Ryan's Lessons from a "Tree Stand," or, Will the Media Please Stop Defending Paul Ryan!!!

What is wrong with the media? This dance around Paul Ryan’s recent “inarticulate” commentary is even more pathetic than ever. The media is now making excuses for Ryan.

PolitiFact even decided to offer up a larger part of Ryan’s Bill Bennett interview, so we could put Paul’s comments in “context.” What a joke…big difference?

Simple Truths…missing in action:

#1. Ryan’s False Premise A: Ryan’s culture of work statement isn't a brilliant observation, who would disagree with it…only “the left” I guess. PolitiFact would rate that as “Pants on fire.”

#2. Ryan’s False Premise B: Lefties love the “status quo/no changes,” therefore oppose Ryan’s ideas. Like cutting people off (“courage to face that down”) the safety net programs, unless they did what they were told with new and stricter back to work laws. A desperate slave labor force? You’ll also notice Ryan hedges his bets with “if we succeed.” He wants to use the entire U.S. population for his experiment. See for yourself below:

And so when you question the status quo of the government’s poverty -- this war on poverty -- you get all the criticisms from the adherents of the status quo who just don’t want to see anything change. We’ve got to have the courage to face that down, just like we did in welfare reform in the late 1990s. And if we succeed, we can help resuscitate this culture and get people back to work and get people back to meeting their potential…”

#3. Ryan ignores the economic bloodletting known as the Great Recession. That one moment in history destroyed jobs at big box retailers and neighborhood small businesses. Remember when Best Buy had to compete with Circuit City and CompUSA, two stores that employed millions nationwide. They’re gone now. My own business died instantly when car dealerships were wiped out en masse.

Ryan and his accomplices like Gov. Scott Walker can’t seem to fix the problems with tax cuts to big business and deregulation. Corporate promises of job creation, a bust.

#4. One-note Ryan’s Remedy? Deregulate, open up our parks for big energy, tax cuts for business, create a desperate workforce by cutting the safety nets and demoralize Americans enough so they gravitate to more conservative policies and big talking “leaders.”

I thought this ridiculous example of Ryan’s rugged individualism and leadership said it all in a "nutshell:"

Bennett:  What’s the roadmap, as someone might say?

Ryan: In a nutshell, work works. It’s all about getting people to work ... Mentors and my mom. My dad’s friends, his buddies taught me how to hunt and taught me a lot of things, and my mom. And so --

Bennett: Hunting is not working, is it?

Ryan: Well, no, but you can learn -- by the way, you can teach your kids character in the woods. A lot of good life lessons are learned in a tree stand, Bill.