I see that RMoney’s vice presidential candidate, not satisfied with Willard’s dismissal of the 47% of Americans he considers welfare recipients and not worthy of him worrying about since they will never vote for him, has decided to proclaim that as far as he, Ryan, is concerned, a full 60% of Americans are just low down worthless moochers, because they get back more in services from government than they pay in as taxes.
Romney’s dismissal of 47% left him with 53% to appeal to.
Ryan’s dismissal of 60% leaves him with 40%. Hard to win an election with just 40%, as I hope Ryan will soon discover.
What makes this even more hilarious as well as disgusting is that Just this week Romney publicly tried to walk back and repudiate his clear disdain for the 47% he criticized so harshly when speaking in private with his wealthy supporters. Of course, he did that only because it was hurting him in the presidential race, since it has become a consistent topic of discussion, and fodder for many powerful ads from the Obama campaign against him. And of course need I point out that his walk-back was, like pretty much everything that comes out of Romney’s mouth, a bald faced, hypocritical lie. He no more sincerely meant his retraction than he meant his lies during the debate that he will not destroy Social Security and Medicare. I fact, his performance in the first debate was a perfect example of the debate technique called the “gish gallop”.
Named for the debate tactic created by creationist shill Duane Gish, a Gish Gallop involves spewing so much bullshit in such a short span on that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it. To make matters worse a Gish Gallop will often have one or more ‘talking points’ that has a tiny core of truth to it, making the person rebutting it spend even more time debunking it in order to explain that, yes, it’s not totally false but the Galloper is distorting/misusing/misstating the actual situation. A true Gish Gallop generally has two traits.
1) The factual and logical content of the Gish Gallop is pure bullshit and anybody knowledgeable and informed on the subject would recognize it as such almost instantly. That is, the Gish Gallop is designed to appeal to and deceive precisely those sorts of people who are most in need of honest factual education.
2) The points are all ones that the Galloper either knows, or damn well should know, are totally bullshit. With the slimier users of the Gish Gallop, like Gish himself, its a near certainty that the points are chosen not just because the Galloper knows that they’re bullshit, but because the Galloper is deliberately trying to shovel as much bullshit into as small a space as possible in order to overwhelm his opponent with sheer volume and bamboozle any audience members with a facade of scholarly acumen and factual knowledge.
As for Ryan, who has now upped the ante to dismiss 60% of Americans as moochers off the government teat:
In a story reminiscent of Mitt Romney’s attack on the 47% of Americans who he says think of themselves as “victims,” Ben Craw and Zach Carter of the Huffington Post report today that Paul Ryan has repeatedly criticized 60% of Americans, who he calls “takers,” for getting more money from the federal government than they put in. (People who put in more than they take are called “makers” by Ryan.)
Not mentioned in the HuffPost story, and buried at the end of their video showing Ryan repeatedly mentioning “takers” and “makers,” is Ryan accusing “takers” – 60% of the country – of not being “American,” not “want[ing] the American dream,” and not “believ[ing] in the American idea.”
This comes on the heels of Mitt Romney’s retraction today of his 47% comments, after a month of defending them.
Here’s Ryan’s standard talking point, per HuffPo:
“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.”
Paul Ryan has worked only two “real jobs” in his entire bleeping life. A few weeks flipping burgers. And a short stint as an intern driving the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. I refuse to count and include the time he worked for his parents’ construction company. I mean really, who gets to count doing chores for daddy on their job resume. Oh, except the super rich and thus entitled. I forgot.
Seriously, that anything this man says regarding the American economy is taken by any hearer with any response other than uproarious laughter and scorn is a testament to how far from reality based government the GOP and the Corporate Oligarchy and the Far Right Wing have managed to move our national debate and discourse.
I seriously hope and pray that the enthusiasm I am seeing in the crowds of 35,000 that show up for Obama appearances will be reflected by an eager willingness to go to the polls this cycle, and dump the GOP out of power in all three branches of government. Recent polling showed that Americans are tired of the gridlock of divided branches, it has gotten us nowhere. It is time to throw the GOP out of power, out into the street where they belong, once and for all.
And then, maybe Paul Ryan will finally have a chance to get a real job. Although you and I both know he will land a cushy overpaid position in some right-wing think tank, where he can continue to plan how to undermine American government, Social Security, Medicare, and every good thing the government does for the American people, i.e. the 99%, not the 1%.
In the perfect, government free GOP Romney / Ryan world, we all will be free to have no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no support from the government at all for either savings programs, the first two, or help for the desperately poor, the third. There will be no unions, no public education. We will all be on our own, all free to exercise our inner John Galt.
Of course, this will mean we will all also get to build our own roads; establish our own private police and fire forces; build our own dams; waterways; bridges. It will be a fantastic utopia, utterly free of the heavy hand of big government, and socialism.
If you sense that I see a certain logical disconnect between the needed role of government and what the GOP and Corporate Oligarchy want, you have been paying attention.
And one other point of interest. The states that consistently receive MORE in government services back than they pay in taxes are, yes, you saw this one coming: the RED states that consistently vote for the GOP. Go figure.
Oh, and based on Romney’s remarks in the first debate, here is a scene from future America. Because Willard just LOVES to fire people.
