The American Dog

As we wind down another hideous week for The One Nobody Wants Anymore, there are some loose ends to tie off and dust bunnies to settle.

Next House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI1) is....skeptical about this backhanded messianic compliment from the already-infamous New York Slimes interview:

“I think somebody like a Paul Ryan who has got a lot of attention is absolutely sincere about wanting to reduce the deficit. The problem is, is that the plan he’s put forward so far is about a trillion dollars short. The numbers don’t add up.

And even with those numbers being fudged, most of his Republican colleagues in the House have not been willing to sign on to what he’s suggesting, in part because he does significantly cut benefits in things like Medicare, which are politically difficult to do.

I give him credit for at least being willing to put out there some tough choices, although, as I said, even there, the numbers don’t quite match up the way they should.”

"Numbers don't add up" means "won't raise taxes to the outer solar system". But we don't have to tell that to the Roadmap architect; he knows, my friends, he knows:

"What I’m proposing is so antithetical to his ideology, that I’d just have a hard time believing he would embrace anything close to it," Ryan told TAS on Wednesday. "I’m proposing an individual-based society, reclaiming the founding principles of limited government; free enterprise society, where individuals are made more powerful and government is made more limited. He believes in the opposite of that."...

Ryan said he has always been willing to adjust the tax reforms to meet revenue requirements, but the point of his plan was to focus on the spending side....

He also said that Obama "is prone to using these sort of Machiavellian tactics where the ends justify the means," noting the recent attacks on the Chamber of Commerce as an example.

Bingo. Red Barry is "willing to work with" Paul Ryan in order to set him up as his own personal Newt Gingrich punching bag, because right now Ryan is even more nationally obscure than Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner. So what better way to ambush Ryan than to draw him in with a "bipartisan budget balancing" lure and then blast him as an entitlements predator? What the hell, Comrade Hussein hasn't been able to put over a right-wing boogeyman/woman yet to take the onus for the disaster that is his Obamidency.

But, see, that's the problem with "the Chicago Way" - subtlety is not one of its strong points. Once you blow your cover, your reputation tends to precede you. And, apart from that, the GOP majority that is about to be elected isn't being sent to D.C. to blur inter-party differences, but to widen them, pump them full of day-glo neon, and set them in cement.

Speaking of exploiting his means for our ends....:

Via Eeyore, even Obamicans (or maybe Brooks is the only one left, since Peggy Noonan bailed) are reaching for the ejector lever:

I must say this has been a tough week for those of us who personally admire President Obama and his advisers…

Obama’s line of attack is also bad for his re-election prospects and the future of the Democratic party as a whole. The main reason the Democrats are in trouble is not the Tea Party movements. It is because independents have abandoned the Democrats. The polls clearly indicate indies think the party is too liberal and too hostile to business. So why does Obama take every conceivable opportunity to go to war with business?…

My point is that there are big and small business in towns across America. There are people who work in the private sector everywhere. Why is there always so much hostility to these people?

Um....because the president and his advisors you personally admire so much are too liberal and too hostile to business. Keep thinking about it, Daveyboy, and you might finally connect those pesky dots.

Exit double-quote from Peter Wehner....:

The White House, then, is characterized by habitual vanity, rising cynicism, collapsing morale, and increasing resentment toward politics and governing, itself.

....and Superman II: