The GOP’s Flimflam Man goes all in on GOPropaganda lies

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The GOP's alleged boy genius policy wonk, Ayn Rand fanboy Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), gave his vice presidential nominee acceptance speech last night to the GOP convention. I watched his speech. Paul Krugman is correct. Paul Ryan is The Flimflam Man – NYTimes.com.

His speech was substance free, devoid of any clearly defined policies. At best there were some undefined aspirational goals. The only clearly stated policy was "repeal ObamaCare." Apparently, boy genius did not want to disclose what he would "replace" it with (remember "repeal and replace"?)

Ryan did offer a mish-mash of focus group tested attack lines which have previously been fact checked and found to be false by media fact checkers. As I have posted previously, the "Galt – Gekko 2012" campaign has made a deliberate decision to pursue a Big Lie GOPropaganda campaign. They are saying to the media, "We're going to lie. What are you going to do about it?" This presents a test for the media villagers, who are averse to ever pointing out that someone is blatantly lying.

One thing we know for certain after last night's speech: Paul Ryan is willing to be as much of a shameless shapeshifter and pathological liar as his running mate, Willard "Mittens" Romney. America has never before seen a campaign like this, and it is setting a dangerous precedent.

It was so bad that even the GOPropaganda media arm, FAUX News, was shocked and called out Paul Ryan as a shameless liar. Sally Kohn writes, Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words | Fox News:

On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was  Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

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. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.

Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing.

Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period.

Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan.

Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.

And then there is what Paul Ryan didn’t talk about in his speech. Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words | Fox News.

Sahil Kapur at TalkingPointsMemo adds, Paul Ryan Faces Media Backlash For Misleading Convention Speech | TPMDC:

[T]he Wisconsin congressman’s speech strained facts on multiple occasions. And that has rankled more than just the usual suspects. Several mainstream outlets that have praised him in the past pointedly went after his misleading portrayals of critical issues at stake in this election.

The Associated Press took on Ryan’s misleading assertions in an article headlined, “FACT CHECK: Ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech,” which included a point-by-point refutation of various claims he made.

The AP article took on his claims about Medicare, the stimulus package, an auto plant in his home state and the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission, among others.

MSNBC host David Gregory accused Ryan of “ideological amnesia” for papering over his own role in helping rack up large deficits.

“He is a man — as I know that you’ve all referred to this — who did vote for the auto bailout, he did vote for TARP, he did vote as well for both wars that were not funded, and he voted for Part D of Medicare, and he’s spent his entire life in government,” Gregory said.

Washington Post opinions editor James Downie called the speech “breathtakingly dishonest” in a headline at his paper’s PostPartisan blog, declaring in his opening paragraph that it was “filled with falsehoods from start to finish.”

Downie concluded with a plea to reporters: “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.”

[And then there is the Washington Post editorial board opinion today, Mr. Ryan’s speech: Effective maybe, but definitely misleading – The Washington Post.]

[There is also the Washington Post's Jonathan Bernstein, Paul Ryan fails — the truth – The Plum Line.]

The Boston Globe’s editorial page editor noted in a headline that Ryan’s attacks on the president “may hurt his own credibility.”

Other takedowns of the House budget chief’s claims were published in CNN and ABC News.

Do you know where you did NOT see any of this critical analysis? In any of the Arizona political media, who continue to maintain a policy of radio silence about the Big Lie GOPropaganda campaign of the "Galt – Gekko 2012" campaign. You should contact management and demand to know the reason why. They are failing to inform and warn the public about the most mendacious campaign in U.S. history.

UPDATE: Other fact checks of Paul Ryan's speech: Slate, Bloomberg, New York Magazine, the New Republic, the New Yorker,  Politifact, Factcheck.org and the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler.