Paul Ryan continues to prove his idiocy and incompetence

Looks like a local Wisconsin boy got a chance to come back home this week,
as former House Speaker Paul Ryan got to speak to the business “leaders” at Forward Janesville. < And yes, it was as full of BS as you would think.

Asked about the biggest issues facing the nation, Ryan said they were entitlement reform, including health care, and immigration reform.

Ryan called those “the two big things that got away” when he was speaker, “and I think it was because of our politics.”

Fix those two things, “and we will have another spectacular American century,” he said.

I’ll leave out the awfulness of what Paul Ryan wants to do with “entitlement reform” (in a nutshell - “leave your future up to the whims of whatever a few oligarchs allow you to have”), and I’ll go with the reason Ryan gives for those issues not getting resolved – “our politics.” If only Paul Ryan had been in a position to deal with “our politics” over the last 20 years!

I mean, it’s not like he ever was Speaker of the House and got to decide on who headed up committees or which bills needed to be taken up, right? We should never forget Ryan’s last, fitting act as Speaker - allowing a government shutdown because he was scared to death of Trump and a few angry TeaBaggers, and then skipping out the back door two weeks later to hand off the mess to Nancy Pelosi.

What did you actually do in DC?

Oh, but there’s more from Pau-lie.

“We have such a bitter, polarizing politics today, and it is not simply because of this person or that person. It is the era we are in, where digital technology, algorithms, are basically feeding off of anger and bad, dark emotions. There is a whole cottage industry in Washington of people who make a lot of money getting you mad, getting you upset,” he said.

Which is why Paul Ryan boycotted Milwaukee hate radio and Fox News for his entire career, because he despised that “cottage industry”, right? NOPE. Instead, he actively went on those stations of hate and winked and nodded when they would give inflammatory talking points to stir up rubes into voting Republican, while frequently using racially-tinged “hammock” imagery as a reason to cut health care and food stamps.

And did Ryan say or do anything to try to get President Trump in line, either through words, or through holding up legislation? Of course not! He didn’t give a damn what Trump did to wreck this country as long as it helped give his donors a few more tax cuts.

And did Ryan ever do anything about the “algorithms” and Big Tech companies that gladly took the money of foreign agents to spread hate and try to influence our country’s elections? HELL NO, and in fact, Ryan was the guy who appointed Devin freaking Nunes to chair the House Intelligence Committee, and allowed that tool to obstruct and bury information on investigations that might reveal how these operations helped Donald Trump and other Republicans win in 2016.

Ryan also made a comment about someone who wasn’t in the House when he was “working” there – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ryan said he didn’t think AOC “really listened to a thing I said, you know, ‘just take it easy, just watch things for a while.’”

In addition to the fact that AOC is clearly smart enough to ignore an empty vessel, unlike so many DC insiders who “know how it works”, Ryan's comment ignited a reaction from Esquire’s Charlie Pierce. Charlie has a special level of disgust for Ryan, given that he is also Irish-Catholic, and (unlike Ryan) graduated college in Wisconsin.

First of all, the zombie-eyed granny starver is the deadest letter in American politics right now. He is reckoned even by his own party to be the worst Speaker of the House in living memory, albeit for different reasons than the ones that drove Democrats to the identical conclusion. Second, he was elected at 28 and immediately started promulgating his truthless economic policies all over Washington until he developed a completely unmerited reputation as an economic wunderkind. And third, just shut up. You scarpered on the Speakership because you saw minority status coming at you like a freight train.

You may not like the way AOC does her job, but at least she's in there doing it. Why she should give you the time of day is a mystery beyond my ken.

Indeed, why should anyone give Paul Ryan the time of day in April 2019?

Still soooo punchable.

I don’t know what’s more amazing. That Paul Ryan thinks he can still pull this “aw shucks, I have principles and fought the good fight” act, or that anyone with an IQ above bug level would buy it after the way he incompetently failed in Congress. Even if it’s only to speak to a bunch of “big fish, small pond” types like Forward Janesville, it’s a space Paul Ryan isn’t worthy of these days.