True colors

Not happy with just calling out parents of poor children for not loving their children enough, Rep. Paul Ryan, the man who would not be Vice-President, declared earlier this week that poverty is the result of lazy inner city men.

No shit.

Ryan spokespersons later tried to defend his comments by citing some data that did nothing of the sort (turns out that most of the poverty in America occurs in rural areas), and Ryan later backtracked on his comments saying he did not intend to demean an entire community (read:  African-American).

Yes, yes he did.  The republicans' Southern Strategy is well-documented and this is just another case of a republican assuring the base in an election year that all would be well in American if it just wasn't for those darn colored folks.

As Barbara Ehrenreich has famously noted, poverty is not a character flaw, it is a shortage of money.  But it's a lot easier for republicans to blame somebody than to fix the problem--and blaming people gets them a lot more votes than showing compassion for America's poor.

Peace,
emaycee