It seems as if many pundits have been heralding vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan as a smart, dynamic, and electrifying young speaker.
Oh yeah, he cuts a great image all right; trim and dashing --- one of the so-called "young guns". Yet despite his radiant image, he seems to have no compunction about fibbing: blatantly so!
For instance, he stated that the General Motors plant in his home town of Janesville, Wisconsin was abandoned under President Obama's watch. It actually ceased operation (except for a skeleton crew) in December, 2008 --- a month before his inauguration. Notice of the shutdown had been given four months earlier.
Surely, as a resident of Janesville, he had to know the truth, as did his fellow burghers. What an insult to everyone's collective intelligence!
Then of course, there's the whopper about Medicare: How Obama raided Medicare recipients' benefits of $716 billion and diverted it to Obamacare. The reality: That amount represented a savings realized by reducing payments to hospitals and insurance plans (which don't seem to have affected the quality or level of Medicare services to its beneficiaries). In the meantime, Mr. Ryan continues to tout his proposal to, in essence, trash Medicare by transforming it into a voucher program, placing a heavy financial burden on those who can least afford it.
(Sidebar: This seems like an appropriate time to quote former Congressman Alan Grayson [D - Florida] who eloquently summed up the Republicans' watchword on health care: "Don't get sick, but if you DO get sick, die quickly!" He's campaigning to recapture his old seat in the Orlando area).
The examples above represent two of the five misstatements cited by Fact Check and attributed to Mr. Ryan. (Fact Check is a non-partisan, nonprofit organization, based at the University of Pennsylvania, that researches the veracity of political claims).
While I realize that it may be a humongous stretch to compare Congressman Ryan to Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, I do feel that it's not entirely inappropriate. Mr. Goebbels was notoriously known for having stated that, "If you repeat the big lie often enough, people will believe it."
Well, it appears as if the spirit of Herr Goebbels is alive and well and living in the heart and soul of Congressman Paul Ryan.
You've made a good listing here of Ryan's being cavalier with the facts this week, as he has done previously. I find him to be dangerous not because he is trim and dashing, but because he has the appropriate demeanor, poise, and seeming
ReplyDeleteapprehension/command of U.S. budget facts, which he SHOULD have as head of the U.S. House Budget Committee....but he doesn't, or at least, he didn't publicly betray such knowledge at any time this year.
factcheck.org is not an impartial source, as it is funded by the Annenbergs, known to be conservative. They may be often inclined to attempt objectivity, but how can they succeed, beginning with at least SOME philosophical bias? Still, agreed, Annenberg is not equal to the rabid right-wing nuthatch Koch Bros.