DOES PAUL RYAN'S FACT STRETCHING LAST NIGHT DIMINISH HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH ?............

Congressman Paul Ryan delivered a personable and, powerful, oration last night that was also a scathing, and unvarnished, indictment of President Obama and his lack of leadership in the White House, in his Acceptance Speech as the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee; while at the same time taking liberties with the truth or speaking with incompletions about that which he was critiquing.  The most obvious fact stretching  of these being Ryan's story about the General Motors plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin which he said President Obama pledged four years ago, would remain open for another hundred years, if the voters put their trust in him for President.  Ryan went on that the plant closed within the year after the 2008 Election.  Thus blaming President Obama for the closure and shuttering of the auto plant.  However, the GM plant actually closed after the election, but in December 2008, before Obama was inaugurated, and during the George W. Bush Administration.  Secondly, Congressman Ryan was dismissive of President Obama for adding $5-6 trillion  to the national debt during his first term, yet failed to mention that before he became the acclaimed Chairman of the House Budget Committee, the master of crunching and cutting, who authored the Federal Budget Plan bearing his name, as a member of the House of Representatives between 2001-2009, he himself voted for every policy proposal and legislative bill of the Bush 43 Administration, that sent the Federal Budget surplus the Republican Administration inherited into $10 trillion of national debt; from the Drug Prescription Plan, accusing the President of cutting Medicare by $716 billion, when the Ryan Budget Plan caps Medicare spending and costs seniors virtually the same amount of money, to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among them.  Ryan also derided the President for doing nothing about the Simpson-Bowles Debt Commission recommendations, when he himself as a member of the Commission voted against those same recommendations.  The Obama expeditiously responded early this morning with a campaign ad and a line by line fact check of Ryan's speech, par for the course in contemporary American Presidential election campaigns.  In the summation of his address last night, Representative Ryan said, of the Romney-Ryan ticket, "We will not duck the tough issues.  We will lead.  We will not spend the next 4 years blaming others.  We will take responsibility.  We will not try to replace our founding principles.  We will reapply our founding principles".  If the "goodness", and "hope", taking "responsibility one to another", and the "moral creed of our country", of which he spoke, is to be achieved in this Presidential Election campaign, then all four of the Democratic and Republican standardbearers must tell truth to the American people and be accountable for, and honest about, the entire record of their public service whatever the electoral consequences; even and especially when past positions, policies, and practices, contradict current proclamations made during the close, competitive, contest, this campaign certainly is............Fr.  Troy