Romney Wins; Ryan Budget Dreams Anew

Romney pulled off an important win in Illinois and seems poised to spend his way to the nomination now, with Santorum all but dead and buried -- though sure to continue on with the "good" fight toward flight. One wonders what Gingrich will do; really too unpredictable to bet on either way. And Ryan has just released a new budget proposal that largely mirrors the ridiculous one of last summer (which it appears Obama almost submitted to in a moment of weakness that could be costly). The budget calls for cuts to social security and Medicaid, huge cuts in other programs, more tax cuts for the rich and corporations and little in the way of real deficit reduction. The GOP gambit appears to be that people will continue to abide their 30-year plans to shrink government and serve the powerful even as it came within a Santa's whisker of causing global economic collapse. And given recent discussions about the ignorance of the American populace (at least in the South), one wonders if they can pull off selling their poisonous snake oil yet again. The news about Obama's near capitulation last summer is really disappointing and makes me wonder if there is a democrat in the country left with a sufficient backbone. But I have to believe that their strategy will fail and people will finally awaken to what hope and change meant four years ago -- moving away from neoliberalism and its implicit exodus from hope in lieu of returning to having some faith in government to temper the excesses of the super rich and corporations and restoring our economy to some measure of equity, equality of opportunity and social justice. Since the birth of capitalism it is the only thing that ever has -- though sometimes aided by the other American bete noire ... unions, of course. While I would have loved to run against the seriously deluded and retrograde Santorum, Romney's ideology schizophrenia seems a rather steep mountain to climb, particularly as he changes his route from one day to the next ...