I get the feeling that if I stared too long at this photo, I would be turned to stone.
That dead-eyed motherfucker up there is US Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI). He’s often talked about as one of the rising stars in the Republican Party, which most likely means that it’s only a matter of time until he gets caught with his dick in a hummingbird, or whatever peculiar fetish he has that he’s not telling anyone about.
Anyway, he was on the local TV news a couple of days ago, and I wanted to write something about it. I held off because I didn’t want to tread on Scout’s announcement, and then, of course, Senator Kennedy needed space for a eulogy or two.
But now it’s time to talk about Paul Ryan. Like I said, he was on television the other day, and he was making the following patently absurd claim: Republicans want to make sure that everyone in the country is covered by health insurance.
The local reporters missed a golden opportunity to do some, you know, JOURNALISM. Not that I’m holding them to a different standard than I do the national press; oh, no. You get the same (if not worse) shitty reporting from, say, Dana Milbank as you do from Blowdry McEmptySuit on ACTION NEWS 4000!!!!!(tm). Now, I’m sure you’ve spotted the glaring, unasked question that hung in the air like the stench of death at a charnel house.
Uh, Representative Ryan? WHEN, YOU FUCK? Your party ran the roost–the whole goddamn government–for six years. Six years! You held the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2007. You had TWELVE FUCKING YEARS to introduce something, anything that would show that your party was even marginally interested in providing health insurance to everyone. Now, I’m not entirely sure, but I’m pretty goddamn confident that, in those twelve years, quite a few Americans got sick, then went bankrupt, and/or became disabled, and/or fucking died because they didn’t have any health insurance. Or, you know, they had some, but then the criminal fucks who line their pockets off of the sickness and misery of others took their money and then denied them coverage.
Your statement, in honest (and therefore publicly unacceptable) language, is a lie. If health insurance was a priority, you would have done something. If it wasn’t you wouldn’t have. You didn’t.
Before any of you smartasses accuse me of falling prey to a logical fallacy, I’m not saying “(1) if A then B, (2) if not-A then not-B.” No. I’m using the contrapositive of the conditional: If not-B, then not-A. The lack of any health care proposals at all by the Republicans is evidence that they don’t care about reform.
Q.E.D., bitch.