Rep. Paul Ryan will be named Mitt Romney's running mate on Saturday,
ending weeks of speculation about the No. 2 slot on the GOP ticket.
....
Ryan, 42, is best known as the chairman of the House
Budget Committee and author of a dramatic plan to overhaul Medicare, the
government-run health insurance program for senior citizens.
....
Ryan, a House member since 1999, has proposed to overhaul both
Medicare and Medicaid, the programs that have been a hallmark of the
nation's compact to provide health care to senior citizens and the poor.
Under his plan, Medicare would be run by private insurers while
Medicaid would be turned over to the states.
....
Ryan's
budget plan has been widely criticized by President Obama and his
fellow Democrats, who contend it would "end Medicare as we know it."
Obama has called Ryan's plan "thinly veiled social Darwinism."
Romney has been described as the candidate without policies. With his choice of Ryan, may we assume that Ryan's policies will be Romney's policies? Ryan's plans for the country are specific, and detailed. With prescience,
The New Yorker recently published
a lengthy profile of Ryan. What stands out in my memory from reading the profile is that Ryan wants to avoid any movement in the direction of a
European type of government.
Romney introduced Ryan as "the next President of the United States."
ReplyDeleteGaffe/Laugh 2012!
Bex, I could hardly believe it, but it's true!
ReplyDeleteIn all fairness, Obama did it first.
ReplyDeletePaul Ryan . . . because Dan Quayle was too sane?
ReplyDeleteYes. Actually, it's probably a shrewd move by Romney and his advisers. At least some Republicans will like one of the top two. And I never underestimate the propensity of voting America to shoot themselves in the collective foot
DeleteIn April the RC bishops condemned Ryan's budget - "...deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility efforts must protect and not undermine the needs of poor and vulnerable people. The proposed cuts to programs in the budget reconciliation fail this basic moral test."
ReplyDeleteGiven the hierarchy's strong pro-Republican bias, will they stick with this? Guess we'll find out.
Did you, by the way, catch "You can't reconcile Ayn Rand and Jesus" in USA Today?
Do you think we'll hear from the RC bishops again re Ryan and his budget? I'm betting NOT.
Delete...but I expect the Dems to publicize the earlier condemnation, repeatedly!
The "Kill Medicare (and Grandma with it)" ticket: BRING.IT.ON!!!
Re-elect Obama/Biden!
I wonder about the bishops, too, but they have given the Dems talking points no matter what they decide. They were against it before they were silent?
DeleteI suspect that Rand's outspoken atheism, and the thick Russian accent in which she proclaimed it, may cool some Teabagger enthusiasm. Of course, there's no cure for "Stupid", is there?
DeleteLapin, I have not read your link yet.
DeleteRichard Helmer wrote an excellent essay on Ayn Rand at the Episcopal Café over a year ago.
The recordings of Rand sounding like a furriner should be interesting.
DeleteRecording here. Thirty minutes, tho'
DeleteI listened to the first 10 minutes of the Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand, and I see where Paul Ryan is coming from. Rand's views are the very opposite of the Gospel, so I don't see how a person can claim to be a Christian and a Randian at the same time.
DeleteWhat's with the shifty eyes in the video? I'm trying hard to love Rand, but it's not happening...yet. I'll keep trying, but I'm not sure she is deserving of my love.
Think of it. All of Ryan's employees must read Rand. I read The Fountainhead when I was in college, and what I recall is not much, only that it was weird and boring. I think I didn't get it back then.
From Wikipedia: In 1976 she retired from writing her newsletter and, despite her initial objections, reluctantly allowed Evva Pryor, a consultant from her attorney's office, to sign her up for Social Security and Medicare.
I will watch the rest of the interview.
Rand came perilously close to saying that abortion should be mandatory for any intelligent woman--which I guess would mean only dumb women would become mothers, something utterly marvelous for the gene pool, no? She herself apparently had an abortion early in her marriage because she couldn't afford to have a kid.
ReplyDeleteHer views on American Indians are so bad that modern followers of Rand can only wince, agree they were horrible, and move rapidly on to another topic. And her views on homosexuality is also a topic many modern Objectivists move rapidly away from because they were, at best, simply representative of their era. Her concept of love is a farce--for her, love was just another way to go on an ego trip, and real love, the kind the Bible talks about, seems to have been beyond her understanding
OTOH, her principles prompted her to write one of the clearest and most vigorous denunciations of racism in general that was ever produced.
It struck me the other day that Rand was simply trying to come up with a system of natural law that didn't involve God. And like the Catholic theologians who produced a system that did involve God, she merely produced a set of rules that conformed to her own prejudices.
Actually, Objectivism, if rigorously followed, would be a very good spiritual path, because it demands that one constantly think--one constantly be aware, make decisions, reason thoroughly, always base oneself on facts and examine one's premises. But it fails because it provides no means of making sure one stays on that path, and not wander off through the powers of rationalization and bad thinking. The power of the human mind to present excuses in the guise of reasonable ideas was something she never dealt with. (I think it was Charles Williams who described temptation as something which is recognized as temptation only after the temptation has been rejected.) And with no sort of "spiritual director" to point out when you go off the path, one tends to stay off the path permanently. Rand herself is a good example of this failure. And it says something about her beliefs that in her last days she could not even keep the few friends she had remaining, and had to depend for her physical needs and medical care on her housekeeper's good will.
Rand's opinions were a mixed bag. Nothing wrong with thinking, but none of us is completely objective and rational. Of course, some of us are more irrational than others.
DeleteThe power of the human mind to present excuses in the guise of reasonable ideas was something she never dealt with.
Yes, indeed.
Ethical egoism does not look at all ethical to me, although with her background of her family's suffering in Soviet Russia, I see how she came to her views. And to think Randian disciple Alan Greenspan was, for all intents and purposes, running the economy of the country for a good many years.
Her housekeeper's goodwill and Social Security.
ReplyDeleteAnd Medicare.
DeleteAnd it was Newt who called the Ryan budget "soccial Darwinism"
ReplyDeleteYes, it was susankay. Thanks for the reminder.
Delete71-year-old retired plumber from Kenosha thrown to the ground, cuffed, and arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest after objecting to Ryan's plans to gut Social Security and Medicare. Ryan jokes, “I hope he’s taken his blood-pressure medication”.
ReplyDeleteRyan's joke about the retired plumber says quite a lot about Ryan himself. I'll wager he won't make more public appearances where anyone with $15 can come in.
DeleteSeems that in 13 years in the House, Ryan has seen exactly two of his bills passed into law. One, passed twelve years ago, renamed the Janesville, Wis. post office the "Les Aspin Post Office Building"; the second, passed in 2008, imposed a 39 cent tax on any arrow or arrow tip imported into the US. Ryan is a keen bow hunter.
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing legislative record! Hmm...a bow hunter, and he's never taken a freebie.
Delete