Did Paul Ryan Give “The Most Dishonest Convention Speech … Ever?”

(UPDATE: The Washington Post Fact Checker demolishes Day #2 of the Republican Big Lie Fest. Bottom line: this whole thing is complete garbage; they’re just pulling it out of their hindquarters, making it up out of whole cloth, whatever cliche you want to use. DO NOT LISTEN TO WHAT THESE PEOPLE SAY ABOUT ANYTHING! – promoted by lowkell)

With regard to the question in the headline, the short answer is: It sure looks like it. First, check out this video, which shows Ryan doing the classic Republican thang of blaming Democrats for problems – in this case the closing of a GM plant in his hometown in 2008, when George W. Bush was president – that occurred on THEIR WATCH. For more on that, see Ryan misleads on GM plant closing in hometown.

As for Ryan’s convention speech in general, check out the following links:

*The Most Dishonest Convention Speech … Ever? (“At least five times, Ryan misrepresented the facts. And while none of the statements were new, the context was. It’s one thing to hear them on a thirty-second television spot or even in a stump speech before a small crowd. It’s something else entirely to hear them in prime time address, as a vice presidential nominee is accepting his party’s nomination and speaking to the entire country.”)

*Paul Ryan’s brazen lies (“His Republican National Convention speech was stunning for its dishonesty”)

*Top 5 Fibs In Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech (“on the merits it was chock full of misstatements of fact that undermine his reputation for brave, big ideas – which has hastened his rise through the ranks of the GOP.”)

*Paul Ryan Is the Newest New Nixon, a Moocher Belied (“he left truth far behind and soared into an attack on the current administration that was as fake as blue money, but that wasn’t the really wonderfully Nixonian thing about it. It wasn’t that Ryan was lying about his opponents. It was that he was able to level out with those big baby-blues, and drop his voice into that kindly voice straight out of the silent confessional, and tell you things that his entire record as a public figure have demonstrated that he does not believe for an instant.”)

*The true, the false, and the misleading: grading Paul Ryan’s convention speech.

*Mr. Ryan’s misleading speech (“Emblematic of the liberties Mr. Ryan took was his depiction of the hometown auto plant whose shuttering he implicitly blamed on Mr. Obama – even though the plant closed before the president was inaugurated.”)

*PolitiFact: “Did Barack Obama break a promise to keep GM plant open?” (Answer: FALSE)

This could go on all day – not opinion, but hard, cold facts countering Paul Ryan’s brazen lies, one after the other after the other. What astounds me, at this point, is not even political, as much as cultural: namely, what on earth happened to our country? I mean, there’s always been nastiness in politics, of course, but that’s NOT what we’re talking about here. And there’s always been exaggeration and dishonesty, but that’s not even what we’re talking about here. Instead, it’s clear at this point that the Romney-Ryan campaign is just saying whatever, even if it bears absolutely no resemblance, not even the vaguest, to anything that could conceivably be considered “true.” And the media, until recently – and even now, we get cowardly weasel words from the likes of Wolf Blitzer – has been terrified, or too stupid, or too incompetent, or all of the above, to call the Republicans out on what they’re doing here. And no, it’s not “both sides” engaging in a completely post-truth campaign.

To be fair, the Obama campaign – like every other campaign in human history – has exaggerated at times. But has it made stuff up out of whole cloth, pulled stuff out of their you-know-wheres, let alone centered their entire campaign on repeated, pathological lying? Not even close. As for Romney-Ryan, that’s all they’ve got, apparently: discredited (by every independent fact checker who’s looked at their statements), verifiable lies, huge ones, whoppers — the racist  and utterly fallacious welfare ad, for instance; their flirtation with “birtherism;” their “Obama apologized for America” and is somehow anti-Israel (despite being praised by President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, etc, etc., for the tremendous military support flowing to Israel) bull****; their “you didn’t build that” canard/slander; their lies about their plan to voucherize Medicare and their disastrous budget plan ; their lies about the economic situation (e.g., that Obama, who inherited an economy in freefall, is somehow responsible for what he inherited, but gets no credit for turning it around); ad nauseum.

My question, at this point, is really simple: is there ANYTHING truthful about the Romney-Ryan campaign? Anything at all? If so, what? Heck, Romney’s real first name isn’t even “Mitt,” it’s “Willard.”