The fact that this story is actually a story is stupid in the first place. Paul Ryan goes out with colleagues, orders a bottle of wine, and then another, pays for it himself with his own money and is then confronted by an angry liberal that he dares to buy wine. And it becomes a story.
I'm not even kidding:
She approached the table and asked Ryan "how he could live with himself" sipping expensive wine while advocating for cuts to programs for seniors and the poor. Some verbal jousting between Feinberg and the other two men ensued.
Matthew Hurtt has the best comment on this: "Because Paul Ryan believes government should live within its means, he can't buy a $350 bottle of wine." And from Erick Erickson at
Red State:
Ms. Crabtree felt the need to go to DEFCON 1 for this outrage that a member of Congress and his two economist friends would buy expensive wine with their own money. She's never, ever written horribly about Barack Obama using taxpayer money for fancy wine at State Dinners. She's never written salaciously about the liquor bills on Nancy Pelosi's government funded plane.
But by God you get some failed Rutgers economist out on a birthday date with her husband at a hotel restaurant who gets all jealous that she's not cool enough to hang out with Little Eddie Munster and his econ pals and . . . well . . . fire up the broom stick and quill pen, we've got a hot story and a little scandal on our hands.
Similar sentiments from Gateway Pundit:
Libs Outraged Over Paul Ryan’s $350 Bottle of Wine… But Were Silent When Nancy Pelosi Pounded Down $101,000 of Booze On “Pelosi One” …Update: And Obama Served $399 Bottles of Wine to Chi-Coms For some reason the libs weren’t so outraged when Obaama served $399 bottles of wine at his taxpayer-funded state dinner.
Of course, these same hypocrites were silent when it was discovered that Speaker Pelosi’s military travel expenses on Pelosi One cost taxpayers $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.
No liberal outrage over the fact that Paul Ryan also uses his own money
to leave generous tips:
More at
Instapundit, including the money comment similar to Hurtt's above:
I THINK WHAT REALLY OFFENDS THEM IS THAT HE PAID FOR IT WITH HIS OWN MONEY: Newsflash: Rich Man Drinks Expensive Wine. It’s kind of like how corporate jets are evil, but flying around on taxpayer-provided Gulfstreams is fine.
UPDATE: A harsh take from Ann Althouse: “How much does Prof. Feinberg weigh? I’d like to calculate her level of intoxication. A woman who’s drunk half a bottle of wine and gets emotionally overwrought after calculating the price of items consumed at another table by a politician she loathes should probably restrain herself from going over to that table to tell him off. . . . TPM should be ashamed of itself passing along this embarrassing story and for the way it presented this material. In the middle of the piece, TPM informs us of Congressional ethics rules barring expensive gifts from lobbyists. I was thinking: Oh, maybe this is a serious problem. But if you keep reading, much further down, you see that Ryan paid for the meal with his own credit card, and TPM saw the receipt. Ridiculous! What hackery from the once-respectable Talking Points Memo!”
Speaking of hackery, I'm not a bog Althouse fan and for a good reason. Stacy McCain has similar sentiment:
Ann Althouse: Rube. She voted for Obama in 2008 and now regrets it. Rube indeed!
