Epistolary Address on the Margins: Paul Ryan

"It's more like a slow train wreck."-- Lanhee J. Chen, expectations disappointed

I tweeted a question weeks ago, Mr. Speaker, to your twitter account, about Boehner's warning on repeal and replace. Not being a citizen of Wisconsin in your district, I did not expect a response, but knew you were headed for trouble with your replacement bill, and I do blame you, even if Trump's public face is disingenuous on the matter. No one cares about my opinions. This is partially my fault. If Blogger had actually suspended me two years ago, I might have made it a cause celebre with Breitbart. If I had cleaned up my act, at least on this account, I might have linked it as a resume highlight, but did not quite go to either extreme, except for a recent severe depression over the prospect, not yet actually in process, of summer homelessness, which caused a precipitous drop in my followers, and probably has Dr. Floch shaking his head, a younger and more attractive head than I thought, about the difficulties and demands I place upon myself, but I am a radical, don't believe in making medical paradigms a way of life, and if Medicare costs eat up 20% GNP even before Obamacare, add the VA medical budget to that, Medicaid, it really isn't possible to continue, and I tend to disagree with Timothy Taylor about the cost of the sickest patients: I have a grandmother in her mid 90's in a home, no more than a functional corpse. I do not know how much this is costing her surviving daughter, ten years my senior; it is wrong, and I'd withhold nutrition and hydration. Ditto for my father's brother. He is extremely sick with heart disease and viral infections, and his sister, who has basically served as a self trained hospice nurse since her husband's lung cancer, isn't far behind. I disagree with my Church here, to some extent, and when quality of remaining life is marginal, withhold treatment. It is nothing I haven't written before, but it is what I believe, given that the medical treatment I get is shoddy, with students, or residents who wanted me on oxygen, or an inhaler, failing to take other factors into account, like allergies, and I haven't seen a doctor since my Craigslist hire. Where is my line? I do not know, maybe in my meringues.

Yours was a sorry performance Friday evening, and just as I, you're old enough to remember Tip O'Neill, the last Speaker who had any real corralling power. Earmarks too, which may need to be restored in the House rules. I had hoped to live long enough to see you in the Presidency, a rational corporate conservative, but you ran this game drive like Mickey Mouse. I do own some knowledge about how bills are sponsored and written, and know how hard it is, but you've had national prominence even prior to being Romney's running mate. You should have learned to control the chamber by now. Let's be less headstrong in the future. I have to lie down; pushing too hard.