Hold the phone! National media is starting to notice that the Romney/Ryan campaign is based on LIES

Welcome aboard, media friends

Yesterday, Greg Sargent at The Plum Line wrote a terrific piece titled “Call out the lies right in your headlines”. He, as well as others, are ratcheting up the call for our main media sources to start calling what Mitt Romney and his campaign are doing: blatantly lying. Making things up and then repeating them over and over again despite being debunked and fact-checked as false Pinocchios with their pants on fire.

It’s starting to work.

Here’s what Greg said, referring to another excellent piece by Mother Jones writer Kevin Drum:

This doesn’t happen every day, but good for the Los Angeles Times for calling out the ubiquitous falsehood about Obama supposedly waiving welfare reform’s work requirement right in its headline:

“Rick Santorum repeats inaccurate welfare attack on Obama”

As Kevin Drum says: “it’s about time reporters and copy editors started putting this stuff front and center.” And, indeed, the LA Times does this, in its headline and with this highly placed sentence: “In fact, Obama did not waive the work requirement.” {…}

Mark Kleiman suggests that horserace reporters begin clearly spelling out that Romney has “made a strategic decision to try to bury Obama under a blanket of false charges.” Would that be an exaggeration? No, it wouldn’t. What if newspapers devoted extensive front page pieces to dissecting Romney’s decision to continue basing entire ad campaigns on widely debunked claims, even as Romney advisers openly boast about the success of their dishonest ads and

On the facts, Ryan left a lot out. He’d cut Medicare too; he opposed Simpson-Bowles, he voted for policies that increased the debt… etc.

— Marc Ambinder (@marcambinder) August 30, 2012

The Atlantic‘s Andrew Sullivan:

Now Ryan is actually blaming Obama for failure of Bowles-Simpson. But Ryan was on the commission and voted against it! thebea.st/QAnUiQ

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) August 30, 2012

Fox News (Fox News!):

…to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

MSNBC’s David Gregory: “A kind of ideological amnesia…on the part of Paul Ryan” (VIDEO)

US News & World Report: “Paul Ryan Repeats Auto Bailout, Medicare Lies” (they actually used the word “LIES” in their headline!)

New York Times‘ Jonathan Weisman:

Wow, did Ryan just criticize Obama for walking away from Simpson-Bowles when he led House Republicans on the commission to vote it down?

— Jonathan Weisman (@jonathanweisman) August 30, 2012

The Daily Beast‘s Michael Tomasky: “Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech and His Web of Lies — Paul Ryan pushed American politics into new territory with his convention speech, effectively daring Democrats and the media to call him out on his string of blatant falsehoods… Those three lies are just the beginning of a cavalcade that followed.”

Washington Post‘s James Downie: “Paul Ryan’s breathtakingly dishonest speech”.

The Maddow Blog’s Steve Benen:

Slate’s Dave Weigel: “I was in the cheap seats, not on carpet, when Ryan plowed through one of the more impressive strings of whoppers we’ve seen at this level. Ryan’s been doling out chunks of this speech for weeks, which made the fibs sound even stranger.”

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell:

.@paul ryan attcking stimulus but didnt he write letters asking for stimulus programs for his district? @nbcpolitics

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) August 30, 2012

Washington Post‘s Jonathan Bernstein: “It was, by any reasonable standards, a staggering, staggering lie… [and] that wasn’t the only bit of mendacity – lazy mendacity, incredibly lazy mendacity – in Ryan’s speech.”

Associated Press: “Convention speakers stray from reality.”

The New Yorker correspondent and CNN contributor Ryan Lizza:

Wow, genuinely shocked Ryan would use GM plant anecdote. GM announced its closure before Obama was president. Just a straight up falsehood.

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) August 30, 2012

Salon’s Joan Walsh: “Paul Ryan’s Brazen Lies — 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.”

The New Republic‘s Jonathan Cohn: “The Most Dishonest Convention Speech … Ever? — At least five times, Ryan misrepresented the facts. And while none of the statements were new, the context was. It’s one thing to hear them on a thirty-second television spot or even in a stump speech before a small crowd. It’s something else entirely to hear them in prime time address, as a vice presidential nominee is accepting his party’s nomination and speaking to the entire country. ”

Honestly, with all of that, you hardly notice that Andrew Borowitz’s latest piece is parody: “Ryan Launches Campaign Theme of Lying About Everything”

In an email this morning, Paul Ryan said, “This is not an ordinary election — because this is not an ordinary time.” Is that, perhaps, his justification for lying through his grin?

The Obama campaign has a nice summary of last night’s tragic liefest. Give these guys credit; they are putting out responses to the Romney campaign’s cavalcade of crap with astonishing speed. Gone are the days of letting swiftboat-style attacks go unanswered. The Romney campaign’s latest lie has barely left the tip of their forked tongue before the Obama campaign is getting out the truth to media folks and on YouTube:

By the way, if you think that somehow Paul Ryan misspoke about the timing on the Janesville GM plant closing, think again. He sent out this press release in June of 2008, several months before the election of Barack Obama and over a half year before he took office:

June 3, 2008

Washington, D.C. – Following the announcement by General Motors that it planned to close its Janesville plant by 2010, U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl and Representative Paul Ryan sent a letter to General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner asking him to reconsider the decision to close the Janesville GM plant and requesting a meeting to discuss the possible retooling of the plant for different production lines. Click here to view the letter (pdf).

So maybe, just maybe, the Romney Ryan False Talking Express has finally hit the roadblock they never thought they’d see. Maybe, just maybe, they actually can NOT get away with brazen lying and provably false fabrications. Romney is already at 51% unfavorability rating nationally. It’s well known that he’s not well-liked, even by people in his own party. He’s already completely alienated the tea party/Ron Paul branch of the party. Moderate Republicans have got to be really questioning if the sinking ship of a super-wealthy one-percenter who has to lie in order to win is really someone they want to hitch their horses to.

When you have to lie about your opponent in order to run your campaign, it’s clear that you know you are on the losing side. It’s refreshing that our national media is starting to wake up and inform Americans the truth about the lies.