I’ve already done a thorough take-down of the Paul Ryan’s 28 lies in 37 minutes HERE. If you want details – read that. But finally – the media is starting to call out publicly IN THE HEADLINES that Paul Ryan is simply propagating lies, dishonesty and misinformation. It used to be that politicians would feel some level of decency to maintain some amount of honesty for fear people would consider them dishonest.
There is nothing exceptional about having to lie about what your plans do and there is nothing American about lying about your political opponent’s positions either. But now that there is a new Fox News universe where conservatives live in their own information bubble … they have yet to realize that there could be a penalty for bald face lying to voters. This election will tell us if voters will reject the lies and make Republicans course correct or if they’ll vote for them anyway in which case prepare for an even worse alternative reality bizarro world experience. Nice job media – keep doing your job.
Sally Kohn from Fox News said this HERE:
“The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth.”
Jonathan Chait at the New Yorker writes HERE:
The political blogosphere has taken apart Ryan’s brazen dishonesty brick by brick so that barely anything remains. I have been writing about his dishonesty for three years. I have the equivalent of a master’s degree in Ryan lie-ology. I’ve heard many of his lurid fantasies innumerable times and I haven’t got it in me to go through it all again — his deep dishonesty largely reflects the fundamental gap between the radicalism of his agenda and his need for public acceptance. I’ll merely point out that, even if all the smaller component dishonesties of Ryan’s speech were true, the larger points they undergirded were false as well.
Bloomberg says HERE:
Ryan decried “$716 billion funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for.” But the budget House Republicans passed this year, which Ryan wrote, keeps Barack Obama’s Medicare cuts and adds another $205 billion on top.
Boston Globe said this HERE:
But Ryan’s bill of particulars against Obama strained credibility enough to damage his own, not-quite-earned reputation as a straight shooter. He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a General Motors plant in Wisconsin – a cheeky move for a vice-presidential nominee whose standard-bearer once wrote that the government should allow all of GM to go bankrupt.
The New Republic wrote HERE:
At least five times, Ryan misrepresented the facts. And while none of the statements were new, the context was. It’s one thing to hear them on a thirty-second television spot or even in a stump speech before a small crowd. It’s something else entirely to hear them in prime time address, as a vice presidential nominee is accepting his party’s nomination and speaking to the entire country.
The Associated Press wrote HERE:
Laying out the first plans for his party’s presidential ticket, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took some factual shortcuts Wednesday night when he attacked President Barack Obama’s policies on Medicare, the economic stimulus and the budget deficit.
Politifact fact checked some of Paul Ryan’s statements HERE:
Factcheck.org says HERE:
Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention contained several false claims and misleading statements.
James Downie writes HERE:
With tonight’s speech, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have doubled down on their twin bets of 2012 — that journalists will sit back and name winners and losers without regard to who is telling the truth, and that voters are too ignorant to care about the truth. Do not let them be right.
James Fallows at the Atlantic HERE:
To restate the larger points for the moment: The bad one is that a major party’s nominee for national office apparently just doesn’t care that he is standing in front of millions and telling easily catchable lies. The less-bad one is that parts of the media are noticing, and are trying to figure out what they can do in response.
Ezra Klein writes HERE:
So at about 1 a.m. Thursday, having read Ryan’s speech in an advance text and having watched it on television, I sat down to read it again, this time with the explicit purpose of finding claims we could add to the “true” category. And I did find one. He was right to say that the Obama administration has been unable to correct the housing crisis, though the force of that criticism is somewhat blunted by the fact that neither Ryan nor Mitt Romney have proposed an alternative housing policy. But I also came up with two more “false” claims. So I read the speech again. And I simply couldn’t find any other major claims or criticisms that were true.
Business Insider says HERE:
There was once a time when lying in a political speech–and getting called out on it by the media–was shameful or embarrassing.
Not anymore.
Now, says Jeff Greenfield, the veteran political analyst and Yahoo News columnist, the media is held in such low regard by Americans that getting called out for lying merely serves to confirm a widespread belief that the “liberal media” has an axe to grind against conservative politicians.
As a result, the whoppers that dominated Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan’s convention speech last night will likely not hurt the candidate’s standing with Republican voters, says Greenfield. Rather, they’ll reinforce the right-wing view that the media is “in the tank” for President Obama.
Andrew Sullivan says HERE:
When a Randian is speaking of a priority for the poor and weak, you know you have a world-class bullshitter.
The BBC writes HERE:
But fact-checkers listening to his speech on Wednesday night quickly alleged that he had been slack with his facts.
On a key area of debate, the future of Medicare, the government-run health programme for over-65s, Mr Ryan accused the White House of slashing $716bn (£450bn) from the much-loved scheme.
But FactCheck.org, amongst others, said Mr Obama’s 2010 healthcare reform law does not cut money from Medicare, but simply reduces the growth in spending on the scheme in an effort to keep it solvent.
In addition, Mr Ryan – who described the Obama plan as “the biggest, coldest, power play of all” – failed to note that he proposed virtually the same cuts in his own budget plans.
































3 Comments
[...] Not so much apparently. Reuters-Ipsos has a daily rolling poll and during the beginning of the convention earlier in the week …the movement showed Romney taking a “lead” in the polling. After Romney’s speech – Obama “regained a narrow lead”. That doesn’t bode well for Romney. Now – it is all in the margin of error but this is seriously underwhelming and not a good sign for Romney. I wonder how much of this incredibly disappointment can be linked to media organizations FINALLY calling out the Romney/Ryan campaign for its overt dishonesty and lies like after Paul Ryan’s speech HERE. [...]
[...] 28 lies in 37 minutes and the media ate Paul Ryan’s lunch for how dishonest his speech was (source). Politifact has rated 43% of Romney’s statements as FALSE, Mostly False or Pants on Fire [...]
[...] Republican National Convention; we fact checked that HERE and the media vilified him for his lies HERE. More lies by Ryan [...]