Paul Ryan gets 4 Pinnochios for his fabricated tale denigrating school lunches

[Atomic Playboy]

I don't care if you're conservative, liberal, progressive, radical, whatever, if you have a problem with a program that feeds kids who would otherwise be unable to eat, you're an absolute monster. I can understand being against most types of welfare, but welfare that exclusively gives food (not money) to children (not their parents) whose parents can't afford it? How the hell do you find fault with that?

 

[Daverino]

I don't care if you're conservative, liberal, progressive, radical, whatever, if you have a problem with a program that feeds kids who would otherwise be unable to eat, you're an absolute monster. I can understand being against most types of welfare, but welfare that exclusively gives food (not money) to children (not their parents) whose parents can't afford it? How the hell do you find fault with that?

Ryan's not saying the kids are the problem. It's their horrible uncaring welfare-teet sucking parents that are the problem.

 

[Jaskalas]

Paul Ryan gets 4 Pinnochios for his fabricated tale denigrating school lunches

I... think... I understand what he's trying to say, but the man needs schooling on public speaking and communication. Of course kids want food. Holly hell Mr. Congressman.

 

[HomerJS]

Ryan's not saying the kids are the problem. It's their horrible uncaring welfare-teet sucking parents that are the problem.

What Ryan is saying if parents can't afford lunch for their kids they don't care about them.

Meanwhile Wall St and Monsanto can have all the gubmit money they desire.

 

[Jaskalas]

What Ryan is saying if parents can't afford lunch for their kids they don't care about them.

Ouch. You just hit the nail on the head.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I am all for pulling up yourself from the boot straps, but go after the billions dumped in corporate coffers (which are already bloated with profits), instead of taking away a sandwich.

And, if the argument is; "it creates a wrong sense of dependancy",.. well, hello, Earth to conservative space cadet, what is going on with corporate welfare?

Isn't that the same thing?

No No NO, they're corporations in that regard...they need record quarterly profits..each..and...every..quarter.

 

[shira]

Whether the story is actual or apocryphal is of no importance. The underlying point is it is much, much better for a child to have a brown bag than to rely on government entity for support. Providing support for that notion should be our aim, not inducing generations of people to rely on anyone other than themselves for support.

And it's much better for everyone to have good educations and secure, high-paying jobs, too. But the reality of the world - a reality that the far right wants to pretend doesn't exist - is that there are lots of families in the U.S. who love their kids but can't afford to provide their children with three square meals a day. So school-lunch programs are a necessity, not a luxury, not a liberal "giveaway," not anything but an acceptance of reality and a way of dealing with it.

But keep on pretending that the right is not - once again - totally out of touch with mainstream America.

 

[werepossum]

Whether the story is actual or apocryphal is of no importance. The underlying point is it is much, much better for a child to have a brown bag than to rely on government entity for support. Providing support for that notion should be our aim, not inducing generations of people to rely on anyone other than themselves for support.

Granted, but she should not have reworked the story to make herself a part of it.

He's known as "Lyin' Ryan" for a reason.

And that reason would be that proggies hate and fear him.

I don't care if you're conservative, liberal, progressive, radical, whatever, if you have a problem with a program that feeds kids who would otherwise be unable to eat, you're an absolute monster. I can understand being against most types of welfare, but welfare that exclusively gives food (not money) to children (not their parents) whose parents can't afford it? How the hell do you find fault with that?

Granted, and having been involved in the school lunch program I suspect there is so much red tape that it would actually be cheaper to make lunch free for all kids - although it's worth pointing out that some kids eat three meals a day on the public dime, even though their parent or guardian is being paid to feed them. If a parent or guardian is not to be trusted to even feed the child, we're solving the wrong problem. How much support and good direction in life will a child get from a parent who can't be bothered to even feed her even though we pay for the food up front?

Two other points - this is the same organization that rated Obama's "If you like your insurance plan, you can keep it" as true for years before they admitted it was the lie of the decade. Maybe Anderson needs a few years?

And besides, I'm pretty sure Ryan was under sniper fire from a spontaneous riot when he heard that story.

 

[fskimospy]

And that reason would be that proggies hate and fear him.

Either that or all the lies he keeps telling, haha. It is pretty amusing to watch him try and play the part of a policy wonk as if he were some soap opera actor or something though. I've rarely seen an elected official try harder to sound like he knows public policy and fail more obviously.

 

[Vic]

I don't quite follow Rands rhetoric. Obviously, we all want every parent to care enough about their children that they provide them a healthy lunch every day. But with stark reality working against that ideal, I see no harm in ensuring that, at the very least, the children of these less caring parents have something to eat.
It seems that Rand is arguing that children should be punished for the sins of their parents. That would not be in line with the usual conservative rhetoric that everyone should be provided the opportunity to excel.

 

[ivwshane]

I don't quite follow Rands rhetoric. Obviously, we all want every parent to care enough about their children that they provide them a healthy lunch every day. But with stark reality working against that ideal, I see no harm in ensuring that, at the very least, the children of these less caring parents have something to eat.
It seems that Rand is arguing that children should be punished for the sins of their parents. That would not be in line with the usual conservative rhetoric that everyone should be provided the opportunity to excel.

Look at werepossums post to see how the retarded right think. You think parents can't afford to give their kids lunches, the retarded right thinks it's a matter of parents not being trust worthy enough to give their kids a lunch. They think, because they have been told, that "hand out" programs provide more than enough to get by. They feed off of a few examples of abuse or fake anecdotes for reasons why the whole system should be scrapped (yet they never apply that same logic to other issues on the side they support).

What I've learned from this board and listening to right wingers is that the words "compromise" and "reform", are dirty words. Sure there are some righties that are willing to compromise and reform laws and programs to make them better but those people are a minority and I'd say that a righty politician with that attitude is non existent.

 

[Fern]

Oh my fucking lord you are stretching thin on this one

have a nice day

x2

Fern

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Pray for a Palin-Bachman ticket!

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I'm fascinated by the number of people here who don't care about issues as long as they get to bash their favorite low life politician. News flash! Politicians lie! How's it feel to be the folks responsible for 'reality ' tv?

 

[ivwshane]

I'm fascinated by the number of people here who don't care about issues as long as they get to bash their favorite low life politician. News flash! Politicians lie! How's it feel to be the folks responsible for 'reality ' tv?

Exactly! Any politician whose majority of talking consists of bashing the otherside automatically gets discounted as a waste of time. People with real solutions talk about those solutions not how bad the other guy is. Occasional bashing is fine and apart of the game but constant bashing? I'll pass.

 

[13Gigatons]

Paul Ryan gets caught often lying or embellishing a story. The paper bag stunt has been used several times before:

She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch — one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.

The original story had nothing to do with a child turning down a free lunch. It's about a kid, Maurice Mazyck, who met a private benefactor, Laura, asking to literally have his lunch placed in a brown paper bag:

“Look, Maurice, I don’t want you out there hungry on the nights I don’t see you, so this is what we can do. I can either give you some money for the week–and you’ll have to be really careful about how you spend it–or when you come over on Monday night we can go to the supermarket and I can buy all the things you like to eat and make you lunch for the week. I’ll leave it with the doormen, and you can pick it up on the way to school.”
Maurice looked at me and asked me a question.
“If you make me lunch,” he said, “will you put it in a brown paper bag?”
I didn’t really understand the question. “Do you want it in a brown paper bag?” I asked. “Or how would you prefer it?”
“Miss Laura,” he said, “I don’t want your money. I want my lunch in a brown paper bag.”
“Okay, sure. But why do you want it in a bag?”
“Because when I see kids come to school with their lunch in a paper bag, that means someone cares about them. Miss Laura, can I please have my lunch in a paper bag?”
​

Anderson told this story before Ryan's last July 31st. Anderson, per the transcript, told Ryan's committee:

My thought has always been around the SNAP program even when it was called "food stamps" is, why do you have this program, school program, school breakfast, school lunch, school dinner, when do we start asking parents to be responsible for their children?
You know, a little boy told me once that what was important to him is that he didn't want school lunch, he wanted a brown bag because the brown bag that he brought with his lunch in it meant that his mom cared about him. Just think what we have done. If this kid tells me a brown bag was more important than a free lunch, we've missed the whole notion of parents being there for their children because we've taken over that responsibility, and I think we need to be very careful about how we provide programs to families that don't undermine families' responsibilities.
​

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/paul-ryan-free-lunches-make-kids-soulless.html

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Pft,... you just don't get it; he is being conservative.

You know I was being sarcastic right?

 

[michal1980]

irs targeting one party = not news worthy.

Paul Ryan misrepresenting a story = end of the world.


Got it liberals.

 

[Vic]

irs targeting one party = not news worthy.

Paul Ryan misrepresenting a story = end of the world.


Got it liberals.

The IRS targeted liberal groups too.

 

[Fayd]

The IRS targeted liberal groups too.

but not to anywhere near the same degree.

 

[cubby1223]

irs targeting one party = not news worthy.

Paul Ryan misrepresenting a story = end of the world.


Got it liberals.

It's even worse than that, Paul Ryan was honest in that was the story that was told to him. The person misrepresented the story. And in the end, all it is is a story to say that government should not be replacing the role of parents. The over-all message remains the same, whether Ryan should have used this example or sought out a different example.

 

[ivwshane]

but not to anywhere near the same degree.

And not anywhere near the number of progressive organizations applied as there were conservative organizations.

 

[ivwshane]

It's even worse than that, Paul Ryan was honest in that was the story that was told to him. The person misrepresented the story. And in the end, all it is is a story to say that government should not be replacing the role of parents. The over-all message remains the same, whether Ryan should have used this example or sought out a different example.

That's true but kids shouldn't be punished just because their parents suck either.

 

[dali71]

Oh my fucking lord you are stretching thin on this one

have a nice day

x2

Fern

Which probably explains why the OP didn't bother linking the source article from the Washington Post (a.k.a. "Pravda on the Potomac").

 

[cubby1223]

That's true but kids shouldn't be punished just because their parents suck either.

And there needs to be some punishment on the parents so we don't enable and encourage more deadbeats with an endless supply of benefits. There is no easy one-size-fits-all answer here.

Some times it's the kids who grow up poor who learn the value of hard work and become some of the most productive and innovative people in society. Kids who get accustomed to receiving handouts any time their parents decide to be lazy, well, do they grow up learning how to receive the same handouts and more?