Making room for a substantive discussion on issues

In order to separate comments about Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and their priorities and positions (legitimate topics in an election) from odd comments made by supporters in odd contexts, I am putting these comments in a separate location.  Policy issues, such as my disagreements with privatizing Medicare, privatizing Social Security, increasing overseas military use in a time of large budget deficits, et cetera, will be handled elsewhere.  Right here, I will address some things that I consider morally inconsistent and odd about a biography/hagiography of Paul Ryan floating around on the web.  Parts of this biography will be included in brackets and handled in the same order as written.  there will be some removal of material I do not directly touch on for the sake of space.  The non-inclusion of a part of the original set of claims should not be taken to mean agreement.

<He's not a graduate of Columbia University . He's not a graduate of Harvard. He wasn't selected as the President of the Harvard Law Review.>

To a certain extent, this reflects a strain in American populism; especially when used to refer to someone who has had a fortunate start in life.  It also is part of a strain of anti-intellectualism in American life: “How dare this person get into one of them fancy schools!”  What makes this discordant here is that George W Bush, whom Obama replaced, got into Yale and Harvard as a legacy, and because his father was then running the CIA and had been a US Representative, and his grandfather had been a US Senator.

< He didn't get a special free quota scholarship ride to any prestigious university> and later, < No one offered him a "token honor" position at the University of Chicago>

Obviously, simply disagreeing with Barack Obama, or supporting a different candidate, is not racist.  These, however, cross that line.

<One morning when Paul Ryan was sixteen years old he went in to wake his father up and found him dead of a heart attack.>

This is extraordinarily unfortunate.  My father died when I was forty, and it still affected me strongly.  How Barack Obama had it easier by never knowing his father (meeting him once, and he died when Obama was 21) is not explained.

<He didn't write two books about that experience.>

Why is this bad?  Seriously, why is this a bad thing?

<Instead, he assumed the role of adult at an early age, never having the luxury to pursue youthful drug use and the art of socialist revolution.>

This person is using the Democratic definition of “youthful drug use” (~teenage) as opposed to the Republican definition of “youthful drug use” (~until you are forty – cf ‘George W Bush’).  Oh, and “socialist” is cheap name calling.  Yawn.

<His grandma wasn't the Vice President of the Bank of Hawaii so she could offer nothing in return, except the element of "need".>

But Obama’s grandmother worked her way from a B-29 assembly plant to become the first female vice-president of the Bank of Hawai’i without a college degree.  I thought that would be the self-made Republican ideal.  What did I miss?

<When a still young Paul Ryan returned to Wisconsin to run for Congress he didn't demonize his opponent and dig up dirt to shovel against him.> 

It was not Barack Obama that knocked out the previous senator, it was for an open seat.  It was not Obama who knocked Jack Ryan out of the race, it was revelations that Jack and his wife actress Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager, NYPD Blue) had gotten divorced in part because he was trying to get her to take part in public sex in Chicago sex clubs.  Although if mud-slinging was at one point not part of Ryan’s toolbox, I wish that he had kept it so.

<He waited until the standing Congressman vacated the office before seeking the office.>

This implies that it is a good thing to have Congressmen who reach office, and then stay there until they die.  Almost as odd as using this when Obama’s entry in Congress also came while running for an open seat.

Here I skip some “Wow, what a good ol’ boy our candidate is.”

<No, I don't know if we can vote for a guy like this. He doesn't have a regal pedigree; he's Irish for God's sake!>

Because the Irish have had it so much harder in America than mixed ethnicity African-Americans …  (That was sarcasm.  I really that sarcasm does not come across well in text, so I am telling you, just to make it clear.)

< He's is brazen and heartless …>

Agreed.  Oh wait, there’s more …

<… in advocating in that budget for a $5 trillion dollar reduction in federal spending over the next ten years!>

It is the manner of cuts and the assumptions that he makes about their effects that I oppose.  as a policy statement, I am writing this to free myself up to respond to other statements.

< … without ever proposing a budget of their own.> 

While not necessary, I will agree that the Democratic Congressional Leadership should put forward a budget to illustrate their goals and priorities.

<I don't know. Paul Ryan seems heartless to me.>

I agree again.  Oh, wait, still more …

< He keeps wanting to cut government waste,>

Only if you define government waste as “everything except for defense.”  I do not.

<… worse, he keeps trying to make people look at that $16.7 trillion dollar deficit! >

That is not the deficit, that is the debt, and we have not reached that number yet.  Also, we had a debt of $12 trillion before Barack Obama signed his first budget.  A discussion of priorities, why I strongly disagree cutting spending in a recession and slow recovery, can go in a substantive discussion that I am trying to make room for by addressing this stuff here.  Hint : It did not work so well when Herbert Hoover tried it.

<Who wants a numbers cruncher?>

As long as it is an honest number cruncher.  Paul Ryan’s reputation as a numbers-savvy deficit hawk is tremendously undeserved.