May 16, 2009
Choosing the argument
Who cares how the Pelosi argument comes out. In th meantime, the right wing has what it wants: a distraction from Wilkerson's explosive charge that Cheney ordered torture as part of his plan to lie us into an unnecessary war.
May 14, 2009
May 11, 2009
Cheech and Chong mathematics
For a $50/ounce cannabis tax to produce $1.3 billion in annual revenue for California, each Californian who smokes pot at all would have to average more than 2 joints a day.
April 30, 2009
Condi Rice is not Richard Nixon
She's morally worse. Chris Matthews gets Condi Rice's argument wrong.
April 22, 2009
Cheney's Assertion that Torture Works: Hillary Nails It
Why should anyone pay attention to anything Dick Cheney says?
April 05, 2009
January 31, 2009
November 05, 2008
October 29, 2008
"A gauzy, feel-good commercial"
The McCain folks didn't watch the same 30 minute Obama closing argument I watched.
October 27, 2008
"Incoherent"
Ann Althouse says that John McCain's attempt to paint Barack Obama as a socialist is incoherent, and wonders if McCain is "exhausted or sick." McCain may well be losing it, but that's not the reason he can't make the case. There's no case to be made.
October 26, 2008
College Republicans fingered in Ashley Todd affair
Only the CRs and the Pittsburgh cops had the photo that ran on Drudge, and then around the world.
October 25, 2008
Race, desperation, and Ashley Todd
Could she really have told the same story but with a white assailant?
October 21, 2008
Timeline
Pat McHenry denies saying that liberals "hate real Americans," until the audiotape shows up. Ooops!
October 17, 2008
October 12, 2008
Lowered expectations
Why aren't Sarah Palin's lies about the Troopergate report news? Because by now no one expects her to tell the truth.
October 03, 2008
October 02, 2008
Can't-make-this-stuff-up Dept
"All politicians lie." How often have you heard that line? I just watched a TV news segment about the FDA's decision to ban OTC cold-symptom medicines for children under six. The Big Pharma flack said the ban was unjustified because the medicines are safe for children over 2. (The reporter had just mentioned that OTC cold remedies send 7000 children...
September 22, 2008
Note to Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt calls a conference call to complain about being called a liar. Tells several silly lies. Gets called on it by Ben Smith.
September 20, 2008
The road to nowhere
Newsweek has the detail. The road, with $26 million of your money in it, is almost done. As the mayor points out, you could use it for a 10k: a nice flat paved surface with no risk of traffic.
September 19, 2008
"Yes, thanks," to a dead-end road
The LA Times tells, once again, the story of the Access Road to the Non-Bridge to Nowhere, still being built by Sarah Palin with your money and mine. Think what it says about John McCain that he is so willing to repeat, and keep repeating, a lie that has already been exposed.
September 16, 2008
John McCain, liar extraordinaire
Yes, John McCain is more of a liar than the average politician. He tells more lies, he tells more blatant lies, and he keeps right on telling them after they're exposed as lies. The difference matters.
September 15, 2008
September 14, 2008
If their lips are moving ...
Why bother to lie about crowd sizes? The McCain campaign seems to avoid the truth, just on general principles.
Challenge to David Bernstein
He attacks the New York Times for a story concerning McCain's mendacity. Is he willing to defend McCain in a face-to-face debate?
September 11, 2008
"McCain lies": AP edition
Charles Babington reports (this is the lead): >>>>The "Straight Talk Express" has detoured into doublespeak.
September 09, 2008
August 18, 2008
McCain's Saddleback deception
A Megan McArdle commenter on McCain's shenanigans: "His performance didn't look so good when I suspected the performer was a cheating liar."
August 01, 2008
Joe Klein sees the light
"A few months ago, I wrote that John McCain was an honorable man and he would run an honorable campaign. I was wrong."
July 14, 2008
McCain says: "Slash Social Security benefits"
He wants to close the gap between projected revenues and projected benefits, and he's committed in advance to not increasing revenues.
July 08, 2008
Just to be clear ...
... when John McCain asked Bush the First to "earmark" money for a water project, that wasn't an "earmark."
July 07, 2008
Voodoo economics redux
John McCain is going to fill a $695 billion gap with $20 billion a year in spending cuts. But the press won't come out and call him a liar, or explain that his plan depends on slashing Social Security and Medicare. Obama should say that, and keep saying it.
June 29, 2008
No lower bound
Sullivan says of Krauthammer's latest ravings, "Krauthammer is better than this." False.
June 28, 2008
Political cockroaches
Curious about where the Obama-is-a-Muslim crap came from? So is Danielle Allen of the Institute for Advanced Study. Answer: a couple of Freepers and one of Obama's former political rivals.
June 14, 2008
He contains multitudes
John McCain never changes positions. He just magically goes from position A to position not-A without ever changing.
June 08, 2008
John McCain: One interview, two gaffes
He flatly denies saying what he actually said to a national TV audience just last Tuesday, about how the media had been mistweating poo' liddle Hiwwawy. And he says that his new position that the President may engage in warrantless wiretapping in violation of criminal statutes is no change at all from his earlier position that "Presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is."
June 07, 2008
Strange bedfellows
Glenn Reynolds ought to be embarrassed to be quoting Larry Johnson. And Larry Johnson ought to be embarrassed to be quoted by Glenn Reynolds.
June 05, 2008
May 27, 2008
Scott McClellan to reporters: Suckers!!!!!!!!!!
"... the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House ... he collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise ... "
May 07, 2008
Lunatics all over the place
Jeremiah Wright believes, or at least says, that the US government invented HIV. Glenn Reynolds and Victor Davis Hansen believe, or at least say, that Barack Obama is a socialist.
May 05, 2008
Contempt
By proposing the gas tax holiday, an idea only a fool or an ignoramus could take seriously, Hillary Clinton has advertised to the world that she thinks her voters are easy marks. Some of them probably resent it, or could be encouraged to do so. And the same goes for John McCain in the general election: the press has already more or less announced that the idea is bogus.
May 03, 2008
Ooooops!
Hillary Clinton says her gasoline tax holiday will help farmers, who don't pay tax on fuel used on the farm.
May 02, 2008
The Republican war on science, continued?
For going on eight years now, we have had a White House that profoundly believes that politics trumps reality, and that the Presidency carrries with it the right and the obligation to ignore inconvenient facts. People in the Bush White House say things like: We believe the presidency requires leadership. There are times that a president will take a position...
April 29, 2008
April 24, 2008
April 21, 2008
McCain finds a loophole in McCain-Feingold
... to let his fat-cat friends give him $70k each instead of the $2300 legal limit.
April 20, 2008
March 11, 2008
Too late, the truth about NAFTAgate
Naturally, the lie about what Austan Goolsbee is supposed to have said to the Canadian government has gotten around the world seven times by now, but at last the truth has managed to lace its boots on. Neil Macdonald, the Washington correspondent for the CBC, has the entire timeline. The whole flap started with a political operative for Canada's Tory...
March 08, 2008
The truth hurts
Hillary Clinton's handlers have been padding her foreign-policy resume. Her purported advocacy of action by the US to stop the Rwandan genocide left no trace in any contemporary record, and isn't mentioned in her memoir, in her husband's, or in Madeline Albright's.
March 06, 2008
February 28, 2008
Anatomy of a smear: Obama and NAFTA
No, a senior member of the Obama campaign did not call the Canadian Ambassador to say "never mind" about Obama's call to renegotiate NAFTA. Even CTV's original source has now backed away from that claim: "perhaps a miscommunication." To cover its journalistic butt, CTV is now hinting darkly about a phone call from Austan Goolsbee, not a staffer but an academic adviser to Obama, not to the Ambassador but to someone in the Canadian Consulate-General in Chicago. John McCain, having frankly said he had no idea whether the original story was true, now pretends to believe it, and uses it to question Obama's integrity. Taylor Marsh and Larry Johnson side with McCain. Feh.
February 22, 2008
Straight Talk speak with forked tongue
McCain claimed that his letter to the FCC was designed to get a speedy decision, as desired by both sides to the controversy. But at the time the lawyer for the opponents of the deal denounced it angrily.
January 27, 2008
Can't fool all of the people ...
The Clinton campaign's lies about Obama's record on choice start to come back at them.
January 26, 2008
John McCain, honest and civil?
He tells a flat-out lie about Mitt Romney. Yeah, I know. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But still ...
January 24, 2008
My $1000 is safe
Lots of abusive email so far, but no offer of the "exact quote." The Clintonoids seem to think that if Obama did not say that he "really liked" Republican ideas, and Hillary Clinton asserted that he did say that he "really liked" Republican ideas and that she could provide the "exact quote" to prove it, that's merely a matter of...
January 22, 2008
About those White House emails ...
... yes, they're missing. And on a very interesting pattern of days.
In search of "the exact quote"
I'm still waiting. And I've still got a thousand bucks that the "exact quote" Hillary Clinton promised does not exist.
January 21, 2008
January 15, 2008
January 06, 2008
No sense of decency?
The slimy little so-and-so breaks laws that don't even exist. Ask the Clinton campaign.
January 05, 2008
I suppose you could call this good news
HRC is attacking Obama on abortion (as too wishy-washy) rather than on health care, guns, and crime (as too liberal). But the attacks are false: Obama was carrying out a strategy invented by pro-choice groups when he cast those "present" votes.
January 02, 2008
Concerning mendacity
Yes, there are more black men under 35 behind bars than there are enrolled full-time in four-year colleges. Richard Cohen needs to retract his charge of "mendacity." I'm not holding my breath.
December 22, 2007
Mark Twain on Mark Penn, Mitt Romney, et al.
"An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth."
December 17, 2007
"A liar needs a good memory"
Mark Penn says Billy Shaheen voluntarily resigned from the Clinton campaign. Billy Shaheen says that Billy Shaheen voluntarily resigned from the Clinton campaign. Hillary Rodham Clinton says that Billy Shaheen was fired from the Clinton campaign.
December 15, 2007
Michael Boskin, traitor to his discipline
"Giuliani lies about economics": dog-bites-man. "Stanford economics prof supports his lies" ought to be man-bites-dog. Alas, it isn't.
December 13, 2007
Concerning feasibility
"Zero energy consumption" as a national goal is a physical impossibility. "Zero energy imports" as a national goal is an economic, political, and administrative impossibility. Social constraints are no less real than physical constraints. Promising the impossible is a form of lying.
October 15, 2007
Truth, diplomacy, and genocide
The Armenian genocide is a live political issue only because the Turkish government insists on denying it. Yes, this is an inconvenient time to speak the truth on the matter, but nonetheless it IS the truth.
October 10, 2007
HRC on torture: the "we don't know" evasion
If she pretends she doesn't know whether the Bush Administration is torturing people, she is not actually against torture.
October 02, 2007
Clarence Thomas, again
Why doesn't Anita Hill sue for libel? She might not win, but it would be fun to watch.
September 17, 2007
September 14, 2007
GOP historical canards
No, it's not established fact that Nixon made more impressive arguments that Kennedy in the 1960 debates and only lost because JFK looked better on TV.
August 22, 2007
No, Hillary didn't "support the surge"
Of the top three Democratic contenders, Hillary Rodham Clinton would be my fourth or fifth choice. I think she's the Democratic candidate most likely to allow the Republican to win in an otherwise impossible year, because she will mobilize a Republican base which would otherwise stay home in droves. Worse than that, having her at the top of the ticket...
August 20, 2007
Holocaust denialism at the ADL
The Turkish government massacred of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, says the ADL, but it would be RUDE to call that genocide. Ick.
Glenn Reynolds maintains his standards of accuracy and civility
Anyone who criticizes the Instapundit must be hearing "gibbering voices inside his head."
Gitmo prosecutor finds Moscow Show Trials defendants guilty
When a person still in custody recants his allegations of torture as part of deal to go free, that doesn't really show that the original charges were false, now does it?
Stalinist history, here and there
Russian textbooks are about to become more "patriotic." No doubt Lynne Cheney and her fellow book-burners will be pleased to hear it.
August 12, 2007
President Pants-on-fire and the draft
Bush's new war czar confirms that John Kerry was right: conscription "has always been an option on the table."
August 10, 2007
The Real Difference Between the Parties
EJ Dionne has a superb yet nauseating column about why the Democrats caved on FISA: essentially, the Republicans sprang the issue on them at the last minute, and the Dems worried that if a terrorist attack occurred in August while Congress was out of session, they would get blamed. Matt Stoller glosses this by saying that the Blue Dogs may...
August 08, 2007
Mark Penn has a CONSCIENCE? Tell me another one!
He's used Burson-Marsteller's "conscience clause" to "recuse himself" from the firm's union-busting practice. But there's just one thing: Penn, when he's not playing Svengali to Hillary Clinton's Trilby, is the CEO of Burson-Marsteller. So he gets to decide whether Burson-Marsteller stays in the union-busting business or not. I guess his conscience doesn't extend as far as reducing his income.
July 31, 2007
"Wishing for John Roberts' Death" - NOT!!!
Patterico and Glenn Reynolds accuse either Wonkette or TPM of "hate speech." They're grossly and irresponsibly wrong.
July 19, 2007
Romney: Ignorance is strength
Romney, who once supported age-appropriate sex education, now attacks Obama for supporting age-appropriate sex education. Ignorance is strength
July 16, 2007
July 15, 2007
July 14, 2007
Tillman files
Mark is probably right about the political payoff of using the Tillman coverup as a battlefield on White House secrecy. I'm not sure how it would come out in court, though. Governments at war have historically had enormous authority to conceal and to lie, for many reasons: -to deprive the enemy of knowledge of our decision processes and our state...
The right place to fight
Executive privilege claims in the Pat Tillman case? Is the White House claiming that the President needs to keep confidential the process by which he decided to mislead the public? This is the case to take to court.
July 10, 2007
The Gonzales Denounement--You Heard It Here First
Now that the Washington Post has revealed that Alberto Gonzales perjured himself while testifying before a Senate committee in 2005 (piling on top of his other perjuries), I will now offer the Ultimate Prediction on what will happen. Likely? No. But if it happens, you heard it here first: 1. The House of Representatives will impeach Gonzales. 2. The Senate,...
July 08, 2007
Can he get away with it?
Fred Thompson refuses to confirm or deny lobbying for abortion rights. Can he succeed again in substituting folksy b.s. for a simple answer to a simple question? Maybe.
July 06, 2007
June 13, 2007
June 10, 2007
April 27, 2007
April 24, 2007
April 13, 2007
President Pants-on-Fire
Apparently GWB planned to delay the announcement of the extension of tours of duty in Iraq until he could blame it on the Congressional Democrats.
April 03, 2007
The Pelosi trip, the Israeli connection, and AIPAC
Turns out Pelosi is carrying water for Israel on her Damascus trip. Will AIPAC stand up in her defense? Probably not.
April 02, 2007
Hudathunkit?
The New York Times revisits the market where John McCain took his famous stroll, and finds the actual situation a little more dangerous than the one McCain tried to portray.
February 24, 2007
Blair, Basra, and our "delusional" Veep
Cheney says the Brits are pulling out of Basra because things have gotten better. The experts say, "Bullshit." Delusions, or lies? We report; you decide.
February 20, 2007
Mutual concern
Glenn Reynolds is worried about my mental health; I'm worried about his character disorders. Isn't it nice when this sort of goodwill cuts across ideological boundaries?
February 19, 2007
Challenge update
Tom Maguire responds to my challenge. Yes, VPW's employment status was classified. That being the case, the charges of prosecutorial misconduct against Patrick Fitzgerald fall to the ground.
February 18, 2007
Bill Frist in Democratic dress
A psychiatrist, speaking as a psychiatrist, ought not to purport to diagnose people he hates as a means of attacking them politically.
February 17, 2007
Don Young: let's hang Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln, as a Congressman, opposed the Mexican War and denied the President's right to wage it without Congressional authority.
February 15, 2007
Man bites dog
The Republican Study Committee makes a false charge against Nancy Pelosi: dog-bites-man. National Journal's blog relays the false charge as fact: dog-bites-man. Glenn Reynolds calls "foul" on his own side: man-bites-dog. That's news, and cause for celebration.
February 12, 2007
More fiscal hokum from the right
Yes, the federal budget was in surplus for the month of January: that's when the estimated-tax payments come in. Only a fool or a scoundrel would conclude that the deficit is imaginary
January 28, 2007
Thanks for explaining that
If you think the Bush health plan is puzzling, Stephen Colbert can straighten you out.
January 24, 2007
Military opinion about the war:
Jim Webb's secret source
The wingnuts want to know why Jim Webb thinks that a majority of the military no longer supports the Bush strategy of Iraq. Ummm ... because the Military Times poll says so?
January 23, 2007
Vindication
Cheney and Rove outed Valerie Plame Wilson, working as a CIA agent under non-official cover.
Stanley Fish on the George W. Bush Presidential Library
SMU's refusal to host a George W. Bush Presidential library paid for by his beneficiaries and staffed by his accomplices would "forsake its integrity"? Howzzat again?
January 17, 2007
Budget nonsense from Right Blogistan
Give THIS President rescission authority? I don't think so. And if Glenn Reynolds or any of his followers really believes that the deficit is going to disappear in 18 months, I have $10,000 that says he's wrong.
January 07, 2007
Politics of the absurd?
The State Department refuses to give a U.N. team access to prisoners at Guantanamo, then dismisses their critical report as "without merit" because it isn't based on first-hand evidence.
January 05, 2007
Is Bush more popular than Pelosi?
No. She's 43-39 favorable/unfavorable, for a net +4. He's 45-54 favorable/unfavorable, for a net -9. Lots more people are undecided about her than about him, which isn't surprising. So Bush is "more popular" only if you insist on comparing only the favorables. But Right Blogistan is so fixated on "liberal media bias" that it can't see its own biases. Motes and beams, motes and beams.
December 27, 2006
Fake, but accurate?
Clifford May (formerly of the Republican National Committee, now of NRO's The Corner) today published a document purporting to be from a Marine in Iraq, boasting of how well things are going there and blasting the mass media for misrepresenting the story. But it turns out the same document, which has never been traced to an actual Marine, has been in circulation for more than a year. Will the same people who treated the forged Bush National Guard memos shown by Dan Rather as exonerating Bush from the charge of shirking his duty continue to insist that the disaster in Iraq is merely a media fantasy?
November 07, 2006
"Mission Accomplished" down the Memory Hole
The White House website crops the "Mission Accomplished" banner out of the video of Bush's carrier-flight-deck speech.
October 29, 2006
October 12, 2006
The irrepressible (scheduling) conflict
Tom Reynolds has a case of political leprosy. John McCain stands him up, but his spokesman can't get the usual "scheduling conflict" fib straight, pleading a scheduling conflict yet to be determined.
October 11, 2006
September 07, 2006
Just asking
Bush acknowledges what he acknowledges "everybody knew": that the CIA was running secret prisons in Europe. His supporters here mostly won't mind his making them look like a pack of fools. His supporters in Europe may not be so understanding.
September 05, 2006
A question of journalistic ethics
A letter to Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, ABC's parent company, about the coming mockumentary about the run-up to 9/11.
September 02, 2006
August 21, 2006
History of a cover-up
How the Army used slime-and-defend against Lt. Col. Herbert's accurate reports of torture in Vietnam.
August 03, 2006
Is lying a traditional family value?
Bob Corker is a Republican candidate. Bob Corker doesn't tell the truth. But I repeat myself.
July 06, 2006
McCain and Bush, together at last
The only real disagreement between George W. Bush and John McCain was over which of them was going to get to be President first. Now, after McCain's parade of "indepdendence" - which was always more shadow-play than substance - they're coming together. That will be fine with Bush's fans. But how about McCain's?
May 28, 2006
Murtha vindicated; wingnuts refuse to notice
The investigation of the Haditha massacre says exactly what Jack Murtha said it would say. The wingnuts seem to think he ought to face a firing squad for having been right prematurely.
May 11, 2006
Vocabulary lesson
Secretary Jackson now says that his quite circumstantial account of having turned down a would-be contractor for dissing the President was "anecdotal," by which he seems to mean "false." It wasn't, though.
May 10, 2006
"Jihadists"? "JIHADISTS"?
Charles Krauthammer has taken to calling CIA critics of Bushism and Bushit "jihadists." Will others on the right hold still for this disgusting slander, or will they speak out?
May 07, 2006
Does integrity require the breaking of promises?
Jim Lindgren thinks that Ted Sorenson's refusal to claim credit for the authorship of Profiles in Courage reflects his lack of integrity. I would have thought the reverse.
April 30, 2006
Anti-Semitism? I don't think so.
I've been harshly critical of Juan Cole in the past; indeed, I don't recall ever saying anything nice about him. He's obviously a sharp and knowledgeable analyst of Middle Eastern affairs, but I doubt his moral compass points true north. His embrace of the Wald-Mearshimer "Israel Lobby" paper certainly doesn't make me think any better of him. But none of...
April 26, 2006
No foolish consistency here: or any other kind
Two headlines from from today's Washington Post: P. 1: Bush Calls For Probe Of Rising Gas Prices P. 6: GOP Blocks Measures Boosting Taxes on Oil Companies' Profits Note that the actual activity is stuffed inside, while the mostly meaningless speech is a headline on the front page. The fault lies mostly with the editors; the reporting by VandeHei and...
April 20, 2006
Newspeak ...
Katherine Harris goes from 22 points down to 29 points down in new poll; expresses confidence that she will "continue to go only up."
April 11, 2006
In defense of leaking
A Defense Intelligence Agency report trashed the idea that those trailers in Iraq were mobile biowarfare labs three days before GWB said "We have found the WMD." The report proving that the President was a liar was stamped "Secret." Without leaks of classified information, we wouldn't know about it.
April 08, 2006
The smoking gun on the Sixteen Words:
Bush lied, (tens of) thousands died
The National Intelligence Council, in a document delivered to the White House in January 2003, reported that the Yellowcake Road story was "baseless." Bush used it in his State of the Union Address anyway.
March 17, 2006
Correction
What do Claude Allen's shopping habits and George W. Bush's tax policies have in common? The principle of something for nothing.
March 12, 2006
A distinct odor of fish
Claude Allen's resignation statement was a lie. The White House stood behind it. That ought to be a problem, but apparently it isn't.
March 10, 2006
Unclear on the concept
Yes, we all know that the basic BushCo operating principle is "lie, cheat, and steal." But Claude Allen seems to have understood the word "steal" in an excessively literal sense.
March 09, 2006
The Feiler Faster Thesis and professional lying
Too weird. Today's Financial Times has a quote from the CEO of Dubai Ports World denying that the company had even "thought of" selling off P&O's U.S. port management contracts. I read that story immediately after seeing on my screen that DPW had agreed to do precisely that.
March 04, 2006
More entries for the Winglish-English dictionary
What are the English equivalents for the Winglish words "nonpartisan," "bipartisan," and "partisan"?
March 02, 2006
Wisdom from Macaulay
"There is no quackery in medicine, religion, or politics, which may not impose even on a powerful mind, when that mind has been disordered by pain or fear."
February 28, 2006
Glenn Reynolds is right ...
... someone is spreading disinformation about the Dubai Ports World deal. The puzzling thing is that Glenn is helping.
February 18, 2006
January 20, 2006
Shameless Self-Promotion
Tomorrow night, I’ll be on Fox News’ “Heartland with John Kasich,” at 5 pm and 8 pm (both times PST). You might very well ask, why in the world is Fox interested in me? Over the last few days, the media has decided that its resources are best focused on a right-wing UCLA group called the “Bruin Alumni Association,” which...
January 14, 2006
December 17, 2005
Down the Memory Hole
Bush switches in three hours from refusing to discuss warrantless wiretaps, in order to protect intelligence sources and methods, to confirming their existence and defending them. Will anyone notice?
December 10, 2005
Does not compute
If we're so popular in Iraq and Afghanistan, why is it necessary to disguise the source of information we insert in Iraqi and Afghani media?
November 20, 2005
Hat trick
Let us pause to admire the three-peat of the increasingly odious Jean Schmidt. Fresh from election victory over Paul Hackett, she (1) attacked the courage of decorated Marine veteran John Murtha on the floor (coming from this particular artillery, a devastating hit; imagine the shuddering impact of a ping-pong ball striking the USS Missouri direct amidships), being careful to (2)...
November 11, 2005
November 06, 2005
More Republican elections cheating
False statements under oath in registration challenges: naughty, naughty!
November 03, 2005
Rove, McClellan, and the truth
John Podhoretz is a pretty sharp political analyst and a moral idiot. Podhoretz is surely right to say that today's Washington Post story about Rove and McClellan was promoted by McClellan and his friends. Podhoretz is also right to say that, in promoting that story, McClellan & Co. did the President no favor. As an avowed opponent of the Bushocracy,...
October 13, 2005
Practicing spontaneity
Yes, that "conversation with the troops" was about as spontaneous as High Mass.
Is there anything about GWB that isn't fake?
If you're going to fake a conversation with the troops, don't allow the rehearsal to be videotaped for broadcast.
September 09, 2005
Giving without actually giving
The following astonishing remark seems to sum up a lot of the mendacity, or (generously) profound cluelessness, of the current administration: [Bush] also promised to reimburse states for the costs associated with taking in people forced out of their homes by the hurricane, telling state leaders, "You should not be penalized for showing compassion." What can this possibly mean? Does...
Naughty, naughty!
Padding your resume to get a federal job is a felony. Michael Brown seems to have padded his resume to get his job at FEMA.
September 05, 2005
Coulda guessed this one
Hear hoofbeats, expect to see horses. Hear "White House sliming operation," expect to see Karl Rove.
September 04, 2005
Slander on background
The White House tells another whopper: the Governor of Louisiana did indeed proclaim a state of emergecy a week ago Friday, before the storm hit.
September 03, 2005
GWB as Baghdad Bob
When a Republican political consultant compares Bush and the DHS folks to Baghdad Bob, you know things aren't going well for the Red Team.
August 23, 2005
The Republicans versus the truth
Politicizing science, lying to investigators, and giving an taking bribes have two things in common: all involve dishonesty, and all have are standard Republican operating procedure under George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Tom DeLay.
August 18, 2005
Joe McCarthy lives!
Eugene Volokh searches for disloyal liberals and comes up empty. Henry Farrell searches for lying right-wingers who falsely claim that there are lots of disloyal liberals and brings back a full bag.
August 08, 2005
July 21, 2005
July 06, 2005
Interesting-questions-to-which-we'll-never-know-the-answers
Dept.
How much of the purported conservative outrage over the potential Gonzales nomination is being deliberately ginned up by Karl Rove and his colleagues in order to make Gonzales, when nominated, look like a moderate? After all, Bush isn't up for re-election, so having some of the rank-and-file nutsos mad at him doesn't actually do him any harm, and no Republican...
June 02, 2005
The Potemkin pothole
Yes, it's true: Aaahnuld had a road crew dig a pothole so the cameras could film him filling it in.
May 19, 2005
Whopper
The Pentagon's spokesman says, on the record, that "there hadn't been credible allegations" of the descration of the Koran at Guantanamo. Two days later, it emerges that the Red Cross had reported such allegations in detail more than two years ago.
February 09, 2005
David Hume forsees the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
Hume on lying in what you think is a good cause.
February 04, 2005
February 03, 2005
January 25, 2005
Paging Dr. Orwell.
Paging Dr. Orwell.
CODE BLUE!
Let me get this straight: first the Bushites were for privatizing Social Security, like the good Thatcherite wannabes they truly are. Then it turned out that "privatization" didn't do well with focus groups, so they were for "private accounts" instead. Now that turns out to be a loser as well, so the Social Insecurity proposal is to be described as...
January 23, 2005
January 22, 2005
December 09, 2004
If their lips are moving...
The deficit isn't shrinking. The armor production capacity isn't scarce. And the Bush team isn't telling the truth. So what else is new?
December 01, 2004
November 05, 2004
Yes, they were lying about al Qaqaa
The looting went on while Marines, outnumbered by the looters, stood by helplessly. Requests for help were ignored. And the Pentagon obviously knew all this three weeks ago, and covered it up to get past the election.
October 25, 2004
October 24, 2004
There he goes again
What charge was Mr. Bush working off when he was "volunteering" at Operation P.U.L.L.?
October 23, 2004
The three central facts about Bush's puppies
No, John Kerry didn't propose "slashing" the intelligence budget, and he didn't propose any cuts at all after 9-11. Bush's new CIA Director, when he was in Congress, proposed bigger cuts.
October 16, 2004
The "Special Olympics" dirty trick
Make a disgusting flyer, try to plant it on your opponent. When caught, just keep saying "The facts are the facts."
October 13, 2004
October 12, 2004
Health policy experts scoff
at "government takeover" charge
Health finance heavyweights can't figure out how anyone could call the Kerry proposal a "government takeover."
October 09, 2004
Big hype, small retraction
If Tom Ridge's troops are doing fake terror alerts to move votes, someone ought to call them on it. If they're doing it out of sheer incompetence, that's par for the course.
Objective jouralism and systematic lying
Mark Halperin encourages reporters to insist on the difference between truth and falsehood. Red Blogistan disapproves.
October 08, 2004
Cheney's fuzzy coalition math
No, the Gulf War coalition was not "far stronger" than the Iraq War coalition, unless 800,000 is a far bigger number than 24,000.
October 07, 2004
Re-election is the right to say that 2 + 2 = banana
Does showing the falsity of the factual premises underlying the invasion of Iraq prove that we were right to invade Iraq? Apparently it does, in Bushworld.
October 06, 2004
Making Cheney pay
If Cheney hadn't seen Edwards in the Senate, it must have been because Cheney wasn't there.
The factually challenged veep
Cheney pretended he had a response to charges that he dealt with the nation's enemies as the CEO of Halliburton. He was bluffing. Will any reporter call his bluff?
October 05, 2004
Cheney's nose continues to grow
If Cheney never met Edwards, he has an evil twin. Or maybe Cheney is the evil twin.
October 03, 2004
Bush fib: 100,000 trained Iraqi security forces
Try 22,700 minimally trained. And Reuters had published the real numbers, in response to an earlier Bush misstatement, before the debate.
September 24, 2004
Don't hold back, E.J.
"A press corps that relentlessly nitpicked Al Gore in 2000 in search of 'little lies' and exaggerations has given Bush wide latitude to make things up. I guess the incumbent benefits from the soft bigotry of low expectations."
September 23, 2004
Banning the Bible
Does anyone have the full text of the RNC flier telling West Virginia and Arkansas voters that liberals want to ban the Bible?
September 08, 2004
September 07, 2004
Matt Yglesias fisks George W. Bush
A little bit of fact checking on Iraq section of the acceptance speech.
September 06, 2004
September 03, 2004
Where does Hastert's money come from?
Is Dennis Hastert just a slimy, slandering politician, or is he a tool of the drug cartels?
August 31, 2004
Did Dennis Hastert really accuse George Soros
of taking money from the drug cartels?
Is there anything the Republicans won't say in an attempt to discredit Soros?
August 23, 2004
August 17, 2004
The charter school report
Bad news for charter schools: their students seem to underperform comparable students in regular public schools. That's not what I wanted to hear. That's not what the Bush Administration wanted to hear. I'm telling you about it. They tried to bury the information.
June 22, 2004
June 03, 2004
Guess who's turned soft
on the cheese-eating surrender monkeys?
Did you know that George W. Bush was never angry with the French goverment over Iraq? Me neither.
May 31, 2004
May 26, 2004
May 20, 2004
"Bush the liberal"? Again?
Is fake liberalism the same as liberalism? Is bad conservatism the same as liberalism? David Bernstein seems to think so.
May 13, 2004
How to cover lies
and the lying liars who tell them
Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post catches Marc Racicot telling a whopper, and calls him on it.
May 09, 2004
Slime & defend hits John Murtha
In Republican fantasyland, calling for more troops to win the war in Iraq is a nearly treasonous call to "cut and run."
April 20, 2004
Lying by silence
SEE UPDATE AND RETRACTION BELOW Kevin Drum posts a truly bizarre dialogue between one of his readers and the office of the "Public Editor" (ombudsman) at the New York Times. ********** To: NYT Public Editor According to Ron Suskind, "For each press conference, the White House press secretary asks the reporters for their questions, selects six or seven of the...
April 15, 2004
Waiting for retractions
The Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says the Senate Majority Leader was wrong when he accused Richard Clarke of having perjured himself.
April 06, 2004
Slime and Defend: Kennedy's Vietnam comparison
Ted Kennedy points out that the Bush Administration is a bunch of dishonest slime artists, and gets dishonestly slimed in return. No, Kennedy didn't say that "Iraq is Vietnam." What he said, quite clearly, was that the dishonesty with which the Administration marketed the war in Iraq had cost the President the credibility he needs to wage the war on terror effectively, making it "Bush's Vietnam."
March 22, 2004
Hagel defends Kerry on defense
Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) says that the White House isn't telling the truth about John Kerry's record on defense: "The facts just don't measure [up to]the rhetoric." First McCain, then Hagel. Both Republicans, both with strongly pro-defense voting records....
March 18, 2004
Giving Congress the mushroom treatment
So it turns out that the Administration knew when the Congress passed what its officials were describing as a $400 billion Medicare bill that its own actuary had estimated that the cost would be more than $500 billion. (Current estimate: $534 billion.) And it's pretty clear that there wouldn't have been enough votes for the bill if an honest figure...
March 10, 2004
George Tenet doesn't call Dick Cheney a liar
... quite. ... Cheney cited a November article in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, as "the best source of information" on cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida. The article was based on a leaked top-secret memorandum. It purportedly set out evidence, compiled by a special Pentagon intelligence cell, that Saddam was in league with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. It...
February 15, 2004
February 09, 2004
White House predicts economic disaster
After more than two decades of low productivity growth, the campacity of the American economy to turn inputs of labor and capital into valued products and services soared in the late 1990s. But in order to avoid predicting (what is certain to be true) that the country will have fewer people at work at the end of the current Presidential...
January 22, 2004
How much circumlocution is appropriate
in describing prevarication?
Kevin Drum poses an etiquette question Miss Manners doesn't cover. See if you can offer any useful advice....
January 13, 2004
Portraying sense as nonsense
Kevin Drum wants to know just what the hell Chris Suellentrop thinks he's up to. So do I. The fact that Andrew Sullivan links approvingly to Suellentrop ought to say somthing about just how bad the piece is. Part of the journalist's job ought to be throwing the penalty flag when politicians (and others) talk bunkum. But that job needs...
January 06, 2004
Does opposition to neo-conservatism amount to anti-Semitism?
Right. Wesley Clark thinks that the prophets of a new Amerian empire (1) have a collective screw loose and (2) have too much influence in the Bush II administraiton. David Brooks thinks -- or, at least, writes -- that, therefore, Clark is a kook and an anti-Semite: Do you ever get the sense the whole world is becoming unhinged from...
December 26, 2003
The Smith bribery base: update
And speaking of cases in which Attorney General Ashcroft has to choose between his party loyalty and his oath of office: when are we going to have a grand jury on the attempt to bribe a Member of Congress on the floor of the House? Tim Noah has been all over this one. Of course, this is just about the...
December 22, 2003
The big lies and the lying Hammer who tells them
Joe McCarthy demonstrated the techique fifty years ago: a politician prepared to lie, and keep lying, and never let up, can overwhelm journalists trying to be "objective." Now Tom DeLay is demonstrating it again....
November 15, 2003
Are conservatives prehistoric humans?
Politicians who call themselves "conservative" are usually the politcal beneficiaries of racial prejudice, because their opponents are, more or less correctly, identified in the public mind as favoring the interest of ethnic minorities, and in particular African-Americans. (During the Civil Rights era, "conservative" in the South meant primarily "anti-integration," while "liberal" meant basically "pro-integration.") Some politicians on the right make...
A queer explanation
Claude Allen, nominated for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, seems to have a rather defective memory, or perhaps one should say a well-functioning forgettery. When he was helping Jesse Helms defeat Jim Hunt in the 1984 Senate campaign, he criticized Hunt for his connections "with the queers." That was consistent with Helms's successful use of anti-gay prejudice as a...
September 04, 2003
Lies, Post-modernism, pragmatism, the press, and Bush
A couple of weeks ago, [*], in connection with the hyping of Charles Colson's recidivism-reduction program, I suggested that there was an essay to be written about the Bush Administration as the first post-modern Presidency. Josh Marshall has now written it. [*] (It's more than possible that I the idea from him in the first place.) I'm going to ignore...
October 21, 2002
A Po-Mo in the White House?
My colleague Andy Sabl, and one or two other readers who have not offered to have their names published, have raised questions about my assertion that universities tend to attract people with a strong urge to keep their thinking coherent and in touch with reality. What about the post-modernists, I am asked? Aren't they even more tolerant of incoherence, and...
October 19, 2002
Bush is an Idiot: Not!
Matthew Yglesias makes two rude remarks about George W. Bush. Not only do I regard making such remarks as encroaching on my private turf, but in this instance both seem to me false-to-fact. And the wrongness of one helps make sense of the other. The first has to do with the latest Andrew Sullivan flap. Apparently (I must have...
