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...
