Last seen blaming “urban” voters (you know who he’s talking about) for his and Mitt Romney’s bitter November defeat, Rep. Paul Ryan returned to the prevaricating ways he made famous throughout the campaign on Tuesday. There were his silly lies about his marathon time, of course, and perhaps more serious, his serial lies in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., last August, on welfare, GM restructuring and the 2009 stimulus bill.  It’s hard to know exactly what words to use to describe his campaign appearance “helping” at a soup kitchen that turned out to be a photo op showing him scrubbing already clean pots and pans, but “honest” isn’t one of them.

Now Ryan is trying to squirm out of the lasso in which the president captured him in his inaugural address Monday. “The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us,” Obama said with indignation. “They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”

Everyone who followed the 2012 campaign knew Obama was talking about Ryan as surely as if he’d said his name.