Monday, December 10, 2018

We're All Paul Krugman




David Brooks on Paul Ryan in 2011.
The Ryan Journey

...
The best thing about the long-term budget proposal from Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is that it forces Americans to confront the implications of their choices. If voters want taxes that amount to roughly 18 percent of G.D.P., then they are going to have to accept a government that looks roughly like what Ryan is describing.

...
Ryan has moved us off Unreality Island. He is forcing Americans to confront the implications of their choices. With a few straightforward changes, his budget could be transformed into a politically plausible center-right package that would produce a fiscally sustainable welfare state while addressing the country’s structural economic problems. I suspect the process Ryan has started will take us back toward the moderate framework the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission proposed a year ago.

Great journeys begin with one bold step.  

Ezra Klein on Paul Ryan today, demonstrating once again that the power of Beltway-bros-defending-Beltway-bros is mightier than mere facts:

Paul Krugman on Paul Ryan today.



Laughing and crying.
Laughing and crying.
Laughing and crying.


Behold, a Tip Jar!

7 comments:

PSF said...

Oh,sure. Quote the shrill economics brainiac.

RUKidding said...

"Has anyone learned from it?"

Sure. Many have learned from this that conservative pundits (which are nearly all of them, Katie) can continue to push out this type of bullshit about future Paul Ryan-type of Republican (and Republican-lite) pols, with lashings of Both Siderisms, and they'll continue to get paid very very very well for their specious crapola. Because the PTB like it and want it that way.

Unfortunately the Shrill One trucks in reality, which we all realize by now that's a No-No in this day and age of the rightwing propaganda wurlitizer, plus all media outlets furiously focusing on every debased twit that eminates from that Orange Anus in the White House as if they're some kind of pearls of wisdom.

Shrilly McShrillface will never be viewed as "correct" when he attempts to impinge reality on the conserva-masses. They're simply not buying what Shrillo is "selling."

Alas...

trgahan said...

Because it was more important to have a good looking, well connected, TRX workout buddy than worry about the pain and suffering such a Randite Policy Hatchet man would do to most of the media's flyover country hometowns where their parents likely still lived...

..hell, all the better, because the effects of the GOP's forced austerity in flyover country produced the very effects that gave these same reporters an endless supply of Obama and the Democrats Forgot Real America! bullshit to publish and yammer on about since 2016.

dinthebeast said...

As far as Ryan goes, we need to actually make sure he stays gone, because as a media-friendly total fraud, he's prime Republican presidential material.
And if you thought his ideas were bad as budget committee chair or speaker, you'll hate them if he's president and not laboring under the utter cluelessness about how the government works that Fergus has been constrained with.

-Doug in Oakland

Brad in Dallas said...

What's becoming clearer is that the Fox Propaganda machine in fact is only one of several, having been joined by the three letter news networks, who have after some uncertainty cemented an establishment Republican worldview into their mindsets.

Lit3Bolt said...

Ezra Klein admits to operating in the bad faith pundit fallacy View From Nowhere?

SHOCK. SHOCK AND/OR OUTRAGE.

It's almost as if everyone in the current media climate, from well meaning but hapless "liberals" to fuzzy headed centrist cocktail waiters, err, I mean journalists and columnists, to rapacious and spiteful but gosh darn so likable (and part of the Tribe) conservatives want their children and grandchildren to grow up in a Mad Max style dystopian hellscape.

METEOR/SUPERVOLCANO 2020!

Robt said...

Do not cry for Paul Ryan.

He will be receiving a yearly pension of $84 thousand per year with full ObamaCare coverage for him and his family. It may get a bit tight to live on. So he may be forced into taking a part time job lobbying for Putin.

The Ryan who did everything he could with his party of anti worker/ anti Union that have been successful in negotiating pensions for their the working class.

Ryan who received his economic degree from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". Made it his ideology. You see, it is socialism for workers to defer their pay to a pension through their employment but forcing tax payers to fund your pension as a U.S. Republican (Ayn Rand book carrying conservative), it is not socialism for his to get that pension. Because he is republican. And they would refuse to live with socialism.
Like Farmers, Wall Street bail outs, subsidized tax exempt NRA's.

Paul Ryan no doubt will, end up being nominated early to the Republican Hall of Fame.