Media Still Lying About Paul Ryan: He's No "Policy Wonk" Nor "Numbers Guy"

After Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan staged a fake photo-op washing clean pans, undermining the ability of a soup kitchen to raise money to support their work, one might have been hopeful that Paul Ryan would no longer be held up as a "great mind", "policy wonk" and "numbers guy".  Since Paul Ryan could not even carry his home state of Wisconsin nor his home town of Janesville; there was reason to hope that the media would stop propping up this charlatan and his austerity for the masses and give-aways beyond avarice for the ultra-wealthy economics.

There was reason to hope the media propaganda that misrepresents Ryan as a "serious man" and a relevant voice would subside.  Today we find out that is not the case.  The con goes on:  Foreign Policy Magazine has named Ryan one of its top 10 global thinkers.

Paul Ryan is a con man and, regardless of what certain right wing media assets may want you to believe, his economic plan is a joke.  More after the jump.


Paul Ryan proved in his debate against Vice President Joe Biden that not only was he unprepared for the national stage, but Ryan is no policy wonk nor is he a numbers guy.  Paul Ryan is a flim flam man.

So despite the fact that VP Biden mopped the floor with Paul Ryan in their single debate appearance, especially on each and every issue related to foreign policy, how can Foreign Policy Magazine bestow Ryan with this honor?

From VOICES "You Can't Make This Crap Up" department, on  August 17, 2012, Foreign Policy itself called out Paul Ryan's Bad Idea for the Middle East, stating:

It's not true that Mitt Romney's veep choice is a complete neophyte on foreign policy. But his major foray abroad does not inspire confidence.

Frankly Curious, the musings of of Frank Moraes, may have the best take on this:

Alec MacGillis at The New Republic has now written about, Paul Ryan, Global Thinker? In the article, he alerts us to a new list from Foreign Policy, 100 Top Global Thinkers. Such exercises are always stupid. Earlier this year, I wrote about The Rolling Stone 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, Pathetic Rock Journalism at Rolling Stone. In that article, I was particularly upset that George Harrison was listed at number 11. But I have to give The Rolling Stone credit: George Harrison was, in fact, a guitarist. I don't think that Paul Ryan qualifies as a global thinker.

Clicking through THIS link at FP's web to find their reasoning is a waste of time -- but go ahead if you like.  There is nothing in their rational that makes sense or is worth repeating.  There rational for putting him on their list, and then burying it in a poorly formatted Website to make it cumbersome and unlikely to be read, is based entirely on Paul Ryan's republican convention speech -- perhaps the most dishonest political speech ever given to at a national party's big event.

Garbage in, garbage out -- if Paul Ryan's conventi9on speech can be demonstrated to be misleading and intellectual dishonest, then Foreign Policy Magazine's homage to Ryan is also a sham.  Fact checkers, whom the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan team had no use for, were kept busy for days documenting the audacity of the brazen disinformation of Ryan's speech.

ThinkProgress identified the 6 most glaring lies from Ryan's speech as follows:

1. “A downgraded America.” Ryan blamed the president for the nation’s credit downgrade in August 2011 after Republicans threatened to allow the government to default on its debt for the first time in history. But the ratings agency explicitly blamed “Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal.”
2. “More debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined.” Romney has made the almost identical claim, that Obama has amassed more debt “as almost all of the other presidents combined.” But their math doesn’t add up: when Obama took office, the national debt was $10.626 trillion. It has increased to slightly above $15 trillion.
3. Shuttered General Motors plant is “one more broken promise.” Ryan described a GM plant that closed down in his hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin, and blamed Obama for breaking his promise to keep the plant open when he visited during his campaign. But Obama never made that promise, and the plant shut down in December 2008, before Obama even took office.
4. Obama “did exactly nothing” on Bowles-Simpson. Ryan said, “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.” In fact, Ryan was instrumental in sabotaging the commission, leading the other House Republicans in voting against the plan.
5. “$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.” Ryan’s favorite lie is a deliberate distortion of Obamacare’s savings from eliminating inefficiencies. Furthermore, Ryan’s own plan for Medicare includes these savings. Romney has vowed to restore these cuts, which would render the trust fund insolvent 8 years ahead of schedule.
6. “The greatest of all responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak.” Ryan closed the speech with an invocation of social responsibility, saying, “The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” However, numerous clergy members have condemned Ryan’s budget plan as “cruel,” and “an immoral disaster” because of its devastating cuts in social programs the poor and sick rely on. Meanwhile, Ryan would give ultra-rich individuals and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks.

Salon took Ryan to task for being stunningly dishonest in his GOP convention rhetoric:

Paul Ryan gave a feisty anti-Obama speech that will have fact-checkers working for days. His most brazen lie accused President Obama of “raiding” Medicare by taking the exact same $716 billion that Ryan and the House GOP notoriously voted to slash. It was stunning.

But that’s not all. He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a Janesville GM plant that closed under Bush in 2008. He hit him for a credit-rating downgrade that S&P essentially blamed on GOP intransigence. He claimed that all taxpayers got from the 2009 stimulus was “more debt,” when most got a tax cut (and the stimulus is known to have saved between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs). He derided the president for walking away from the Simpson Bowles commission deficit-cutting recommendations when Ryan himself, a commission member, voted against those recommendations.

He blamed Obama for a deficit mostly created by programs he himself voted for – from two wars, tax cuts, new Medicare benefits and TARP.

And of course, he riffed on the tired central lie of the GOP convention: that the president said “government gets the credit” for small businesses, not the business owners themselves.

Other than that, it was a great speech.

And the blog I Acknowledge Class Warfare Exists dissected and refuted 28 falsehoods that Ryan told the cheering mob last August and provides a video and transcript of the speech so fact checkers can verify the analysis themselves.

And entirely based on these lies, most prominently the false dichotomy that America has only 2 choice -- another Paul Ryan lie, Policy Magazine wants to anoint an intellectual lightweight at-best, a world-class thinker.

Paul Ryan was never a policy wonk.  He was never a numbers guy.  This is an image bestowed on him by a compliant media.  After Paul Ryan showed his true colors to the world, what does the media echo chamber do?

Prop him up with more propaganda -- perhaps not surprising -- it took a lot of propaganda to fraudulently hoist this man onto the national stage in the first place.