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Miles Mogulescu

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Paul Ryan: Lying Liar

Posted: 08/30/2012 12:00 pm

Paul Ryan's Republican Convention speech was truly scary.

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.

A sampling of the lies in Ryan's speech:

• Ryan claimed that President Obama threatens Medicare because the Affordable Care Act reduces the cost of Medicare costs by $716 billion over 10 years. The truth is that those savings come primarily from slowing the rate of growth in payments hospitals and doctors and do not take away any benefits from seniors, unlike Ryan's plan to end Medicare by turning it into a voucher program in which seniors rather than the government will bear increasing health care costs. Moreover, Ryan's own Medicare plan contains the same $700 billion in costs savings. It just goes to show that a good defense is a good offense with the man who wants to end Medicare as we know it claiming it's President Obama who wants to cut Medicare.

• Ryan accused President Obama of "adding more debt than any other President before him." The truth is that the biggest driver of the debt have been the Bush tax cuts, the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Republican-backed Medicare drug program which wasn't paid for, all of which Paul Ryan voted for.

• Ryan blamed Obama for the shutting down of a GM plant in Ryan's home district in Janesville, Wisconsin. The fact is that the plant shuttered in 2008 while George Bush was still President. President Obama's program to keep GM alive saved hundreds of thousands of jobs.

• Ryan gave moving homilies to the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak. The truth is that the Medicaid cuts in Ryan's budget would deny health care to millions of the poor and prevent millions more middle class families from affording nursing homes.

• Ryan appealed to young people without jobs living in their parent's homes. Cuts to student loans in Ryan's budget would deny millions of them the chance to go to college and obtain the skills to get high-paying jobs.

• Ryan blamed President Obama for last summer's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard and Poor's. But S&P itself stated that the downgrade was caused primarily because Congressional Republicans, like Ryan, refuse to consider raising revenues.

Ryan is a master practitioner of The Big Lie, the propaganda technique in which if you lie big and often enough, people will believe the lie.

The question is whether the American media will let him get away with it.

 
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Paul Ryan's Republican Convention speech was truly scary. 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...
Paul Ryan's Republican Convention speech was truly scary. 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...
 
 
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
willjo1
01:05 AM on 09/04/2012
And the hits keep on coming Paul Ryan just can’t help but to lie. This guy Paul Ryan told such a trivial lie about his running time in a 20 year old marathon when he was in college. All I got to say about that is; will someone please tell Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, you can’t out run a Kenya. Obama/Biden 2012
05:53 PM on 09/01/2012
Ryan lied that he ran the Marathon in sub 3 hr time when he now admits that he ran it in more than 4 hrs. I don't know if he indeed ever ran a Marathon. I don't believe a word he says anymore. The Romney campaign is infected with liars and Romney is the biggest one. Romney officially uses lies as tools in his campaign. Mr. Obama should make truthfulness a main element of his campaign. The American People have the right to expect that when the President opens his mouth there is a decent chance that he is telling the truth.
01:42 PM on 09/03/2012
Sorry, Ryan is indeed a real person with real opinions. What happens every election cycle is that out pedestrian media demolishes real people and makes them caricatures. Any American who is nominated by a major party to their Presidential ticket has a certain degree of intelligence. In the course of campaigns all politicians spend thousands of hours speaking and talking, and the pundits seize on various minor inaccuracies. Policy differences are legitimate, but to call any major party nominee a liar is utterly useless.
01:31 AM on 09/11/2012
You get to know people by how they present themselves; are they honest in the way they tell you about their lives and accomplishments? I know others just like Ryan, some have gotten to high levels in their organizations, but what many come to realize is the story they told was not true. Not being able to tell the truth on small matters (how fast you can run a marathon) gets even worse with larger matters down the road. After 40 years of working, I now understand that these people can never be trusted. I don't trust Ryan and watching him on Face the Nation where he tries to deny what he voted for (even though the voting record is clear), he comes across so shallow and unbelievable.
07:56 PM on 08/31/2012
"Ryan lies like a hooker ..." This type of rhetoric is not the work of a serious journalist.
08:50 PM on 08/31/2012
I trust hookers more than this lying, womb obsessed tyrant.
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cognitogrrl
No Repubs putting Baby in the corner
01:13 AM on 09/01/2012
He's an entertainment ATTORNEY, writer and political activist. He told the truth without using any dirrrty words, but he wasn't mincing around with this "Demonstrably Misleading Assertions" crap.

Ryan LIED. ROMNEY virtually said "IT'S ALL ABOUT ME" -- these are con men.
06:33 PM on 08/31/2012
You counter Ryan's half-truths with your own lies? That's not cool, bro.
12:59 PM on 08/31/2012
"The question is whether the American media will let him get away with it."

Since when is that in question?
Bufford P Tusser
Impeach this!
01:43 PM on 08/31/2012
saved my fingers a little work...

fanned
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Celiene
Human.
12:32 PM on 08/31/2012
The think is, Catholics THINK that they can get away with anything because of the confessional. They can sin regularly, and as long as they confess, say three Hail Mary's and an Our Father, they can do ANYTHING. So Ryan can wreak all the havoc in God's name that he chooses, he'll be forgiven. ALL the religious think they can do ANYTHING for the 'greater good' that they see. That does not mean their 'greater good' is EVERYONE's greater good. The Catholic Bishops have condemned Ryan's plan.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned.
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cognitogrrl
No Repubs putting Baby in the corner
01:16 AM on 09/01/2012
The Catholic Bishops did condemn it? Grand. Is there a link I can visit to read about it?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Celiene
Human.
01:54 PM on 09/01/2012
Google. Bishops slam ryan budget.
02:01 PM on 09/03/2012
A contradiction here, criticizing Ryan's catholicism and then citing the Catholic Bishops later on for support. It would seem more logical to quote an organization that is also critical of Catholics. Perhaps you are looking for support from the American Atheists?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Celiene
Human.
11:37 AM on 09/04/2012
I didn't write the letter to Ryan, the Bishops did.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Celiene
Human.
12:29 PM on 08/31/2012
What baffles me is what do they think will happen to all the poor and elderly they screw? For-Profit prisons? Deportation? Killing fields? What?

I think Paul Ryan is actually the model for Stephen King's Randall Flagg. And they are setting this country up for the scenario in "The Stand".
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bluedog24
< I'll vote Republican when...
08:20 AM on 08/31/2012
I hope that the Democrats remind voters that Lyin' Ryan is a career politician who was ineffective as a legislator, putting it kindly. He has been feeding at the public trough for years. The DNC and the media need to shine a spotlight on his positions and "fact check" his speeches. The GOP has stated they will not be constrained by the facts, so one could assume that anything they say is a lie. I am afraid that the huge money advantage the GOP and their surrogates have will drown out the truth.
11:49 PM on 08/30/2012
Makes Joeseph Goebbels proud that his lessons have been so thorughly understood.
11:39 PM on 08/30/2012
I would like to see anyone in OFFICES' gave up one year of their earnings.
I bet we would no longer have a deficit!!!
11:34 PM on 08/30/2012
Republican want America with less Education so they can control them better.
Health care or medicare.
If the Republican win those would be of the past.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Damaven
08:19 AM on 08/31/2012
Ya got that right on, Linda Dofelmire.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
JOBrien5986
There's a reason we're called "The Right".
10:12 PM on 08/30/2012
Paul Ryan is trying to make the country stronger again by getting people off the entitlement programs that so many Americans abuse. I'm tired of working hard to support immigrants that open up their unlicensed grocery stores and use food stamps to stock their shelves, making 100% profit. I respect this man because of his plans to make our country great again. He's not going after gays, and pro-choice supporters, he is going for fiscal responsibility!
02:05 AM on 08/31/2012
Ryan is a liar and a hypocrite he is nothing more than a Washington lifer a real convenient conservative that signed off on all of Bush's wasteful spending and begged for his cut of President Obama's stimulus that he claimed was such a failure.
02:26 AM on 08/31/2012
Paul Ryan can claim to be going for fiscal responsibility when he reveals which tax loopholes he'll close. Until then, no.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
The real Don Carey
Cuz you don't gotta be smart to be a liberal
07:57 PM on 08/30/2012
There is no "Truth in advertising" law in politics.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
The real Don Carey
Cuz you don't gotta be smart to be a liberal
07:56 PM on 08/30/2012
“Now all that’s left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind.”

Nobody could have said it better. Get used to it...you'll be hearing it for the next 8 years. Ha Ha Ha Ha Haaaa
10:30 PM on 08/30/2012
hearing that melodramatic inane comment for the next 8 years? is that what romney's gonna give the american people? let me quote you....."Ha Ha Ha Ha Haaaa"
02:18 AM on 08/31/2012
Unlike ryans slogans about supply side doctrines which are fresh as cake baked in 1980.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
loggerboots
WELL RETIRED UAW.
07:49 PM on 08/30/2012
December 28th, 2008 last SUV rolled of the assembly line in Janesville.
10:42 PM on 08/30/2012
wrong// April 2009. BFD anyways/ But factually correct/ under Obama's watch.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
loggerboots
WELL RETIRED UAW.
12:35 AM on 08/31/2012
Skeleton crew,removing machinery, that was about it,still a lie though, 
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
usa1alltheway
10:44 PM on 08/30/2012
Doors were still open in 2009 and then the plant closed for good. Obama lied.
02:27 AM on 08/31/2012
90 days after inaug and before any stimulus and if you claim gop was trying to get obama to bailout each and e very business you are the one l.y.in.g.
02:28 AM on 08/31/2012
So Bush and Ryan should have done something in 2008 to prevent it from closing in 2009.