Wisconsin media getting wise to Paul Ryan lies

After weeks of near-coronation of home-state-pol-gone-bigtime Paul Ryan, criticisms are finally creeping into Wisconsin media's coverage in the wake of his widely panned, lie-filled speech to the RNC on Wednesday.

Shortly after the speech, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel PolitiFact reviewed three statements from Ryan's RNC talk and a fourth Ryan assertion, giving the bunch two "false" ratings, one "mostly false" and one "half true."

The paper's editorial this morning, while focused more on Mitt Romney's speech ("Romney's shifting record remains a problem for him"), noted in euphemisms for "lying" also cropping up in other media, that:

"...his (Ryan's) speech was littered with loose talk..it was marred by how often he shaded the truth."

Is the bloom starting to come off the Ryan Rose at the state's biggest paper? Nice to see some fact checking and critical thinking of homie Ryan finally.

Over in Madison, in the Wisconsin State Journal, a conservative daily, a story carried the headline, "Fact flub in speech calls Ryan's credibility into question," noting:

""The risk for Rep. Ryan is he's a new face, to be sort of caught in those misstatements, it will raise questions about his character, and whether he's ready to play at this level,' said Joel Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and an expert on the U.S. vice presidency."

And the reliably liberal (and mostly online, not print, these days) Cap Times, found that Romney trumped Ryan in his speech -- in the number of lies he told:

"But anyone who thought that Paul Ryan was going to win the liar's contest at the convention wasn't counting on Mitt Romney."

Clearly the Romney/Ryan machine, with its Wisconsin Walker allies, will work the media, try to spin Ryan back into their good graces. As will the smooth-talking Ryan himself.

But with the avalanche of national criticisms of Ryan's speech-a-lyin', and non-partisan fact checks ripping his speech, perhaps Wisconsin media will put aside its milk-colored glasses and keep reporting the truth of what Ryan is saying.