Austerity for dummies
by digby
I hate to hit Paul Ryan twice in one day, but this is so mind-bogglingly disingenuous that you have to assume the man is either a sociopath or extremely disabled:
RYAN: Let's review for a moment the path we are on, where we stand right now. It pains me to say this, but it's become clear that the president has committed us to the current path: higher taxes, more dependency, more bureaucratic control, inaction on the drivers of our debt — just not even dealing with it — and painful austerity, the kind you see in Europe.
This is very clever Orwellian gobbledygook. I would guess that the Republicans have found that the word "austerity" has penetrated and has negative connotations. So they are trying to shift the definition. It's quite a bold move even for a Randian menace like Ryan.
As we all know, Europe is a welfare state and that's very bad because it creates "welfare queens" who suck all the money from the hard working tax payers. (This is why Germany and France are nothing but hellhole ghettos where you can't even find a WalMart when you need a quick case of Capn' Crunch and Dr. Pepper.) Anyway, they gave all kinds of benefits to their welfare queens and now they have to live under austerity --- something we can only avoid if we cut government spending and taxes on the wealthy.
I don't know if it will work, but I do know that it gave me a headache when I read it so I'd guess it has a pretty good chance of sufficiently confusing the issue.
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