Paul Ryan cannot even be honest about how fast he can run. To be more accurate, Paul Ryan lied about how fast he could run twenty years ago. In fact, his own brother called him out on his lie and mocked him relentlessly. Ryan had claimed that he once ran a 26 mile marathon in under three hours.
“The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three. If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight.”
The safe thing to do when dealing with Paul Ryan and math is to assume massive rounding errors on pretty much every number he gives you. The man is the biggest liar we have ever seen on a presidential or vice-presidential level. He is a bigger liar than Sarah Palin, Dick Nixon, or Spiro Agnew. If he’s moving his lips, he’s telling a lie.
Funny how all those “rounding errors” are in the directions he wants, and some of them are by orders of magnitude.
500 Million, 500 Billion, 500 Trillion…
Eh, what’s the difference? They all rhyme.
It takes an extraordinary man to remember things in a way that ISN’T to his own best advantage.
Not to say Paul Ryan isn’t a lying piece of scum, and in particular you should remember if it took you less than 3 hours to run a marathon, but remembering something in your favor (in general) is natural.
This nails it. If there’s a language people should be using to talk about Paul Ryan it’s just eactly this. Saying he is dishonest cuts to the core much better than trying to ennumerate his absurd and complicated lies.
UP with Chris Hayes this morning did a whole segment on the fact checking with comments from Sirota and Herbert. Provocative takes.
Also, did you notice the DemocracyNow piece where they caught up with Adelson in the halls of the Convention and there was a toss back about ‘losing credentials’?
As Sirota pointed out, the power of billionaires buying out newspapers and then WallStreet Opinionpaging them or lying by omission has already impacted one race in his home state of Colorado.
Billionaire lying running this country; kick the CBO out cause they’ll just get in the way? What’s the difference in that context of the CBO and FactCheck.org? Just a higher level to be ignored. And they will be.
Not to mention, Gore was roasted for supposed fabrications. And now we have Yglesias and Attackerman trying to brush this off as no big deal. Except it is a big deal. It’s just another example showing how dishonest the Zombie-eyed Granny-starver is.
Great point. Difference is, none of Gore’s supposed lies were even close to lies, and yet the attacks on them played a decisive part in his near-loss. Ryan/Romney’s lies are real, from the monumental to the trivial. They’re just habits, and nobody seems to think they show anything about the candidates.
What surprises me about Ryan, though, is that sociopaths are usually better at making their lies seem truthful.
Privileged sociopaths don’t develop their lying skill set as well as the unprivileged variety because they rarely get busted. OTOH, the lies of most sociopaths are rarely better than what the most gullible will fall for.
I can’t believe that politicians haven’t figured out that you can’t lie on the national stage against the power of the internet.
It’s a truly bipartisan affair, too. I remember in 2010 when Blumenthal got caught fabricating his Vietnam service record, and Mark Kirk got caught lying about his “intelligence” career. The internet busted them in no time flat. Of course, both of them went on to win their respective senate races, so it’s hard to say that there’s any penalty to getting caught.
Paul Ryan’s marathon bullshit never stood a chance. What a twerp.
Kirk got elected anyway.
Or to paraphrase Mary McCarthy referring to Lillian Hellman, every word that comes out of Ryan’s mouth is a lie, including and and the.
I don’t think one appreciates the depth of the dishonesty until you see the whole exchange with Hugh Hewitt in context
“HH: Are you still running?
PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.”
Notice the plurals. He ran ONE marathon, when he was 20.
Its just a matter of others perspective.
England horse