posted 08-30-2012 02:25 PM                  

Sally Kohn is a writer and Fox News contributor.

Deceiving

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.

Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.

Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing.

Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period.

Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan.

Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.

Distracting

And then there’s what Ryan didn’t talk about.

Ryan didn’t mention his extremist stance on banning all abortions with no exception for rape or incest, a stance that is out of touch with 75% of American voters.

Ryan didn’t mention his previous plan to hand over Social Security to Wall Street.

Ryan didn’t mention his numerous votes to raise spending and balloon the deficit when George W. Bush was president.

Ryan didn’t mention how his budget would eviscerate programs that help the poor and raise taxes on 95% of Americans in order to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires even further and increase — yes, increase —the deficit.

These aspects of Ryan’s resume and ideology are sticky to say the least. He would have been wise to tackle them head on and try and explain them away in his first real introduction to voters. But instead of Ryan airing his own dirty laundry, Democrats will get the chance.

At the end of his speech, Ryan quoted his dad, who used to say to him, “"Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution."

Ryan may have helped solve some of the likeability problems facing Romney, but ultimately by trying to deceive voters about basic facts and trying to distract voters from his own record, Ryan’s speech caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate.

..and their slogan is “We Can Change It”..wow…somebody needs to rethink that one..it should be “We CAN’T CHANCE IT”..voting in another Bush era storyteller..

posted 08-30-2012 03:24 PM                  

Then bring it on! BHO's past 40+ months as President is a joke! He's no leader, and not capable of bringing the country together, get the economy growing, inspire new private sector jobs, reduce number of citizens living in poverty, reducing the deficit, lower taxes, protect our borders from influx of illegals, make sure Soc. Sec. is solvent, and not rob Medicare of billion$ to finance his other loser (NoBamaCare).

He has no positives to run on,,,,just throw out crap and further divide the country. The only things he got.....

Worst President since Jimmy Carter,,,probably even worse!

posted 08-30-2012 03:37 PM                  

Paul Ryan is bad for America. He's anti-choice, and would give big tax cuts for millionaires, while raising taxes on the middle-class. He's a Tea Party favorite who takes donations from the billionaire Koch brothers, and he introduced one of harshest and most inhumane budgets in recent history. His ideological hero for many years called selfishness a virtue and charity an abomination.

But most people don't know just how bad Paul Ryan is. So we made this list of 10 things to know about Mitt Romney's Vice Presidential pick, Paul Ryan. Read it, then click here to share this list as an image on social media, or just forward this email! The future of America is on the line—from a woman's right to choose to our economy.

10 Things to know about Paul Ryan

1. His economic plan would cost America 1 million jobs in the first year. Ryan's proposed budget would cripple the economy. He'd slash spending deeply, which would not only slow job growth, but shock the economy and cost 1 million of us our jobs in 2013 alone and kill more than 4 million jobs by the end of 2014.1

2. He'd kill Medicare. He'd replace Medicare with vouchers for retirees to purchase insurance, eliminating the guarantee of health care for seniors and putting them at the mercy of the private insurance industry. That could amount to a cost increase of more than $5,900 by 2050, leaving many seniors broke or without the health care they need. He'd also raise the age of eligibility to 67.2

3. He'd pickpocket the middle class to line the pockets of the rich. His tax plan is Robin Hood in reverse. He wants to cut taxes by $4.6 trillion over the next decade, but only for corporations and the rich, like giving families earning more than $1 million a year a $300,000 tax cut. And to pay for them, he'd raise taxes on middle- and lower-income households and butcher social service programs that help middle- and working-class Americans.3

4. He's an anti-choice extremist. Ryan co-sponsored an extremist anti-choice bill, nicknamed the 'Let Women Die Act,' that would have allowed hospitals to deny women emergency abortion care even if their lives were at risk. And he co-sponsored another bill that would criminalize some forms of birth control, all abortions, and in vitro fertilization.4

5. He'd dismantle Social Security. Ironically, Ryan used the Social Security Survivors benefit to help pay for college, but he wants to take that possibility away from future generations. He agrees with Rick Perry's view that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" and he supported George W. Bush's disastrous proposal to privatize Social Security.5

6. He'd eliminate Pell grants for more than 1 million low-income students. His budget plan cuts the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could mean a loss of educational funding for 1 million low-income students.6

7. He'd give $40 billion in subsidies to Big Oil. His budget includes oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting "billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil."7

8. He's another Koch-head politician. Not surprisingly, the billionaire oil-baron Koch brothers are some of Ryan's biggest political contributors. And their company, Koch industries, is Ryan's biggest energy-related donor. The company's PAC and affiliated individuals have given him $65,500 in donations.8

9. He opposes gay rights. Ryan has an abysmal voting record on gay rights. He's voted to ban adoption by gay couples, against same-sex marriage, and against repealing "don't ask, don't tell." He also voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2009.9

10. He thinks an "I got mine, who cares if you're okay" philosophy is admirable. For many years, Paul Ryan devoted himself to Ayn Rand's philosophy of selfishness as a virtue. It has shaped his entire ethic about whom he serves in public office. He even went as far as making his interns read her work.10

If there was ever any doubt that Mitt Romney's got a disastrous plan for America—he made himself 100% clear when he picked right-wing extremist Paul Ryan as his running mate. Paul Ryan is bad for America, but we can't beat him if Americans don't know everything he stands for. Share this list with all your friends by clicking here, or simply forward this email.

Thanks for all you do.

–Justin, Carrie, Steven, Stephen, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Ryan's Budget, Robin Hood in reverse," Economic Policy Institute http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278939&id=48818-23572866-nVpxeWx&t=4

2. "12 Things You Should Know About Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan," Think Progress, August 11, 2012 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278662&id=48818-23572866-nVpxeWx&t=5

3."Ryan Budget Would Raise Some Taxes; Guess Who Gets Hit?," Off the Charts, April 12, 2012 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278692&id=48818-23572866-nVpxeWx&t=6
"Middle class could face higher taxes under Republican plan, analysis finds," The Washington Post, June 19, 2012 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278693&id=48818-23572866-nVpxeWx&t=7

4. "Statement on Mitt Romney's Selection of Rep. Paul Ryan for His Vice-Presidential Running Mate," NARAL, August 11, 2012 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278694&id=48818-23572866-nVpxeWx&t=8

"Paul Ryan's Extreme Abortion Views," The Daily Beast, August 11, 2012 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278695&id=48818-23572866-nVpxeWx&t=10

"Paul Ryan Sponsored Fetal Personhood Bill, Opposes Family Planning Funds," Huffington Post, August 11, 2012 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278852&id=48818-23572866-nVpxeWx&t=12

posted 08-30-2012 03:43 PM                  

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Call 911 - there is a Prowler in my garage.... along with '06 SRT10 Viper Coupe

posted 08-30-2012 05:40 PM                  

By James Rosen

Published August 30, 2012

FoxNews.com

Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Obama for America, wasn't mincing words Thursday morning.

In a fundraising email blasted out at 4:37 a.m., he said flat-out that GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan "lied" about Medicare and the stimulus bill in his convention speech the night before.

Messina and the Democrats are zeroing in on two particular aspects of Ryan's 36-minute address, as Mitt Romney prepares for his own nomination address.

The first passage concerns what was once the largest employer in Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wis.

"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day," Ryan said.

It is true that President Obama, when he was running for president in February 2008, toured the GM plant in Janesville. But Democrats point out that the plant actually closed in December of that year, under President George W. Bush -- who in that same month authorized an emergency loan of $14 billion to GM and Chrysler.

That was not enough to prevent GM from moving forward with plans it had already announced: to shutter the Janesville facility and lay off its remaining 1,200 workers.

His aides point out -- and GM confirms -- that the plant was not shut down per se but idled, meaning it could be reactivated at any time.

However, nothing Ryan said in his speech about the plant was factually untrue.

Ryan stated in his convention speech that "we were about to lose a major factory" in the town at the time Obama showed up there. And though he compressed then-Sen. Obama's remarks, Ryan did not distort them.

This is what Obama said at the time: "I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years."

In October 2008, after the plant's fate was announced, then-Sen. Obama issued a statement that inched closer to promising to help the factory, which in its prime employed some 7,000 people. "As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America," Obama said at the time.

The other part of the Ryan speech that Democrats are attacking is the passage concerning the so-called "Simpson-Bowles" commission, a bipartisan group empaneled two-and-a-half years ago by Obama to tackle the deficit.

Obama did not fully adopt the panel's recommendations, which included a mix of spending cuts and revenue enhancements -- otherwise known as tax hikes -- to put the country on a path to erase its now-$16 trillion debt.

"They came back with an urgent report. He thanks them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing," Ryan said.

However, Ryan also served on that commission and opposed the final report.

Ryan aides explained Thursday the congressman partnered with a Democratic member of the panel, Clinton-era White House budget director Alice Rivlin, to address entitlement reform -- the real driver of U.S. debt -- and their plan was voted down by the commission. And that is why Ryan voted against the final recommendations, they said.

However, it was probably untrue for Ryan to say Obama "did nothing but dodge and demagogue this issue" -- as Obama put forth his own debt-reduction plan and did negotiate personally, albeit unsuccessfully, with House Speaker John Boehner.

posted 08-31-2012 08:07 AM                  

Posted 08/30/2012 06:58 PM ET

Journalism: If media "fact checkers" are just impartial guardians of the truth, how come they got their own facts wrong about Paul Ryan's speech, and did so in a way that helped President Obama's re-election effort?

Case in point was the rush of "fact check" stories claiming Ryan misled when he talked about a shuttered auto plant in his home state.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler posted a piece — "Ryan misleads on GM plant closing in hometown" — saying Ryan "appeared to suggest" that Obama was responsible for the closure of a GM plant in Janesville, Wis.

"That's not true," Kessler said. "The plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in."

What's not true are Kessler's "facts." Ryan didn't suggest Obama was responsible for shuttering the plant. Instead, he correctly noted that Obama promised during the campaign that the troubled plant "will be here for another hundred years" if his policies were enacted.

Also, the plant didn't close in December 2008. It was still producing cars until April 2009.

An AP "fact check" also claimed that "the plant halted production in December 2008" even though the AP itself reported in April 2009 that the plant was only then "closing for good."

CNN's John King made the same claim about that plant closure. But when CNN looked more carefully at the evidence, it — to its credit — concluded that what Ryan said was "true."

Media fact-checkers also complained about Ryan's charge that Obama is cutting $716 billion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare. Not true, they said. Medicare's growth is just being slowed.

But Obama achieves that slower growth by making real cuts in provider payments. And in any case, the media always and everywhere call a reduction in the rate of federal spending growth a "cut." So why suddenly charge Ryan with being misleading for using that same term?

In any case, Obama himself admitted that he's doing what Ryan says. In a November 2009 interview with ABC News, reporter Jake Tapper said to Obama that "one-third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare," to which Obama's response was: "Right."

The rest of Ryan's alleged factual errors aren't errors at all; it's just that the media didn't like how he said it. But since when is it a fact-checker's job to decide how a politician should construct his arguments?

This isn't to say that journalists shouldn't check facts. Of course they should.

The problem is that the mainstream press is now abusing the "fact check" label, using it to more aggressively push a liberal agenda without feeling the need to provide any balance whatsoever. And, as the reaction to the Ryan speech shows, they are now blatantly using it to provide air support for Obama.

Is it any wonder that soon after Ryan's speech ended, the Obama campaign rushed out an ad using the media's "fact check" stories as its source?

posted 09-02-2012 10:13 AM                  

Sep 10, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 48 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES

If you missed Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention last week and tried to play catch-up the next morning, you could be forgiven for concluding that nothing the Wisconsin congressman said was true.

AP

Twelve hours after the speech, Josh Marshall, editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo, popular among journalists, asked: “Will the Paul Ryan Lying Thing Break Through in the Mainstream Press?”

Um, yes. It would.

The mainstream media “fact checked” Paul Ryan’s speech with alacrity. At the Washington Post, for instance, four of the five most-read articles were, in effect, accusations that Ryan had lied. The New York Times published an article under the headline: “Ryan’s Speech Contained a Litany of Falsehoods.” The Associated Press accused Ryan of taking “factual shortcuts.” The Week magazine published not only “The media coverage of Paul Ryan’s speech: 15 Euphemisms for Lying,” but also “Why Paul Ryan thought he could get away with lying: 6 theories.”

Here’s the funny thing about most of these articles: They fail to cite a single fact that Ryan misstated or lie that he told. In most cases, the self-described fact-checks are little more than complaints that Ryan failed to provide context for his criticism of Barack Obama. For example, virtually every one of these articles included a complaint about Ryan’s comments on Obama and entitlement reform. In accusing Obama of failing to lead on entitlements, Ryan noted that Obama had ignored the findings of the Simpson-Bowles Commission that the president himself had empaneled. The complaint: Ryan did not mention that he had served on the commission and voted against its findings.

Could Paul Ryan have gone out of his way to disclose his role? Of course. Does his failure to do so constitute a “lie”? Hardly. There’s an additional irony here. None of those accusing Ryan of omitting important context noted in their reports that Ryan, both before and after voting against Simpson-Bowles, authored comprehensive and detailed plans to address entitlements and debt—something that might be considered important context for their critiques of Ryan.

Most of the fact checking focused on a passage about a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan’s hometown. This, allegedly, is the big lie:

My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it—especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, “I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.”

That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s fact-checker, accused Ryan of lying.

“In his acceptance speech, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan appeared to suggest that President Obama was responsible for the closing of a GM plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin,” Kessler wrote. “That’s not true. The plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in.”

There are two things wrong with this. Ryan didn’t claim that Obama was responsible for the closing of the GM plant, he faulted Obama for failing to do what he’d suggested he’d do: Save it. It’s an important distinction. If Ryan’s intent had been to deceive, he wouldn’t have introduced his critique noting that “we were about to lose a major factory” when Obama told workers, “this plant will be here for another 100 years.” Second, Kessler was simply wrong to claim “the plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in.” The plant was producing trucks as late as April 2009, several months after Obama was sworn in. On February 19, a month after Obama’s inauguration, the Janesville Gazette reported on the imminent closure: “General Motors will end medium-duty truck production in Janesville on April 23, four months to the day after the plant stopped building full-size sport utility vehicles. About 100 employees associated with the line learned of the layoffs Wednesday.”

It’s true that GM, in the summer of 2008, had announced its intention to put the plant on standby. But if announcing something accomplished it, I would have long ago announced that I’d lost 30 pounds. The plant was not, in fact, “closed in December 2008.”

But the narrative was set. How did this happen? Immediately after Ryan finished delivering the passage on the GM plant in his speech, top Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter sent this tweet: “Ryan blaming the President for a GM auto plant that closed under Pres Bush—thought he was smarter than that.” With one click after another, Cutter’s false claim became accepted wisdom.

So we are left with this irony: Paul Ryan was accused of lying because journalists and self-described “fact checkers” relied, at least in part, on a misstatement of fact that came directly from the Obama campaign.

There’s a bigger problem. The same media outlets so energetically fact-checking every claim made by Republicans are missing extraordinary contradictions and inconsistencies from the Obama campaign. (Note to fact-checkers: The words “every claim” are deliberate hyperbole, not meant literally.)

Think about this: In an election in which voters cite the economy as their top concern, the centerpiece of Barack Obama’s reelection campaign is a policy proposal that he has twice insisted would damage the economy. It might be considered the most audacious and important contradiction of the 2012 campaign. Most journalists haven’t noticed.

Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich. He has vigorously opposed Republican efforts to maintain the current tax rates for all taxpayers, including the wealthy, and he’s mentioned his desire for tax “fairness” in recent campaign speeches in Virginia, Colorado, and Iowa. An ad the Obama administration ran in August urges higher taxes on “millionaires” and concludes: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message because to cut the deficit we need everyone to pay their fair share.”

More by Stephen F. Hayes
Paul Ryan’s Dress Rehearsal
Reince Rules
Rubio to Be Bumped?
The Cost of Ignoring Wisconsin
Fighting to Win

In the summer of 2009, Obama said in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd that raising taxes in a recession “would just suck up—take more demand out of the economy and put business in a further hole.” Raising taxes in such a downturn, the president said, is “the last thing you want to do.” Obama can point out, correctly, that we’re not in a recession. The obvious question to ask him, however, is why it’d be foolish to raise taxes in a recession but wise to do so in a sputtering recovery.

The second time he made this argument presents more problems—or might if journalists actually asked him about it. On January 29, 2010, with an economy he described as “somewhat fragile,” Obama said that the “consensus among people who know the economy best” was that raising taxes was one of two ways to damage the economy. At a House Republican retreat in Baltimore, Obama rejected a Republican proposal to freeze spending at pre-stimulus levels and warned against the “destimulative effect” of tax hikes.