John/BannedAgain’s Post on Paul Ryan

Posted on August 11, 2012 by okiegirl

The Ryan you see today is not the man who for years has appeared as a guest on CNBC. That guy was a “moderate”, nuts and bolts on facts and figures, a charismatic wonk if you will. However not at all, ideologically speaking, on the side of the budget that now bears his name Here’s what I think happened.

The GOP in 2006-08 was an old party, especially in the national leadership, people in their 60s and older. It was full of politicians who had cut their teeth in the Reagan years. The back to back defeats damaged the brand so to speak and paved the way for the sea change that occurred in 2010. Suddenly, much more suddenly than men like Boehner were expecting I’m sure, the GOP was younger, angrier, more ideological and conservative.

As in any civil war, everybody has to choose sides. Ryan being a politician first and a wonk second, chose to run with the upcoming big dogs of his own generation as it were, rather than stay a moderate. He capped this off by putting his name on a budget that was a terrible mistake, because it was another one of those “symbolic” pieces of legislation that had no possibility of passage and which are by their very nature works of faith , not reason.

He’s stuck with the “Ryan budget” now in which the numbers don’t work, but which he’ll have to defend. It’s probably career suicide for him

Incidentally and hopefully the same sea change is about to occur for the Dems in 2014-16. They are an exceptionally old party at the leadership level, notwithstanding the president. Men and women who came to the fore in the Clinton years and who are now in their 60s and 70s. In the next two elections, all the Reids, Bidens, Clintons, Hoyers, Dingells Levins and Rangells will retire or be swept out by a younger generation of Dems, hungrier, more combative, more liberal in a watershed move.

May we all live in interesting times.

Posted on behalf of bannedagain because he doesn’t have the capability of creating a post himself, which is his own damn fault.

Filed under: 2012, Republican Party | Tagged: | 146 Comments »

Nuns on the Bus

Posted on June 21, 2012 by lmsinca

Yesterday jnc4p mentioned a slight difference between men and women that I found provocative.

It appears that when there is a financial crisis there is a gender divide on what the appropriate resolution is.

The male outlook as represented by Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke seems to favor the make a deal approach as the way to resolve it with the government assisting/backstopping private entities. If a deal goes bad, make a bigger one until confidence is restored. I believe this is part and parcel of having the regulators captured by the mindset of the Wall Street banks they are supervising.

This is contrasted with the female outlook as represented by Sheila Blair and Brooksley Born which is more in line with follow the rules and let the chips fall where they may.

He went on to say how much respect he has for women like Sheila Bair and Brooksley Born.  His comment made me think of another woman who’s doing her part right now, not in the financial world, but in the political arena nonetheless, as a response to the spending cuts in the Ryan Budget, the increase in poverty since the beginning of this recession and in defiance of the Catholic Bishops’ rebuke.  Have you heard of Sister Simone?

(CBS News) JANESVILLE, Wis. – Fourteen Roman Catholic nuns on a nine-state bus tour are in Chicago Wednesday, after several stops in Wisconsin. Officially, they’re protesting cuts in federal programs for the poor. But the “Nuns on the Bus” tour is also an act of defiance against criticism from the Vatican.

Sister Simone Campbell is a Roman Catholic nun and the executive director of Network — a liberal social justice lobby in Washington.

“Nuns on the Bus” website

She’s been under siege, but she’s not fazed.

“Into every life a little rain must come,” she said.

Sister Simone is also a bit of a provocateur.

“Catholic sisters have always been out on the edge,” she said. “And quite frankly we have a long history of kind of annoying the central authority.”

The central authority they’ve recently annoyed is the Vatican itself. In April, sister Simone’s group and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — representing 80 percent of the nation’s nuns — were attacked by the church hierarchy for focusing too much of their work on poverty and economic justice, while being silent on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican reprimands U.S. nuns over “radical feminist themes”
U.S. Catholic nuns go about work after rebuke

Simone says she pleads guilty to part of that charge: “That I spend too much time working for people in poverty. I wear that as a badge of honor.”

The Vatican has appointed a bishop to correct what the church calls “serious doctrinal problems” in the way the nuns work.

They’ve been called radical feminists.

Simone’s response: “Oh my heavens. I actually have to laugh. We are strong women. We’re educated women. We ask questions. We engage in dialogue. That’s all we do. We stay faithful to the gospel and trying to live it.

From the AP via the Washington Post:

While the nuns say they aren’t opposing any specific Republican candidate, they plan stops at the offices of several closely tied to the budget process, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the architect of the House-passed budget. Their first stop Monday was Rep. Steve King’s office in Ames. The tour will end in Washington on July 2.

Social activism at its finest.

Filed under: 2012, Poverty | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

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