Shame, apparently, is overrated.

Let me say this for the bazillionth time: Facts matter! It is not possible to find a solution to a problem unless you take time to assemble the facts about the problem. American politics has apparently gone down the rabbit hole with Alice. Here's what Michael Cooper said in his NY Times column Facts take a beating in acceptance speeches:

"The two speeches — peppered with statements that were incorrect or incomplete — seemed to signal the arrival of a new kind of presidential campaign, one in which concerns about fact-checking have been largely set aside."

"The growing number of misrepresentations appear to reflect a calculation in both parties that shame is overrated, and that no independent arbiters command the stature or the platform to hold the campaigns to account in the increasingly polarized and balkanized media firmament. Any unmasking of the lies or distortions, the thinking goes, rarely seeps into the public consciousness."

"Representative Paul D. Ryan used his convention speech on Wednesday to fault President Obama for failing to act on a deficit-reduction plan that he himself had helped kill. He chided Democrats for seeking $716 billion in Medicare cuts that he too had sought. And he lamented the nation’s credit rating — which was downgraded after a debt-ceiling standoff that he and other House Republicans helped instigate."

"And Mitt Romney, in his acceptance speech on Thursday night, asserted that President Obama’s policies had “not helped create jobs” and that Mr. Obama had gone on an “apology tour” for America. He also warned that the president’s Medicare cuts would “hurt today’s seniors,” claims that have already been labeled false or misleading."

Cooper points out that both sides are doing it: "In recent weeks, the Romney campaign has broadcast television advertisements leveling the widely debunked assertion that Mr. Obama had gutted the work requirements for welfare recipients. The Obama campaign, for its part, ran a deceptive ad saying that Mitt Romney had “backed a bill that outlaws all abortion, even in case of rape and incest,” although he currently supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.?"

The amazing part is that they apparently do not care if they are caught. The Washington Post reported earlier this week that "Yesterday, at an ABC News panel, Mitt Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Apparently the campaigns are going with their alternate views of reality thinking that their base will believe what they're told because the base WANTS to believe these kinds of things and the folks who don't believe it won't vote for them anyway. 

You know things are out of hand when Sally Kohn of Fox News calls Ryan's speech "an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech."

Here's a summary of the fact-checking for Paul Ryan's speech:

• Ryan said Obama broke a promise by not saving a GM plant in Janesville, Wis. But PolitiFact could find no evidence that Obama explicitly made such a promise and, more importantly, the plant closed before Obama was even sworn in.

• Ryan chastised Obama for creating a bipartisan debt commission and doing nothing with its findings. But asTalking Points Memo points out, Ryan was on that commission—and voted against it, as did the panel's other Republicans.
• Ryan attacked Obama for the S&P's downgrade of America's sovereign credit rating. Which is rich, writes Brett LoGiurato of Business Insider, because the S&P specifically said that it downgraded the rating "because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues."
• He repeated the Romney campaign's frequent assertion that Obama "funneled" $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for ObamaCare. Actually, the Affordable Care Act reduces payments to health care providers, not Medicare's budget.
• In another oft-repeated distortion, Ryan said Obama wanted to credit the government with the private sector's successes. "That isn't what the president said. Period," Kohn writes.
• The speech also gave Mitt Romney credit for bringing up household income as governor of Massachusetts. That's only half-true, PolitiFact rules: Adjust for inflation, and income actually decreased.
• Near the end, Ryan described protecting the poor as the "greatest of all responsibilities." According to TPM, two-thirds of the cuts in his budget proposal come from programs that help the poor.

How did Mitt Romney do? Here's a link to the Washington Post fact check of his speech:

Fact checking Mitt Romney's acceptance speech (Washington Post)

Although the "fairness doctrine" no longer applies on radio and TV, we will fact check the Democratic convention a week from now.