This was written by a friend of mine and I thought it was too good not to share.
This was written by a friend of mine and I thought it was too good not to share.
TheatreDiva90016
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/10/04
#1This was written by a friend of mine and I thought it was too good not to share.
Posted: 9/4/12 at 4:34pm
Yes, it's long, but he says everything that I would love to say!
Paul Ryan seems to be a relatively nice and decent politician. Of course I think that primarily because he has a nice face, though not as handsome as Jon Stewart suggests, and Republican apologists have told us for a long time that hes an honest straight shooter and a real intellectual a policy wonk. Hes the new brains and conscience of the Republican Party.
Independent of the hero hype, I admired him because he was brave enough to have actually proposed a tangible budget, which is politically dangerous. Of course several people helped with the construction of that budget, and its the most recent iteration of trickle-down economics, so Im not really sure if he stepped out boldly to present the budget, or he drew the short straw at the Republican Caucus meeting. Either way its very impressive that he was so brave. He deserves much praise for that.
Since he gave the speech at the Republican National Convention however, many have suggested that in the speech he was more dishonest than the average politician, which lit up the blogosphere with many people, who apparently speak English as a second language, giving proof that he lied or didnt lie. I wouldnt have given the speech a second thought, had I not logged on to Facebook and seen several posts from my conservative friends swooning about the speech as if the new messiah had been delivered unto us. There were lots of cheers for this new super-honest superhero to take on the good fight. What my liberal friends arent really aware of, is that many conservatives believe that there is currently a cultural war for the direction of America. As part of that war, liberals are the bad guys, who dont love America, or are trying to destroy America, or are just too dumb in their university towers to realize that theyre horrible for America. Since the evil of liberalism is so bad, Fox News and thousands of conservative commentators characterize Republicans as heroes standing up to the evil. The thing that seems to be especially frustrating to these heroes, is that they have all the facts on their side, and the liberals are just too pig-headed or stupid to understand it. So when Ryan knocked it outta the park as one of my friends put it, it was a signal that a champion had risen to slay the liberal dragon. I work for a large university, and a large entertainment company, so it would be no surprise to anyone that I lean a little left. Whats surprising to me is that others assume that I have my opinions because I dont understand the facts, or Im too emotionally volatile to understand reason. I should note too that Im not particularly gung-ho for any Democrats either, except Elizabeth Warren. She was pushed out of Washington because she wanted credit card companies to make the interest rates clear and understandable to the credit card holders. I dont think thats too much to ask of the banks.
Less than an hour after Ryans speech, I was surprised to see one of my friends throw down a gauntlet, I challenge ANYONE who actually LISTENED to Paul Ryan's words and message to even TRY to refute/rebuke ONE WORD of what he said. I hadnt thought of refuting anything that Ryan had said. I thought that it was not worthy of a second thought, but the sanguine reaction to the speech made me think that perhaps I had missed something. I had just heard the speech, and a couple things did sound a little fishy, and my friends use of CAPS was a little enticing, so I took the bait.
After reading my friends challenge, I went to Politifact (winner of the Pulitzer Prize) and saw that they had already noted that he had said four things that were characterized as half true to false. Perhaps Ryan should be proud that of the 22 statements that Politifact has evaluated, only two, that werent in the speech, were ruled pants on fire lying. Maybe Ryan wasnt the straight shooter his friends had insisted he was. I actually thought the constant theme of Obama being a bad leader who cant get anything done was more disingenuous. First, he got ObamaCare done, which took the kind of leadership that pissed off the Republicans. Second, the reason he couldnt get more done was because Ryan and the Republicans wouldnt compromise on a single issue. I agree with conservative commentator George Will, when he says that government was designed to move slowly, and we shouldnt be upset by it. The Politifact rulings all seemed to make sense to me, and I thought that the issue would be done. As every right wing apologist since the founding of Fox News has repeated when light has shined on their shenanigans, Every politician lies, and all news outlets are biased. I thought everyone would let the lies lie, since everyone does it. I had no idea that Ryans honesty would be a hot topic throughout the media all weekend. Im confident that this topic is still alive in part because conservative journalists keep trying to prove his statement absolutely 100% true, based on FACTS. Im writing today not because I want to stick-it to Ryan, or play gotcha journalism as our friend Sarah Palin would complain. Im writing because Im stunned that so few people can read English and understand what theyre reading, then brag about their bad analysis of the text. Im also horrified at what passes as a fact to the faithful, and how its used to denigrate those who are better educated, and thus characterized as less than American.
I happened to be driving home from work when Ryan was speaking, and heard the speech in its entirety. My immediate impression in the first few moments was that I missed Peggy Noonan. It didnt have a particularly poetic or stately tone. He didnt sound like the intellectual that I had been promised. It sounded a little common to my ear. There were a couple of clever tropes that I liked a lot. His job was to denigrate the performance of the President, so it was appropriate when he said, With all their attack ads, the president is just throwing away money and hes pretty experienced at that., and, After four years of getting the runaround, it is time for an American turn-around. I thought the Ryan version was good, then the next day Jon Stewart suggested that a better benefit for the American people would be a reach-around. Ryan ended the speech with phrases that sounded too much like something a GM line-worker wrote: The work ahead will be hard. These times demand the best of us all of us, but we can do this. Together, we can do this. We can get this country working again. We can get this economy growing again. We can make the safety net safe again. We can do this.
We can make the safety net safe again, was one of the many phrases that I understood as both ironic and reaffirming to the faithful. I saw the phrase as ironic because in Ryans budget, hes making Medicare, one of the two big nets in our circus, safe by turning it into a voucher system. Republicans love vouchers. When I think of vouchers, I think that its welfare for corporations with huge marketing budgets that want to reap the free government money from the people, then not provide service (like insurance companies were found guilty of doing before ObamaCare). Im no expert, but my experience leads me to think that education vouchers would lead to a huge increase in private religious schools, where teachers dont have to be credentialed, where kids will be taught that biology, chemistry, and genetics are just theories and Creationism is science and of course that Thomas Jefferson wasnt very vital to the creation of our Nation, because he was too liberal. With the increase of religious schools would be the demise of public schools due to lack of funding. I think health insurance vouchers would increase the amount of salesmen at health corporations, as they would have to compete with each other to get the most clients with government money, while concurrently having an excuse to cut grandmas health care, because she has already reached the payout limit of her voucher.
On the topic of his safety net, Ryan was more explicit earlier in the speech. You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didnt have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didnt even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and were going to stop it.
This is one of the points that many analysts have characterized as misleading rather than an outright lie. It would seem that Obama was very mean-spirited to old people, if you didnt know that that huge sum of money was being transferred to ObamaCare where the old people could still get health care under a different name. The other thing that makes Ryan seem a little less than forthright is that seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars is the approximate amount that he plans to cut from MediCare in his budget. Hes the one that is going to sacrifice grandma when he cuts her old entitlement. One might imagine that Ryan assumes that the improved economy would help grandma in some other ways, but he didnt articulate how that might happen. On this point I agree that Ryan was misleading, which was his job as a politician in the first place, but not lying. He just didnt tell us the whole truth.
There were two issues though that caused quite a kerfuffle.
Ryan said, [Obama] 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. Republicans stepped up with good-faith reforms and solutions equal to the problems. How did the president respond? By doing nothing nothing except to dodge and demagogue the issue.
The problem with this version of events is that Ryan was on that committee, and he voted against that urgent report. He didnt want Obama to do anything with it. what others on the committee said was that he lead the Republican House members on the committee to reject it because it was spending cuts and tax increases. Ryan, like most of the Tea Party House Republicans, refused to allow any tax increases. The Democrats on the committee apparently rejected it because it cut Social Security benefits. The good faith reforms and solutions were solutions that included only spending cuts, and no tax increases, which is like saying, Ill make a good faith deal with you only if you compromise, but I dont compromise.
Not only did Ryan omit his own role in the demise of the urgent report, that was misleading, he was also a little dishonest in saying that Obama did nothing, as according to Factcheck.org Obama offered good faith proposals to John Boehner after the Simpson/Bowles failure. What makes this even more misleading, is that Ryan set this up as a reason that we had our credit rating from Standard & Poors downgraded. Ryan blamed Obama. It began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America. Standard & Poors said that it was because Americas governance and policymaking had become less stable and predictable than previously believed, and it appears for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In other words, they dropped our credit rating because the Republicans refuse to compromise on tax increases.
This raises the issue of a general lie that permeated every speech I heard at the convention. The Repblicans kept chiding Obama for being a failure at getting anything done. They contrasted that with how they were real leaders who could take America back.
The issue on which much ink has been used, is that damn GM plant in Janesville, Ryans hometown. Ryan said, 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. Thats what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didnt last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And thats how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.
This started out as absurdly misleading, and ended up as a lie. My guess is that Ryan used this story because it took place in his hometown. It would be much more powerful to use a plant in Janesville, than a plant somewhere else. To demonstrate the dishonesty, Ill let a conservative apologist explain why its not a lie, and Ill comment on why hes either intentionally misleading his readers, or doesnt understand English well. Appropriately, his name is Conn. He uses characterizes his essay as a fact check because these faith based fans of Ryan love facts. He also uses enumeration, which confers a sense of factiness.
Conn Carroll writes, The Washington Post, and a host of other liberal media outlets, are calling this passage misleading because the Janesville plant closed before the president was inaugurated. The Post is dead wrong. Here are the facts:
1. On February 13, 2008 Obama said in Janesville : 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.
Here everyone seems to be in agreement, except for the Post being dead wrong.
2. In June 2008 GM announced that the Janesville plant would stop production of medium-duty trucks by the end of 2009, and stop production of large SUVs in 2010 or sooner.
So many months before Obama took office, and could do something to save the plant, GM announced it would close.
3. In October 2008 Obama doubled down on his promise to keep Janesville plant open: 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.
Heres where it gets messy. Obama never promised to save the plant. Right wing bloggers keep saying that he promised to keep the plant open, in part because thats what the guys at the plant believed he was saying. Obama gave us a conditional statement saying if the government helps, this plant will continue. The use of I believe before the conditional statement, reinforces the idea that hes making a statement of principle or theory, rather than a promise of an action plan. Not only does Conn make an inaccurate presumption, which some might characterize as a lie, but he does it twice assuming that Obama doubled down. In the October statement, Obama wasnt even talking about Janesville. It had already been slated to close. He said, or promised, to retool other plants, like Janesville. Conn is trying to con us.
4. In December 2008 GM idled production of GM SUVs at the Janesville plant. Medium-duty truck assembly continued.
This is where they dismissed 90% of the workforce of over a thousand. The use of the word idled is perhaps a euphemism. They stopped production of GM SUVs and laid off the people who made them. They kept under a hundred to keep making some Isuzu trucks that they were contractually obligated to complete. Few people mention Isuzu though, as it sounds so un-American.
5. In April 2009, four months after Obama was inaugurated, GM idled production of medium-duty trucks.
This is where they fired everyone else. The use of idled implies that Obama still hasnt done something that he promised, because the plant can still be reopened. There was a sixth point that you can read at the Washington Examiner website:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/fact-check-obama-promised-and-failed-to-keep-janesville-gm-plant-open/article/2506462#.UD--s8GPXII
The larger lie about this whole issue, is that Obama saved GM. No one should criticize Obama for not doing enough to help any GM plant. Bush started the bailout of GM and Chrysler, which Ryan voted for, then Obama expanded it, which saved thousands of American jobs, and Ryan opposed the Obama increase. Ryan was against Obama doing more to help GM. Ryan wasnt there to help his high school buddies in Janesville.
At this point, its fair to say that Ryan artfully misled his audience about the impression some had from Obamas campaign speeches. It is in the follow-up interview with Brian Williams, that he wasnt following the artfully crafted script, and lied. I saw this video on the Independent Journal website, and Im copying the introduction here from Kyle Becker, because I think its hysterical.
To be perfectly honest, the interview does look pretty bad for the Democrats and their mainstream media allies, given that Ryan is quicker on his feet than the political hit men being sent to take him out.
Its clear to anyone who hasnt had the Kool-Aid at Fox News, that Williams is very fair and collegial with Ryan, rather than playing a hit man. Its a standard practice for any interviewer to ask a politician about the charges of his critics. The important point vis a vis honesty, is that here is where Ryan lies. He said, This plant will be here for a hundred years. Obama didnt say that. Its a lie to say that he did. Then Ryan chided Obama for empty promises after empty promises. It cant be an empty promise, if its not a promise at all.
Ryan does offer a new misleading reason for the Janesville plant closure. He says, What really got the plant was $4 gas lack of an energy policy, and that predates the Obama years. That reason is clever, because it is also a selling point for Ryans desire to open up new drilling across the nation, and defund the Environmental Protection Agency.
Contrary to what Kyle Becker thinks, Williams didnt follow up on Ryans defense of Romneys impossible plan to help the auto industry, nor did he follow up on Ryans lie about Obama not keeping his promise to reopen the Janesville plant. Maybe thats why Becker thinks Ryan was so quick on his feet.
http://www.ijreview.com/2012/09/14667-unaired-unedited-paul-ryan-responds-to-democrats-charge-he-lied-during-rnc-speech/
This morning, Ryan repeated the lie to George Stephanopolous. It would really be better if he shut up about it, or softened it like others who made excuses for Ryan, The guys in the plant thought that Obama was promising to retool their plant. At least that would be true. Of course Ryan would have opposed Obama on this, because it would be socialism for Obama to tell GM how to run day-to-day operations.
I dont think these lies were huge or important. In fact, had I not been inspired by a challenge, I would not have known about some of the right wing journalism out there, or that theres a racist website that keeps track of whos dated black people. Apparently Ryan was drilling for oil, with a black cheerleader in college. I thought I was googling Ryans energy and environmental positions. I do think that if youre going to be a political agitator, and scream that facts are important, and make your point, then you should be able to understand Standard English. (To the right wing writers, that was a conditional statement. I didnt promise to teach everyone English.) The most shocking article I came across was Fox News Online, which incredibly, chastised Ryan for lying.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/
In an odd addendum to this episode, Ryan lied about his time while running a marathon. In an interview, which he apparently thought was a first date, he shaved more than an hour off his real time. It happened a long time ago, and maybe he got his brothers time confused with his own. I dont think its a big deal. I just hope that some Ryan fans dont start saying I dare you to find an instance when Ryan lied about his running. Then when faced with the proof saying, Well all runners lie, but the important thing is To Ryans credit, he acknowledged the lie about his marathon time.
In the speech, Ryan said, My Dad used to say to me: Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution. If the problem is that politicians lie too often, then Ryan is absolutely part of the problem.
"TheatreDiva90016 - another good reason to frequent these boards less."<<>>
“I hesitate to give this line of discussion the validation it so desperately craves by perpetuating it, but the light from logic is getting further and further away with your every successive post.” <<>>
-whatever2
#2This was written by a friend of mine and I thought it was too good not to share.
Posted: 9/4/12 at 5:58pm
I always felt Biden went easy on Palin in the debates. I think he's going to DESTROY Ryan.
The right loves to say Biden is stupid. They forget to mention he hasn't lost an election since 1970.
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/31/69
#2This was written by a friend of mine and I thought it was too good not to share.
Posted: 9/4/12 at 6:24pm
No one "wins" a debate. They debate and the media invites flacks from both sides to claim their candidate won. Then, eventually the media starts to tell a story that this guy won or lost. But no one does. The only winner is the one who wins in November and the debates are just one weapon in that war.
Nice piece Diva. I think the bigger issue with Ryan's speech (apart from the lies) is that the Republicans have made it clear: They will attack Obama when they disagree with him and they will attack Obama when they agree with him. Obama has shown he will accept Republican ideas and recommendations (The individual mandate, not closing Gitmo, cutting Medicare) and Republicans have shown they will attack him for it. That's no way to run a government.
TheatreDiva90016
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/10/04
#3This was written by a friend of mine and I thought it was too good not to share.
Posted: 9/4/12 at 8:12pm
G-O-P supporters...this is how ignorant Paul Ryan thinks you are:
He knows there's a photo of the Janesville, Wisconsin plant closure that shows a banner stating the last vehicle off the assembly line was December 23, 2008 (a full month before Obama took office). Hell he knows you can easily verify this with a simple internet search. Yet even though he knows it's a blatant lie, and anyone with the internet can prove it, he still built a large part of his RNC speech based on this made up rhetoric.
And you know why he did this, on a national stage, for millions to see..
Because he knows the majority of right-wing voters are too ignorant to look up facts so it won't matter if he's called out on his lies publicly...he'll just keep lying because he knows you'll never question him.
He's betting on right-wing ignorance to never doubt anything he says and you people are proving him right.
So here's a rule: Stop attacking liberals for mocking right-wing ignorance when your own VP candidate openly depends upon it and you people seem determined to prove he's made a safe bet.
"TheatreDiva90016 - another good reason to frequent these boards less."<<>>
“I hesitate to give this line of discussion the validation it so desperately craves by perpetuating it, but the light from logic is getting further and further away with your every successive post.” <<>>
-whatever2
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