Lies, lies, and more blatant lies. Paul Ryan delivered his speech last night on national television during day two of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida to rousing cheers from the only people in the US who care about him, those inside the same arena. In his speech, which he wrote himself, he managed to lie about his entire congressional record.
Let’s look closer at the lies. Ryans most bald-faced lie came when he attacked Obama for trying to trim over $700 billion from Medicare. This in itself is true, Obama has created extensive proposal calling for spending cuts across the board including Medicare and (yikes!) defense, yet Ryan represented the information as harmful to seniors, while omitting the fact that it is his budget proposals which called for even deeper cuts, an elimination of the popular senior health program, and would lead to huge out of pocket cost rises for seniors (on average $6,000 per year per senior). The fact that Ryan is attacking Obama for what he has fought hard to implement is hypocritical at best and downright lying at its worst. Luckily, people saw right through that one. Ryan has already cost the GOP Florida, and his notions of where spending cuts should fall is contrary to most American’s notions of what living in a civilized society means.
The second lie was his assertion that the bailout was Obama’s cronyism favoring corporations. This elicited laughs from all circles across the country. A Republican accusing a Democrat of corporate cronyism! It’s hard to type through the laughter! Ryan might have been right about how he defined the bailout, but he voted for the plan and was responsible for bringing tens of millions of dollars to companies in Wisconsin to protect jobs and keep industries from failing. In civil terms: a bailout during hard times, in convention speak: corporate cronyism. He also cited a story of a Janesville, Wisconsin GM plant that Obama promised to save during a speech there in 2008. Ryan then blamed Obama for the plant’s closure. The truth is that the plant closed in December 2008, before Obama was President. But that isn’t the point. Ryan is simultaneously criticizing Obama for cronyism while not doing enough cronyism in the same breath. Which one is it Paul?
Instead of steering the Republican party away from controversy, Ryan has brought on more problems than Sarah Palin in 2008, who, despite having a questionable intellect, was at least genuine. Ryan represents the type of Washington double standards that America has come to hate. What is worse now are the surfacing allegations that two billionaire brothers (the Koch family, pronounced like “Coke”) essentially bought Ryan’s selection by promising over $100 million in campaign donations to Republican-supporting groups if Romney selected Ryan. Why would anyone spend that kind of money on a political race? When the man they are backing wants to eliminate nearly every kind of tax on the super rich, it might turn out to be a good investment. $100 million to create one job. Oh, by the way, this is super illegal and will have far-reaching consequences if evidence makes it to the feds. But what is super official now: our country’s soul is up for sale.
