"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Saturday, August 18, 2012

Paul Ryan is a liar too
Posted by Jill | 10:17 PM
I blame Ron Suskind.

In 2004, in a New York Times Magazine article titled, "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush", Suskind cited a discussion with a senior Bush official:
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''


Republican lying isn't anything new. Back in the 1990s we had Dan Burton shooting watermelons in his backyard to "prove" his claim that the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered. There have always been lies in campaigns. What's astonishing about the wave of Republican lying that has taken place in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks -- the creation of "truthiness", is that it takes place in the face of video proof of its falsehood. Willard Rmoney has elevated this sort of lying to an art form. With as much documentation as there is about his years as governor and his campaigns for governor and president, he will still insist that he never said things that there is documented proof that he did. Of course if you don't live in the reality-based community, none of this matters. It's "We Have Always Been At War With Eastasia" writ large.

Now, in Paul Ryan, Rmoney has found a running mate with a talent for lying that rivals his own. After days of doubling down on his lie that he never asked for stimulus money for his Congressional district, the Greatest Mind of the Republican Party (and what a low bar THAT is) admits that he has been lying all week -- that he DID ask for stimulus funds:
The Janesville congressman said he had forgotten that his office sent letters — with his signature — to the Energy and Labor departments asking for money from the stimulus program on behalf of two companies in his home state.

“They should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that,” Ryan, R-Janesville, said in a written statement released only after he again denied requesting stimulus funds Thursday in an Ohio television interview.

Ryan’s denial in an interview with WCPO, Channel 9, Cincinnati, contradicted letters he wrote in 2009 to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis seeking stimulus grant money for two Wisconsin energy conservation companies. One of them, the nonprofit Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp., later received $20.3 million from the Energy Department to help homes and businesses improve energy efficiency, according to federal records.

“After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them, and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled,” Ryan said in a statement late Thursday. “This is why I didn’t recall the letters earlier.”

The congressman’s denial came as new audio surfaced of Ryan telling a Boston radio station two years ago that he “did not ask for stimulus money” in response to a caller’s question about the recovery program. “I’m not one who votes for something and then writes to the government to ask them to send us money,” Ryan said. The exchange was first reported Thursday by The Boston Globe.

But a year earlier in his request to Chu for funds for the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp. Ryan said the stimulus cash would help his state create thousands of new jobs, save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What's hideous about all this isn't that Ryan requested stimulus funds. It isn't even that this is yet another example of Ryan wanting to benefit from federal funds that he would deny others. It's that a Congressman, elected to serve the constituents of his district, has to be ashamed for doing so. It's just further proof that in the GOP, ideology trumps EVERYTHING -- even a Congressman's OBLIGATION to do right by his constituents.

Labels: , , ,

2 comments
Bookmark and Share
2 Comments:
Anonymous Wifely Person said...
The NYTimes had a piece on Ryan and the auto bailout, and I left the following comment, which is appropriate here as well:


Pinocchio Ryan needs to be very careful about his revisionist self-history and outright lying. People like that get named to the PANTS-ON-FIRE list and we all know how dangerous fire is to wooden puppets.

I'm just sayin'.........
8/19/12, 12:09 AM  
Blogger Bob said...
That Times article was one of the most frightening things I ever read, because I knew it was true, that "reason" could not react fast enough.
8/19/12, 1:25 AM  
Post a Comment
<< Home