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News & ArtsSaturday, August 11, 2012
2012 Ryan's Record
Posted by Paul Constant on Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 10:05 AM
One last mammoth post from me and then I'm done for the morning. In sifting through the 290-page Ryan file I linked to last night, I saw that Paul Ryan has a highly consistent legislative record. He has voted against regulations of all kinds—environmental protections, work safety laws, controls on the banking, credit card, and health care industries—and against spending on things like food stamps, arts funding, Medicare, and infrastructure. He wants to decimate Pell Grants and he votes against education funding almost every time. He's strongly anti-abortion. He votes against protecting minorities and women—against The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, for example—but he votes for religion, arguing against the separation of church and state whenever possible. He claims to be for small government, but he votes for military spending a whole lot. He was against drawing down in Afghanistan, and he's for government wiretapping and the PATRIOT Act. The only real divergence from that record comes from his votes to bail out GM and his support for TARP, when the entire country was teetering on the edge of a Bush-inspired collapse.
Something that worries me, though, is Ryan has a disconcerting habit of completely denying the reality of his record, in a very convincing way. If a senior citizen asks Ryan about privatizing Medicare, he will toss a word salad that leaves the senior disoriented and convinced that he's actually for a stronger Medicare. He will force his interns to read Ayn Rand novels, tell everyone we're "living in an Ayn Rand novel," and even credit his entire life of public service to Ayn Rand, and then he will tell a crowded room with a straight face that his love for Ayn Rand is an "urban legend." Both of these contradictory truths are on the record.
So the most important job of the Obama campaign is to get the truth about Ryan out there so quickly and so completely that there can be no doubt about it. I'm kind of surprised I only woke up to one Obama campaign video about Ryan this morning. It's a sign of the times that the best vetting of the Republican vice presidential candidate I've seen so far is on Reddit:
Rated 13% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance. (Dec 2006)
Rated 36% by NAACP, indicating a mixed record on affirmative-action. (Dec 2006)
Rated 8% by the NEA, indicating anti-public education votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 30% by CURE, indicating anti-rehabilitation crime votes. (Dec 2000)
Rated 0% by the CAF, indicating opposition to energy independence. (Dec 2006)
Rated -3 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)
Rated 11% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 0% by the AU, indicating opposition to church-state separation. (Dec 2006)
Rated 10% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record. (Dec 2003)
Voted YES on $15B bailout for GM and Chrysler. (Dec 2008)
Voted NO on $60B stimulus package for jobs, infrastructure, & energy. (Sep 2008)
Don't forget that he got a 3% from the League of Conservation Voters (environmental issues). He never scored higher than a 27% in his entire career.
He also got a 13% from the Humane Society Legislative Fund, having just voted to gut the Endangered Species Act (bill removes the US Fish & Wildlife Service's ability to add any new species or territory to the list of protected species and habitats), and having voted for the government funding helicopter shootings and poisoning of wolves in the Northwest.
Most of that information came directly from Ryan's OnTheIssues page, which can be found right here.
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Wonder if it'll have the same effect?
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on social and economic issues the contrast is stark.
R/R will win for exactly all the reasons that slog is pissing itself over.
Of course, the most important strike against him as far as the Stranger is concerned is that he has an Anglo sounding name and he doesn't put his penis in places that are meant for pooping.
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Once it gets down to election time, you guys lose any sense of the bigger picture and do nothing but shill for one against the other, regardless of the true merits involved.
Looking forward to the conclusion of this election so you guys can once again return to being a semi-respectable news organization.
Thinks someone is projecting over the penis they want in their own pooper.Come out of the closet 4, you'll be a happier person.
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Also, "paid."
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Built Blood Money Capital (Bain Capital) by original financing from the death squad operators of El Salvador, etc., and proceeded to destroy companies and jobs, while creating ever more debt.
Willard Mitt Romney, draft dodger, tax dodger, debt queen.
Mandatory viewing for the day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla…
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It's just insane and requires both a complete misreading of Rand and no understanding of "public service".
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@14 With Ryan's talent of 'baffling them with bullshit' (His Ayn Rand flip is priceless), and the need to change the game, I think they'll put him out earlier and controlled like Palin.. He seems better suited for that then her, but even Daily Kos thought she was a reasonable R before her nomination.
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@23 Kudos.
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@31: I'm glad I wasn't the only one getting a "possum" vibe from TSWN. That was exactly the word I was thinking. Weird!
but he will push grandma off the cliff, and he is a budget slasher.
the o team will quicly brand him as such. florida is now for O. ditto pennsylvania and ohio. so who cares if wisconsin goes the other way.
also he's quite new to the national stage and can be counted on to make rookie errors, and he's not even that well known in wisconsin, also he's going to have to speak on foreign policy and he's got nothing there. ending medicare as we know IS THE ONE THING DEMOCRATS REALLY GET MOTIVATED TO FIGHT ON.
so bad choice. on the other hand, I wistfully note the GOP prediliction for having a clear theory and program they're not afraid to present to voters.......
I think of TSWN more as the santorum of a comment thread, you don't really want to acknowledge it in the middle of all the fun, but he just feels he has to self servingly stain the sheets.
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Whenever I find someone that uses canned answers to reply to challenges to their philosophy, I wonder if they even think it through anymore. or if they ever did. For some, the answers seem so easy. They're handed to them in pill form, meant to be swallowed whole, unquestioningly.
My dream candidate would not have any responses ready to whip out in an instant. S/he would paused when asked a question, mull the idea over, ask alot of questions, engage in a discussion exploring the merits and deficits of an idea, and then arrive at a conclusion that is open to later review.
Such a candidate will never exist. We want our politicians to be confident even to absurdity. We want them to be super-human, in their ability to know exactly what is to be done. Which is why our system fails so frequently. The only people who ever get into office are the frauds who project themselves as being exactly what we want them to be- infallible.
I have no religion and no politics to speak of. I have a few things I would like to see done, but those who sit in pews or pay membership dues frighten me.
(although, technically, wouldn't Obama have to actually have a personality for it to work? no doubt that is why trashing the opposition is the only game his sad disappointed supporters have left......)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-fin…
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.co…
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In the third debate, instead of Vice President versus Vice President, how about opposing VP versus Presidential candidate?
That would give us a Ryan versus Obama debate (and a less interesting Romney vs. Biden).
So, this would be a chance for each party's Ideological Persecutor to interrogate the flag bearing candidate.
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http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore…
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