Ryan: Boastful or Lying?

Or is there a difference?

Mitt Romney's running mate told his hometown newspaper that he had scaled 'close to 40' of Colorado's 54 'fourteeners' mountains, each of which is at least 14,000ft tall.

Although Mr Ryan made this claim three years ago, it is now under scrutiny after he admitted on Saturday that he hasn't run a marathon in under three hours, as he had boasted last month on a radio show broadcast across the U.S.

In case you've forgotten, Paul "Rosie Ruiz" Ryan shaved more than an hour off his best marathon time, claiming to run in the "high twos" when, in fact, he didn't break four hours.

I am sure that certain Republican apologists will weigh in that this is small beer.

I disagree.

First off, every one that I know who has run a marathon knows their finishing time. If they ran more than one. they know their best time. Changing a four-plus hour time into a time under three hours isn't a matter of a foggy memory. It is lying.

And so is the one where Ryan claims to be some kind of whiz of a mountain climber. It speaks to his lack of character. It speaks to his contempt of both the public, who he figures will swallow down any lie he serves up, and to the press, who he thinks will just regurgitate it unchallenged.

Besides being a liar about his own athletic prowess, Ryan is pretty much a liar about being a deficit hawk. He didn't care about the deficit when he voted for Medicare Part D. He didn't care about the deficit when he voted repeatedly to fund the Iraq and Afghan Wars without a single move to pay for those wars.

No, Ryan only became concerned about the deficit when the Tea Party began parading around with their guns. He is the exemplar of a cowardly, soulless politician who waits to see which way the parade is going before rushing to get to the front of it.