Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In an article for Huffington Post, Miles Mogulescu wrote the following about Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan:
He comes off like a Midwest choir boy who grew up busing tables and just wants to help unemployed 20-year-olds get jobs and move out of their parents’ house. This ‘aw shucks’ act may play well among heartland voters who could swing the election.
But Ryan lies like a hooker telling her john that she loves him. And given a media that tends to cover the horse race rather than the substance, there’s a good chance he could lie his way all the way to the vice presidency.
Mogulescu—among others—has written and spoken about the number of inaccuracies and untruths included in the speech that Paul Ryan gave at the Republican National Convention last week.
Sally Kohn of Fox News wrote:
…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.
In Paul Ryan’s breathtakingly dishonest speech, James Downie wrote:
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.
Pat Garofalo of ThinkProgress wrote that Ryan’s speech “was riddled with lies.”
Matthew Dowd, a former chief political strategist for George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004, also criticized Ryan for the falsehoods included in his speech on ABC’s This Week. He said that “at some point, the truth should matter”:
DOWD: Paul Ryan, what he did in his speech, I think so stretched the truth. And I like Paul Ryan, have a lot of great respect for Paul Ryan, but the elements that he said about closing the GM plant which closed before Barack Obama took President [sic], about the Simpson-Bowles bill which he opposed and then all of a sudden he faults Barack Obama for. At some point, the truth should matter…He was trying to convey that Barack Obama was responsible for the closing of that GM plant and that isn’t true.
Aviva Shen provided us with this list of what she thinks are “Ryan’s most glaring lies from his speech”:
1. “A downgraded America.” Ryan blamed the president for the nation’s credit downgrade in August 2011 after Republicans threatened to allow the government to default on its debt for the first time in history. But the ratings agency explicitly blamed “Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal.”
2. “More debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined.” Romney has made the almost identical claim, that Obama has amassed more debt “as almost all of the other presidents combined.” But their math doesn’t add up: when Obama took office, the national debt was $10.626 trillion. It has increased to slightly above $15 trillion.
3. Shuttered General Motors plant is “one more broken promise.” Ryan described a GM plant that closed down in his hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin, and blamed Obama for breaking his promise to keep the plant open when he visited during his campaign. But Obama never made that promise, and the plant shut down in December 2008, before Obama even took office.
4. Obama “did exactly nothing” on Bowles-Simpson. Ryan said, “He 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.” In fact, Ryan was instrumental in sabotaging the commission, leading the other House Republicans in voting against the plan.
5. “$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.” Ryan’s favorite lie is a deliberate distortion of Obamacare’s savings from eliminating inefficiencies. Furthermore, Ryan’s own plan for Medicare includes these savings. Romney has vowed to restore these cuts, which would render the trust fund insolvent 8 years ahead of schedule.
6. “The greatest of all responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak.” Ryan closed the speech with an invocation of social responsibility, saying, “The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” However, numerous clergy members have condemned Ryan’s budget plan as “cruel,” and “an immoral disaster” because of its devastating cuts in social programs the poor and sick rely on. Meanwhile, Ryan would give ultra-rich individuals and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks.
Paul Krugman feels that Ryan’s “big lie” is his claim that “a Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare.” Krugman claims that it would actually “kill the program.”
I understand that politicians often fudge the truth, leave out details, take their opponents’ comments out of context, etc., in order to win votes. But one “untruth” that Ryan told recently in an interview with Hugh Hewitt confounded me. Ryan claimed that he had once run a marathon in under three hours.
Excerpt from Ryan’s interview with Hewitt:
HH: That’s okay. Hey, in high school, what did you do in high school? Were you a speech and debate guy? Were you a bandie? What were you?
PR: No, I was student government and athletics, honor society, you know, that kind of thing. I was kind of a combination. I was class president my junior year, I was the school board rep my senior year. I lettered in varsity, you know, my first year in high school, mostly soccer and track. I was a distance runner and a soccer player. So kind of well-rounded. I can’t, I can play a cowbell. That’s about it for instruments.
HH: Are you still running?
PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.
Well, it turns out that Ryan has run but one marathon in his life—and that was when he was just twenty years old and in college. He did not run that marathon in under three hours as he had claimed. He did—in fact—run the marathon in just over four hours.
So why, I wonder, would someone who is running for vice president and who knows the press will likely pick up on everything he says lie about something so trivial?
It appears that James Fallows of The Atlantic wonders too. He wrote: “the mystery in this case is why someone just stepping into the spotlight of national attention would risk telling an (a) entirely unnecessary and (b) very easily disprovable lie. It doesn’t make “normal” political sense, where you lie to get out of a jam, or because you think you can’t be caught. ..”
He continued:
We’ve all exaggerated to make ourselves look better. You’ve probably done it. I know I have. (Let’s not think about the whole category of “what happens on first dates.”) But out of prudent self-protection, most people have a sense of “situational awareness” when it comes to self-burnishment. Somebody you’re talking to in a bar, and you’re never likely to see again, is in one category. Somebody interviewing you for national broadcast is in another. That is what I’m having a hard time fully understanding.
You’re on a nationwide show. You’re one of the handful of people most prominently in the national eye. You know that everything you say is going to be recorded, parsed, and examined. And still — last week, not at a freshman mixer or in a Jaycees speech somewhere — you happily reel off a claim that is impressive enough to get people’s interest and admiration, and specific enough to be easily testable.
I don’t understand this. I can understand, while obviously deploring, why Bill Clinton brazenly said “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” on national TV. It was a flat-out lie that to him might have seemed necessary to his survival. I can understand the little embellishments politicians and everyone else make — especially when these occur in early days of the campaign, or in odd corners where you think no one is listening.
That’s why I mention it one more time: This doesn’t fit the normal model of “efficient” political or human truth-shaving. It was a lie that was totally unnecessary — if he’d said he had run a five-hour marathon, we’d still know that he’s physically very fit. And telling it in his current state of 24/7-scrutiny and prominence was either unbelievably naive (“no one will ever double-check this”) or plain reckless (“I don’t care if they do”). Unless we get into Jonah Lehrer territory — that is, the realm of people who self-destructively take needless risks with the truth — I just am amazed.
Are you amazed too? What do you think about Paul Ryan’s marathon claim?
SOURCES
Lie or Mistake? Paul Ryan’s Marathoning Past (The New Yorker)
How Fast Can Paul Ryan Run? (The New Yorker)
The Real Mystery of Paul Ryan’s Marathon Time by James Fallows (The Atlantic)
Three ‘Post-Truth’ Related Items (The Atlantic)
Paul Ryan Has Not Run Sub-3:00 Marathon (Runner’s World)
Paul Ryan Interview (Hugh Hewitt)
Did Paul Ryan Really Run a Sub-Three-Hour Marathon? No, He Didn’t. (Slate)
Paul Ryan: Lying Liar (Huffington Post)
Paul Ryan Address: Convention Speech Built On Demonstrably Misleading Assertions (Huffington Post)
Fox News: Paul Ryan’s Speech “Greatest Number of Blatant Lies” (Daily Kos)
Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words (Fox News)
Bush Chief Political Strategist: Paul Ryan’s Speech Was Full Of Lies (ThinkProgress)
6 Worst Lies In Paul Ryan’s Speech (ThinkProgress)
Paul Ryan’s breathtakingly dishonest speech (Washington Post)
Facts Take a Beating in Acceptance Speeches (New York Times)
The Medicare Killers (New York Times)
I heard that Paul Ryan has a secret plan to take over the presidency once he and Romney are elected and then select one of the Koch brothers as vice president, Ryan will then resign from office leaving the United States at the mercy of Koch Industries and the Catholic Church.
Ryan is going to have Romney committed based on his Mormon beliefs. He already has lined up judges and psychiatrists who are willing to do this based on their anti-Mormon beliefs. The Catholic Church and the Cato Institute are behind this scheme.
I may not have the details exactly right but from what I can gather based on my association with the Catholic Church, the Cato Institute and the Republican Party that is basically how it is going to go down. The Kochs and the Catholic Church have become allies in their global quest for world domination.
You are right to fear Paul Ryan, he is the Kochchurian Candidate. Stop him now, before it is too late. Please.
Another nightmare! At least it will be a change.
Didn’t Obama promise that. And now Ryan delivers.
James in LA,
Great response.
PS How many “nettites” even vote? Are they even registered or know how to do so?
@James in LA,
Nice to hear from you. Want to take issue with a couple of things. You say:
“But the new era we live in makes them stand out like sore thumbs, as well they should.”
Pleaae read ElaineM’s account of press comments to the lies. Note also what I wrote above of the uselessness of small islands of truth here on the internet.
As for using the net as a force, how do you raise 200,000 hits or get it to go viral so it gets more than a notice in the Tech section of the NYTimes?
Hope you are right. My view is not so pleasant.
Waking from a nap, and am greeted by repeated nightmares.
“8. “It’s keeping fact-checkers busy…[the Obama campaign] is trying to call attention to perceived inaccuracies in Ryan’s speech” — Chuck Todd, MSNBC. Indeed.”
ElaineM citations and comment.
Ryan 8; Press 0.
Who is the pathological liar and who are the whores.
No disrespect to an honorable (?) profession (whoredom) or women. Just for the press. They now, if not before, now facing such bald-faced lying with total disregard for the so-called power of the media, are totally paralysed. Not even capable of completing a full sentence of critique. There well-worn leather doing its usual round of ass-kissing stroking of power.
Ryan, I wrote before WP swallowed it whole, is a pathological liar. An excellent one. A compulsive one. An unrestrained one. And likely an immortal one; as he together with Romney and Co. will draw us completely under the surface of the tarpits of doom.
Why should he stop lying. His charm, charisma, persona have all been irresistable, if we are to believe the testimony in the press. Never publicly challenged. Only thwarted nominally by Obama and Co., but emerging to victory through stalling the nation and progress.
The eight items cited prove the Press is totally dysfunctional, cowed, dropping their heads like dogs before the alpha hound.
Can we rely on Elaine’s choice as being truly a picture of the devastation wrought on truth by Ryan and his supporters? I say that in desperation, seeking a straw to keep my hopes floating. I depend on ElaineM, accused as some say, to be the deliverer of liberal leftist views. But this is a terrible view. The minds of a people are in thrall to the power of “creating consent”.
The apocalypse has come without the trumpets and alarums of conflict. It is greeted instesd by the intoxicated chants from Tampa. Intoxicated? By the prospect of more for them, and less for others. Unaware all! That this cow will soon be unmilkable escapes them.
Are there no mass protests? Does the world still turn, and all go to jobs (those who have ones); carefully controlling their disapppointment. Or are they even aware that the Matrix has not been shattered by any protests? Of course not. There have been no protests. Tiny islands of small media voices do not a protest make.
The mockery of democracy prepares for the second act in Charlotte.
Fourth Estate? Lackeys of power is the right name.
Most all elected pols hail from the Age of Newspapers when you could white lie your way across the country and no one could possibly connect the dots. This includes Paul Ryan, who is just old enough to have born into the previous era and had to learn of computers largely as an adult.
Yes, Ralph, all politicians lie. But the new era we live in makes them stand out like sore thumbs, as well they should. They offer us the opportunity to reject the liars speaking the lies BEFORE they get into office.
The lies are really rotten, too. Not even creative. The ease of the Marathon Lie means these two lie with the freedom of breathing.
Add Romney’s ethically challenged financial position, and you have a ticket that cannot be elected. Most Americans hear Swiss and Caymens and think tax dodge. Thems the rules. Offshore accounts are beyond Congressional subpoena and FOIA requests, and can be used for bribery, blackmail, and money laundering. They pose a serious security risk to the country.
Ralph, instead of complaining pols lie, use could be using the new media to make them stop. “All sides do it” is neither a valid defense nor a constructive plan.
We should read JT’s post this morning concerning his interview by John Cusack, Paul Ryan’s public statements that Romney determines their campaign rhetoric because he is the boss, and a writing by a Mormon concerning their concepts and support of deception:
(Lying For The Lord). The reality is not good vs evil, in the form of truth v lies, in any election within our nation any more.
We are lied to because it is a very time-worn tradition in our culture, and it will continue until we stop it or it destroys our culture.
We can’t fix something unless we have an honest appraisal of what software developers (“computer programmers”) call “the problem domain”.
No programmer can fashion a valid solution unless and until that programmer has the real problem domain honestly and competently identified.
A false problem domain will lead to a false solution every time.
What are you people on about? You’ll vote Romney/Ryan in, or rather the apathetic masses will, thus;
Michael Moore: “Sorry to speak the Awful Truth: 90 million say they’re not voting Nov 6 & 2/3 of ’em are Obama supporters. Unless that changes, Romney wins.”
From the immortal Douglas Adams: “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
How The Media Soft-Plays Paul Ryan’s Lies: ‘Factual Shortcuts,’ ‘Perceived Inaccuracies,’ ‘Questionable Claims’
By Zack Beauchamp
Aug 30, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/30/774211/how-the-media-soft-plays-paul-ryans-lies-factual-shortcuts-perceived-inaccuracies-questionable-claims/
Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) speech to the Republican National Convention last night was chock-full of bald-faced lies. For example, Ryan blamed the Obama for S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating (despite the fact that S&P blamed GOP policies) and blasted Obama for failing to heed the Bowles-Simpson debt commission (which Ryan torpedoed). Yet political reporters covering the speech have, in many cases, been curiously reticent to call Ryan’s lies what they are. Here’s a list, in no particular order, of the euphemisms used in place of “lie” to describe Ryan’s falsehoods:
1. “Factual shortcuts.” — Jack Gillum and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press. Even in some pieces ostensibly devoted to fact-checking Ryan’s speech, like this Associated Press item, reporters shy away from the term “lie.”
2. “Factually challenged” – John Berman, CNN. The word lie was later used on air to describe Ryan’s speech, but by The Daily Caller’s Will Cain, who was defending Ryan against the charge.
3. “Inaccuracies” — Donovan Slack, Politico. In what’s essentially a he-said-she-said post about the Obama campaign’s reactions to Ryan’s lies, Slack refers to the speech as “otherwise well-reviewed” despite the avalanche of criticism Ryan received for the speech’s tenuous relationship with the truth.
4. “Mr. Ryan ran headlong into the fire” — Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times. The Times’ write-up of the speech fails to call out any of the lies in Ryan’s speech, focusing instead on how the speech would play politically — an issue which is in part determined by how the press chooses to cover the speech.
5. “He is viewed as a truth teller.” — Howard Kurtz, Newsweek/The Daily Beast. Kurtz chooses to repeat this supposed perception of Ryan without addressing the question of whether the content of the speech is, in fact, truthful.
6. ” Paul Ryan stretched some truths Wednesday night…according to the fact checkers” — Mark Memmott NPR. In an otherwise admirable piece critiquing Ryan’s speech, Memmott uses both a the “stretched the truth” euphemism and frames the issue as a debate between fact-checkers and Ryan. The Romney campaign dismisses factcheckers, having said “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
7. “Questionable claims.” — Carol Costello, CNN. Costello goes on to say that Ryan’s claims about a GM plant in his hometown were rated by CNN factcheckers as “true but incomplete.”
8. “It’s keeping fact-checkers busy…[the Obama campaign] is trying to call attention to perceived inaccuracies in Ryan’s speech” — Chuck Todd, MSNBC. Indeed.
Oh, by the way, the election will be a marathon. Big Ears will be in the high twos. They need 270. Two sixty is high. Two months from now. Two sixty Big Ears. Close and of course smoke the Bain cigar. All the way to the bank. The one in the Canaries.
As usual, I agree with Zarathustra above. Except finding the brain with a drill would be a drain on the patience of the driller. The Willard and Big Ears–team of the 21st Century. The Willard is kind of like Dewey. Big Ears is kinda like Quayle. Truman, the incumbent, beat Dewey, the Willard of his time. even over the accolades of some newspaper the day after the election in 1948. Yes those East Coast predictors could not tathom the failed haberdasher from Missura beating their boy. Now you have another incumbent from the midwest. The NY and MA folks are chompin at the bit for their Willard to come to the rescue of the Bain investors. I say: Cheers Big Ears to both of these prep school boys in jeans with cheeks of tan, fluffy wives and expensive luxury homes.
I remember Elaine. The amazing part is that they don’t even try to hide their dirty tricks and lies anymore.
Carol,
Do you remember the swiftboating of John Kerry…what the dirty tricksters of the Nixon campaign did to Ed Muskie and his wife…Lee Atwater?
Most members of the media have been enamored of Paul Ryan. Maybe some of them are beginning to understand who he really is.
Al Gore was acused of lying everytime he opened his mouth…and Ryan actually does lie and it really isn’t a big deal?? Gore was ridiculed, mocked, and practically spit in by the media for having factual statements twisted into preposterous lies. By election day everybody in the Country was programmed to believe Al ALWAYS lies.
To bad even half the effort that was used to destroy Gore won’t be used to tell the truth about Ryan.
i enjoy receiving your posts and was very sorry to hear about your sister, She and you and your family will be in our prayers. Frank Hackmann
Sent from my iPad
In their search for the ultimate liar, the Republicans have gone too far. Pathological liars are the ultimate, but can they control their lying? Paul can not.
And if Mitt is not pathological, then why is he the Presidential candidate?
Or simply as a five second TV ad:
“Paul Ryan says he did the marathon in 3 hours.
Do you believe him? Will you on election day?”
We have a winner chant:
“Time under 4 hours. What is the next lie?
The others did not factcheck out either.”
Ralph,
I am glad that you finally realized that I am a leftist. However, you don’t understand that I have not turned a blind eye to Obama’s deficiencies. Just because I believe Obama is the best candidate running for President, does not mean that I think he is perfect. Far from it. However, Romney and Ryan will in office will mean the end of the middle class, the death of Social Security and Medicare, and women’s rights will be turned back 75 years.
Zarathustra 1, September 3, 2012 at 12:17 am
And now it’s time someone used a drill on his brain………………
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I already replaced the keyboard, and it works really well.