I spent another pleasant night not watching the Republican National Convention, but I did follow the live-blogging on ThinkProgress. It’s the best way to do it, because apparently they’ve organized a team of fact-checkers, and everytime a Republican opened their mouth, someone scurried off and looked up whether they were lying or not. It must have been a busy night, scurry, scurry, scurry, and I imagine at the end everyone was lying on the floor, panting like exhausted gerbils. Because it turned out that that was what everyone at the RNC was doing: lying.
The New Republic called Ryan’s big moment in the spotlight the Most Dishonest Convention Speech…Ever?. Charles Pierce compared Ryan to Nixon…only not as honest. New York Magazine said Ryan was betting on American ignorance (scary thing is, that’s a fairly safe bet).
Romney is on tonight. I’ll have the TV on, watching petty, vicious infighting among a mob of amoral cannibals in a devastated world. Same difference, I know.
And some whipped cream to top the RNC lie sundae – I saw an ad last night for a movie about Obama that “travels to four continents” to tell you the things you “don’t know” about Obama, hosted by D’Souza. Hmmm, with D’Souza as host, are you wondering if it will be an honest look at the man or a lot of insinuation and outright B.S.?
And the true beauty of it all (from the GOP’s perspective)? 99% of those lies will never be challenged in our “liberal media”.
Thanks for the TPM link.. that’s a nice summary of the lies.
For more fun–you can also go to littlegreenfootballs.com and watch Charles Johnson and his crew of commenters SNARK LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW! about the convention speeches… (and really, if the Republicans win–there won’t be a tomorrow…but I don’t think that will happen…).
It’s hilarious.
Dinesh D’Souza is the poster child for right-wing pseudo-intellectualism. No one should be surprised by his smear campaign against the president, any more than they should have been surprised by his lame Christian apologetics or his trenchant I-can-spill-coffee defense of free will.
Borowitz has a great take: Ryan Launches Campaign Theme of Lying About Everything
I am so glad I skipped the speeches to watch Futurama last night. From Wonkette’s coverage:
OOOOOOO, BURN!
http://wonkette.com/482565/liveblogging-tampa-wednesday-rand-paul-ryan-rubio-olympians#more-482565
I’m kind of a passenger on this bus ride. I’m not a citizen of the US, just living here because the person I married was here. Considering how disgusting I find the GOP, I can’t imagine the nausea and ‘I threw up in my mouth…A LOT!’ feeling that a person would have who was born here and doesn’t have the escape pod to Tatooine option of a foreigner. You have my genuine sympathies.
The GOP are pathological truth twisters, and enough of the population is stupid enough to believe their bullshit to make them the official government. I never thought it could happen in a post-Orwell era. And now the Jesus freaks may be exempt from having to read Orwell in some places and reinforce the moron voting bloc. How fucked up can things get? I hope there’s enough sane people on voting day so we don’t have to find out. Especially so if as some of the bloggers are saying this is the ‘extinction burst’ of GOP stupidity and last chance they ever have of being ‘relevant’ (or the pretense of it).
Not only have the speeches been full of lies, it seems as though other Republicans don’t even know what
Gov. HairgelMitt Romney stands for. For eexample, from the Think Progress link:*facepalm!*
I needed the laffs from the Borowitz article. Thanks for that, irisvanderpluym.
I too refuse to watch this pretense of a convention – but when I see clips and see the attendees, I am reminded that this is a group of people who “want small government” – until it is their ox being gored! And then there isn’t enough the government can do! Blatant hypocrisy! BTW, who in hell voted Grover Norquist to the position of power he apparently has…at least in the eyes of the RC.
Norquist.
The GOP followed its recent tradition of creating an alternate reality for its members. It’s actually kind of brilliant when you think about it. Convince people that there is a liberal media out to get Republicans, and then say things so profoundly untrue that the media has to attack you for them. Your base is thus both primed to disbelieve corrections from nonpartisan sources and made to feel attacked which causes them to retreat further into your own partisan media.
Even worse, when you lie more than your opponents, the media looks like its spends more time picking on you than them. Giving more evidence of a liberal bias and reinforcing the base’s persecution complex. This effort has been going on for a generation and is starting to pay off real dividends for the Republican Party.
Actually let me add to that
Norquist and whoever is funding ATR, which we don’t know for sure.
Hey, it’s like they say, “Go Big or Go Home!” And Ryan is literally doing that, going big lie so he doesn’t have to go home and be a mere politician, instead of VP and potentially Pres.
I haven’t brought myself to watch. The stuff I get through the news is enough to make me homicidal. It’s astonishing to me how effective the GOP propaganda machine is. The things that people believe…
Wait wait wait. You mean to tell me that Rmoney let a policy position slip?! I thought they were all “I’m
whitenot Obama!”Entire comment quoted for truth.
Meanwhile, President Obama participates in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session at Reddit. More substance than the entire Republican convention.
Highlights link.
The Maddow Blog also covered Paul Ryan’s lie. The article contains embedded links to sources that back up each conclusion. I did not include all those links in this excerpt.
Talking Points Memo seems to have found the source for the lie about the plant closing in Janesville.
This story is instructive in that it shows the lengths to which Republicans will go to wring an insult to Obama out of thin air.
Lynna:
Come on, he could have copy/pasted all of his AMA responses from his campaign website.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said he counted “seven or eight” claims that “fact checkers will have some opportunities to dispute,” but concluded the lies didn’t matter because it was “a powerful speech” that gave Republicans what they “were hoping for.”
CNN’s Erin Burnett added, “There will be issues with some of the facts, but it motivated people.”
Okay. Enough. Can we please stop saying that it is okay for Paul Ryan and for Mitt Romney to lie as long as it pleases their audience?
You mean this is still a question? I thought it was well established by now that any time a republican open his mouth they’re lying, the only question is what are they currently lying about.
From Mike Huckabee’s speech: [President Obama] Obama “believes that human life is disposable and expendable … even beyond the womb.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/30/13568079-huckabee-reads-tax-returns
WTF?
Lyin’ brown-nosin’ Ryan. Is, was and always will be an asswipe. Lying about who’s responsible for the Janesville GM plant closing, lying about the “Climategate ” non-story. Then again you can always tell when this cheeseturd’s lying, his lips move. Just bizarre. I’d love to have an escape route out of this place in case Rmoney wins but at 56 aint too many options open, especially w/out a BSc. Some great articles at Slate on the lies this doucheULCC spewed last night, if y’all can stand to wade through bullshit.
Jon Stewart covered the “human life amendment” in the Republican platform. Scroll down to see video here: http://www.salon.com/2012/08/30/must_see_morning_clip_20/
Yup. And it still had more substance than the entire RNC.
Norquist.
But I say it like.
Newmen.
Salon posted what they call Paul Ryan: The definitive fact check.
Excerpts:
I don’t think that level of lying is new. Romney already set the bar for casual, unashamed lying so high that Ryan will have to continue to lie for months just to get close.
I wonder if these two guys like each other so much because they share a common trait: they don’t know when they are lying.
You know it’s bad when:
FOX NEWS:
“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.”
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/
Even Fox can’t take this level of BS.
More people giving Ryan a pass. Hey, it’s okay to lie:
Here is a video on this topic – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd_iADA32C4
Rik Emmett (lead guitarist / vocalist of Triumph’s heyday) is Canadian, but nearly all of this applies to the US as well…
Charles Pierce’s magnificent must-read column about US national unity (and the Reckless Right attempt to destroy it)
[writing about the approach of Isaac]
I have nothing to add.
I happened upon ‘1984’ on netflix and skimmed through it to remind myself what it was like. The 5 minute hate scene could be swapped with footage of a republican speech with little chance of anyone noticing.
Romney’s got some trouble coming up soon, too. Rolling Stone on the federal bailout of Bain that Romney personally arm-twisted out of the FDIC.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney-20120829
Speech was a successful test run. Definitivly shows to the GOP that the media is sufficiently cowed that they can blatantly lie now and be praised by the liberal media for it
Reason behind Blitzers idiocy is obvious: all the press is afraid that if Romny wins they’ll be the press who shat on their speech rather than sucked them off…they’re protecting future interveiw
The media aren’t afraid of them. They just accept Rupert Murdoch’s characterization of their product as, well, just another product on the market. The truth just doesn’t sell as well as the lower priced spread.
We’ve long know that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, it’s Murdoch’s genius to realize that you can do better with shit than with sugar.
I watched the video in the link on the salon article (comment #26), and this is the first time I heard a woman say that it’s impossible to get pregnant from rape. So I was wondering as I heard her say that if she only started believing this when it was recently announced. Did she believe before that rape could result in pregnancy? Also, if she seems to believe this lie so completely, would she (and other Republican women) agree to being experimented on to show that rape really does not result in pregnancy? And then if they got pregnant, would they say it was not really rape? I know that they must have a lot of cognitive dissonance going on, but I really wonder if they believe this.
@39 Jamie:
Wouldn’t consenting to be raped….make it not rape, but more like S&M role-playing?
But yeah, the fact they still have women in their party forces me to expand my theoretical limits of the depths of self-delusion.
Obama punching bag a popular souvenir? Oy, vey!
And farting Obama doll? Classy!
@kagekiri #40: obviously I did not think that experiment through. I guess a better idea would be to survey Republican women who have been raped and see if a child resulted. (Or they could do twisted experiments on unsuspecting Republican women, but that would be cruel. Or would they think not since they don’t think that they’ll get pregnant or it isn’t *really* rape? I don’t know; I can’t sort out what in the world they think.)
@42 Jamie:
Yeah, it’d have be a pretty horribly unethical experiment to test on people, and I suspect even a survey would just end with victim-blaming or rejection of the surveyed, even if it was only for Republican women.
jamie
I don’t know; I can’t sort out what in the world they think.
there is your first mistake no thinking is taking place.
uncle frogy
Indeed. As Quinn Martindale @ 12 noted above it is a great little scam they are running.
1) Spout lies and bigotry, when media reports said lies and bigotry convince your base that the media has a liberal bias and just wants to persecute conservative viewpoints.
2) Media then gets blasted by Republican politicians and pundits everytime the media has the temerity to question them.
3) The media noticing this tries to be more balanced to avoid the charge of bias.
4) Their bullshit goes unchallenged.
It is one of the most ingenious silencing tactics I have ever seen. The ultimate tone trolling.
It really does seem to have reached a point where the likes of Ryan don’t even bother to make much effort to conceal the fact that they are lying any more.
The Ryans and Romneys of the American political Right seems to have correctly assessed contemporary American politics as a system that favours style over substance at every turn – a speech that bears scant resemblance to reality, but that is calculated to cover the right ‘hot button’ topics in such a fashion as to induce as much faux-righteous indignation as possible, will be hailed as a triumph irrespective of how many equivocations, distortions and outright lies it contains. We are seeing the final transition from any kind of susbtantive, measured, credible political process to a system consisting purely of empty political theatre.
And Ryan knows that, even should he be caught red handed in an unequivocal lie about a major issue, it would make little difference. This about mobilising core party support. He is throwing out red meat to his base, and he is safe in the knowledge that those dyed-in-the-wool Republicans would respond to any revelation of the sheer extent of his lies by constructing some kind of deliberately vague yet elaborate conspiracy on the part of the liberal media/GLBT groups/ethnic minorities/immigrants/feminists/atheists/muslim fundamentalist terror groups (delete as appropriate) to discredit Ryan.
It is the same mechanism that those who promote creationism and climate change ‘scepticism’ rely on – the people they are primarily talking to are already true believers. When such people are confronted with the fact that the evidence is against their cherished beliefs, they don’t change their stance; instead they try to attack the evidence. They are quite happy to set their faces aganst reality itself rather than admit they are wrong.
Sadly, such delusional people form a very large demographic, and as kevinalexander pointed out @ 38, the media is rather more concerned with what sells copy than with anything so unprofitable as championing the truth. As a result, the actual facts of the political issues get drowned out under a tide of glib sound bites as the media scrambles to give the viewing public what they want, rather than what they need.
So my question is, did previous Republican National Conventions sell Clinton punching bags or farting Clinton dolls?
@40
If the experimenters slip the woman a roofie, then she’s no longer capable of consent, so it’s still rape regardless of what forms she’s signed beforehand.
Meant to put quotation marks around balanced in the previous comment.
To paraphrase another, earlier writer: “Every word in Ryan’s speech is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”
This just in! Scientists have discovered that hurricane Isaac has torn a rift in the interdimentional fabric and thousands of denizens of Bizzarro World have poured into Miami.
It takes some sensitive instruments though, with the Republicans in town, it’s hard to tell.
http://9gag.com/gag/5215591
Cthulhu 2012 “Why vote for a lesser evil?”
They had a close up of a guy with a single tear running down his face while Paul Ryan was speaking.
Another shot revealed that, behind the single tear man of abject awe, there was a large black delegate.
Further, nearly ever time I saw a black person in a crowd shot, they were well centralized in the frame.
My cynicism sense was tingling.
Republican organizers moved the delegate blocks from the Northern Marianas and Puerto Rico down front so that more people with darker skin would appear in TV coverage.
Delegates from Rand Paul-supporting states were moved into the nosebleed sections so they would not be seen.
The LA Times has more coverage on the attempt to put a brown face on a white party.
Link.
Markita:
I would so buy one of those.
More coverage on the Janesville falsehood.
There’s a photo at the link of Janesville plant workers holding a banner commemorating the last vehicle off the Janesville line in December, 2008 … when George Bush was President.
Lynna, OM:
The GOP, not realizing the vaudeville days are done and past, tries on blackface.
QFFT!
…Apparently I’m awake. The world is remarkably constant, and my perception isn’t almost limited to sight.
what is this I don’t even
…
I followed the link. Here’s the paragraph after the one you quoted:
And then follows a list of 4 lies and refutations, 2 with 1 link each, 1 with 2.
Sally Kohn is my new heroine: speaking truth in the heart of power.
“And then there’s what Ryan didn’t talk about.” ♥
“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.’ [Or part of the precipitate. </obligatory>]
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.”
How did she get into Fox… and how much longer will she stay there…
We’re living in interesting times!
Depends on the kind of fly! Drosophila and the like will go for the vinegar.
rather amazing that the gal on Faux Noise called Ryan and Romney liars. I wonder how long she’ll have a job there. It does amaze me that lies have become all the GOP/TP has left, and that their religion is so very clear that its god hates lies and liars.
A more nuanced look at the closing of the Janesville plant, a look that further condemns Ryan. Even a greatly stretched and distorted version of the story, one in which one assumes that Obama should have made it possible to reopen the plant, is wrong.
Link.
Fox News will restrict that info to online opinion pages. It will not be allowed during prime time commentary.
I caught a few minutes of a Fox News panel, and the projection was so strong that I could smell popcorn. They were babbling about people in a closed information loop (not their words), folks who just cannot realize that Obama can do anything wrong, and how Ryan was going to get attacked because the media is prejudiced.
They were very actively discussing how to filter information to arrive at their version of reality.
Is Fox owned by the Republican party’s disinformation campaign?
Frustrations are simmering over Ann Romney’s speech as well. She doesn’t exactly lie, she just ignores a lot of salient facts.
http://open.salon.com/blog/geekate/2012/08/29/ann_romney_may_love_me_but_i_dont_love_her
The Bain Capital story and how it proves Romney has business sense, how it illustrates his bold ideas in turning around difficult financial situations, is also about nine tenths false.
Matt Taibbi wrote a new article for Rolling Stone that reveals the falsehoods behind the myth.
Excerpts:
Yes.
Another excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone — a good section that neatly explains how Romney ran Bain Capital after he stopped creating companies like Staples and started power fucking existing companies.
I have to wonder why Ryan et al don’t at any point take a look in the mirror and realise that they are horrible, horrible human beings. I’m no paragon of morality, but I simply wouldn’t have it in me to be that dishonest. It’s a talent, I guess.
@Lynna (#66):
Speaking of which, finance is not my strong suit. So how do the readers here assess the accuracy of this explanation of how Mitt amassed his fortune:
How Did Mitt Romney Get So Obscenely Rich? Robert Reich Explains
Matt Taibbi is one of my fav journalists. His cogent explanation of what caused the recent worldwide recession makes for very interesting, though depressing, reading:
The Big Takeover
Metz @68
I hope ‘Tis Himself drops in to this discussion. He can explain better than I can.
Paul Krugman and Matt Taibbi seem to have sorted Romney’s finances fairly well. One can quibble, but “mostly right” is far better than the lies coming from the Romney campaign.
I would compare Robert Reich’s take to several of Krugman’s posts.
I agree with Reich’s explanation of how Romney bet against the American economy and won. The one thing you have to remember is that Romney was a modern day, legal pirate. He took profitable companies, stripped them of anything salable, and left a carcass loaded with debt. He enriched nobody but himself and his associates.
I (like a few others here) am a resident alien in the US. As in previous elections cycles, it will soon be time for a self imposed media black out of election coverage or I will be either grumpy, sad, or downright angry until November. I do make sure my husbands votes every time, and as a somewhat mad scientist he is likely to forget on his own.
Thanks for the affirmation, ‘Tis Himself:
Ah, the Rethuglican version of The American Dream™
Makes me nervous as there is a solid rumor my division is up for sale. Gotta keep the Redhead in health insurance until we are both on Medicare (democrat style, not rethuglican).
*sigh*
If you really want to know, ask an actual investment banker:
My emphasis. Anyone who wants to talk about deregulation and competition needs to think this point through …
(That said, Romney and Ryan are both lying like [something], which is scary. See Brad DeLong for details.)
I so want to stand in front of Romney and Ryan and demand the truth from them. But I want to be able to tazer them every time they lie. Unfortunately for me, both of them now have secret service protection, and had private security goons before that.
You don’t get near one of these liars without careful screening.
It’s not just the lies. It’s that they lie and expect you to believe it and throw lies and insults at you when you call them on their lies. Jebby Bush is up their lying now. (Al Gore is on Current TV doing play-by-play with a twitter-stream next to it)
Romney’s acceptance speech?
The usual: business, faith, prayer equals ‘American Dream’, that smoke-and-mirrors approach to obscure the destructive agendas of conservatives and Republicans. No answers deeply addressing the poor, middle class, disaffected, health care for all, etc.
And punctuating it with a swipe at addressing climate change, that got a few laughs from the peanut gallery attending? Disgusting.
DLC @ 76:
Nice idea….can I bring my tazer too? I want a piece of that action.
Lies are out the new theme is chairs
Saw Romney’s Republican Convention speech today on the news. There was a moment where Mitt said something like that “Obama promised to stop the seas rise and heal the planet .. “ There was a long awkward pause and some uncomfortable laughter then Romney continued with something like “.. I’ll focus on your family and jobs instead.” (Implied : Forget the environment and do nothing to fight the HIRGO* “hoax” / reality.) The audience’s seemingly flat and awkward reaction to this apparent appeal to selfishness over environmental action I found interesting.
I got a vibe that they (These committed Republicans even!) were distinctly uneasy and uncomfortable about Romneys words. Maybe more of them really know that Global Overheating is a reality that needs to be tackled than they let on? Maybe bashing the supposed “Hoax” isn’t a vote winner given that surveys now say more of the US public accept the scientific consensus and that the trend in accepting the science is growing. Maybe they’re wondering about that Hurricane Isaac that took away their conventions first day, those serious midwest USA fires and droughts and the recent record low in Arctic sea ice? Maybe those observed and alarming facts and measured phenomena were at the backs of their minds?
Maybe.
Maybe I’m being too optimistic and seeing what I want to see rather than what’s really there like martian canals in the eyes of the observers like Lowell over a century ago. But still ..
Anyone else here know the moment I’m talking about and get that same sense I’ve described here?
&&&&&&&&&&
Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating
Quinn Martindale @ 12
May I quote you on this and would you prefer attribution or not? I have some Republican friends who desperately need to read this.
Sure, you can quote me. I don’t care whether you give me attribution or not.
StevoR #80
Yeah. I ranted about it in the thunderdome.
I didn’t read it the same as you *at all*.
It seemed to me that a number of people didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about: “ocean rising? what the hell does that refer to?” And those that did understand that he meant climate change laughed condescendingly at the stupid Nigra Muslim President promising to stop this big bad hoax of liberal conspiracy.
I’d bet dollars to donuts the semi-lukewarm response wasn’t due to any awkwardness concerning acceptance of climate change, but rather that so many of them are so ignorant that “oceans rising” is a confusing reference to god-knows-what.