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"  It was remarked upon by more than a few people that, during the Reign Of The Morons, now entering its second smash week, Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, and first runner-up in the most recent Mr. Vice President Pageant, had been conspicuously laying low. This was accounted to be somewhat odd, since Ryan&amp;#039;s counterfeit credentials as a &amp;quot;budget wonk&amp;quot; were really the only reason anyone ever had heard of him. I was not surprised because Ryan still has national ambitions, because Ryan is still thoroughly convinced of his own visionary genius, and because this whole Republican &amp;quot;civil war&amp;quot; is merely a disagreement on tactics. (And because, let&amp;#039;s face it, the Democratic party&amp;#039;s position is to reopen the government on budgetary numbers that are worse than the ones Ryan once proposed.) The party is still united in its desire to eliminate all the functions of the federal government except those that enable economic oligarchy, and that has been Ryan&amp;#039;s golden dream ever since he was mooching a higher education on my tax dollars and those of my parents. You&amp;#039;re welcome, foof. He&amp;#039;s emerged from the canyons of his giant intellect as his own idea of a conciliator -- Yes, like all modern Republicans, Ryan is gifted at casting himself in the movie of his own life -- with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. First, let&amp;#039;s clear something up. The president says he &amp;quot;will not negotiate&amp;quot; on the debt ceiling. He claims that such negotiations would be unprecedented. But many presidents have negotiated on the debt ceiling-including him. In 1985, Ronald Reagan signed a debt-ceiling deal with congressional Democrats that set deficit caps. In 1997, Bill Clinton hammered out an agreement with congressional Republicans to raise the debt ceiling, reform Medicare and cut capital-gains taxes. Which is merely the latest talking point pulled from the nether regions of John Boehner. The previous negotiations were different by an order of magnitude from the naken hostage-taking currently being practiced in Washington. Except, of course, for... Two years ago, Mr. Obama signed the Budget Control Act, which swapped spending cuts for a debt-ceiling hike. Which was an enormous mistake, as even the president is rather after admitting these days.  In 2011, Oregon&amp;#039;s Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and I offered ideas to reform Medicare. We had different perspectives, but we also had mutual trust. Neither of us had to betray his principles; all we had to do was put prudence ahead of pride.  (Briefly lapses into W.C. Fields impression) Ahhhhh, yessss. (Regular voice resumes) This was one of Ryan&amp;#039;s previous scams, and he still hasn&amp;#039;t learned that I Found A Sucker isn&amp;#039;t a demonstration of bipartisan problem-solving. The Ryan-Wyden plan, which would have mixed private plans with a Medicare &amp;quot;public option,&amp;quot; thereby blowing a hole in the Medicare guarantee, attracted the support of exactly nobody and went exactly nowhere. (In fact, to this day, it&amp;#039;s hard to see what Wyden ever got out of the deal.) This is because sensible Democrats realize that Ryan has no more interest in &amp;quot;saving&amp;quot; Medicare than he does of joining the Young Spartacist League. This isn&amp;#039;t a grand bargain. For that, we need a complete rethinking of government&amp;#039;s approach to helping the most vulnerable, and a complete rethinking of government&amp;#039;s approach to health care. But right now, we need to find common ground. We need to open the federal government. We need to pay our bills today-and make sure we can pay our bills tomorrow. So let&amp;#039;s negotiate an agreement to make modest reforms to entitlement programs and the tax code.  Give me the appetizer today. I&amp;#039;ll be back for the main course later. Trust me. (You will also note that nowhere in Ryan&amp;#039;s op-ed does the Affordable Care Act -- the alleged casus belli that brought on the Reign Of The Morons -- appear. I&amp;#039;m not the only person who noticed that.) Paul Ryan is staking his claim as a reasonable guy on the very narrow criterion of Not Being Louie Gohmert. But there isn&amp;#039;t an ounce of daylight between their essential positions. When Paul Ryan talks about &amp;quot;reforming&amp;quot; entitlements, he&amp;#039;s talking about eliminating them, because he does not now believe -- nor has he ever believed -- that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaidare legitimate functions of the national government. He will get rid of them piecemeal if he has to do so, but he is as dedicated to their elimination as he ever was when he was mooching off my money. When Paul Ryan talks about &amp;quot;reforming&amp;quot; the tax code, he doesn&amp;#039;t mean making sure the people to whom all the money has been shoved upwards over the past four decades start paying their fair share again. He means &amp;quot;broadening the base&amp;quot; -- You pay more. Jamie Dimon doesn&amp;#039;t. -- and he means &amp;quot;lowering the rates&amp;quot; -- on the people who buy him his $4000 bottles of wine -- and he means &amp;quot;simplifying the code&amp;quot; -- eliminating loopholes for the 20 minutes it takes before tax lawyers open up a hundred new ones. He has not changed. He&amp;#039;s just worried that the Reign Of Morons is damaging both the brand and his political future, even though, outside of Dan Quayle, it&amp;#039;s hard to remember a candidate on a national ticket who was exposed so clearly as not being ready for his close-up as Ryan was last year. Zombie-eyed granny-starving is a tough sell on its best days. Imagine doing it with Michele Bachmann screeching in your ears. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25059/today-in-the-reign-of-morons-100913/>