Michael Ryan Encourages our President to have Bad Manners

Re: "And the Nobel for Good Intentions goes to..." from the October 10th editorial page of the Augusta Chronicle.

Conservatives sure demonstrate their jealousy of President Obama's influence. Admittedly, he's done nothing to deserve the Nobel peace prize, which is basically an irrelevant award, ever since they gave one to the likes of Yasser Arafat.

Nevertheless, it is an honor for a sitting U.S. president. Incredibly, Mr. Ryan suggests that the president should decline the award. Just within the last few weeks, Mr. Ryan wrote a column lamenting the lack of civility in this modern world, and here he is encouraging bad manners. What a diplomatic faux pas that would be, if the President declined the Nobel Prize.

Mr. Ryan thinks awarding the Nobel peace prize will encourage the president to be an appeaser, and he cites the example of how fighting World War II promoted peace. It is true that sometimes war is the answer, but more often than not, war creates more problems than it solves.

In any case, suggesting President Obama decline the award is another example of the ridiculous jealousy that right wing pundits have for him. This point is not Mr. Ryan's original idea. It's yet another example of a plagiarized conservative talking point that he put very little thought into.

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Re: "Danger: Radioactive," from the October 12th editorial of the Augusta Chronicle.

Mr. Ryan rightly condemns Nathan Deal's reference to "ghetto grandmothers."

I guess the racism wasn't subtle enough for him. Mr. Ryan demonstrated a subtle form of racism in yesterday's editorial, "Free Markets, Free People," when he falsely blamed last year's economic collapse on "government presssure to load Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with bad loans in order to puff up home ownership statistics."

He didn't use the word, minority, but every reader knows what he meant was the government was giving out too many loans to poor black people who couldn't afford to pay the mortgages. This is completely false. Minority loan programs have a higher rate of successfully paid mortgages than average. The collapse of the real estate market was caused by rich people (mostly white) who used real estate as an investment, rather than as a place to live. The speculation caused the value of the properties to skyrocket far past their value, and when the values declined to realistic numbers, lots of people lost their shirts. It had nothing to do with what Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac were doing.

So in one column, Mr. Ryan was scapegoating black people, and the very next day he criticized a conservative politician who was not subtle enough about his scapegoating. However, they are on the same side of the fence.

There is also one laughable line from this column. Mr. Ryan's all for the free market and against salary caps, even though it is the unequal distribution of wealth that causes all recessions and depressions. He wrote "And think of what kind of world we'd have...if all compensation were capped at $500,000. Where would human ambition and striving go to breathe?"

I think 99.99% of the population would be motivated, if they knew it was possible to make $500,000. I don't think capping salaries at $500,000 would discourage very many people.