The day after the formal announcement,  the Sunday talk shows, trotting out the GOP’s talking heads, are on the same talking point, that the selection of Paul Ryan by Mitt Romney is “courageous”.

Interesting word. It’s used because that was the Frank Luntz talking point to discuss the Ryan Budget. It polls very well for the uniformed and/or very stupid, or cruel. And since Paul Ryan is synonymous with his Budget, the word for anything “Ryan” must be “Courageous”.

Time to examine the definition of some words at play here:

Courageous – possessing or displaying courage; able to face and deal with
danger or fear without flinching; “Familiarity with danger makes a brave man
braver but less daring”- Herman Melville; “a frank courageous heart…triumphed
over pain”- William Wordsworth; “set a courageous example by leading them safely
into and out of enemy-held territory”

Synonyms: Spartan, Trojan, Adventuresome, Adventurous, Assured, Audacious, Cool, Daredevil, Daring, Dauntless, Doughty, Fearless, Fiery, fire-eating, Gallant, Game, Gritty, Gutsy, Hardy, Heroic, high-spirited, Impavid, Indomitable, Intrepid, Lion-Hearted, Martial, Nervy, Plucky, Red-Blooded, Resolute, Stalwart, Stand Tall, stout-hearted, Strong, Tenacious, Tough, Unafraid, Undaunted, Valiant, Valorous, Venturesome, Venturous.

Antonyms: Cowardly, Faint-Hearted, Fearful, Fearing, Meek, Shy, Timid, Weak.

To boldly go where no man has gone before

Bold: adjective, bold·er, bold·est. 1. not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff; courageous and daring: a bold hero. 2. not hesitating to break the rules of propriety; forward; impudent: He apologized for being so bold as to speak to the emperor. 3. necessitating courage and daring; challenging: a bold adventure. 4. beyond the usual limits of conventional thought or action; imaginative: Einstein was a bold mathematician. a difficult problem needing a bold answer. 5. striking or conspicuous to the eye; flashy; showy: a bold pattern.

Cruel: adjective, cru·el·er, cru·el·est. 1. willfully or knowingly causing pain or distress to others. 2. enjoying the pain or distress of others: the cruel spectators of the gladiatorial contests. 3.causing or marked by great pain or distress: a cruel remark; a cruel affliction. 4. rigid; stern; strict; unrelentingly severe.

Inhumane: adjective, cruel and heartless. Used to describe terrible things like your neighbor’s inhumane treatment of his hound dogs, which he leaves tied up in the yard in all kinds of weather.

Cowardly: adjective 1. lacking courage; contemptibly timid. 2. characteristic of or befitting a coward despicably mean, covert, or unprincipled: a cowardly attack on a weak, defenseless man.

Now that we have the basic terms involved here, let’s examine what is the crux of the Ryan Budget, who according to his own people, is at his heart. Keep in mind also that although he recently denied it, he is clearly on tape saying what a big believer he is in Ayn Rand’s principles that selfishness is a virtue and Christian charity is a farce (my summation, but prove me wrong)

The focus of the Ryan budget is to make the Bush Tax Cuts for the upper classes and corporations permanent, even though they currently account for nearly a third of our current deficit. He also wants to increase military spending. To do this the budget first of all:

Increases taxes on the middle-class and working poor by eliminating sections in the code that assist them in not paying what would cause them to fall into poverty. Home mortgages, education deductions, etc.

He slashes Pell Grants which keeps middle class and working poor from being able to afford higher education.

He eliminates Medicaid needed for disabled and poor who cannot afford healthcare.

He places Medicare on a voucher system that would increase the average elderly recipient out-of-pocket costs up to $3,000.00 per year (from people living on fix earnings) or in other words, takes a system where they currently pay 25% of their medical costs and increases it to over 80% while providing vouchers to those who are already so rich and cared for that they don’t need it.

He also will privatize Social Security, a system designed to not make people rich, but to keep them from lapsing into poverty. He plans on doing this by allowing Wall Street investors access to the $3,000,000,000.00 trust fund, take commissions and gamble with money that is currently safe from risky market fluctuations like the one that is responsible for the crash of 2008. 

Incidentally, he wants to remove regulations that are designed to keep bankers from gambling with your deposits that caused the current depression.

So what is he doing here? It is indeed bold and courageous because of his audacity to jeopardized the health and financial welfare of elderly, infirm, disabled, sick, powerless people to provide more money to people who already have more than they can spend in a life-time. People who if they never received another dime on income, would still live till their dying days and beyond in the lap of luxury, never wanting from anything.

It’s bold and courageous in its cruelty and inhumanity to others in need and are too weak to defend themselves. It is has bold and courageous as was rounding up people who couldn’t defend themselves, and murdering them even though the world may have taken a dim view of it.

Yes, it is bold and courageous in its cruelty and inhumanity. But you don’t have to be cruel and inhumane to be bold and courageous.

You can also be bold by telling your financial backers like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson that you will work to help the less fortunate while taking their campaign contributions.

You can be bold and courageous by telling racists, misogynist, bigots that you do not accept what they say in public and openly and critically ridicule them for their comments.

You can be bold and courageous by doing what right for the country despite the power base being hell-bent on doing only what’s right for them and not the people.

I’ll add that by not being bold and courageous in the ways mentioned above, you are in fact, weak and cowardly and not deserving of any support.