Paul Ryan's RNC Speech

[carlfense]

Honestly . . . even in this campaign . . . this level of complete dishonesty is jarring.

Incredibly, the larger theme of Ryan’s speech was to assail Obama for failing to take full responsibilities for this state of affairs — Obama is “shifting blame,” “blaming others.” It is the single largest motif of Ryan’s speech. Let’s review: Ryan helps to create a massive structural deficit, repeatedly and almost single-handedly prevents a solution, then runs for vice-president, blaming Obama for the structural deficit and further blaming him for his unwillingness to agree that this is all his own fault. The really amazing thing is that it could possibly work.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/the-lies-of-paul-ryan.html

[carlfense]

Ezra Kline chimes in:

But Ryan’s claims weren’t even arguably true. You simply can’t say the president hasn’t released a deficit reduction plan. The plan is right here. You simply can’t say the president broke his promise to keep your GM plant open. The decision to close the plant was made before he entered office — and, by the way, the guy at the top of your ticket opposed the auto bailout. You simply can’t argue that the Affordable Care Act was a government takeover of the health-care system. My doctor still works for Kaiser Permanente, a private company that the government does not own. You simply can’t say that Obama, who was willing to follow historical precedent and sign a clean debt ceiling increase, caused the S&P downgrade, when S&P clearly said it was due to congressional gridlock and even wrote that it was partly due to the GOP’s dogmatic position on taxes.

<snip>

I don’t like that conclusion. It doesn’t look “fair” when you say that. We’ve been conditioned to want to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame, and the fact of the matter is, I would like to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame. I’d personally feel better if our coverage didn’t look so lopsided. But first the campaigns have to be relatively equal. So far in this campaign, you can look fair, or you can be fair, but you can’t be both.

http://www.washingto...thful-campaign/

 

Will the American people let this happen? I shudder to think of what the next campaign will look like if this sort of flat out lying is rewarded instead of punished.

[zoogs]

The RNC/DNC are just more places for empty words and rally-cry rhetoric -- no real discussion of policy, and no real information worth listening to. Although I suppose it could be a place to launch careers (Obama at that 2004 convention, I think? ) because it affords these speech-givers a nice national close-up.

 

I listened to one of the speeches the other day:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuFe6R29Zso&feature=share

 

In it, Sen. Cruz appears to take Obama to task for things like telling seniors they'll have medicare taken away from them (I still am not sure I heard this correctly), telling Hispanics they can't be here (I am SURE I didn't hear this one right. I about fell out of my chair...) He also takes Obama to task for excessive spending, and too much medicare spending. So I came away from it all pretty confused.

 

Campaigns are all about defining truth. I think with social media -- twitter, sharing Meaningless Pictures of Things With Brief Captioned Text -- all of this promotes the widespread acceptance of falsehoods or spin as truth. Yes, they'll get properly taken to task for it in the end. But how many people will they reach and turn before that? Often these sorts of things aren't even started by the campaign, but by ardent (and often ignorant) supporters.

 

The GOP convention is still hanging onto that "you didn't build that [business]" theme, aren't they, when what should belong in those brackets is [roads/bridges].

[krc1995]

Ezra Kline chimes in:

But Ryan’s claims weren’t even arguably true. You simply can’t say the president hasn’t released a deficit reduction plan. The plan is right here. You simply can’t say the president broke his promise to keep your GM plant open. The decision to close the plant was made before he entered office — and, by the way, the guy at the top of your ticket opposed the auto bailout. You simply can’t argue that the Affordable Care Act was a government takeover of the health-care system. My doctor still works for Kaiser Permanente, a private company that the government does not own. You simply can’t say that Obama, who was willing to follow historical precedent and sign a clean debt ceiling increase, caused the S&P downgrade, when S&P clearly said it was due to congressional gridlock and even wrote that it was partly due to the GOP’s dogmatic position on taxes.

<snip>

I don’t like that conclusion. It doesn’t look “fair” when you say that. We’ve been conditioned to want to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame, and the fact of the matter is, I would like to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame. I’d personally feel better if our coverage didn’t look so lopsided. But first the campaigns have to be relatively equal. So far in this campaign, you can look fair, or you can be fair, but you can’t be both.

http://www.washingto...thful-campaign/

 

Will the American people let this happen? I shudder to think of what the next campaign will look like if this sort of flat out lying is rewarded instead of punished.

 

Obama's budget was released a year ago. How much progress has been made? If his goal is to realize more than $3 trillion in net deficit reduction over the next 10 years, I think he should have made some progress by now. There are many areas of the government that need to be addressed. For me the number one is entitlements and I don't see entitlements specifically addressed in his budget reduction.

[carlfense]

For me the number one is entitlements and I don't see entitlements specifically addressed in his budget reduction.

Pages 35-43 if you're interested.

[BigRedBuster]

Honestly . . . even in this campaign . . . this level of complete dishonesty is jarring.

Incredibly, the larger theme of Ryan’s speech was to assail Obama for failing to take full responsibilities for this state of affairs — Obama is “shifting blame,” “blaming others.” It is the single largest motif of Ryan’s speech. Let’s review: Ryan helps to create a massive structural deficit, repeatedly and almost single-handedly prevents a solution, then runs for vice-president, blaming Obama for the structural deficit and further blaming him for his unwillingness to agree that this is all his own fault. The really amazing thing is that it could possibly work.

http://andrewsulliva...-paul-ryan.html

 

That's funny when for half of his term, he has had a majority in both the house and senate. Must be pretty difficult to get things passed when everyone with power pretty much is in your party.

[knapplc]

That's funny when for half of his term, he has had a majority in both the house and senate. Must be pretty difficult to get things passed when everyone with power pretty much is in your party.

 

Have you ever heard of the filibuster?

 

[carlfense]

That's funny when for half of his term, he has had a majority in both the house and senate. Must be pretty difficult to get things passed when everyone with power pretty much is in your party.

Have you ever heard of the filibuster?

yeah....

[ZRod]

The thing that get's me is how everyone gets heel-and-toe behind Romney. I wish just one of them had the guts to say that they don't like him, and in all likelihood he would be the same moderate that he's always been and so similar to Obama it would be shocking.

[Guy Chamberlin]

The thing that get's me is how everyone gets heel-and-toe behind Romney. I wish just one of them had the guts to say that they don't like him, and in all likelihood he would be the same moderate that he's always been and so similar to Obama it would be shocking.

 

Obama has been shockingly similar to Bush and presumably to McCain, but I think Mitt has drunk from the Koolaid the far right forced him to drink, and the definition of "moderate" has been pushed so far to the right that there's no going back to Massachusetts Governor Romney. Whereas no one used to admit they were governing on behalf of the 1%, now there's a political cover to do so, along with a knee-jerk rejection of science and logic.

 

Income disparity has been killing the American Dream, and Romney shows every indication of making it worse.

 

Watching Republican stalwarts forced to explain how Mitt Romney has won them over has been amusing. They still don't like the man.

[ZRod]

I guess I should have added "similar to Obama who is also similar to Bush" because I agree with that. I think that if Romney made it to office he would in fact try and enact his tax policies, economic plans, and energy policies like he's said but I think he will ultimately comeback to his track record with healthcare, abortion, and the like. But the former is what really scares me, these are vision that are 20+ years old and either have become outdated, proven not to work, or in the case of energy are just plain harmful on multiple levels.

[zoogs]

http://romneytheliar.blogspot.com/

 

I wish they had done a more thorough documenting of sources for the claims they make, but nonetheless...

[Ziggy]

http://romneytheliar.blogspot.com/

 

I wish they had done a more thorough documenting of sources for the claims they make, but nonetheless...

 

That has got to be one of the worst links I have ever seen. And people complain about FoxNews.

[zoogs]

http://romneytheliar.blogspot.com/

 

I wish they had done a more thorough documenting of sources for the claims they make, but nonetheless...

 

That has got to be one of the worst links I have ever seen. And people complain about FoxNews.

 

Well, yes...I hope it is not hard to understand why "major news corporation" might be held to higher standards for fairness and balance (especially when it's their tagline) than "some random guy's blogspot."

 

However, I posted that link in the hopes that somebody with more interest in defending Romney, might go through and either confirm or dispute some of these 'lies'.

[Ziggy]

Then don't link some random guys blog spot. It almost as bad those group email forwards.