TV News LIES

This is getting to be a serial adventure with this guy, like Harry Potter -- but way heavier at the nightmare end of things.

So far, Paul Ryan's running his campaign as Veep wannabe about like he does a marathon:  running his own course, running his mouth, and running out his clock on his own sense of time and timing.  For someone who considers himself so fleet of foot, he's certainly being footloose with the truth, getting so often tripped up by it and tangled all around in it.

We've had to low-crawl on our stomachs and chests all week, under razor wire and raking machine gun fire, but we've finally made it, safe:  The Weekend.

Relax, enjoy your coffee, no rush.  There'll be little mention of politics here today, save for a quick thanks to the cosmos for the Tampa-tantrum finally ending.  (Yes, now that you ask, I will have a little something in my coffee, after all.  Whooo-ah.)

Readers periodically ask me some variation on this question: “Why does the press follow every jot and tittle of Iran’s nuclear program, but we never see any stories about Israel’s nuclear weapons capability?”

It’s a fair question. Going back 10 years into Post archives, I could not find any in-depth reporting on Israeli nuclear capabilities, although national security writer Walter Pincus has touched on it many times in his articles and columns.

I spoke with several experts in the nuclear and nonproliferation fields , and they say that the lack of reporting on Israel’s nuclear weapons is real — and frustrating. There are some obvious reasons for this, and others that are not so obvious.

The older the echo, the louder the cry.

And then, there were the waves and waves of echoing cries crashing out in torrents from the tightly-choreographed GOP amateur hour and presidential auditions in Tampa, where everyone's dance steps are painstakingly mapped out in lockstep, on the planks of that sprawling, unbrawling floor.

It is an unusual Tampa-tantrum, this gathering, but one bearing many old echoes.

Peculiar, it was, not having George W. Bush, the previous Republican occupier of the White House, slide on by to cut some conversational brush with us, and remind us how fine those eight years were.  But, the taint of epic disaster lingers among those echoes, so -- please:  No reason to drop by.

Based on news reports we're all seeing, hearing, and reading, there is an epic amount of hand-wringing going on in every media office, cubicle, and cubbyhole.

It's especially impressive that so many intricate, flailing hand motions can be maintained, all while your feet and legs are dancing as fast as they possible can, all around not saying what you mean.

You see, Paul Ryan has been using the English language again.  As usual, he is not interested in using that language to shed any light on plans and facts, but on maiming and hiding them as best he can.

You may be noticing some of these pieces feel as if you've read them before.  In a manner of speaking, you have.  It's on the order of one-size-fits-all, since any lie fits almost any Republican, and vice-versa.

Today's example:  The Romney campaign is running an ad about welfare that uses absolutely no facts -- just lies. Nothing but lies.  The campaign says it's their most effective ad yet, and no, they're not at all concerned the ad has no basis whatever in fact.

A Romney pollster was quoted as saying,  "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."  That level of outlandish, outrageous behavior is simply stunning -- lying, then bragging about it, and then being proud of it, too.