Juan Cole: Top Ten Repeated Paul Ryan Lies

[highplainsdem]

http://www.juancole.com/2012/08/top-ten-repeated-paul-ryan-lies.html

This year’s Republican campaign may be the most dishonest in history. A couple of weeks ago I listed 10 major falsehoods and gaffes of Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan. He repeated several of them in his Tampa speech, and added a few more. In honest political debate, when a candidate says something that is not true, he is confronted by journalists and the public, and either gives evidence that it is true, or backs off. Ryan continues to insist on repeating known falsehoods, to the extent that even Fox Cable News lamented his dishonesty.

Voters need to ask who Ryan represents. It is people who make a million dollars a year or more. Everything he says is intended to produce policy that benefits them, and which hurts working people. Millionaires don’t like having to pay for government-provided infrastructure, or health care for workers, and don’t like having to put up with unions. The rest of us like driving on roads without potholes, over bridges that don’t fall down, and not being bankrupted when we need an operation. Since most Americans would be crazy to vote for policies that only benefit our three million wealthiest, out of 310 million, Ryan tries to appeal to workers with religion (banning abortion). He needs to put together a coalition of millionaires and some religious workers in order to win. But even that wouldn’t be enough. He has to get people on his side who would be hurt by his policies. And that requires that he simply lie to them.

So here are some new lies he just retailed, along with a reiteration of my earlier refutation of points drawn from his stock speeches, which he put right back in his Convention speech.

1. Ryan blamed the US credit rating downgrade on President Obama. But it was caused by the Republican Congress’s threat not to raise the debt ceiling. That is, the fault for the credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA belongs with… Paul Ryan.

-snip-

Emphasis added.

[speedoo]

1. Excellent summary of Ryan's lies.

Must read (unless you already know them!).

[oldsarge54]

2. Historic Truth

Actually, the Republican party has been the home of the "better" people since the 1870s. Why is it you have to scratch your head to remember the Presidents for that period through 1900? They were non-endities selected by party bosses and big businessmen to be agreeable idiots that can take orders. The nomination of Warren G. Harding is a case in point. In 11th place at the start of the Republican convention, behind those closed doors the power brokers divied up the cabinet and agencies and put Harding on the ballot. They basically nominated the man who would give them the power they wanted. Another lighter case, ever see that New Yorker cartoon, a bunch of well dress people getting ready to head to the Lux and hiss Roosevelt?

[Blue_Tires]

3. ttt

[pampango]

4. I know they don't want a campaign based on facts, but here is FactCheck.org's take on Ryan's speech.

Ryan’s VP Spin

Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention contained several false claims and misleading statements. Delegates cheered as the vice presidential nominee:

Accused President Obama’s health care law of funneling money away from Medicare “at the expense of the elderly.” In fact, Medicare’s chief actuary says the law “substantially improves” the system’s finances, and Ryan himself has embraced the same savings.
Accused Obama of doing “exactly nothing” about recommendations of a bipartisan deficit commission — which Ryan himself helped scuttle.
Claimed the American people were “cut out” of stimulus spending. Actually, more than a quarter of all stimulus dollars went for tax relief for workers.
Faulted Obama for failing to deliver a 2008 campaign promise to keep a Wisconsin plant open. It closed less than a month before Obama took office.
Blamed Obama for the loss of a AAA credit rating for the U.S. Actually, Standard & Poor’s blamed the downgrade on the uncompromising stands of both Republicans and Democrats.

And when he wasn’t attacking Obama, Ryan was puffing up the record of his running mate, Mitt Romney, on taxes and unemployment.

http://factcheck.org/2012/08/ryans-vp-spin/

What follows is a detailed dismantling of Ryan's speech.