When Elephants Lie, People Die

The Ryan Budget Plan Selling Document for Medicare Savings - Yet Paul Ryan Says He Will Save Medicare?

by Denis G. Campbell

People are drowning but the Burning (99.9% White) Man Festival known as the Republican National Convention must go on! In New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast Tropical Storm Isaac was stationary and entering its second day of relentlessly pounding them with wind and rain but no one in the hall cared. They needed to relentlessly pound President Obama with lie after lie after lie because the US television cameras were on and they can do what they want to do!

This was 100 proof catnip to the serially undereducated and FOX News-only informed (who sent four alerts that VP candidate Paul Ryan was speaking and to watch live on my iPad, will they send that many alerts next week when the Democrats speak?). These gullible, fear-inspired members of the base ate it up. The problem? They need to reach outside their incestuous tent to independents and wavering Democrats.

For a supposed policy wonk, Ryan played fast and loose with policy facts and the truth reciting a litany of false charges against the President’ programme, including the closing of an automotive plant in his hometown that closed a month before the President took office?

Paul Ryan Addresses the Republican National Convention

The sheer audacity of everything bad that has ever happened over the last six years being 100% the President’s fault (that includes George W. Bush’s last two years) occurs in their fantasy-filled minds as if fact-checking is not ever done by anyone with a computer or smart phone. It remains a simply stunning exercise in deception.

Not one person who took the time to wrap themselves in the 9-11 flag last night mentioned that Bin Laden is dead and Obama took the real decision to get him. Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice defended the Bush era with gusto. Even Poppy and W Bush appeared in a bizarre video speaking of each other (at 7:15 pm, long before the prime time cameras ever focused on what was happening) and their reaction to each other being President as father and son.

Let’s go to the videotape of most blatant lies… again… and we’ll do this tomorrow as well because the Lying King has his speech:

• Paul Ryan again repeated the GOP talking point lie that Barack Obama “added more debt than all other Presidents combined” whilst failing to mention the debt stood at $10.626 trillion when President Obama took over from the previous Administration and Ryan voted to add $6.5 trillion as a Congressman.

• Paul Ryan said he will save Medicare but the numbers in the chart above (made by him when selling his budget and bragging about how it will cut Medicare in his budget) do not lie. They plan to gut it and shorten the life of the fund from the current 2024 to 2016? Yet they are following the Karl Rove ‘I am rubber you are glue’ plan of blaming this as a weakness on your opponent and forcibly lie your way through it.

• He attacked The President for a US sovereign debt credit downgrade but ignored his leading role in holding the country hostage in the debate led to that downgrade.
• When he compared US debt to Europe, he failed to mention the crushing role of austerity in creating double dip recessions here in the UK and other EU nations.

• He lied about the Simpson Bowles Commission. Ryan claimed the President promptly ignored the commission’s report yet failed to mention he was a member of the committee who walked away from the effort before the report was finished.

• Four years ago John McCain was the party nominee. Last night he was relegated to a position so early the crowd was milling about talking loudly. McCain wants the US to become involved in six conflicts? He wants to fight Russia, China, Syria, Iran as well as the two we are currently involved?

• His former Vice Presidential candidate took to the only news source that would have her – her Facebook page – to complain about her treatment by FOX. She was cancelled yesterday and spewed rubbish about wanting to support John McCain. Her 15 minutes of fame clock has finally hit 14:59.

• Condoleeza Rice spoke of people coming to the USA for opportunity but her Party platform does not want them to stay. Her personal experience of Jim Crow laws came across genuinely but the hypocrisy of giving that speech to room full of birthers, racists and xenophobes was not lost?

• Radio host Mike Huckabee attacked Romney all last week over the attempts to get Todd Akin out of the race turned around and did his best to label Barack Obama as an ‘other’ when it comes to religion.

• Former candidate Michele Bachmann was seen but not heard since Tuesday as her delegation cast it roll call vote standing and smiling but not heard. Ron Paul’s son spoke but his father who won hundreds of delegates was not allowed near a podium microphone?

So you can say whatever you want in this Republican convention, just not during the two-hour window between 9 and 11 pm on national television. When Ryan was finished, there was applause for 70 seconds then everyone filed out? Makes one wonder if the balloons falling from the ceiling tomorrow night for Romney will be lead filled?

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Denis G Campbell is the author of 6 books including 'Billionaire Boys Election Freak Show,' 'The Vagina Wars' & 'Egypt Unsh@ckled.' He is the editor of UK Progressive Magazine and provides commentary to the BBC, itv Al Jazeera English, CNN, MSNBC and others. His weekly 'World View with Denis Campbell' segment can be heard every Thursday on the globally syndicated The David Pakman Show. You can follow him on Twitter via @UKProgressive and on Facebook.
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