A quick little diary just to get this passed along.
In "The Plum Line" blog at the Washington Post, Jonathan Bernstein has just made a most righteous and entirely justified rant. Just go read it. But I'll post a couple choice excerpts under the croissant l'orange....
The title of the piece is "Paul Ryan fails--the truth." How's that?
It was, by any reasonable standards, a staggering, staggering lie. Here’s Paul Ryan about Barack Obama:
He 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.
“They.” “Them.” “Them.” Those words are lies. Because Paul Ryan was on that commission. “Came back with an urgent report.” That is a lie. The commission never made any recommendations for Barack Obama to support or oppose. Why not? Because the commission voted down its own recommendations. Why? Because Paul Ryan, a member of the commission, voted it down and successfully convinced the other House Republicans on the commission to vote it down.
And then...
There’s also, as many were pointing out, the plain fact that until January 2009 Paul Ryan faithfully supported all the tax cuts and spending increases which created the deficit problem he’s been so concerned about since January 2009.
And then a swift kick to the hind-quarters:
...the proper response to a speech like this isn’t to carefully analyze the logic, or to find instances of hypocracy; it’s to call the speaker out for telling flat-out lies to the American people.
Cut it, paste it, Facebook it, pass it on....
Wed Aug 29, 2012 at 10:07 PM PT: Thanks for the rec list. Allows me to highlight a possible new accidental coinage by Bernstein in that last blockquote: "hypocracy"! That would mean: government of, by, and for the hypocrites. Perfect.
More update: It did not take long for the full editorial board of the Washington Post to weigh in. Under the headline Mr. Ryan’s misleading speech:
...[Ryan] offered a speech that was part introduction of himself and his small-town origins, part testimonial to his running mate and — in largest part — a slashing and, in many elements, misleading indictment of President Obama as both a spent force and a threat to American freedom.
...to caricature the president’s vision as “a government-planned life, where everything is free but us” insults voters who surely know better.
With that, time for some shut-eye....