In his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president, Mitt Romney repeated a charge he’s made before: that Obama has traveled the world apologizing for America. 
 
 
 
 "I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour. President Obama began with an apology tour. America, he said, had dictated to other nations. No, Mr. President, America has freed other nations from dictators," Romney said. 
 
 
 
 We first fact-checked this claim back in 2010, when Romney published a book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. 
 
 
 
 Obama’s apology tour, Romney wrote, "is his way of signaling to foreign countries and foreign leaders that their dislike for America is something he understands and that is, at least in part, understandable. There are anti-American fires burning all across the globe; President Obama's words are like kindling to them." 
 
 
 
 "In his first nine months in office, President Obama has issued apologies and criticisms of America in speeches in France, England, Turkey, and Cairo; at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the United Nations in New York City. He has apologized for what he deems to be American arrogance, dismissiveness, and derision; for dictating solutions, for acting unilaterally, and for acting without regard for others; for treating other countries as mere proxies, for unjustly interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, and for feeding anti-Muslim sentiments; for committing torture, for dragging our feet on global warming and for selectively promoting democracy." 
 
 
 
 It’s a common theme for some anti-Obama websites and commentators. But is it accurate? 
 
 
 
 Obama’s early travels and remarks 
 
 
 
 We looked at the seven separate speeches Romney mentioned in his book as apologies. (We've compiled those passages in a separate document.) 
 
 
 
 At times, Obama uses an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand formulation that he tends to employ right before he talks about two sides coming together. 
 
 
 
 At a town hall meeting in France in 2009, for example, Obama encouraged Europe to work with the United States, and admitted that the United States "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." But he immediately said that Europe has been guilty of a "casual" and "insidious" anti-Americanism. 
 
 
 
 At a major address to the United Nations, Obama said, "I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. And this has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for collective inaction." 
 
 
 
 At a speech in Cairo on relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world, Obama got very close to regretting decades-old U.S. actions in Iran. But then he immediately countered with criticism of Iran. He did not make a formal expression of regret, but suggested both countries simply "move forward." 
 
 
 
 Looking back at those 2009 speeches, we noticed that Obama was most conciliatory when discussing torture and detention at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Typically, Obama would say that the U.S. must always stay true to its ideals, and that's why Obama "unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year." 
 
 
 
 Apologies -- or diplomatic language? 
 
 
 
 In 2010, we quizzed several experts about whether Obama had apologized. Here’s a brief recap of what they had to say (read more here): 
 
 
 
 • Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy analyst with the the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Obama was definitely apologizing. He co-wrote an analysis on the topic: "Barack Obama's Top 10 Apologies: How the President Has Humiliated a Superpower." 
 
 
 
 "Apologizing for your own country projects an image of weakness before both allies and enemies," Gardiner said. "It sends a very clear signal that the U.S. is to blame for some major developments on the world stage. This can be used to the advantage of those who wish to undermine American global leadership." 
 
 
 
 • John Murphy, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studies presidential rhetoric and political language. He said Obama used conciliatory language for diplomatic purposes, not apologizing. 
 
 
 
 "It's much more a sense of establishing of reciprocity," Murphy said. "Each side says, okay, we haven't done great, but we have a new president and we're going to make a fresh start and move forward. I don't think that's an apology." 
 
 
 
 • Lauren Bloom, an attorney and business consultant, wrote the book, The Art of the Apology, advising businesses and individuals on when to apologize and how to do it. 
 
 
 
 She said Obama's words fell short of an apology, mostly because he didn't use the words "sorry" or "regret." "I think to make an effective apology, the words 'I'm sorry' or 'we're sorry' always have to be there," Bloom said. 
 
 
 
 Obama's remarks were really non-apologies, and they're not good in business or personal relationships, Bloom said. The one area where they can be useful: international diplomacy. 
 
 
 
 "Gov. Romney is trying to appeal to the inner John Wayne of his readers, and that has a certain emotional appeal," Bloom said. "For the rest of us, a level assessment of less-than-perfect human behavior is perfectly reasonable." 
 
 
 
 • We spoke with Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, a professor who tracked international human rights issues via the website Political Apologies and Reparations. Many of the apologies in the database relate to genocide or slavery. 
 
 
 
 "To say the United States will not torture is not an apology, it is a statement of intent," Howard-Hassman said. "A complete apology has to acknowledge something was wrong, accept responsibility, express sorrow or regret and promise not to repeat it." 
 
 
 
 Obama's Cairo address in particular was a means of reaching out to the Islamic world, not an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, she said. 
 
 
 
 "Whether he's apologizing or not, he's saying 'I respect your society and I respect your customs.' Maybe that's what Romney considers an apology, that gesture of respect," she said. "But a gesture of respect is not an apology." 
 
 
 
 Actual apologies 
 
 
 
 In the years since we first looked into this matter, Obama or someone in his administration has formally apologized for U.S. actions. In 2012, Obama apologized for the accidental burning of copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. Obama sent the apology in a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Officials hoped the formal apology would quell violent reactions against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 
 
 
 
 A few months later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized to Pakistan for a Nov. 26, 2011, incident involving the death of Pakistani troops. The apology was made as part of an effort to re-open supply routes to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 
 
 
 
 We should note that these apologies came toward the end of Obama’s first term, while Romney said Obama "began" his presidency with an apology tour. 
 
 
 
 Our ruling 
 
 
 
 Romney said Obama began his presidency "with an apology tour." 
 
 
 
 But a review of Obama’s foreign travels and remarks during his early presidency showed no evidence to support such a blunt and disparaging claim. (In later years, we found two formal apologies, but they were not at the start of his presidency and not part of a tour.) 
 
 
 
 While Obama's speeches contained some criticisms of past U.S. actions, he typically combined those passages with praise for the United States and its ideals, and he frequently mentioned how other countries had erred as well. We found not a single, full-throated apology in the bunch. 
 
 
 
 Calling those remarks "an apology tour" is a ridiculous charge. So we rate his statement Pants on Fire. ||||| 141 days ago 
 
 (CNN) – Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney criticized planned cuts to the U.S. defense budget Thursday night, accusing President Barack Obama of weakening future American power. 
 
 "His trillion-dollar cuts to our military will eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, and also put our security at greater risk," the former Massachusetts governor said in his acceptance speech to the GOP national convention in Tampa, Florida. The line was met with boos by the delegates in the convention hall. ||||| Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
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 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. 
 
 But an interesting question unfolding is whether there is a tipping point at which a candidate becomes so associated with falsehoods that it becomes part of his public persona — which hampered Vice President Al Gore during his run for president in 2000, when his misstatements on the campaign trail were used to stoke the perception that he could not be trusted in general. 
 
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 In the case of Mr. Ryan’s speech, the jury is still out. It was received rapturously by the Republican Party faithful, but his many questionable assertions ensured that much of the analysis on Thursday focused on his accuracy more than his acumen. 
 
 The Obama campaign fanned the flames with a Web video mocking Mr. Ryan, showing anchors from CNN and Fox News questioning some of his statements. And Stephanie Cutter, the president’s deputy campaign manager, was blunt. “There’s no delicate way to say this: last night Paul Ryan lied, repeatedly, knowingly and brazenly,” she said. 
 
 Here are some of the misleading section of their convention speeches: 
 
 Deficit Commission 
 
 One of Mr. Ryan’s most pointed attacks on Mr. Obama was on the deficit. “He created a new bipartisan debt commission,” Mr. Ryan noted. “They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing.” 
 
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 Left unsaid: Mr. Ryan served on that commission himself, and his opposition to its final proposals helped seal its fate. The panel, known as the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission, made a number of recommendations that Mr. Ryan ultimately opposed on the grounds that they would have raised some taxes while failing to cut enough from health programs. His dismissal of the plan was seen as a significant blow to its chances of success, since it soured other House Republicans on it. 
 
 Credit Rating 
 
 In his attack on the president’s time in office, Mr. Ryan said: “It began with a perfect AAA credit rating for the United States. It ends with the downgraded America.” 
 
 When Standard & Poor’s lowered the nation’s credit rating, it was in large part because of the standoff last year over the debt ceiling — which needed to be raised so the government could borrow money to pay for spending that Congress had already approved. The White House had asked Congress to simply raise the debt ceiling; Mr. Ryan and House Republicans balked at doing so without reaching a deal on significant spending cuts. The ensuing standoff took the nation to the brink of default. 
 
 In its statement explaining the downgrade, Standard & Poor’s wrote that “the political brinkmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policy making becoming less stable, less effective and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.” 
 
 Medicare 
 
 Mr. Ryan spoke out forcefully against the “$716 billion funneled out of Medicare by President Obama,” without noting that his own past budget plans had counted on the same savings. And he pledged to protect Medicare without explaining how the Romney-Ryan plan would change it. Mr. Romney said that the Medicare cuts would “hurt today’s seniors.” In fact, the savings would come not from trimming benefits for current recipients, but from cutting the projected growth in reimbursements to hospitals and insurers over the next decade. The Medicare debate is shaping up as central to the election: Democrats say that the Romney-Ryan plan to reshape Medicare would force future beneficiaries to pay more for their health care, while Republicans fault Mr. Obama for cutting $716 billion in its projected growth. 
 
 Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have proposed limiting the government’s open-ended financial commitment to Medicare. Under their plan, the government would contribute a fixed amount on behalf of each beneficiary, and future beneficiaries could use that money to buy private insurance or to help pay for coverage under the traditional Medicare program. It would apply only to people currently under 55. 
 
 Mr. Ryan’s earlier plans called for capping the rate at which Medicare spending would grow — which analysts from groups including the Kaiser Family Foundation found would lead to higher out-of-pocket costs for future beneficiaries. The Romney campaign now says that their plan would work differently from Mr. Ryan’s original proposal, and would have the flexibility to raise the proposed cap on spending if it does not keep up with costs. 
 
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 The $716 billion cut to Medicare that Mr. Obama made will reduce payments to health maintenance organizations and hospitals and other health care providers. Mr. Ryan initially counted on the same savings in his budget plans. 
 
 G.M.’s Janesville Plant 
 
 Mr. Ryan appeared to criticize Mr. Obama for the closing of a General Motors plant in Mr. Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis. — a decision made before the president was elected and before his bailout of the auto industry, which was credited with saving a number of other factories. He noted that Mr. Obama had visited the plant in 2008 and said, “I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another hundred years.” 
 
 “Well, as it turned out,” Mr. Ryan said, “that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.” 
 
 As a candidate, Mr. Obama did give an economic policy speech at the Janesville plant in February 2008. The decision to close the plant was made several months later — as can be seen by a June 2008 letter from Mr. Ryan urging G.M. to reconsider. 
 
 It took some time for the plant to shut down, and some work continued there after Mr. Obama was sworn in as president. 
 
 The Ryan campaign said Thursday that the issue was not when the plant stopped production, but the fact that it has not reopened — and pointed to accounts of an Obama campaign statement from the fall of 2008 in which he said, “I will lead an effort to retool plants like the G.M. facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America." 
 
 While Mr. Obama bailed out the auto industry, saving jobs, and included money in the stimulus for “green” energy jobs, the Janesville plant did not benefit from his moves. 
 
 The Apology Tour 
 
 In his floor speech, Mr. Romney repeated his widely debunked charge that Mr. Obama had gone on an “apology tour” on America’s behalf — an accusation he feels so strongly about that he laid out his own worldview in a 2010 book he titled “No Apology.” 
 
 But independent fact checkers have called the accusation a distortion, and it is hard to find evidence that Mr. Obama ever said he was sorry for the United States. Even in his speeches after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Obama offered a strong defense of American policies, including the war in Afghanistan, which was growing increasingly unpopular in the rest of the world. ||||| TAMPA, Fla. — In a speech heavy on anecdotal history but short on policy details, Mitt Romney avoided major falsehoods in making his case to the American public while accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. 
 
 Even a key Democratic strategist, Bill Burton, a former press secretary for President Obama, tweeted shortly after the speech ended: “Romney actually avoided almost all of the lies from Ryan’s speech.” That was a reference to Rep. Paul Ryan’s address the night before, which we found to contain a number of false and misleading claims. 
 
 In Romney’s case, we found a few bits of exaggeration and puffery. He exaggerated the loss in family income that has occurred under Obama, for example, including 13 months of losses that actually occurred before the president took office. And he made a back-handed accusation that Obama has raised taxes on middle-class taxpayers, when in fact the president has lobbied for and signed several temporary reductions. 
 
 Likewise, we found some misleading claims from convention speakers who preceded Romney on the final day of the GOP convention. For example, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich repeated the bogus claim that Obama has “gutted” the welfare overhaul law, when all he has done is allow states to seek flexibility to experiment with applying the law’s work requirement. 
 
 And we even caught a mistake by actor/director Clint Eastwood, who put in a surprise appearance but wasn’t fully briefed on the proper way to spin statistics about unemployment. 
 
 Note to Readers Our deputy managing editor, Robert Farley, is on the scene in Tampa at the convention center. This story was written with the help of the entire staff, based in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Next week, we will dispatch our managing editor, Lori Robertson, to Charlotte, N.C., for the Democratic convention. We intend to vet the major speeches at both conventions for factual accuracy, applying the same standards to both. 
 
 Middle Class ‘Crushed’ 
 
 One section in particular drew our attention. Romney declared that “this Obama economy has crushed the middle class,” and rattled off some horrible-sounding statistics. But we found some of them to be exaggerated or in need of added context. 
 
 Romney: In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before. Nearly one out of six Americans is living in poverty. Look around you. These are not strangers. These are our brothers and sisters, our fellow Americans. 
 
 Family income: Family income has not fallen by $4,000 under Obama, as Romney implied. That figure comes from a study by Sentier Research, and while most of the drop occurred after the president took office in January 2009, some of it (the study didn’t say exactly how much) occurred in the 13 months before that. 
 
 The study measured the drop in family income starting in December 2007, when the recession officially started, and ending in June 2012. The study noted that income has fallen more since the economic recovery officially began (in June 2009) than during the recession itself. 
 
 Poverty: It’s true that “more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before,” as Romney said. But it’s also true that there are more Americans, period. 
 
 The poverty rate — that is, the percentage of all Americans in poverty — is nowhere near a record, even for the relatively brief historical period since 1959, when the government first started measuring poverty. 
 
 The raw number of individuals in poverty in 2010 was 46.2 million, according to the most recent Census figures. And the poverty rate went up that year to 15.1 percent — the highest since 1993. But as Census noted, that “was 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available.” Furthermore, Census noted that the number in poverty had increased for four consecutive years, so the rise started well before Obama took office. 
 
 Gasoline: Romney said “gasoline prices have doubled” since Obama took office. That’s correct, but only because gasoline prices were unusually depressed when Obama was inaugurated due to the recession and financial crisis. 
 
 The average price for regular gasoline was $3.78 last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a bit more than double the $1.84 average on the week Obama was sworn in. But the average exceeded $4 a gallon for seven weeks during the summer of 2008, and it has never reached $4 under Obama. 
 
 Premiums: Romney said that “health insurance premiums are higher” under Obama. But premiums have been going up for years. Experts say the federal health care law was responsible for only a small part of the recent hike in employer-based plans. 
 
 The average cost of an employer-sponsored family insurance plan went up 9 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual survey. Several independent experts told us that rising medical costs were still the main culprit. The health care law, they said, was responsible for 1 point to 3 points of that 9-point increase. 
 
 And the reason for that is improved coverage. Insurance companies are required under the law to include free preventive care, coverage for adult children up to age 26, coverage for children regardless of preexisting conditions, and an increase in annual limits. 
 
 Rising premiums are nothing new. Between 2001 and 2011, family premiums for employer-sponsored plans went up 113 percent. Year to year the size of the change in premiums has varied, but it has always been in one direction: up. 
 
 Food: Romney said “food prices are higher” under Obama, and that’s also true, though not by a lot. The index measuring the average consumer price of all food and beverages (including restaurant meals) stood just 6.2 percent higher last month than it was when Obama took office, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
 Another Middle-Class Falsehood 
 
 Romney said “unlike President Obama, I will not raise taxes on the middle class.” But Obama has not raised taxes on middle-income taxpayers, and, in fact, he has targeted tax cuts and credits to benefit them. 
 
 Among the president’s major tax cuts and credits: 
 
 Making Work Pay Tax Credit . For two years, 2009 and again in 2010, the stimulus law provided up to $400 to individuals earning up to $75,000, and up to $800 to couples earning up to $150,000. 
 
 . For two years, 2009 and again in 2010, the stimulus law provided up to $400 to individuals earning up to $75,000, and up to $800 to couples earning up to $150,000. Payroll tax cut . When the Making Work Pay credit expired, Obama successfully pushed Congress to cut the employee portion of the Social Security payroll tax in 2011 from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The tax is applied to the first $110,100 of wages, and it resulted in an annual maximum savings of $2,200. The tax cut was extended through 2012. 
 
 . When the Making Work Pay credit expired, Obama successfully pushed Congress to cut the employee portion of the Social Security payroll tax in 2011 from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The tax is applied to the first $110,100 of wages, and it resulted in an annual maximum savings of $2,200. The tax cut was extended through 2012. American Opportunity Tax Credit. Also part of the stimulus, this is a college tuition tax credit. It modified and expanded the existing Hope Credit. It was intended for two years, but was extended through 2012. The full credit of $2,500 is available for individuals earning $80,000 or less and families earning $160,000 or less. The Hope Credit maximum was $1,800 in 2008. 
 
 The Republican nominee did not explain what he meant by his remarks. But some Republicans have claimed that the president’s health care law amounts to a tax on the middle class, because it imposes a penalty on those who do not buy health insurance. But, as we have written before, those arguments are overstated. 
 
 The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 3 million taxpayers earning less than $120,000 will pay an average penalty of $667 by 2016. 
 
 Tax Exaggeration 
 
 Kerry Healey, who served as Romney’s lieutenant governor, boasted that Romney “cut taxes 19 times” as governor. But tax rates remained unchanged under Romney, and Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group, called his tax record “mixed,” because he raised hundreds of millions of dollars by increasing fees and closing loopholes in the corporate tax structure. 
 
 The Romney campaign’s list of 19 tax cuts includes some business tax cuts and a host of relatively minor cuts and credits — including a couple of two-day sales-tax holidays, which Club for Growth dismissed as “gimmicky.” The list also includes such things as a “fire safety tax deduction,” a “motion picture tax credit” and a “historic rehabilitation tax credit.” 
 
 In its white paper on Romney, Club for Growth singled out two tax cuts for praise: legislation he signed to prevent state residents from having to pay $275 million in retroactive capital gains taxes, and another bill that provided property tax relief for seniors. 
 
 But Club for Growth called his record “mixed” because of the new revenue he raised. As we have written before, Romney in his first year raised fees by more than $400 million, and generated another $150 million by closing loopholes. 
 
 Welfare Law ‘Gutted’ 
 
 Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dutifully repeated a meritless Romney claim, asserting that Obama “gutted” the 1990s’ welfare overhaul, and accusing him of “waiving” the law’s work requirement. 
 
 Gingrich: Tragically, President Obama gutted this achievement [welfare reform]. …Obama’s waiving of the work requirements in welfare reform is just one example of his direct repudiation of President Reagan’s values. 
 
 Gingrich didn’t elaborate or supply evidence of how Obama’s actions “gutted” the law. Gingrich would have been particularly qualified to do so — if there was substance to the accusation — since it was he who pushed the welfare bill through Congress when he was speaker and Bill Clinton was president. The fact is, Obama has simply allowed state governors to seek waivers from the law’s requirements if they can propose a more effective way to move people from welfare to work, and show that they can produce that result. Nothing has been waived yet. 
 
 And as we’ve noted, states have persistently fallen far short of achieving the law’s goal of putting at least half of recipients in jobs or job training. When Obama took office, only 29 percent of cash assistance recipients nationally were complying with the work requirement, and that had not changed as of the most recent figures. 
 
 Women-Filled Administration? 
 
 Jane Edmonds, former secretary of Massachusetts’ Department of Workforce Development, cherry-picked statistics to make Romney’s record on appointing women to government positions look better than it is. She wrongly said that the percentage of women in senior-level government jobs went up under Romney, but the figure actually declined slightly. 
 
 Edmonds: One area where he made a positive difference is in improving the representation of women in senior positions in Massachusetts State Government. Before Gov. Romney took office in 2003, women were significantly underrepresented among top roles in government, with 52 percent of the population but just 30 percent of the jobs. Over the next two and a half years, 42 percent of the new appointments made by Governor Romney were women. 
 
 Edmonds’ figures are correct, and they are touted on the website of MassGAP (Massachusetts Government Appointments Project), a bipartisan coalition of women’s groups created in 2002 to increase the number of women appointed to top government positions. As Edmonds said, women made up 52 percent of the state’s population, but in September 2002, they held only 30 percent of top government positions. And 42 percent of Romney’s appointments — 14 of 33 appointments — were women during his first two and a half years as governor. But then the percentage of women being appointed to these jobs slipped, according to a 2007 study by MassGAP and the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. 
 
 Over Romney’s entire tenure as governor, the percentage of female appointments was 31 percent. And overall, the percentage of women in senior-level government positions declined slightly, to 27.6 percent, according to the study. 
 
 The study said the MassGAP effort showed “promising” impact with the high percentage of Romney’s early appointments, but the later appointments didn’t show “a continued commitment to the selection of women for high-level posts.” The gains for women between 2002 and 2006 “were elusive,” the study said. “[W]omen at the end of the Romney administration did not hold a higher percentage of senior-level positions than when he took office.” 
 
 Make My Mistake 
 
 And we don’t want to ignore Clint Eastwood — who, unlike Obama, was not invisible at the convention. 
 
 Eastwood mistakenly said that 23 million Americans are “unemployed.” Actually, the figure is a little more than half that — 12.8 million in July, according to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
 Eastwood didn’t phrase things as artfully as most other convention speakers. The often-used 23 million figure also includes 8.2 million who are employed in part-time jobs but say they are seeking full-time work, the so-called “under-employed.” And it also includes another 2.5 million who say they would like a job and would take one, but haven’t looked for one in the last four weeks. 
 
 We hate to nit-pick one of our favorite actor/directors, who is not all that used to the ways politicians inflate numbers without actually saying something false. (He could have said 23 million who “need work” or “are suffering from lack of jobs” and not been technically wrong.) 
 
 But then, Eastwood was mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., and so he knows something of politics. And other film stars have gone on to run for even higher office. To which we say: Go ahead, make our day. 
 
 — Robert Farley, with Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Ben Finley and Brooks Jackson 
 
 Correction, Sept. 4: Our original story gave figures for the price of regular gasoline that were a few cents too high, both for the start of the Obama administration and for the week prior to the GOP convention. We also said incorrectly that the average price of regular gasoline had exceeded $4 per gallon for eight weeks, rather than seven, during 2008. The data to which we linked in that story were for an average for “all grades” of gasoline, not regular.
– Paul Ryan's campaign speech on Wednesday was almost universally decried for distortions and inaccuracies, and Mitt Romney told his share last night as well. "The two speeches … seemed to signal the arrival of a new kind of presidential campaign," Michael Cooper of the New York Times writes, "one in which concerns about fact-checking have been largely set aside." Obama isn't blameless either; a recent ad said Romney backed a bill to ban all abortion, no exceptions, even though Romney now supports rape and incest exceptions. The whoppers "appear to reflect a calculation in both parties that shame is overrated," Cooper concludes. Indeed, the Washington Post observes, the fact-checkers themselves are now under fire. After the Ryan outcry, conservative sites accused them of "spinning" facts, not checking them. "You might reasonably conclude that PolitiFact is biased," wrote one blogger, noting that the site more often found fault with conservatives. In a post on Romney's speech, FactCheck.org felt compelled to include a note promising that they'd be "applying the same standards" to Democrats' speeches. While we're here, distortions from Romney's speech pointed out by PolitiFact and others included… Romney said that family income had fallen $4,000 since Obama. The figure comes from a study that began in December 2007, well before Obama took office. He accused Obama of raising taxes on the middle class. Actually, Obama has fought for a number of middle class tax breaks, like the payroll tax holiday. He said Obama started his presidency "with an apology tour" around the globe. PolitiFact rated that "pants on fire," calling it "a ridiculous charge." For others check here, and here .