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Ryan Lyin' Weasel

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: ‘Policy Wonk’ Paul Ryan Exposed As Spineless Two-Bit Fraud

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Everything Trump Touches Dies — including the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver’s totally undeserved reputation as a Bold Thinker with Leadership Credentials:

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Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver Open Thread: Requiem for A World-Class Fraud

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Almost titled this “Respite from A WCF”, because we know he’ll be back on the Very Serious Media no later than Jan. 6 2019 (even sooner, if Trump completely decompensates and/or flees the country before then), making bank to represent whichever batch of oligarchs and kakistocrats offers him a dirty dollar.

But in this happy moment, let us remember the True Paul Ryan: lifelong suckler upon the gubmint teat, devout Ayn Rand fanboi, personage who stood out for unlikeability even in a party figureheaded by Donald Trump and frontlined by such specimens as Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Stephen Miller…

A special panel dreamed up by Speaker Paul Ryan to end the constant cycle of government shutdowns crashed and burned on Thursday.

The special panel tasked with recommending budget fixes overwhelmingly rejected its own set of proposals, even after lawmakers admitted the package included only modest changes to the way Congress approves budgets and funds the government…

Over several months, the leadership-appointed panel swatted down the most ambitious ideas for overhauling the budget process. The final text of the agreement contained changes like requiring Congress to pass a budget every two years, instead of annually. It also would have required a “fiscal state of the nation” report each year.

Sweeping proposals to “de-weaponize” the debt ceiling, tighten spending limits and disband Congress’ budget committees were all voted down or withdrawn…

He’s going out as he came in, attempting to delegitimize votes along strictly partisan lines…

… Gee, ZEGS, let’s try to parcel this out, shall we? You fronted for an administration* that was xenophobic to the point of ripping families apart, apparently for sport, and for taking a brutally hard line on all immigrants, legal and otherwise. A somewhat gentler version of that was enough to end Pete Wilson’s political career in California 20 years ago. And Wilson was reasonably popular at the time and not a maniac…

Remember when people thought this guy was smart?

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Friday Evening Open Thread: Thoughts & Prayers

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Paulie don’t care, he’s out the door come January if not sooner…

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International Disgrace Open Thread: Happy Fathers’ Day, Repubs!

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Open Thread: Invertebrate Paul Ryan Indicates A Shift in the Political Tide

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Cynics point out that Paulie No-Balls waited until well after Trump’s bullshite ‘spygate’ fantasies had become settled wisdom among the Deplorable Base, but I think any sign of Ryan developing an allergy to Republican lies has to be a positive for truth, justice, and the American way:

… Ryan (R-Wis.) described as “accurate” an initial assessment offered by week by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who told Fox News that “the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do” in investigating information alleging certain Trump campaign advisers had suspicious ties to Russia…

Ryan was careful Wednesday not to disparage all of Nunes’s complaints with the Justice Department, a list of grievances that includes several unfulfilled demands for documents unrelated to the spying accusations. Democrats maintain Nunes is determined to undermine the law enforcement agencies and, by extension, the foundations of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election’s outcome.

Ryan’s announcement appeared to surprise some fellow Republicans pushing for release of that information. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who has floated the possibility of impeaching Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees Mueller’s probe, declined to comment on Ryan’s take until after he had spoken directly with the speaker…


 
And speaking of organisms supremely sensitive to shifts in the prevailing ‘wisdom’…

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Lyin’ Ryan Is the Fig Leaf for Trump’s Racist Immigration Agenda

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One of the few amusements the Trump Error affords is reading accounts of awful people getting dressed down by an even more awful person. From Greg Sargent at The Post:

The New York Times reports that Trump erupted in a rage at Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other Cabinet members over the alleged failure to make “progress towards sealing the border.” According to the Times, Trump also raged about the “continued failure of his administration to find a way to build a wall along the southern border.”

The Post adds more reporting, noting that Trump’s “blowup lasted more than 30 minutes.” His face “reddened” as he railed that Nielsen must “close down” the border and shouted: “We need to shut it down. We’re closed.”

Other outlets reported that Nielsen, who tried to explain the complexity of the border situation but was shouted down, “almost resigned” over Trump’s tirade, composing but not handing in a resignation letter.

Gary Cohn allegedly wrote but didn’t submit a resignation letter after Trump defended Nazis in Charlottesville. I guess the unsubmitted resignation letter is the cabinet/adviser version of “Ivanka privately opposes.”

In The Post, Sargent points out Paul Ryan’s towering hypocrisy on the immigration issue:

Vulnerable Republicans in the House are pushing a discharge petition that would force a vote on immigration bills, including two measures that would grant the dreamers legal status, one of them packaged with fortifications to border security. Seventeen Republicans have signed the petition, meaning that if organizers can get eight more, it would pass, since Dems will support it — forcing a full House vote on whether the dreamers will be protected or remain in limbo.

Ryan is trying to stop this from happening. He justifies this by claiming that there’s no sense in voting on measures protecting the dreamers that Trump would veto. As Ryan put it: “We actually would like to solve this problem, and that is why I think it’s important for us to come up with a solution that the president can support.”

But this is utter nonsense, because there isn’t any deal that Trump is willing to support that can pass Congress… Ryan is trying to prevent a vote to protect the dreamers precisely because such a measure could pass the House… A deal protecting the dreamers in exchange for border security would probably pass the House by a comfortable margin, and it might pass the Senate — after all, passage in the House would bring tremendous pressure on moderate Republican senators — especially if the White House didn’t actively lobby against it.

But Trump will not accept any deal to protect the dreamers, even though it could very likely pass both chambers, unless it also contains deep cuts to legal immigration. So if the House passed it, the White House would lobby the Senate against it, and if that failed, Trump would then have to veto it. Either of those would look horrible, because after House passage, suddenly protections for the dreamers would appear in reach. This is the spectacle that Ryan is trying to avert — all to protect Trump from having his true priorities revealed in all their ugly glory.

Ryan no longer has to worry about reelection or hanging onto the speaker’s gavel, but he’s willing to hold a fig leaf over Trump’s ugly bits. Why? Because the Republican Party hopes to stock the courts with more fanatics, enable corporations to pollute and despoil without regulatory oversight and slash programs and policies that benefit the vulnerable, and while Trump is a big, fat, embarrassing, racist baby-man, he’ll happily sign that shit if they call it a “win” for him.

Oh well. At least we won’t be subjected to paeans about Ryan’s wonkishness, fiscal rectitude and principled conservatism much longer since he’s gonna cut and run after this term expires. That day can’t come soon enough.

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Paul Ryan, Within the Limits of the Law

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If there’s any doubt as to why Trump figured his bagman could practically plaster “THIS SPACE FOR RENT” signs on the Oval Office, here’s a Politico story — “Sheldon Adelson kicks in $30M to stop Democratic House takeover”:

… The long-sought donation was sealed last week when, according to two senior Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan flew to Las Vegas to meet with the billionaire at his Venetian Hotel. Also at the meeting with Adelson was his wife, Miriam; Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator who chairs the Republican Jewish Coalition; Corry Bliss, who oversees the super PAC; and Jake Kastan, Ryan’s No. 2 political aide. They laid out a case to Adelson about how crucial it is to protect the House.

As a federally elected official, Ryan is not permitted to solicit seven-figure political donations. When Ryan (R-Wis.) left the room, Coleman made the ask and secured the $30 million contribution…

Adelson’s donation comes at a perilous moment for House Republicans, who are facing growing headwinds as they try to save their majority. With dozens of incumbents being outraised by emboldened Democratic challengers, desperate party officials have been hoping that Adelson — the party’s most prominent benefactor — would give more than he traditionally does, and earlier in the election cycle.

Adelson came through by giving now, as opposed to waiting until late summer or the fall.

The $30 million contribution is three times as much as Adelson gave to [the Congressional Leadership Fund] in 2016. And the cash comes much earlier in the cycle: In 2016, Adelson gave CLF $10 million in August, as the campaign headed into the homestretch…

Accepting a “love offering” is not illegal if you’re careful to be out of the room when the check gets passed.

Donald Trump is not some kind of malignant oddity that took over the formerly innocent Republican Party. Donald Trump is just the latest refinement on the GOP standard.

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Lest We Forget Open Thread: Paul Ryan — Bad Man, “Good” German Republican

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(Jim Morin via GoComics.com)
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Paul Waldman, at the Washington Post, “A scam of a party says goodbye to its top fraud”:

… The proximate cause of Ryan stepping down is that his party looks increasingly likely to suffer an electoral disaster in November’s midterm elections. He is facing an unusually strong challenge from Randy Bryce, the likely Democratic nominee in his Wisconsin district, so he probably calculated that there were two realistic outcomes for him. The worse one would be that he is defeated while his party loses the majority, as happened to then-speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) in 1994. The better one would be that he holds on to his seat while Republicans lose the majority, which might not be better at all. Being speaker may have meant plenty of headaches for Ryan, but being House minority leader is a total drag; you still have to manage your unruly caucus, but you have no real power and can’t make any progress on your agenda…

For years, Ryan has presented himself as someone deeply concerned with fiscal discipline, committed to getting America’s books in order. As anyone with any sense realized, this was a scam: Like all Republicans, he used the deficit as a bludgeon against Democratic presidents, then forgot all about it while a Republican was in office.

At the same time, Ryan — a lifelong admirer of Ayn Rand, the philosopher of selfishness — dreamed of destroying the safety net, eviscerating Medicaid, privatizing Medicare, slashing food stamps, and generally making life in America more cruel and unpleasant for all those who aren’t wealthy.

But as Paul Krugman observed, Ryan failed at both his pretend goal and his real goal. He will leave office after setting the deficit on a path to exceed $1 trillion in 2020, and yet, he failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and didn’t even bother to wage an assault on Medicare, almost certainly because he knew how disastrous it would be for his party.

So what does he mean when he says “I have accomplished much of what I came here to do”? He can only mean the tax cut Republicans passed last year. In other words, engineering a giant giveaway to corporations and the wealthy was enough for Ryan to say “My work here is done.”…

Osita Nwanevu, at Slate, on “The Wolf in Wonk’s Clothing”:

… [I]t’s worth revisiting now, as Ryan prepares his exit from politics, the thrust of the argument that the tale advanced—that, in general, the 20 million children in this country who receive free lunches have parents who clearly don’t care about them and that in providing food to those children, the government enables bad parenting. That sweeping judgment is impossible unless one considers poverty and economic hardship themselves personal failings. For about a decade now, Ryan has demonstrated that he believes precisely this—that those who have trouble making their way in the world are personally defective, that those immiserated by circumstance have willingly surrendered their lives to dysfunction, and that the best remedy society can offer to those who lack is to deprive them, in cuts to already meager social programs, of even more.

Shaping that dogmatism into pseudo-wonkery has taken years of wild and reckless obfuscation. Most of the analyses of where Trump “came from” have sought and found precedents for his open xenophobia, conspiracymongering, and boorishness in the rhetoric and behavior of Republican politicians in the recent past. But his mendacity and the constant consequence-free dissembling of his administration still baffle all those who’ve wondered aloud, over the past year and a half, how we so suddenly entered a new age of “post-truth” politics. We haven’t, really. Paul Ryan understood, like Trump, the extent to which the norms governing conventional political journalism have always been poorly equipped to handle naked and persistent dishonesty and disingenuousness. His speech to the 2012 Republican National Convention was littered with blatant lies…
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Farewell Ryan Open Thread: Requiem for A Heavyweight Fake

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Nobody loves a quitter, but dayyum Paul Ryan has a lot of enemies! Of course, he’s taken credit for a budget bill that will explode the deficit while giving still more of our common wealth away to the least deserving plutocrats, while failing to rein in the worst impulses of the leaders of “his” party. And he’s abandoning ship just in time for an actual avowed white supremacist to take the lead in the GOP primary for his replacement, and guaranteeing that we’ll all get to watch at least two of the least appealing Repub congresscritters (Kevin McCarthy & Steve Scalise) fight like crazed weasels to take over his “throne”. Also, he’s the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver. But the Media Village Idiots always seemed to love him — yet the concensus of public comment right now seems to be GOOD RIDDANCE, at best. Of course the NYTimes is still slobbering over his “bravery”, and there may be television pundits still standing up for their Pauly Blue Eyes…


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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Probably Not, But Isn’t It Sweet to Watch Him Squirm?

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…“The speaker is not resigning,” AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Amodei is not particularly close to the speaker, who has a small inner circle of advisers and who makes decisions about his political future with an even smaller round of confidants and family.

But Amodei publicly reopened the discussion that has been kept to private whispers within the House Republican Conference about whether Ryan will run to lead the House GOP next year. He went even further by stating, with nothing more than gossip from his colleagues, that Ryan would resign within 60 days and that his successor had already been chosen…

Ryan, who was on a congressional delegation trip to the Czech Republic, has tried to bat down speculation about whether he wants another term as House speaker if Republicans hold the majority in the November midterm elections. Winning approval of the tax-cut bill in December marked a career highlight that led some to believe he might leave office in the winter, on a high note before what is likely to be a rough midterm…

Republicans would be stunned if there was an outright resignation, in the middle of the term, without any political scandal, and many would suspect they had little chance to win the majority in November.

The traditional route for a House speaker looking toward the exits is to run for another term and announce immediately after the election that he or she is stepping down, particularly if the party loses the majority.

There are, of course, rude whispers that Ryan wants to jump ship before he gets blamed for any part of a massive GOP loss come November. Ryan has never been a guy to stand and take punishment for the good of anyone other than Paul Ryan…


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And then there’s this… unpleasant spectacle:

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As the Stomach Churns Open Thread: Budget Drama Update

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Politics: the science of who eats… and who gets eaten.

Given what Paul Ryan and his fellow Trump enablers have been shoveling out to the rest of us, they’re all gonna spend their next million or so reincarnations as dung beetles…

[C]ongressional Republicans were jolted Wednesday morning by phone calls from White House officials, who confided that President Trump was unhappy with the party’s nearly finalized spending deal.

Trump had been up since dawn, keeping an eye on cable-television programs and venting to friends and aides as snow blanketed the executive residence…

Allies of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were alarmed, the people said, once again realizing that only Trump speaks for Trump.

They had been hammering out the details of the spending package with the White House’s legislative staff for weeks and were planning to give a brief update to the president in the afternoon, followed by final votes in both chambers later this week. The people familiar with the discussions were not authorized to speak publicly.

But as senior aides tried to sell Trump on the deal all week, he had hesitated to embrace it. In recent days, he has insisted to associates that congressional Republicans “owe” him more money for the wall since he has raised them millions for their reelection bids and signed the GOP-authored tax bill into law, according to one person close to Trump…

A White House official, meanwhile, said Trump loyalists who dislike Ryan and McConnell, such as Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), have only stoked Trump’s gut feeling that the spending deal is lacking. They also have told Trump that he will be criticized for such a large sum of spending…

Ryan arrived at the White House around lunchtime in his caravan of SUVs. Vice President Pence attended the meeting, as did senior aides to the attendees. McConnell joined by speakerphone.

Over the next 45 minutes, gathered together in the residence, they all made their pitch to Trump in support of the spending agreement, the people said. They argued that he was getting money for the border wall at a level the White House had been signaling was acceptable. They told him that he was also getting infrastructure funding — one of his priorities. They told him the significant tick up in funding for the military was included and politically popular. These were all arguments he had heard before, from his own senior aides…

Eventually, Trump sighed and said he’s fine with the bill — and the meeting soon ended, with Ryan ducking out into the snow. A reporter for NBC News snapped a blurry picture of the speaker being whisked off in the snow.

White House officials and congressional Republicans quickly moved to issue statements affirming Trump’s support, almost “wishing it into reality,” as one official said late Wednesday afternoon. In private conversations at the Capitol, aides shook their heads at another dramatic encounter with Trump, another time when he had nearly brought his party to the brink of a shutdown…

“Our” hero, the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver of Janesville. I’ve been working on this post for a good half-hour — has Donny Dollhands refudiated Pauly Blue Eyes yet?

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Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Who Does the NRA Actually Represent?

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Ever wonder if maybe the monsters are already here on Maple Street?…


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And speaking of politicians who are neither Democrats nor helpful when it comes to gun safety measures…
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Repub Venality Open Thread: Paul Ryan Is Not A Serious Person…

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But he’s very much a serious threat to those of us not in the top 0.1%…

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Oligarch Open Thread: Koch Bros, Still Monsters

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The Boston Globe:

… “We’ve made more progress in the past five years than I had in the last 50,” declared Charles Koch, the 82-year old billionaire, addressing a group of about 550 donors who gathered in Indian Wells for the Kochs’ winter policy and politics weekend seminar.

But this era of gains, which brought them a massive tax cut, a queue of conservative federal judges, and an administration full of friendly regulators, could all be gone if Democrats claw back control of the government.

So the vast network has pledged to devote around $400 million toward politics and policy in the midterms to hold the GOP majorities in both chambers. That’s 60 percent more than the network spent in 2014, when Republicans picked up nine seats in the Senate and 13 seats in the House of Representatives.

The sum includes $20 million that Koch and his brother David plan to put behind efforts to popularize the $1.5 trillion tax cut. The network spent $20 million last year pushing the legislation.

“We have a ways to go,” said Koch, teeing up his Big Ask to the well-coiffed group of donors who contribute at least $100,000 a year to Koch-aligned groups. “So my challenge to all of us is to increase the scale and effectiveness of this network by an order of magnitude. By another 10-fold on top of all the growth and progress we’ve already made. Because if we do that, I’m convinced we can change the trajectory of this country.”…

Voters have been skeptical of the tax law in part because much of the benefit is focused on businesses like those run by the Kochs and their allies. The tax cuts directly benefit Koch Industries by $1 billion to $1.4 billion a year, according to a recent analysis from Americans for Tax Fairness, a liberal advocacy group.
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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: There Will Be Blood (From GOP Turnips)

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When it comes to the modern GOP, we’re speaking of people who could fvck up a one-car funeral procession. Unlike most monstrosities, this bill has at least two very obvious fathers, both of whom I shall take delight in seeing suffer for its every real & imagined failures…

… House Republicans thought they had finished their tax work on Tuesday afternoon when they passed a version of the bill 227 to 203. But the effort hit a snag Tuesday afternoon when the Senate parliamentarian ruled that three of its provisions violated that chamber’s Byrd Rule — guidelines on what types of legislation can pass with a simple 50-vote majority.

To comply with the Byrd Rule, the Senate made minor tweaks to the bill before passing it, requiring the House to vote again as the two chambers must pass identical versions. The House is slated to vote Wednesday midday, and none of the changes are expected to cost the plan GOP support.

Despite the delay, Republicans celebrated Tuesday in anticipation of their plan passing, their first major legislative victory of the Trump presidency.

Trump has for months pushed Republican lawmakers to send him a tax plan by Christmas and promised in a tweet to hold a news conference at the White House around 1 p.m. Wednesday after it clears Congress…

Nobody’s gonna waste much energy holding Trump to account over this, because (a) he’s done nothing but kibbutz the whole process from the sidelines, like any other Fox-News watcher; and (b) there’s so many other terrible things Trump has done as primary actor. But if I get my Winter Solstice wish, neither the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver or the Bug-Eyed Kentucky Chelonian will be able to go out in public without umbrellas, for fear of people spitting at them…


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