great takedown of @reppaulryan 's shitty budget deal and his re-imaging as statesman in light of a presidential run

read more http://gawker.com/jan-20-2017-will-signal-the-dawning-of-president-paul-1481046303?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

''Ezra Klein accurately described the Ryan/Murray plan as a "mini-budget deal." It ignores Medicare and Social Security and subsistence for the unemployed. It restores the bipartisan consensus that spending on military stuff is sacrosanct. And it reaffirms that our government, like the proverbial mangy old porch-dwelling sack of a canine, cannot actually do any new tricks—it can only, at best, agree to keep in place the pro-market anti-safety-net minimalist performance-art-as-policy that it's executed in years past.

But in an atmosphere where our expectations are so vulgarly low—where government shutdowns and world-shaking debt defaults and Barnumesque Senate floor stemwinders are now go-to tools for the average-IQ cheap haircuts we send to govern in our names—a "mini-budget deal" appears as a Marshall Plan, and its architects are as statesmen.

Say that aloud: "Paul Ryan, statesman." He's probably saying it, now, to himself on the House elevator. It probably forms the whispery thesis of his soon-to-be-published book. He was very statesmanlike this week. He sold all of America on the status quo. Not even the status quo president could do that.

It really is a remarkable achievement, doubly so if you're the kind of person who doesn't remember that Paul Ryan is an Ayn Rand groupie who not long ago declared open war on Grandma, decrying her and minorities, and children, and mothers as "takers," not "makers." That he wanted to kill Social Security and Medicare, then denied it and falsely claimed it was the current president who wanted to kill Medicare, then tried to kill them again.''