Michael Ryan Repeats Debunked Flag Pin Lie

Re: "Giving Freedom a Miss" from the November 10th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Michael Ryan repeated the debunked lie that Obama resisted wearing a pin of the American flag on his suit. This is a lie originating with Fox News, and during the presidential campaign conservatives made a big deal about whether or not Obama was wearing a flag pin, even though most of them never wear a flag pin. I bet Mr. Ryan's never worn one. Gee, how un-American. Maybe Billy Morris should fire him for being so unpatriotic.

Nevertheless, the above picture proves that Obama doesn't resist wearing a flag pin.

Obama has also never made a speech in a foreign land, or in America, bashing America as Mr. Ryan falsely claims.

It's quite obvious that Mr. Ryan is an unabashed liar.

Mr. Ryan criticizes President Obama for not traveling to Europe and making a speech at the ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. He did send a videotaped message which, I think is good enough.

Yesterday, on NPR, a historian was reading from President H.W. Bush's diary. The diary entry from 1989 shows that Bush was trying to find a way to slow down events leading to the end of the Cold War. Republicans were against ending the Cold War because they knew it would decrease defense profits. Mostly, Bush didn't like the fall of the Berlin Wall because Gorbachev was making him look bad. Gorbachev did more to end the Cold War than any American.

As usual, Mr. Ryan is simply full of shit.

The Augusta Chronicle editorial page Consists of Just a Pack of Lies

Re: "Obama's Flawed Fox Hunt," from the October 22nd edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Michael Ryan wrote that the Obama administration..."wants to silence dissent and destroy dissenters at home. Ground zero is Fox News."

This statement is a ridiculous lie. The Obama administration is rightfully pointing out that Fox news is little more than a propaganda arm of the republican party. They aren't out to crush dissent.

In this editorial Mr. Ryan once again brings out the tired old whine about how the rest of the mainstream media is liberal. This is mostly untrue as well. The mainstream media is owned by big corporations with pro-conservative agendas. Therefore, journalists are constrained to report in a way that's limited to stay within conservative and centrist ideologies. The mainstream media cites conservative think tanks much more often than liberal think tanks. And although journalists tend to be liberal on social issues, when it comes to economic issues most of them are conservative.

Later in this editorial, Mr. Ryan redundantly repeats the charge he makes in his first paragraph when he writes, "it is highly unusual for a U.S. administration to launch an authoritarian vendetta against an individual news station." This is utter nonsense. The Obama administration has not outlawed Fox news, they've not arrested Fox News employees, they've not even sent the IRS to audit them.

It's apparent that Mr. Ryan just likes making things up. Moreover his claim that the mainstream news has a "left of center oligopoly that has not reflected public opinion" is completely unsupported. He gives no examples of liberal media bias and ignores a recent Washington Post poll that shows that only 20% of Americans identify themselves as republicans. When push comes to shove on such issues as health care, social security, and the environment, the public is overwhelmingly liberal.

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Mr. Ryan's lies are not the only ones appearing on his editorial page. Today, Robert Smock (a regular, contributing, conservative shmuck) adds his lies to those of the editorial page editor. He wrote that Obama took a fairly mild recession and worsened it with taxing the rich. That's just a stupid lie. Obama reduced most people's taxes. The recession was already severe when Obama took office, and the vast majority of Americans understand this. Mr. Smock claims that voters have buyers remorse, but this is just not true either. Obama currently has a 55% approval rating. It's republicans who are sinking in the polls right now, probably due to their irrational and corrupt opposition to health care reform.

On yesterday's editorial page two columnists that regularly run on this page, Cal Thomas and Walter Williams, began both of their columns with ridiculous lies.

Mr. Thomas wrote that "the greatest generation lived within their means." Actually, the biggest national debt in U.S. history occurred during the "greatest generation," due to World War II. To begin a column with such a lie destroys his credibility, but it's been evident to me for a long time that Mr. Thomas is not a very smart man and has little credibility to begin with. He believes fairy tales should be taught in science class.

Mr. Williams is a free market fanatic. In his column yesterday he listed "anti-government" as a good quality for an American to have. Conservatives claim to hate government so much that they don't seem to believe in it at all. Maybe they should stay out of trying to run it then. Mr. Ryan once wrote when criticizing the democrats, "most alarmingly, they believe in government." So if conservatives don't believe in government, what do they belive in? Anarchy?

Mr. Williams falsely claimed that the U.S. is the "most prosperous nation in mankind's entire history." There are about ten nations on earth that have higher standards of living than the U.S. I pointed this out to Mr. Williams once, and he admitted I was right, and he was wrong, yet he's still telling this lie.

Michael Ryan Whines again about Leftist Pundits Giving Tit for Tat

Re: "Attacking with Acid," from the Augusta Chronicle editorial page of October 16th.

Just 12 days ago, in an unsigned column I commented on here, Mr. Ryan was complaining that the left was guilty of name-calling. The left is only guilty of giving the right some of its own medicine, and apparently, this causes Mr. Ryan to whine regularly about it, because here again is another column crying about how vicious left wing pundits are. Mr. Ryan must be running out of ideas, if he so frequently returns to this subject.

Today, Mr. Ryan took issue with Keith Olbermann when he made Michelle Malkin one of his "Worst Persons in the World." He called Ms. Malkin a "mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascisitic, without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed up bag of meat with lip-stick on it."

Of course, Mr. Ryan completely leaves out the reason why Mr. Olbermann attacked her. Ms. Malkin falsely accused Ms. Carney-Nunez of writing and directing the "Obama Song," that elementary school children sang in New Jersey. You know, the one that's got conservatives so hot under the collar about indoctrination, that they're sending protestors to the school to frighten the children. It turns out Ms. Carney-Nunez had nothing to do with the song, but as a result of Ms. Malkin's false accusation, she's received death threats and hundreds of pieces of hate mail.

Taken in context, Mr. Olbermann's criticism of Ms. Malkin is justifiable. Mr. Ryan's a Christian who has attended his fair share of Sunday school classes. I'm sure he's aware of the evils of bearing false witness.

Mr. Ryan then blames liberals for derailing Rush Limbaugh's bid to become part owner of the Rams. This is entirely false. It's the conservative owners of the other NFL teams who didn't want to have such a polarizing individual causing controversy for their milk-toast product.

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Oh and Mr. Ryan just happened to run Ms. Malkin's column today--"Who's Behind the White House War on Fox News? Corruptocrats."

Once again, her column is full of outright falsehoods. She claims Fox is the one news outlet not in President Obama's pocket. To support this ridiculous, unfounded argument, she cites the example of CNN fact-checking a Saturday Night Live skit that was critical of the President. She obviously didn't watch the segment--her source must have been some other conservative pundit. I did watch that segment. CNN sided with the Saturday Night Live skit, not President Obama.

Furthermore, she claims the "press gurus" keep Obama from looking thuggish. Thuggish? There's nothing thuggish at all about the Obama administration, except for maybe in her own paranoid dreams that she shares with the Glenn Becks of the world.

Her case that the Obama administration is full of corruptocrats because a few worked on a failed re-election bid for ex-Senator Daschle is also weak and generally unfounded.

She finishes off with another false claim--that "conservatives are reveling in the left's hysteria over Fox News Channel's dominance." Fox News hardly dominates the media. Compared to the combined ratings of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC, its ratings are minuscule. And its demographic is pretty much limited to old, white conservatives.