Archives for 2003

Meanwhile, Will Saletan has some great advice for the hacks who have spent the last few months doing nothing but working on the ‘Bush is a liar’ meme. No need to point names- you guys kow who you are (and this will apply to the right wing should the Democrats ever get their act together and get in power of something other than the NAACP and the NEA). Saletan explains it is time for you to grow up:

I’m not excusing the games Republicans play. But by projecting all evil onto Republicans, Democrats spread the same political disease: the notion that you don’t have to be wary of lying or cheating unless the other side is doing it. Lying and cheating don’t belong to Republicans or Democrats. We’re all susceptible, and we’re all guilty.

Sure, some people are more guilty than others. But if that’s your obsession, I commend to you the words of my colleague, Jack Shafer: If you’re interested in which wing lies more, you’re probably not very interested in the truth.

The natural response- “But Bush really is the biggest liar ever- we can’t let the Re’thug’licans bully us into not playing hardball.” The Shafer piece is a must read, btw.

Great Advice For EveryonePost + Comments (7)

In the Nation (the left wing political rag whose editor does not know who represents her in Congress), David Corn writes:

September is back-to-school time, and Bush hit the road to promote his education policies. During a speech at a Nashville elementary school, he hailed his education record by noting that “the budget for next year boosts funding for elementary and secondary education to $53.1 billion. That’s a 26-percent increase since I took office. In other words, we understand that resources need to flow to help solve the problems.” A few things were untrue in these remarks. Bush’s proposed elementary and secondary education budget for next year is $34.9 billion, not $53.1 billion, according to his own Department of Education. It’s his total proposed education budget that is $53.1 billion. More importantly, there is no next-year “boost” in this budget. Elementary and secondary education received $35.8 billion in 2003. Bush’s 2004 budget cuts that back nearly a billion dollars, and the overall education spending in his budget is the same as the 2003 level.

Sounds damning, and some on the left rushed to link approvingly to this newest bit of evidence to add to the “Bush is a Liar” meme.

The problem is that Justin Katz and Steve Verdon have run the numbers- and Bush wasn’t lying. Corn was:

In summary, it is only through a combination of selective data and careful parsing of words that David Corn is able to exploit the habitual budgetary tricks of the federal government to call the President of the United States a liar. And his faulty conclusion has probably already caught on sufficiently that careful analysis of boring numbers will not prevent it from becoming “common knowledge.”

This is the Democrat strategery, and it started with the fabricated yellowcake ‘scandal.’ Simply make charge after charge about Bush being a liar, and don’t waste a second checking the facts. The idea is to just throw things up and hope they stick. When you are corrected, merely ignore the corrections, and wait a couple of weeks to re-surface the charge. By then it will be, as Justin pointed out, ‘common knowledge.’ The Democrats will know it is a lie, but they will keep saying it over and over again, because it might lead them to the only thing they care about- winning the White House.

David Corn, LiarPost + Comments (23)

Sorry for the title of this post, but you nee3d to read Krauthammer in Time:

Bill Moyers may have his politics, but his deferential demeanor and almost avuncular television style made him the Mr. Rogers of American politics. So when he leaves his neighborhood to go to a “Take Back America” rally and denounces George W. Bush’s “government of, by and for the ruling corporate class,” leading a “right-wing wrecking crew” engaged in “a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States way of governing,” you know that something is going on.

That something is the unhinging of the Democratic Party. Democrats are seized with a loathing for President Bush

The Hammer Nails ItPost + Comments (15)