Blue-eyed Boys

Silly me: assuming European reaction against austerity would be no more than a quick sound-bite in our media.

Though it may have been partly correct to expect little or no context to the story. That lack of context leaves a vacuum to be filled by the noise machine. Thus: a new story line in the making, and digby spotted it on Paul Ryan's Budget Committee page—

The President and his party's leaders are repeating Europe's mistakes by calling for job-crushing tax increases, making empty promises to citizens, and ensuring harsh disruptions for beneficiaries of government programs. Time and again, their approach to budgeting has been the very definition of European-style austerity. House Republicans reject this shrunken vision of our future. Instead of broken promises and shared pain, we must advance pro-growth reforms that make good on America’s promise and put the country on a path to prosperity.

The wing-nut logic here: everybody knows Europeans are socialists; socialism is a failure; "austerity" = socialist Obama's failed policies; opposite of austerity is TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH.

I don't know whether the guy gives leg tingles to Chris Matthews et. al. equaling those from Commander Flight Suit, but Ryan is the media's latest blue-eyed boy and GOP Big Thinker. It won't be be long before outlets other than Faux are broadcasting the Democrat Party Austerity line; as digby notes, Ryan is the new Gingrich and designated purveyor of the Big Lie to a receptive media.

To use the correct title bestowed by Charlie Pierce, that would be zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan. What he was up to during the week was—

...the "budget" passed on Thursday by the House. In addition to its being the nocturnal emission at the end of all those nights the teenage Paul Ryan spent playing circus tent under the covers with Atlas Shrugged, it is constructed specifically to avoid having to make the $55 billion in cuts to the defense department mandated by the debt ceiling deal, a committment, I would argue, that the Republicans never intended to honor, as is obvious from Boehner's statement last March. Rather than agree to those reductions, the Ryan "budget" does the following:

1) Cuts $83 billion in benefits to federal retirees.

2) Saves $49 billion in "capping" medical malpractice suits, the Dalkon Shield Protection Plan Of 2012.

3) Cuts $48 billion from Medicaid.

4) Cuts $36 billion from the food stamp program.

5) Drops approximately 300,000 children from school-lunch programs, and eliminates health-care coverage for just about as many.

The zombie-eyed granny-starver grew misty as he defended the DOD from the loss of a cent of the trillions efficiently used to Protect Our Freedom.

As Pierce says about congressional kabuki elsewhere in the piece, "The Republicans left their 'good faith' in the pocket of Howard Baker's overcoat 30 years ago."

Taking after the weakest is the behavior the modern GOP shows more nakedly all the time, despite the rhetorical clothing.

And the reporting of Romney's career as schoolboy bully: he was merely living up to expectations. And, as digby said, it bolsters his credibility with The Base.

The GOP is only about bringing on a final triumph of socialism for the rich and the harshest of capitalisms for the poor.

Pierce again, on the sabotage of We the People's constitutionally mandated postal service—

The entire modern conservative movement consists of an ongoing attempt to sever the relationship of a self-governing people to their government, to break down the concept of a political commonwealth. Many of the conservative attempts to wedge people apart through the use of an Other to be feared and despised — whether that was black people, or empowered women, or immigrants, or gay people — have been framed to attack the government's attempts to ameliorate discrimination against the groups in question. In modern conservative thought, then, and in the mindset it seeks to ingrain on the people of the country, the government is the ultimate Other.

In doing so, the corporate masters of the conservative movement are good with all of this because they seek a wary, frightened and insecure people. Those people are too cowed to make waves, too spooked to assert their rights as citizens, too confused to demand accountability. ...

There is a reason why we used to build buildings the way we built the post office in Geneva [NY], with its mural and its marble, and its great arching windows and its Doric entablature. It wasn't because we were profligate. It was because we considered self-government, for all its faults, to be something precious that belonged to all of us, and that it should be housed in places that looked as though we valued it enough to celebrate it and protect it at the same time. They were monuments we raised to ourselves, because we deserved them.

Eugene, Oregon
[More pictures of our national legacy on the block: Save the Post Office]