Brio and Guts
by digby
Uhm, did someone say that David Brooks was a truly decent guy who cares about real people?
Today, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is scheduled to release the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes....His proposal will set the standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this discussion....This budget tackles just about every politically risky issue with brio and guts....Paul Ryan has grasped reality with both hands. He’s forcing everybody else to do the same.
Isn't that great? It's "serious" because it cuts taxes for rich people while throwing the sick and elderly into the street. (And no, that isn't hyperbole --- if his Medicaid and Medicare "reforms" were to actually happen, millions of elderly people in nursing homes would literally have nowhere to go.)
Gosh it must be so nice to feel so secure in your own life that it never even occurs to you that this might be you --- or someone you know and love. Most Americans used to feel that way, but I'm guessing those days are gone forever. With this kind of person considered a true "leader" a courageous man by whom all others must be measured going forward, life is about to get a lot worse in this country. This isn't actually an abstraction.
Kevin Drum puts it well:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Courageous. Serious. Gutsy. I imagine that within a few days this will be the consensus view of the entire Beltway punditocracy. A plan dedicated almost entirely to slashing social spending in a country that's already the stingiest spender in the developed world, while simultaneously cutting taxes on the rich in a country with the lowest tax rates in the developed world — well, what could be more serious than that?
I think I'm going to be sick.
Me too.
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