Lying Liars And Their Lying Lies: Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver Edition

Of the many bald-faced lies and misleading claims that zombie-eyed granny starver Paul Ryan made in his speech last night, there is one in particular that gets the 'Pants & Scrotum Sac On Fire' prize.

Ryan insinuated that Obama was somehow responsible for the closing of a GM SUV manufacturing plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin and giving the 2000+ workers there a sense of false hope that their jobs would be secure.  Ryan's quote:

"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year."

While the Obama quote Ryan refers to is accurate, the details Ryan is willfully and deceitfully excluding are that Obama made the statement while visiting the plant as a presidential candidate in February 2008.  At that point he was simply a Democratic presidential candidate and had not even wrapped up the nomination. Four months later, in June of 2008, while George W. Bush was still President of the United States, GM announced that the plant would drastically scale back production. The plant completed laying off most of its workforce in December 2008, a full month before Obama had even taken the oath of office. The "government support" Obama spoke of to the Janesville workers in his February 2008 visit – his auto bailout plan, which took effect in early 2009 – simply did not arrive early enough to save the plant.  Ultimately that very same bailout plan has been widely credited by a majority of economists, and the auto industry execs themselves, with saving the American auto industry from complete and utter collapse and preventing a recession from turning in to a full blown depression.

Also - it is critically important to acknowledge the full mendacity of granny starver Ryan's lie by noting it in the context of the fact that Ryan's would-be boss, one Willard Mitt Romney, published an op-ed in the New York Times in November 2008 (one month before the remaining Janesville employees were layed off) under the headline "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

The core lesson to be gleened here from Senator granny-starver's speech last night - is that he and Willard both know full well that it is vital to their White House ambitions to keep the low information voters that Fox News churns out week after week fat, happy and gullibly misinformed.  Thus - their entire campaign, right down to the bare foundation, is built upon layers and layers of outright lies and misinformation.  There is an old saying that "in war, truth is the first casualty."  Politics is war in a sense.  But Willard and Ryan have moved the goalposts so far when it comes to the truth, that not only is it a casualty, they are now gleefully pissing on that casualty's corpse.


----TFG