For weeks, political pundits and journalists — a lot not known for niceties — have treated Paul Ryan’s comments like they were delicate little finger sandwiches.

Dan Amira wrote an excellent article for New York Magazine saying that Ryan’s campaign strategy is to ignore the facts and just attack. He’s relying on the public’s ignorance, Amira says.

Maybe no one wants to use the L-word out of civility, but where does that leave the nation? Maybe it’s time to clarify the truth, even if it means calling the Republican VP candidate a liar, starting with his attack on President Obama during last night’s Republican National Convention. Ryan blurred fact with more fiction than a supermarket tabloid.

The line about a GM plant in Wisconsin closing after Obama said he would try to keep it open was an incredible distortion. Obama made the statement while he was campaigning in 2008, but the plant had already closed by the time he was in the Oval Office.

Much of Ryan’s tale-telling last night was not new.

Contrary to Ryan’s assertion, the stimulus bill did create jobs. And Ryan’s Wisconsin constituents were some of the bill’s beneficiaries.

And if Ryan thought Obama should have acted on the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles debt-commission’s report, why did he vote against its recommendations? Ryan didn't even say he was on the commission.

And then there’s his claim that Obama is raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare, which is nonsense. That’s especially hypocritical, since Ryan made the same recommendation in his budget plan.

NPR interviewed some young college women yesterday. They giggled about Ryan’s looks like sixth-grade bobbysoxers. But they knew nothing about his views on women’s health, rape, and abortion.

But they had heard Ryan say that he’ll help them get rid of their student debt, and that's all they think they need to know. I wonder whether they know that he's been talking about cutting support to students: cutting Pell Grants and reducing access to to low-interest loans.