Paul Ryan, bloviator.

Paul certainly gave a barn burner of a speech...To bad it was thick with distortions, and bald faced lies.

How can there be a serious debate about issues, when an entire party has decided that facts do not matter as long as the fiction gets spread.

Here is a list of lies culled from memory. This will be added to as transcripts become available.


    The GM plant in Janesville. Ryan mentioned it in a pretty effective section on the Obama-induced pangs of his hometown. But as Matthew DeLuca explained two weeks ago, GM announced the closure on 6/03/2008, and it ceased production in December 2008. Unless I am seriously mistaken, that was during the Bush presidency. Ryan hustled to save it. He voted for the Bush 2008 GM bailout, in another attempt to save it. You can call that proof of government's failure, sure, but Obama didn't force it on the city.

    "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst." That's extraordinarily hard to argue, since every economist worth a damn states the stimulus helped save or create 1-3 million jobs. Then there is the fact that Ryan's office begged for some stimulus grants stating that it would help create 2600 jobs in his district.

    "$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama." A load of fetid dingo's kidneys, and a complete fabrication.
 The Medicare spending "cuts" are of the sort that Ryan defended when he was rising through the House—reductions in future reimbursement rates. And these savings are to be put back into the program further strengthening it.The budget House Republicans passed this year, which Paul Ryan wrote, keeps  Obama’s Medicare cuts and adds another $205 billion in additional cuts on top. Neither of which is to be put back into the Medicare program.

    "A downgraded America."  Another bloviation that ignores the reality we all witnessed. S&P's rationale for downgrading the United States from AAA to AA+ "assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place." This was "because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues." Ryan's promised to keep those tax cuts for now, then try and flatten the code into two low rates, and we don't know what the S&P Tiki Gods think of that.

    The "bipartisan debt commission" Ryan referred to was Simpson-Bowles. He served on it, and voted against the report, because it didn't tackle Medicare costs—which sort of brings us back to the "$716 billion funneling" issue.


"President Obama just walked away from the debt commission" Another whopper, figuring it was House Republicans that walked away from the negotiations in a publicity stunt.


Ryan attacked Obama’s Patient Protection Affordable Care Act for being laden with “mandates, taxes, fees and fines that have no place in a free country.” He was talking about mandates such as the one Mitt Romney imposed in Massachusetts, and Ryan supported through his first decade in Congress, up until President Obama accepted it for the ACA.

When Romney picked Paul Ryan he said that he had a "unique ability to get people to come together." This is not supported by Paul Ryan's resume, which contains no bipartisan achievements of note. It certainly wasn't found in the speech Ryan delivered to Republicans on Wednesday night. He talked about Obama's "government-planned life," which sounded like the cartoon speech of talk radio. Both Romney and Ryan have repeatedly stated numerous times that "Government does not create jobs", even though Ryan's entire adult life has been in governmental jobs....

Trust Mitt, Ann Romney said last night. But if the idea man on the ticket only uses his skills for easily disproved assertions, character attacks and disingenuous sales pitches, why should voters trust that he won't do the same thing once Romney is in office?