WP editorial: "Paul Ryan's breathtakingly dishonest speech"

[ProgressiveEconomist]

The author highlights the 2 biggest lies in Ryan's speech last night in Tampa:

--Blaming Obama for a GM plant closure announced in early June 2008;
--Claiming Obama 'raided Medicare' when Ryan's own budget includes the same savings from insurer and hospital overpayments;

But--with links to relevant documents--it also explores less blatant Ryan lies last night and wraps criticism of his mendacity in some very strong language for a mainstream newspaper:

WHAT'S YOUR OPINION? Have you seen editorial language attacking Romney-Ryan lies stronger than this from a regular columnist for mainstream media?

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From http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl%3Awashingtonpost.com%2Fblogs%2Fpost-partisan%2Fpost%2Fpaul-ryans-dishonest-speech%2F2012%2F08%2F30%2F&ct=clnk

"Paul Ryan's breathtakingly dishonest speech

By James Downie

Yesterday, at an ABC News panel, Mitt Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said, 'We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.' Wednesday's speech from Paul Ryan certainly took that disdain for truth to heart, as his address was filled with falsehoods from start to finish. ...

'[Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission(, the Simpson-Bowles commission). They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.' But Ryan was on that commission, and he voted against that 'urgent report.' Also, the president did not do 'exactly nothing': The White House released a debt plan last September, despite Republicans' best attempts to pretend it doesn't exist. Finally, if the crisis is so urgent, why does Ryan's own budget proposal not balance the budget until the 2030s? ...

'The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.' As Time’s Michael Grunwald, who has just published a new book about the stimulus, points out, 'Experts had warned that 5 percent of the stimulus could be lost to fraud, but investigators have documented less than $10 million in losses--about 0.001 percent.' ...

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."

[JNelson6563]

1. I wonder what's different this time.

The GOP was allowed to lie and lie big for many years with n'ary a word from the corporate media. Suddenly they're all fact-check this and fact check that. I wonder what has occurred to bring this enormous change.

Julie

[Cha]

2. It is quite perplexing, Julie, but I have a

big smile plastered on my face.

[oldsarge54]

3. Funny you should say that

If you ever played around in yahoo land, the GOP claims that every story from corporate media are liberal lies. I call it republican defense one.
The Republican Defense Plan

If you don't like the news:
1. Blame the media for reporting the story.
2. Blame the reporter.
3. Blame the victim, (it their own fault theory)
4. Resort to name calling.

[CBHagman]

13. In the main, liars and bullies go on the attack anyway.

It's true in interpersonal relationships, and it's definitely true in politics and media.

[Carolina]

6. perhaps, finally, their own

heads are on the line. Readership of the print media has dwindled as has viewership of the cable blatherers. Many livelihoods have been lost in what passes for journalism now and more will surely follow.

Nothing like losing your job and with it your health insurance (if you're lucky), your home and all else income provides...

[Cosmocat]

10. a couple reasons

1) first, there was something about the sophomoric nature of Bush II that got the media wet in its britches. They so liked how he had pet names for them, and it was just big fun getting up on stage at the press corespondents dinner doing rap dancing with Karl Rove. Seriously, though, they got off in some way with Bush II that they just merrily got in line with the "he may be wrong, but he is believes in what he is doing" BS.

2) Even despite that, things were turning VERY quickly on him prior to 9-11. His popularity was falling fast, and he had made a number of gaffes that he was on track to be a one term president. But, then, 9-11, and the republican party rode THAT horse until it was dead and dead. Just enough to get him past 2004, and everyone know it, but it was such a good card the media could not allow it to not be played out.

3) As bad as Bush was, Romney has just totally give up even having the pretense of any consistency or even trying to pretend they care about lying. When it comes to republicans, they have to be bad, REAL BAD, for the media to call them out on stuff and this crew is THAT bad. Even at that, they get away with far more than they get called on, because the volume of their bullshit is so great, but that actually is part of their math. Go all in, get dinged every couple of times, but let the stuff that goes unchecked and even the stuff that gets called out have the negative effect they are looking for.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

20. Yes--Ryan was humorless, unlikable, and unpresidential. Unlike Condi Rice,

whose speech was just as far out in Republican fantasyland as Ryan's, there was nothing appealing about Ryan. Ryan did not take grains of truth and exaggerate and distort the way Condi did last night and many politicians have done for centuries. Ryan had no soaring rhetoric about a positive vision for America. All there was was humorless, mean-spirited, in-your-face, outright untruth after untruth.

And the poll-verified unlikability of Ryan and his boss must take away much of the kind of fear Dick Cheney inspired in reporters. Many journalists must think, What can these losers possibly do to me? Republicans at the top of the ticket this year are neither loved like Dubya nor feared like Cheney.

Their strategy for victory clearly is unusual in US political history since the Dixiecrat era in the South. Romney and Ryan will saturate the airwaves with any lie focus groups tell them stokes white resentment against minorities. Their only hope, given 94 percent African=American support and 70 percent Hispanic support for Obama, is to win ugly with 60-some percent of white voters, suppression of minority and first-time voters, and drowning out of informed, nonpartisan journalism. Any competent political journalist is going to resist being driven into irrelevance, as long as the polls don't turn in Romney-Ryan's favor and trigger reactions of professional caution.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

19. NPR's Mara Liasson fact-checked Ryan's speech as well

pointing out all of the same things that other fact-checkers are jumping on.

[davidpdx]

4. I'm glad to see some of the media are paying attention

If this kind of trend continues Romney/Ryan are going to be roadkill.

[CBHagman]

14. It's going to take a lot more than that.

Remember, there's still Fox News, and there are still PAC ads flooding the airwaves. The Koch brothers have very deep pockets, and Bill O'Reilly has a big mouth.

It ain't over.

[davidpdx]

17. No, but no means did I mean it's over

But if the media starts actually doing it's job of reporting this shit, it will go a long ways toward keeping their negative ratings high.

[avebury]

5. K&R nt

[magical thyme]

7. I can think of only 3 possible reasons why the MSM is calling them out

Either:

1. the fix is in and the MSM is obeying their Lord and Masters, or

2. RR and the GOP have gone too far in their blatant contempt for the media. They have made enemies of the MSM and will be made to pay, or

3. The MSM woke up and realized that RR's attempt at a leveraged takeover of the US will end up in bankruptcy that we will *all* have to pay for, including them. Stop them now before the logical next step and they follow up their leveraged takeover of the US with a leveraged takeover of the world.

Of course it could be some combination of the above.

[renate]

29. I wondered whether it's because the campaign has crossed the line from spin to lies

But then I realized that the Bush presidency was nothing but lies from start to finish.

Maybe, like others above have suggested, the MSM simply doesn't like Romney the way they liked Bush.

[TahitiNut]

8. "filled with falsehoods from start to finish"

In my nearly-seven-decades on the planet, I've NEVER seen such an overwhelming national campaign of LIES, LIES, and more LIES... repeated with bald-faced smugness even after being called on them time and time again.

ANYONE who relies on falsehoods to make their 'case' ... doesn't HAVE a 'case.'

[Cosmocat]

11. Clearly

CLEARLY the most blatant campaign of lies.

I think they went all in on it early in the year, February or so.

I think they have a math, where they knew they would get called out every now and again, but they knew they had to go defcon 1 negative to have a chance to win, and they just said, "fuck it" and gave up even trying to be consistent or honest, all in the hopes of making this a complete muckfest and having something happen in October that gives him a chance to win.

[hifiguy]

24. Willard and Lyin' Ryan make Richard Nixon

look like an avatar of truthiness. I remember Tricky Dick well. These two schmucks may have defied some hitherto unknown law of political physics in making Dick Nixon look good by comparison.

[tclambert]

9. And tonight (Thursday) Romney speaks (while wearing custom-tailored asbestos pants).

The fact-checkers must be drooling over the prospects.

[erpowers]

12. No

I have not seen any other mainstream reporter give a detailed account of the lies of either Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan. The author of this editorial mentioned just about every lie Paul Ryan told in his speech. In addition, the author did not do what some other reporters have done - make it a he said she said thing. The author just said Paul was not telling the truth and gave the evidence to prove it.

[Historic NY]

15. Even Snotty Scottie got into the act...

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/watch-scott-walker-lies-for-5-minutes-to-4-msnbc-reporters-about-2008-auto-plant-closing/politics/2012/08/30/47784

[ailsagirl]

16. Good to hear

I didn't watch it nor any of the excerpts

[WI_DEM]

18. The Dems have to strongly counter these lies next week.

[SemperEadem]

21. unfortunately

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.

And they will win that bet because, with the exception of Maddow and perhaps Matthews, the msm will not put time, money and energy into disproving the lies told by all of the jerks during that past 4 days... Maddow and Matthews will get push back from David Gregory and Joe Scarborough this Sunday if she is on any of the panels. It already happened the other day when Matthews tore out rrrrrrrreince priebus' throat and scarbrow and his mika toy tried to shut him down.

[hue]

23. For sure the main steam media is not calling the Repukes on their lies/baseless claims!!

[hue]

22. Incessant lies--that's all the Repukes offer! They weave a terrible tangle/web of lies!!

We need to catch them in it and expose them for who they are!--->hot, poisonous gas!

Lies are the core of the Republicon/Teacon's nature. That's why I always think of M. Scott Peck's book "People of the Lie" when dealing with RW conservatves.

[indepat]

25. Ryan is holistically disingenuous and dishonest to the core of his

being imo and will continue to dissemble, distort, and lie outright for the core of his agenda is antithetical to everything government should be about. Folks, is this not the face of evil, pure and simple?

[cdb120]

26. Kudos to the WAPO

I hope to see this in more papers

[grasswire]

27. amplify this editorial by sharing it and commenting

Don't just rec it here. Make yourself heard.

Share the article on twitter, on FB, and on message boards and in e-mail.

Comment on the editorial at WaPo message boards.

Write LTTE.

Your voice can amplify the editorial.

[CRH]

28. Ryan seems bent on becoming a replacement for Tom Delay, ...

One can only hope he finds his future equally blackened, by ubiquitous distortion of the facts with a penchant of corruption embracing sociopathy.

[ohheckyeah]

30. I wonder if it has

something to do with the beating the media has taken from The Newsroom. That show has to sting.

[lindysalsagal]

31. I'm actually surprised that the media are this reality based.

I thought they'd been bought off long ago.