve been talking about this for years.

Reed’s argument is that Ryan is just an ideologue. This can’t be said enough. I put it differently: Ryan’s “budget” is not a budget at all; it is just a right wing wish list. Here is where I got semi-brilliant. (Anyone noting the thousands of people who came up with this first will be banned!) I summed up his policy proposals thusly:

1. Cut programs for the poor
2. Cut entitlements for middle class
3. Cut taxes for the rich

This is the Holy Trinity for Paul Ryan—in more ways than one. Cut, cut, and cut: the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of right wing extremism.

I don’t think anything more need be said.

Except from The Boss:

This video will go viral if it hasn’t already. Natalie Morales asks about releasing more tax returns and Ann Romney almost jumps out of her seat and attacks the reporter. She is clearly angry, but I don’t think this is the most important thing:

What comes across most clearly is Ann Romney’s sense of entitlement. She’s rich! She’s above suspicion! Her husband is above suspicion because she says so!

Sometimes I’m glad that I’m not rich or powerful. If I were, I would have to work really hard to not be a total dick. You just don’t come upon many rich people who think they are lucky to be rich. It is because they are smart (a gift) and hard working (a gift) and moral (a gift if it’s true). Mitt Romney deserves his quarter billion dollars! This is because he is 1000 times as smart and 1000 times as hard working and 1000 times as moral as the average American. He must be because he has 1000 times as much money. (We think.)

What is most pernicious about Ayn Rand’s philosophy is not that it is wrong; the most pernicious thing is that it tells those people who are the biggest dicks that they aren’t dicks. Only a sociopath would tell the schoolyard bully that the only thing wrong with him is that he isn’t beating up enough kids.

Ann Romney looks like she is at the end of her rope. She is the one who asks the questions, not the one who answers them!

Soledad O’Brien does the most amazing thing: she counter’s Romney apologist Barbara Comstock’s ridiculous comments about Obama cutting Medicare.[1] The argument the Romney campaign is making is that Obama has cut $700 billion from Medicare and that it is very, very bad. Seniors, be afraid! Be very afraid! The problem is that Ryan’s newest budget (that is much nicer to the old and poor than his earlier one) calls for the same $700 billion cut. But in Obama’s budget, that money is mostly saved by cutting Medicare payments to hospitals for treating uninsured patients. Why? Because under Obamacare, there will be 60% fewer uninsured patients. Ryan, on the other hand, uses the money for extra military spending and tax cuts for the rich. (Funny how conservative deficit reduction always ends in more tax cuts and military spending and no actual deficit reduction.)

To be clear: Obama cuts funding but not services; Ryan cuts funding and services.

This is a great opportunity for Romney. He has claimed that he will roll back Obama’s Medicare cuts. But then he walks all over himself. Jonathan Chait has quoted him in a New York Times article:

This has not been, and I doubt it will become, the major promise of the campaign. Instead, Romney and company will continue to proffer what I have come to refer to as the “Fuck Me, Please!” argument. Barbara Comstock repeats it over and over in her interview, “No one under 55 will see their Medicare changed!”

In other words: if you are young you probably won’t vote for us anyway, so fuck you!

This is remarkable for a party that spends so much of its time claiming to want to protect future generations. The argument always comes down to something like this: Social Security will only be able to pay 70% of promised benefits in 40 years; we need to cut current benefits to 70%! In the case of the Ryan budget, it is this: Medicare is unsustainable in the future; we need to destroy it today!

This really isn’t an exaggeration. Ryan’s plan is to depend upon his religious belief that if we let markets work, all problems are solved. His idea is to give seniors vouchers to buy healthcare from private insurers. Then, healthcare costs will go down. How does he know the costs will go down? Capitalism! There are many problems with this, but the most direct refutation is Medicare Advantage. This is part of Medicare where seniors can get their care in the private sector. The idea was (1) private insurance; (2) capitalism; (3) magic! Instead, it was (1) private insurance; (2) corporate profits; (3) disaster! And by “Disaster!” I mean that it costs about 20% more for the same care.

It makes me very angry to hear people talk about how they aren’t going to touch current recipients of Medicare and Social Security. If this statement has to be made, it must be that current recipients like these programs. Luckily, just as when Bush wanted to privatize Social Security, most seniors are more empathic than the conservative establishment. They think that I shouldn’t be fucked just because I happened to have been born late.

Update (Right Away)

Check out this screen shot of Fox News on Monday. The title read, “Saving Medicare. Ryan Plan: 55 & Older Won’t See Changes.” If I don’t watch Fox News for a while, I forget just how completely they are the media arm of the Republican Party. MSNBC, for all of it problems would never do something like this:

Update (14 August 2012 6:49 pm)

Sarah Kliff has a nice, short article on WonkBlog about where exactly the $700 ($716 actually) billion gets cut. It is roughly a third each of hospital reimbursement, Medicare Advantage, and other things. She writes:

[1] This is really good. Barbara Comstock even brings up Death Panels:

I’ve read a lot today about Mitt Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan for the VP spot on his ticket. The best was Paul Krugman referring to them as Gekko and Galt: the “greed is good” character from Wall Street and the demigod from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. But overall, nothing I read sounded correct. To me, the pick of Paul Ryan was forced on Romney by the Republican establishment. But this was not done because they thought it was a winning ticket. Quite the opposite.

I think the Republican establishment has decided that Romney will lose this election. The pick of Ryan is a way to pull their hero into the national spotlight. Although it is hard for political junkies to understand: the vast majority of the nation has no idea who he is. This is the opportunity to set Paul Ryan up for a presidential run in 2016. They think he will be Reagan 2.0.

If they were really smart, these power brokers would have gotten Ryan nominated this year. This is the best chance for a really vile candidate like Ryan (or Romney) to get elected. In another four years under Obama, the economy will very likely be doing quite well. And this will provide Hillary Clinton with an excellent chance to be the next president.

Of course, it is still possible that Romney will win this election. But I don’t think the Ryan choice has anything to do with this. I’m sure the thinking is: great if Romney wins, but let’s make the best of the likely loss. As usual, the conservatives are overplaying their hand. They think that if the people just get exposed to Ryan and his “ideas,” they will love them. I think things are just the opposite. I’m glad that Paul Ryan will get more attention. He deserves more attention—just not the kind the Beltway pundits like to give him.

Afterword

Mark Thoma has put together a great set of Paul Krugman articles about Paul Ryan that are very much worth reading.

Update (12 August 2012 6:47 pm)

Although I have not read it, it appears my idea is not novel:

Jonathan Chait wrote an article today about how conservatives are trying to spin a couple of articles about the Tax Policy Center take down of Romney’s tax cut proposal. I don’t have much to say about that. If this careful work cannot persuade conservatives that there is something wicked and ridiculous about Romney’s claims, then they are beyond reason. (But we already knew that.) The reason I bring it up is that Chait demonstrates a very common and bad tendency of providing useless links.

The problem is the use of “Click Here” links. In this, the first paragraph of his article, he does this six times in two locations:

You notice the last two? There aren’t literally “here” but they provide as much information. All six tell us absolutely nothing about what the links refer to—both for people and for search engine bots. I know a lot of people link this way, but it is bad. Don’t do this! Instead, edit your text so that it reads more like this:

Now wasn’t that easy?

Apologetics is the defense of a particular doctrine. It is a noble endeavor. But as with most things, it can be done poorly or well.

Most people think of apologetics with regard to Christianity. But I think we all see it more often in the field of politics—especially economics. It is just that it is usually not referred to as apologetics.

Romney’s economic advisers have come out with a really despicable bit of apologetics for his policies. What is really notable is that the authors are very big men in the economics field: Kevin Hassett, Glenn Hubbard, Gregory Mankiw, and John Taylor. I’m no economist and I already knew about three of these four men (I didn’t know Hassett).

Dylan Matthews over at WonkBlog, discusses how the paper cherry picks its data in the discussion of the effects of Obama’s stimulus. He notes that they first compress the entire discussion of the stimulus to one small part of it: cash for clunkers. Then, they ignore two studies that found positive effects of this program. And then to make matters as bad as they could possibly be, they misrepresent the findings of at least one of the two papers they do cite. What is most shocking about this is that Dylan Matthews is not an economist. He is just a reporter who focuses on tax policy. Yet he was able to see how intellectually dishonest this supposedly respectable group is being.

This makes me think of Christian apologists. William Lane Craig is probably the most famous one of these. Although I disagree with him greatly, he is intellectually honest. When he finds a problem in the Bible, he doesn’t cover it over. Instead, he uses his considerable intellect and knowledge to justify and explain the problem. This is what I am used to seeing from liberal economists like Paul Krugman and Dean Baker.

On the other side of things, we have Lee Strobel. He is simply a true believer who will say and do anything to prove his case. He is the most intellectually slimy person I have ever seen in any field. And this is the kind of economic policy apologetics that we are getting from the Romney camp. Brad DeLong has written a substantial article where he goes point by point through the Romney team’s white paper and counters all of its nonsense. If you are at all interested in economics, I recommend reading the article. But you will get an idea of how upset the reputable part of the field must be with this short quotation:

Meanwhile, after all of this and the Tax Policy Center’s analysis, Fox News today has been all day, all the time on how mean a new Obama attack ad is—including on their “straight” news programs.

Update (8 August 2012 11:27 am)

It seems I was wrong. The Romney economists didn’t disregard two studies that indicated that the stimulus was effective—they disregarded 15! Ezra Klein does more work demolishing this horrible attempt at economic apologetics. He ends his article with as straightforward an attack as we ever see from him:

Update (9 August 2012 6:29 pm)

Here is the ad that Fox has been running constantly for the last couple of days:

And here is an Onion parody.

My friend Ananda sent me a collection of photos from India. Many of them involve grammar errors, but could easily be from the United States or Kingdom. One admonishes people in Ludhiana, “Please don’t encourage baggers.” Another is a clever drunk driving sign, “After whisky driving risky.” I’ll take a perfect rhyme over perfect spelling any day.

India is rightly applauded for its democracy. (Largely because unlike the United States, they actually have one.) Their commitment to democracy and egalitarianism is found on a regal sign that reads, “Members and Non-Members Only.” Damn right! Any non-non-members will not be allowed! (Unless they also members.)

What most struck me was this sign above a Cyber Cafe:

Everyone I know suffers on the internet every day, but only the Indians are honest about it!