Meet the new Ari/Scottie. A little history on Obama's new press sec'y--his role in destroying Dean while working for Kerry, reviving the "lincoln bedroom" against Clinton, and other totally Rovian and "old politics" methods. So far, we have Gibbs and Emanuel and Axelrod -- 3 old-school, old-politics, attack dogs. Who's next?

A 16-year-old girl has asked to have her pro-bono lawyer removed from her case after she was the only minor child not returned to the FLDS last month. The lawyer says FLDS Spokesman and "enforcer" Willie Jessop has intimidated her client. The nastiness in the name of God goes on forever.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

V.I. Lenin

Are there any limits to what can be said about political opponents? Should there be any limits? Does anything go, no matter who is the target? Are we all no better now than Karl Rove?

Josh Marshall, what the frack? He's spreading this nonsensical meme that the gas tax holiday won't lower gas prices AT ALL. And furthermore, he's claiming that virtually all economists agree on this.

This, despite the experience of Indiana and Illinois, which saw at least a 60% decline in gas prices per dollar of tax cut.

Now you can argue about the efficacy of the policy, but to spread misinformation and lies is a bit ridiculous, no? TPM is basically now a haven for people who took Econ 101, barely understood it, and then stopped taking Econ because it was "too hard".

The email I sent to WKJM, which should have authoritatively ended his nonsense, but apparently hasn't.
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It's all lies. Or distortion. Or confabulation. Or misdirection. But I found this example rather egregious. I bet you DFHs remember this sort of thing from back in the day:

Radio Sawa broadcast on December 11 the good news from the American forces that the regions of Arab Jabour and Al-Buaitha had been definitively cleared of the last vestiges of AlQaeda. Here's what their website reported that day

Joseph Inge, fourth brigade, third American infantry division, said his forces with the aid of the Awakening forces had been able to clear out the last strongholds of AlQaeda in the regions of Arab Jabour and Al-Buaitha south of Baghdad. He told Radio Sawa: "We have secured the area by freeing it from the threat of AlQaeda, with the assistance of local citizens". And Captain Inge called on the families that had fled to return to their homes in those areas, promising every type of support and assistance to those families.

On Thursday 40 "targets"--described by the miitary as "reported AlQaeda safe-havens"--were hit by a total of 40,000 pounds of bombs dropped on Arab Jabour in a 10-minute raid by the American Air Force assisted by another brigade, the second, of the same third American infantry division that had invited families back into the area only three weeks ago. The military had no information on how many people it killed.

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How low can you go, Mr. President?

Down at the end of yesterday's Froom is an item he found over at US News:

"Current and former Bush administration communications officials tell the US News Political Bulletin that they now believe they relied too heavily on traditional media and the White House press corps to get out the President's message about the broader war on terrorism and the booming economy. 'We didn't use the new tools of communication' like the Internet, blogs and mobile technology, said a former key official. As a result, added another official, the President's message was filtered through the mainstream press which eventually got bored with the story and stopped reporting the President's repetitive messages. 'You've got to use the new tools. They can reach far more people than TV or the papers,' said an administration official. 'A video on the Internet or some blogging can reach millions and we should have played with that much more,' said the official. White House insiders, however, dismissed the complaints, mostly from former communications officials, claiming that they have worked with bloggers and non-traditional media but that the tide has turned against them."

How many ways can you find that this statement is not just off-base, but in typical "Bushian" fashion is 180 degrees away from reality? We'd have found what Bush was saying believable if we'd read it on a blog? If I was a rightwing blogger I'd be pissed, enraged and heartbroken at being so dissed.

No, anonymous "administration official." The "mainstream press" reported your lies just fine. And over and over again, tragically, to the point where there are still measurable numbers of Americans not confined to institutions for the mentally incapacitated who think that we're killing Iraqis to pay them back for 9/11. And that "booming economy"? Please, my eyes hurt enough already. Somehow sending our manufacturing capability overseas in exchange for part-time, no-benefits, no-security jobs in service industries would somehow improve life? And the former "breadbasket of the world" is now so hard up we have to import both pet and human food contaminated with poison in order to make more money? This is what you mean by "booming" perhaps?

Yeah, I'll believe that if I read it in a blog rather than the NYT or WaPo.

The way kids used to take turn standing on each other's shoulders so the one on top could peek through the knothole in the outfield wall and watch the ballgame, we present today's host who frees Krugman from the paywall: the admirably named Free Democracy, bringing us "Sweet Little Lies." Or more accuratly, an honest discussion of the lies, named accurately as lies, and broken down into Little and Big Lies. We've been hearing the Lies of both sorts for some years now, they just haven't been given their proper name.

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.

Oh yes, we know what he's talking about. "Socialized medicine is EEEE-villl!" "Sadaam has 4000 liters of anthrax!" "Welfare dependency weakens the moral fiber!" "The Iraq war will pay for itself just like the last one did" "The jobs we lose to overseas are crappy jobs anyway, and if people will just go back to school and learn computers they'll have nicer, neater jobs and be better off anyway". But go read Froom for the analysis of just how deep some of these have sunk in, and to whose benefit.

Lies. Lies. Just keep saying that word. It's not a "misstatement" or a "rephrasing" or a "lapse of judgement." It's a lie, Mr. Limbaugh. It's a lie, Mr. Gingrich. It's a lie, you filthy pig Cheney. You too, Crashcart.

If it's coming from the military, that is.

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Much ado has been made about a fake Lincoln quote that some righwing bozo (but I repeat myself) put in the pages of the fradulent Moonie Times (damn, there I did it again). Your challenge for today: is the following a real Lincoln quote or not? You too can be a historian. I'll put the answer below the "Read More" button so as to avoid undignified fisticuffs over who won, not to mention the bother of having to award prizes and get people's mailing addresses and all. Here goes:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose---and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him,
``I see no probability of the British invading us'' but he will say to you ``be silent; I see it, if you dont.''

Josh Marshall's got a big one. From a press release/teaser for this week's 60 Minutes:

Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year. Wallace’s interview with Woodward will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Oct. 1 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. “It’s getting to the point now where there are eight, 900 attacks a week. That’s more than a hundred a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,” says Woodward.

The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. “The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], ‘Oh, no, things are going to get better,’” he tells Wallace. “Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know,” says Woodward.

See, I have an overwhelming feeling that my head is going to pop like a ripe zit when I read something like this. Why doesn't Rummy Darling have an actual explosion when he spouts this craptacular bit of pus?:

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: The fact of the matter is - if Saddam Hussein were still in power in Iraq, he would be rolling in petrol dollars. Think of the price of oil today. He would have so much money.

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There are days when I really miss the Corps. Today is one of them; Liberal Jarhead lays it out for you. Forward this one to your mailing lists, as it makes clear the burning orb in the sky that some people, perhaps only 30% now, can't see rises in the east every morning.