Janesville Gazette Changes Name to the Paul Ryan Messenger

By Jeff Simpson

Lost in the Magic of the Christmas season, was an apocalyptic op-ed from the Janesville Gazette, which was a jumble of drool over the Boy Wonder child from Janesville - Paul Ryan.  

Politico recently broke a story about how Speaker Ryan was considering retiring at the end of 2018.  As Joel McNally pointed out, the "leaked" retirement story was just a front, to get the national political reporters to talk about what a great guy Paul Ryan (R- Wall St.) is.     

The Janesville Gazette, abandoning all pretense of objectivity, liberality and honesty, took the story - hook, line and sinker.  

Just in time to be buried the day before they reposted - Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus (showing us the best of what an editorial is meant to be), the Janesville Gazette posted - Please Don't Go Paul.  

Let's take a look:

Rumors about House Speaker Paul Ryan possibly leaving Congress next year dampened excitement over passage of the nation’s first tax overhaul since the Ronald Reagan era.
Some athletes try to retire at the top of their games, and maybe Ryan is having similar thoughts as he contemplates this major legislative victory.

The majority of people do not like the new tax overhaul bill, as they know it is a huge give-away to the rich and will increase the deficit approximately $1.5 trillion! 

Despite its depth, the report reveals little about Ryan—“friends say he feels like he’s running a daycare center”—that we don’t already know or suspect. The story highlights Ryan’s torn feelings over his job, zooming in on the dysfunction afflicting our nation’s capital.
Small wonder Ryan should want to leave. He’s endured withering, often unfair criticism from both the left and right not to mention a parade of protesters stalking his home in Janesville.
We can hardly blame Ryan for wanting to escape the spotlight and spend more time with his family. For many politicians, “spending more time with family” is code to cover up their real reason for leaving. But Ryan has been sincere in his dedication to his family, notably insisting on coming home during weekends as a condition of accepting the speaker job.

Can we please stop with the Paul Ryan family man myth?  Does he really come home every weekend to "spend time with his family"?  Or is he running around the country on weekends fundraising and trying to sell The Donalds border wall?   

$10,000 a plate is a hefty price for a kid's meal.  

Ryan exhibits a kind of humanity and decency too often missing in politics today. D.C. lost its way long ago, and much of the cynicism directed at Congress is justified, though Ryan pulled off a minor miracle by shepherding several bills through the House this year.

Like the Obamacare repeal bill, which Ryan passed through the House, but would have left millions of Americans without healthcare but was too extreme for the Senate to pass.   It would have also ended the pre-existing condition clause in the ACA, which means it would have killed me(literally).   

The GOP tax bill is by no means a perfect document, and we cannot claim the middle class emerges as a clear winner. But the bill is a genuine attempt to simplify the tax code, placing limits on, for example, deductions for mortgage interest and paid property taxes. The bill also seeks to make American companies more competitive by lowering the corporate tax rate.

"We cannot claim that the middle class is a winner"?  Yet you declare it a major victory?  What do you think Janesville is made up of?  Will the private jet deduction be a big hit in your circulation area? By the way any responsible journalism, would tell us that the US does NOT have the highest corporate tax rate and a corporate tax cut will not spark the economy. 

 Under a Republican-controlled Congress and presidency, the tax overhaul should signal greater legislative victories to come. But in this fractured Congress, many Republicans are greeting the tax bill’s passage with a sigh of relief, not so much the jubilation of conquerors.

You are really calling the GOP "conquerors?  I agree but it is hardly a compliment. 

As anyone familiar with Twitter knows, Congress is operating under unusual circumstances thanks largely to President Trump’s unpredictable leadership. Ryan has fortunately avoided getting into a tweet war with Trump, which might explain why Ryan has been spared from Trump’s infamous 140-character assaults. Nevertheless, working with Trump must be exhausting (in the daycare sense).

Paul Ryan(R-Trump's lackey), has not been attacked by The Donald lately because HE AGREES WITH EVERYTHING THE DONALD DOES.   Why would anyone attack a yes man?  

Through it all, Ryan has refused to debase himself by hurling insults at his critics. He reminds the Beltway of what life used to be like before Twitter, and he’s an example of how a leader should behave.

Let's just pretend incidents like this have never happened:

 Or this:

Or This:

“Right now about 60 percent of the American people get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes,” Ryan said. “So we’re going to a majority of takers versus makers in America and that will be tough to come back from that. They’ll be dependent on the government for their livelihoods [rather] than themselves.”

Or this:

 But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.

• Speech at a 2005 Atlas Society event  

Brit Hume, FOX News: What is your view of Ayn Rand? Are you an Ayn Rand disciple? 
Rep. Paul Ryan: No. I really enjoyed her novels, Atlas Shrugged in particular. It triggered my interest in economics. That's where I got into studying economics. That's why I wanted to study the whole field of economics.
I later in life learned about what her philosophy was, it's called Objectivism. It's something that I completely disagree with. It's an atheistic philosophy. But I think what she's done is she's showed -- she came from communism. She showed how the pitfalls of socialism can hurt the economy, can hurt people, families and individuals and that to me was very compelling novels. Which says freedom, free enterprise, liberty is so much better than totalitarianism and socialism. Those novels, I thought were interesting. But her philosophy, which is different, is something I just don't agree with.

There is a reason why Charles Pierce calls Ryan a "zombie eyed granny starver" and the "Biggest. Fake. Ever." 

Charles Pierce describes perfectly, what the folks at the Janesville Gazette think a true leader is:

 As the deciding votes were cast—recorded in green on the black digital scoreboard suspended above the floor—the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, threw his head back and slammed his hands together. Soon he was engulfed in a sea of dark suits, every Republican lawmaker wanting to slap him on the shoulder and be a part of his moment.

His moment. Thirteen million Americans lose their health care.
 Paul Ryan, threw his head back and slammed his hands together.
His moment. Eighty-percent of the benefits going to the top one-percent.
 Paul Ryan, threw his head back and slammed his hands together.
His moment. Millions of dollars shoved upwards to people who already have billions of dollars. A deficit entering the orbit of Mercury.
 Paul Ryan, threw his head back and slammed his hands together.
His moment.

 

William Rivers Pitt @truthout had a similar disgusted reaction: 

When the president of the United States of America signs this bill into law, he will, among many other things, be signing a check to himself and men like Bob Corker. That check has a great many zeroes to the left of the decimal. These are the people the Evangelicals embrace as "theirs," though their pockets will be picked and their futures plundered, once again.

They cheered. It would be bad enough if they did this with their heads hung low in shame, knowing as we all know that this is only happening because the big GOP donors demanded the key to the Treasury and refused to donate again until they got it. We're sorry, they could (but would never) say, but they made us do it. We had to, we're sorry.  

 Instead, they cheered.  They actually cheered.

But Wait there is more:

 It’s not fair to blame Ryan for the antics of a president with little self-control.Congress would lose a great deal—namely integrity—if Ryan were to leave. Paul, please don’t go.

Yes if you were to ignore the career politicians complete record and just be mesmerized the one day a year he graces the Gazette with an interview, then you would definitely think that Paul Ryan was a man of integrity.   

However if you look at his record, listen to his words and as the late great Maya Angelou told us - "When someone tells you who they are. Believe them.".   Then you would know that there is not now, nor has there ever been an ounce of integrity coursing through Paul Ryan's body. 

Please Please Please Paul Go AWAY...and do not let the door hit you on your way out!  

Biggest. Fake. Ever.   

Edit Note:  There are two people running to dethrone Paul Ryan and actually for the first time allow the people of the first CD to be represented in Washington.   

Cathy Myers and Randy Bryce! 

Let's make sure one of them does! 

 

Memorial Day Politics!

By Jeff Simpson

I was excoriated on my facebook page for posting this yesterday, by a couple republicans, who said that Memorial Day is not a day for politics.

Today if you attend a Memorial day parade in WI and some republican politician throws you some candy...GRAB IT. Its the only thing they have done for you in 2.5 years!

I was even told by a de facto right wing member of the legislature - " Memorial Day should never be a day of politics."   

Then I saw this picture on facebook and amazingly none of  people who were upset seemed to be upset about this picture from the Burlington Veterans Memorial Day Parade:

Oops! 

One of my favorite writers William Rivers Pitt had this to say about Memorial Day, and hit it perfectly on the head!

Memorial Day is set aside to honor America's veterans, those who have served and those who have given what Abraham Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion. Indeed, you will not be able to turn your head today without confronting invocations of honor and duty. While it is all well and good to do this, the reality behind what our veterans endure today obscures these pious platitudes with the hard reek of hypocrisy.

Average wait time for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans filing their first claim to receive the benefits they earned: between 316 and 327 days. Those filing for the first time in big cities wait up to twice as long: 642 days in New York, 619 days in Los Angeles, and 542 days in Chicago.

The ranks of veterans waiting more than a year for their benefits grew from 11,000 in 2009 to 245,000 in December, an increase of more than 2,000%. The VA expected the number of veterans waiting - currently about 900,000 - to continue to increase throughout 2013 and top a million by the end of this past March.

There are, on average, 22 veteran suicides a day. “I’m not surprised at the number of us that kill ourselves,” Lincoln Capstick, an unemployed Iraq War veteran in Indiana where the average wait on new claims is 612 days, said to Time Magazine.

So today, as the politicians heap praise upon America's veterans, and as American businesses use veterans as props to boost their sales, remember what their sacrifice has truly meant...and remember that their sacrifice is ongoing, is happening right now, and will continue to happen until this country that so deeply values war finally steps up to care for he and she that has borne the battles.

A nation that does not care for its war veterans has no business making new ones

Nuff said! 

guns, Guns, GUns, GUNs, GUNS!

Some time has passed now since the horrific massacre of students and teachers in Connecticut.  This brought out the discussion on guns and what we need to do to start curbing some of the incredible gun violence that goes on every day in America.  

Gun suicides (nearly 19,000 a year in the U.S.) outnumber gun murders (more than 11,000), and a gun in the home increases the risk that someone in the home will commit suicide. The reason is that suicide attempts with pills or razors often fail; with guns, they succeed. When Israel moved to have many soldiers store guns on base rather than at home, its military suicide rates plunged.

With the passage of time, we realize that our friends on the right are incapable of having an adult conversation about anything much less guns.  Prime examples being here, here and here.  We even have people wanting to arm everyone, although anyone who says that is also not serious about this debate!

There are others on the right who also like to turn it into a straw man argument about the left wanting to repeal the second amendment, and that is also ridiculous.   The 2nd amendment is already limited!  

Immediately after the shootings, the cowards at the National Rifle Association(NRA) immediately went silent, even shutting down their facebook page.   After a few days, they issued a generic press release wanting in on the debate.   Which is a major improvement from Columbine when shortly after that horrible incident, the NRA held a party near by where this was the head of the NRA's famous distasteful quote:

Nice, so it would also be wise to limit the input of the NRA, unfortunately they have alot of money to give to people like we have been discussing who then do as they are told and muddy the waters.  

The problem is, we are shooting each other all too often and it has nothing to do with "protecting ourselves". 

A Florida man defended his decision to shoot an impatient pizza customer over the weekend, citing the state’s infamous “Stand Your Ground” law.
Michael Jock, a 52-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, was standing in line behind 49-year-old Randall White at a local Little Caesars on Sunday when Jock grew angry over White’s complaints about the speed of service. The two began to shove one another, prompting Jock to pull out a .38 Taurus Ultralight Special Revolver that had been concealed on his person and fire twice, hitting White both times in the lower torso.

Let's also never forget Bo Morrison! 

As William Rivers Pitt writes in TruthOut, guns are big business and its killing us!

An 11-year old boy in Utah brought a .22 pistol to school with him on Tuesday. His parents apparently gave it to him "for protection" in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre. His teacher found out he had it after he put the gun to the head of a classmate at recess and threatened to kill her.

Only two weeks ago, on December 4th, 11 people were shot in one night in Chicago, but that news barely jiggled the wires, because at the time everyone was encompassing the murder-suicide perpetrated by NFL player Jovan Belcher, who shot his girlfriend to death in front of her mother before killing himself in front of his coaches in a parking lot. At the time, everyone said it was terrible, something that really makes you think, and Bob Costas went so far as to lament the deadly nature of America's gun culture during the national broadcast of a football game. He was roundly attacked for speaking out of turn, for "not having all the facts," and for generally intruding upon everyone's enjoyment of the game.

Between 2003 and 2010, 247,131 Americans died of gunshot wounds. Since 1982, there have been more than 60 mass shootings in America. In almost every case, the weapons used were obtained legally. The number of households with guns has been declining, with a few upticks here and there, since 1990, and yet gun sales went through the roof in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, which means more people aren't buying guns, but the people who buy guns are buying more of them.

The gun business in America is booming, despite the decline in households that own guns. As the Washington Post glibly noted this week, "The U.S. gun industry has been one of the brightest spots in the U.S. economy in recent years, even through the recent downturn. This year, it racked up $11.7 billion in sales and $992 million in profits, according to the research firm IBISWorld." Almost 17 million people applied for a background check to purchase a gun in 2012. More than 156 million people have applied since 1998.

Now that every state but Illinois has CCW and 17 million people are applying to purchase guns, is it too late to let everyone know that carrying a gun does not keep you safer?

 Let's hope that Joe Biden can hear better from his left side than his right!