Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Lying in politics Archive
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 Mickey Kantor Indiana tape ...
... is bogus. And none of the Obama bloggers took the bait.
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
The Gas Tax Holiday
Six reasons why it's a terrible idea.
April 24, 2008
LAT hit piece on Obama tracks Clinton smears
Dan Moran must have been pretty hard up for a story.
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
MindWar
The Pentagon uses retired brass as propaganda agents.
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
Chutzpah
Latest headline from Ms-NBC:
CLINTON CAMP URGES OBAMA TO BE POSITIVE
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.
The Clintons and the Abyss
Has it begun to stare back? Have they adopted the tactics of the VWRC?
January 21, 2008
OK, go ahead
Hillary's mouth writes a check that her staff can't cash.
January 15, 2008
Concerning denials
Campaigns aren't won by denials.
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
Objective metrics Dep't
What if Gen. Petraeus were Britney's PR guy?
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
Vitter goes all in
Denies New Orleans brothel allegations, refuses to take questions.
July 15, 2007
Shorter George W. Bush
Bush admits - now - that he knew things were FUBAR in Iraq last fall.
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.
Projection
Rich Lowry needs a good mirror.
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
Oooops!
Did Fred Thompson lobby for an abortion-rights group? Or did he bill for work he never did?
June 13, 2007
Just wondering
Does Linda Chavez know how to generalize?
June 10, 2007
ShouldaWouldaCouldaMighta Dep't
Great historical might-have-beens.
April 27, 2007
On "clap-traps" and claptrap
Before "claptrap" meant "bullshit," "clap-traps" were applause lines.
April 24, 2007
Wag the Dog
"Old Shoe," Jessica Lynch, and Pat Tillman.
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