Paul Ryan released his new budget which, from all I’ve read thus far, is remarkably similar to the one Americans resoundly rejected last year as being mathematically impossible and morally depraved.

The “new” plan includes VoucherCare, screws people under age 54 out of Medicare (as a 51-year-old, let me repeat:FUCK YOU, PAUL RYAN), cuts taxes on the wealthiest and corporations, increases defense spending by $500 billion over the next 10 years, and magically cuts the deficit by such amazing feats as repealing Obamacare.
In other words, this isn’t anything close to a serious attempt to deal with “fiscal issues.” So remember, kiddos: when Beale tells you nobody gives a fuck about the budget deficit, this is what I mean.

Says Ryan:

“The election didn’t go our way, believe me I know what that feels like,” Ryan said Tuesday at a press conference to unveil his proposal. “Does that mean we surrender our principles?”

Yep, that’s right. The Republican Party will make its last stand on budget ideas already rejected by voters, because even though they’re based on completely fantastical “principles,” by God it’stheir principles. And when reality trumps conservative principles, it’s always the reality which must be wrong.

Yesterday Son of Breitbart and the dude with the *sirens* told everyone that Nobel Prize winning economist and anti-austerity crusader Paul Krugman had declared bankruptcy. Har har, what a fail, see what happens when liberals try to do economics! Except, of course, he didn’t, it was all a hoax which is precisely what happens when right-wingers try to do journalism. I bring it up because it seems to me that conservatives haven’t learned one lesson from the last election. The whole “information bubble” problem still seems in full force, and they seem to be sticking by their unpopular “shred the social safety net” thing.

With Republicans permanently divorced from reality, now would be a good time for Democrats (asusual, gawd I’m so sick of this shit) to be the grown-ups on the budget issue. Is the budget deficit really a “crisis”? Not according to un-bankrupt Krugman, who has talked about this a-plenty (here’s a good column for starters). It would be really nice if he weren’t the lone voice crying in the wilderness.

I mean, really. If Republicans can put forward a fairy tale budget which is the plutocrats’ wet dream — tax cuts! Increase defense spending! Kill Obamacare! Privatize Medicare! — then I say it’s long past time Democrats found their spine and called bullshit on the whole pretense.