UPDATE: Fox's Web site calls Ryan out for his lies. Wow. In an article titled "Paul Ryan's speech in 3 words," word number 2 is "deceiving."
Deceiving
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.
Paul Ryan gave his keynote address at the GOP convention last night, and the fact-checkers are finding that some of the only times that Ryan told the truth were when he was NOT attacking President Obama. When Ryan DID attack Obama, his biggest anti-Obama zingers were all lies.
Don't take my word for it. The title of the Associated Press article on Ryan's speech is the following:
FACT CHECK: RYAN TAKES FACTUAL SHORTCUTS IN SPEECHAll caps, even. Factcheck.org concurs.
Next, let's hear from Politifact - note how the truths are about things that aren't attacks, but the lies are from direct attacks against Democrats:
First the innocuous truths....
Now the lies:
ABC on the plant that shut down - it actually shut down in December of 2008, before Obama was sworn in as President.
THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took officeThis one is particularly egregious since the Romney people have been using this example for days and already got fact checked on it - but they didn't care, they still included it as Paul Ryan's top zinger. A total lie.
AP has even more on the GM plant lie. You see, Obama's eventual auto bailout, that Paul Ryan opposed, saved GM. So Paul Ryan is criticizing President Obama for something Obama didn't do, and something that Paul Ryan would have done - i.e., let the plant die.
THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office and well before he enacted a more robust auto industry bailout that rescued GM and Chrysler and allowed the majority of their plants - though not the Janesville facility - to stay in operation. Ryan himself voted for an auto bailout under President George W. Bush that was designed to help GM, but he was a vocal critic of the one pushed through by Obama that has been widely credited with revitalizing both GM and Chrysler.ABC on the Medicare lie:
Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee, using the money for deficit reduction. And the cuts do not affect Medicare recipients directly, but rather reduce payments to hospitals, health insurance plans and other service providers.AP agrees:
In addition, Ryan's own plan to remake Medicare would squeeze the program's spending even more than the changes Obama made.
THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee
ABC has more, this time on Ryan's lies about the stimulus:
RYAN: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal."
THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds
AP agrees:
THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan
What's more - not only did Ryan try to carve out some of the stimulus for his own constituents, but the notion that the stimulus only went to the political cronies is interesting since one of those political cronies spoke right before Ryan at the convention - the Republican convention speaker received over $200,000 in stimulus monies.
And another from ABC:
RYAN: Obama "created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing."Ryan has a long history of criticizing Obama for things he did. Such as Medicare - Ryan's budget includes the same savings from Medicare that he is attacking Obama for.
THE FACTS: It's true that Obama hasn't heeded his commission's recommendations, but Ryan's not the best one to complain. He was a member of the commission and voted against its final report.
ThinkProgress catches two more lies in their live blog of the speech:
10:44: Obama hasn’t amassed more debt than all past presidents combined, as Ryan claimed. The New York Times beaks down the math: “The national debt stood at $10.626 trillion on the day that President Obama took office. It now stands slightly above $15 trillion.”
10:42: Ryan just brought up a “downgraded America.” It was his party that held the debt ceiling hostage, causing America’s creditors to lose faith and downgrade the country. In fact, the ratings agency repeatedly blamed Republicans for refusing to raise taxes.
