Uh…

Trey Gowdy (R, SC), Chairman of the House Benghazi committee, upon being asked what new details emerged from 11 hours worth of questioning Hillary Clinton.

Ryan directed the Congressional Budget Office to score his budget plans back in 2012. The score of his plan showed the non-Social Security, non-Medicare portion of the federal budget shrinking to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2050 (page 16).

This number is roughly equal to current spending on the military. Ryan has indicated that he does not want to see the military budget cut to any substantial degree. That leaves no money for the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, The Justice Department, infrastructure spending or anything else. Following Ryan’s plan, in 35 years we would have nothing left over after paying for the military.

Just to be clear, this was not some offhanded gaffe where Ryan might have misspoke. He supervised the CBO analysis. CBO doesn’t write-down numbers in a dark corner and then throw them up on their website to embarrass powerful members of Congress. As the document makes clear, they consulted with Ryan in writing the analysis to make sure that they were accurately capturing his program.

Dean Baker, writing for the Center for Economic Progress. This is exactly right and cannot be repeated frequently enough. The fact that it isn’t even said, much less repeated ad infinitum is why The Democrat fails and but also is why this nonsense within the GOP led House is allowed to continue. Democrats, when people are showing up outside the doors of the House with pitchforks, torches, and large logs you’ll know you’ve repeated it frequently enough. Please start now. It’s going to take decades.

Henry David Thoreau, Hypocrite

Do yourself a favor today and read Kathryn Schulz take on Waldenghazi. Ayn Rand even comes up:

The other and more damning answer to the question of why we admire him is not that we read him incompletely and inaccurately but that we read him exactly right. Although Thoreau is often regarded as a kind of cross between Emerson, John Muir, and William Lloyd Garrison, the man who emerges in “Walden” is far closer in spirit to Ayn Rand: suspicious of government, fanatical about individualism, egotistical, élitist, convinced that other people lead pathetic lives yet categorically opposed to helping them. It is not despite but because of these qualities that Thoreau makes such a convenient national hero.

Well worth your while to read the whole thing.

I said that when I ran four years ago [and I’m saying it again now]— the first thing I’d do is abolish the State Department and start all over [… If the only] tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Every problem that the State Department has, the answer is diplomacy. Why? Because if it’s not diplomacy, they don’t have a job.

Rick “Don’t Google My Name” Santorum brandishing the sort of crystalline logic that powered him to a second place finish last go-round and but thus far in the 2016 cycle has left him seated at the kiddy table.
When do we get to peak abolish-on-day-one? Who will be the first GOP candidate to come out for abolishing our entire system of government ON DAY ONE? I suspect we’re closer than we think to just such a pronouncement.

How long has [the VA] been a problem? Decades. How long have politicians been talking about it? Decades.” Fiorina said she would gather 10 or 12 veterans in a room, including the gentleman from the third row, and ask what they want. Fiorina would then vet this plan via telephone poll, asking Americans to “press one for yes on your smartphone, two for no. You know how to solve these problems, so I’m going to ask you.

Carly Fiorina, wowing us with The Leadership. Rising star, everyone. Deepest GOP bench in a generation or more. To lower taxes, press one!

…if the minimum wage had grown as fast as CEO compensation since 1980, it would be around $95.

Evan Horowitz, quoted in the Boston Globe

…modern Republican politicians can’t be serious — not if they want to win primaries and have any future within the party. Crank economics, crank science, crank foreign policy are all necessary parts of a candidate’s resume.

Until now, however, leading Republicans have generally tried to preserve a facade of respectability, helping the news media to maintain the pretense that it was dealing with a normal political party. What distinguishes Mr. Trump is not so much his positions as it is his lack of interest in maintaining appearances. And it turns out that the party’s base, which demands extremist positions, also prefers those positions delivered straight. Why is anyone surprised?

Paul Krugman, laying bare the sad realities of the modern GOP. That last night’s debate is greeted as anything but a sad portent for the forseable future of representative democracy in America is indicative of the depth of our problem.

There may be no more iconic image for the sorry state of America in the waning days of Our Glorious Conservative “revolution.” A crumbling bridge partially shut down dead center in what’s supposedly the glittering capitol of the most wealthy, most powerful nation in the world today. If only we’d faced historically low employment and historically low interest rates for the past decade or so such that we might actually invest in our country. Come get a big cup of Your Freedoms, everyone.