All aboard the Fancy Feast Express!

'Signed Off' / Illustration by Lance Theroux

By Emily Theroux
Back in the ’80s, my irreverent sister Ann (not a millennial “hipster” but the genuine article) was fond of cracking, whenever either of us came up with a questionable idea, “Let’s not and say we did.” Long before the advent of air quotes and Facebook friending, our favorite throwaway line (which apparently originated as far back as the 1920s) was a pre-”Interwebs” verbal meme.

More often than not, we did all kinds of inadvisable things — and said we didn’t. But we were young and relatively carefree then; life, or what remains of it, has grown a great deal grimmer and more complicated since those heady days.

Case in point: Two weeks ago, my husband’s newspaper job (and, if the virtual writing on the wall proves accurate, a 40-year career in journalism) succumbed to the industry demon: budget cutbacks intended to keep a dying institution — the printed page — from fluttering away on the downdraft of technological progress. The ax fell just six years before Lance’s expected retirement. As bad luck would have it, his layoff occurred a week before congressional Republicans refused to stop the idiocy of deliberate fiscal “sequestration” and two cruel weeks before a positive jobs report hailed a .2 percent drop in the unemployment rate.

We joked, gallows-style, that the “Boehnerquester” arrived a week early in our household, where one of us (that would be me) is already on disability. Both of us are adult orphans with no prospect of any eventual inheritance. In these desperate times, the job market is virtually nonexistent for a 59-year-old unemployed newspaper artist — even one who has earned a slew of national and regional awards from three states and the District of Columbia, in categories ranging from design and illustration to news presentation and graphics.

Terrified yet absurdly hopeful, less than a month out, is probably an accurate appraisal of our current outlook. It’s almost spring. With no commute, we’ve been saving a small fortune on gasoline. We’re literally running on fumes and nervous energy.

I have absolute confidence in Lance’s skills, his talent, his courage and resourcefulness and tenacity, and even (for reasons I can’t explain even to myself) his prospects for a future no one can yet predict.

* * *

We’re not the only ones to find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma.

Since the sequester went into effect on March 1, official Washington has once again descended into “grand bargain” fever. This inexplicable fetish for diminishing the social safety net — provided for decades by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as food stamps, education aid, disability, unemployment, and veterans’ benefits — has long been exalted by Beltway pols and pundits. Now, even President Obama appears poised to break his campaign promise not to sacrifice vital social programs on the altar of “discretionary spending cuts” — the deceitful repackaging of lopsided supply-side dogma as “bipartisan compromise.”

If the sequester furloughs proceed, if the wrongheaded “chained CPI” index impoverishes older seniors whose savings have run out by tampering with the formula for Social Security’s cost-of-living increase, can Paul Ryan’s perennial austerity budget be far behind? Apparently not, as long as Ryan can hustle recent fiscal-cliff “tax hikes” on gazillionaires (along with the same $716 billion Medicare cut that the failed veep candidate brandished against Obama last fall) into something everyone agrees is not going to happen — an “Obamacare” repeal that would preserve the $1 trillion the law is slated to raise in tax revenues!
Washington Post editorial writer Stephen Stromberg’s recent take on the Ryan budget retread — uncharitably titled “Paul Ryan To Change Medicare for Boomers Over 55? Good.” — bristles with intergenerational hostility. (Overcome with curiosity, I Googled Stromberg’s photograph. As I suspected, he looked as though he started shaving last year and rarely trusts anyone over 49.)

Ryan’s budget “upgrade” could include “structural changes for boomers as old as 58,” warned Stromberg. Thank God, my husband and I have both lived long enough to dodge that bullet. But hi-ho, Steverino: You’re going to be an old fart, too, some day. It creeps up on the best of us, much faster than you could possibly imagine. Life, as Thomas Hobbes said in 1651, is nasty, brutish, and short. Rich or poor, upwardly mobile or in sudden harrowing freefall, most of us will likely make it to 65, with or without a safety net. After that, there’s only one exit, though many ways of reaching it.

Nothing — not all of David Koch’s billions or the gold-plated ripcord of his reserve parachute — can slow the inevitable human collision at the bitter end with implacable earth.

* * *

The koi pond in March 2009 / Photo by Lance Theroux

Once our pond thaws and the koi surface to feed, I imagine we’ll go back, Lance and I, to fanning out The New York Times, section by section, on the big glass-topped table on our deck — at least as long as we have a deck to spread it out on. Hot coffee, a mechanical pencil with a decent eraser, the Times crossword puzzle, and ink-smudged fingertips are all the religion I’ve ever needed on a Sunday morning.

The actual physical paper is still good for a great deal more than lining birdcages, clipping grocery coupons, or wrapping fish. But if our headlong hurtle out of the middle class hits bottom and we lose the house, I can always pack my grandmother’s bone-china teacups in crumpled wads of newsprint when the time comes to ship the family heirlooms to my younger sister, Beth. (Ann, two years my junior, is already gone. Like our father, she died tragically before the age of 60.)

Born when I was almost 13, during the baby boom’s penultimate year, Beth long ago relocated to the West Coast to practice family medicine in underserved communities, working for thankless wages yet undoubtedly reaping enormous spiritual dividends. Right up there with Pacific Coast Highway wildfires, earthquakes, and mudslides, my baby sister has survived a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and endured a subsequent residency in neurology, undertaken in her late forties so she could better treat MS patients and research the disease.

Should Beth go without Medicare benefits, if she lives so long that she becomes sick enough to need them? I don’t think so, Mr. Stromberg.

Mitt’s V.P.: The prince of partisan pop

Union members demonstrate against Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick, Paul Ryan, in Las Vegas. (Photo: BuzzFeed)

On Twitter, Rupert Murdoch called Mitt Romney’s V.P. pick an “almost perfect choice,” and a Fox News fanboy dubbed him “the rock star of American politics.”

So why does Witless Mitt appear to have a classic case of buyer’s remorse?

Wayward Willard apparently made the most important decision of his entire presidential campaign in full panic mode. His press secretary, Andrea Saul, had just committed the cardinal sin: forgetting to lie about “Romneycare.” During a Fox News broadcast, Saul was asked about a pro-Obama super-PAC ad in which a laid-off steelworker said that, after his former plant was shut down by Romney’s Bain Capital and he lost his company-sponsored health insurance plan, his uninsured wife later took ill and died. Observing that, if the family had lived in Massachusetts, they would have been covered by Romney’s universal health care law (a forbidden subject in MittWorld), Saul effectively implied that “Obamacare” was a pretty good deal for America.

Erick Erickson

A full fringe freakout ensued. Erick Erickson of Redstate.com sent out The Tweet of Doom: “OMG. This might just be the moment Mitt Romney lost the election. Wow.” Laura Ingraham informed her TRN radio audience that, although she “might be the skunk at the picnic,” she had to say it: “Romney’s losing.” Rush Limbaugh mercilessly castigated Saul on Clear Channel. And Ann Coulter imploded on Hannity, demanding Saul’s head on a platter by the following morning. (As of press time, Saul still had her job.)

Mitt had already grown desperate to change the subject from relentless questions about his unreleased tax returns. Seeking immediate surcease, the Much-Maligned Mittster discovered all possible means of egress were marked “No Exit.” Terrified of spending all eternity with two or more raving partisans in Sartre’s cramped version of hell, Mitt jumped at his first chance to get back in the wingnuts’ good graces. Harry Reid, he could deal with, but being on the outs with El Rushbo & Co. was no freaking Pee-Wee boxing match.

The Mittbot clicked into autocorrect. Salvaging his doomed campaign became paramount; careful deliberation gave way to frenetic  forward motion. He had to do Something Big — and very distracting. Spurning the advice of seasoned pros with far better political instincts than his own, the one-term, faux-conservative governor flashed his only wild card, two weeks before the GOP convention was slated to begin in Tampa.

Whose budget plan — Ryan’s? Of course not — Romney’s!
The presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee, Mitt announced, was Paul Ryan, 42,  the wonkish seven-term Wisconsin congressman of “Young Guns” renown (along with Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy). Ryan, an extreme social and fiscal conservative who serves as chairman of the House Budget Committee, has championed the obliteration of women’s reproductive rights and gay civil rights. He favors uncompromising, hard-right fiscal policy, devotes countless hours to manic P90X fitness workouts, and secretly worships at the bizarre altar of the fanatical ideologue Ayn Rand.

A post on Erickson’s blog gave Mitt props for picking Ryan — and also let him wriggle off the hook for Saul’s unforced error: “Contrary to some people’s opinions, Romney has run a stellar campaign. He can’t help it if Eric Fehrnstrom and Andrea Saul have had some brain-dead moments …well, maybe he could. There is no such thing as the perfect campaign.”

But almost immediately, mainstream reporters began clamoring to sort out how Ryan’s signal political achievement — his 2010 “Road Map for America’s Future,” a radical budget plan that would convert Medicare into a voucher system — would affect the campaign. That led to edgy, defensive bravado on Mitt’s part (Paul who? Who said anything about Ryan’s plan? Hey, I’m the candidate here. My plan’s not exactly chopped liver, ya know. )

Then why appoint Paul Ryan V.P.? they queried. This perfectly reasonable question visibly stunned Romney. His heretofore choreographed campaign began unraveling. His own budget plan remained vague and sketchy like the rest of his policies, but the Ryan plan was something the press — and unfortunately, the public — could sink their teeth into.

Mitt the Whiner

Once again, the Romney campaign backed away from focusing on the economy (his only imaginable path to victory) and started flailing away at Democrats on the stump with an ever-shifting drumbeat of lies and innuendos: Obama wants to keep soldiers from voting. Obama’s going to take the ‘work’ out of welfare reform. Biden is a racist. (Why? He said an unregulated Wall Street would put us “in chains.” Chains = slavery, no matter the context. He used the word “y’all,” so he must have been talking about race. Or something.) Resign, Biden! (Sez Sarah Palin.) Obama’s campaign is based on division and anger and hatred. (Dog-whistle translation: Obama is a scary, angry black man. Be afraid. Be very afraid.) Obama is being mean to me. Obama and Axelrod, go back to Chicago so ‘us decent Americans’ can take our country back!

(Romney himself once said, “There’s no whining in politics.” It’s available on videotape for anyone to see. So why is this man still whining, when it makes him look like such an insufferable ass?)

When the #MittHitsTheFan, GOP insiders remember to duck
Several days after Romney’s announcement, it emerged that, after publicly praising his veep pick, some three dozen GOP strategists and operatives  met individually with Politico reporters to express serious reservations about Ryan’s potential effect on Romney’s candidacy as well as Senate and House contests. “Away from the cameras, and with all the usual assurances that people aren’t being quoted by name, there is an unmistakable consensus among Republican operatives in Washington,” Politico’s resulting scoop revealed. “Romney has taken a risk with Ryan that has only a modest chance of going right — and a huge chance of going horribly wrong.”

Mark McKinnon

“(T)he most common reactions to Ryan ranged from gnawing apprehension to hair-on-fire anger that Romney has practically ceded the election,” the Politico article, co-written by Alexander Burns, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Martin, stated. Some even think the Ryan pick is “a disaster for the GOP” and might cost Republicans the Senate if voters latch onto “MediScare” again. “Very not helpful down ballot — very,” a top Republican consultant told Politico.

Why on earth would Mitt choose a candidate who’s going to tar down-ticket Republicans with the same “class warfare” brush — the “Medicare menace” that enabled a Democrat to win an upstate New York district that had voted Republican since before the Civil War? The risk-averse Romney should have refrained from prodding the dry tinder of districts whose GOP representatives are backing as far away from Ryan as possible, before a spark of doubt among an aging populace bursts into a conflagration.

Meanwhile, wrote a Daily Kos blogger, “The Florida papers are destroying Paul Ryan” — in a state that Romney desperately needed to win. ” So much so that a distraught and panicked Village (a term used by progressive bloggers to denote the mainstream media) believes ‘Mitt Romney is in big, big trouble’ for selecting the man who wants to pull the plug on Grandma.”

The only GOP strategist brave enough to speak to Politico for attribution, former Bush senior adviser Mark McKinnon, called Mitt’s decision “a very bold choice”  that meant “Romney-Ryan can run on principles and provide some real direction and vision for the Republican Party.” Then McKinnon added his single caveat:  “And probably lose. Maybe big.”

Ryan’s list of negatives continues to mount:

• “Willard’s Choice” has doubled the number of rich white men atop the GOP ticket. (Mitt could have picked Pawlenty or Portman — two boring white men — but that would scarcely have budged the Etch a Sketch.)
• Because Ryan proposed eliminating the capital gains tax and Romney’s income is derived almost entirely from investments, Romney would pay virtually no taxes under Ryan’s plan. (Way to pick a winner, Mitt!)
• In the 14 years since Ryan left Wisconsin for Washington, only two of his many proposed bills have ever been passed. One renamed a post office; nobody remembers the other one.
• Romney’s ratings haven’t received the customary “bounce” from his veep announcement.
• #MittTheTwit didn’t rack up any  points bad-mouthing Palestinians in Israel. Only six percent of American Jews answer “Israel” when asked what most influences their presidential vote, says Peter Beinart of The Daily Beast — who adds that Romney (the perennial outsider who never has a clue) probably lost the remaining Jewish vote by choosing Ryan. (The economy, health care, a positive view of government spending, and fear of the Christian right top the list. And get this, Mitt: “Almost 80 percent of American Jews think it’s fine for a woman to have an abortion for any reason.” Giving birth control to teens ranks right up there, too — and support for school prayer is a definite minus. Sorry, Willard — you’d be a lot more popular if you were still governor of Massachusetts!)
• According to the Gallup poll and reason.com, “a clear majority, 58 percent, of Americans” have never heard of Paul Ryan. Snooki, Kim Kardashian, or Donald Trump would have been more readily recognized by the typical American voter. (And maybe Chris Christie, if he keeps insulting people on a regular basis. He might even get his own reality show.)

Union demonstrators protest Ryan’s Vegas star turn

Out on the campaign trail, hecklers interrupted Ryan’s debut campaign appearance at the Iowa State Fair, where the veep candidate showed his snarky side while dodging reporters’ questions. “We’ll play ‘Stump the Running Mate’ later,” he snapped at an NPR reporter. “I’m just going to enjoy this fair right now.”
The following night, the man of the hour attended a GOP fundraiser at billionaire donor Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The event, however, attracted more than big bucks. Outside, several hundred union protesters filled the plaza, according to Alternet. Protestors carried signs reading  “Romney/Ryan Road to Ruin,” “Paul Ryan Hustling for the 1%,” and “This is What Democracy Looks Like!”

John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, had come to Vegas for his union’s annual convention, BuzzFeed reported. “Romney Hood, Ryan Hood, not in our neighborhood,” Gage chanted.

The GOP strategists may not see eye-to-eye with the 99 percenters, but they are definitely worried about the added angst of a Ryan candidacy. “Everybody loves Paul Ryan. Everybody supported the Ryan plan,” one party insider told Politico in D.C. “But nobody thinks Ryan should be the tip of the spear.”