Sigh. Here's Howard Kurtz of the Post, ignoring the obvious falsehood in the Bush interview:
Beat the Press: Bush “made no single mistake that could be replayed again and again with Janet Jackson-like fervor.”
I suppose that will be the press conventional wisdom. I wish this were amazing instead of predictable.
Apparently, it's not big news when GW Bush goes on TV and makes a statement that is totally false. So false that it's not a question of opinion, but a matter of verifiable fact. And not on a trivial matter either. Nor one that could be called a accident. It's an error on a matter of sufficient importance to government that to get it wrong shows either a willingness to try the Big Lie, or a leader very serious out of touch with reality.
Bush on Meet The Press RUSSERT: But your base conservatives, and listen to Rush Limbaugh, the Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, they're all saying you are the biggest spender in American history.
BUSH: Well, they're wrong. If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton, discretionary spending was up 15 percent, and ours have steadily declined.
Angry Bear has the facts: discretionary spending went waaaay up not steadily down every year of this Administration.
Now, if “gotcha” questions like the price of eggs or the capital of foreign countries were once big news, surely voluntarily mis-stating (or not knowing) a fairly basic fact about the trend line (forget knowing the dollar figure details, we're talking trends and gross effects here) about what one's own administrations budgets are like ought to be big news, shouldn't it?
Nope. The Miami Herald (running a Dana Milbank story from the Post) buried this in the last paragraphs of the story, and did it in a way that no one will understand that what Bush said wasn't true.
Bush said critics, including conservatives, are ''wrong'' to say he has not kept control of the federal budget. ''If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton, discretionary spending was up 15 percent, and ours have steadily declined,'' he said.
Federal discretionary spending has grown by more than 25 percent in the past two fiscal years, following average annual increases of 2.4 percent in discretionary spending in the 1990s, according to figures from congressional budget panels.
Note that without a lead-in like “In fact,” that second paragraph is going to be impenetrable to many readers…or at least won't jump out at them as a direct contradiction of the previous graph.
The error isn't mentioned at all in Elisabeth Bumiller's News Analysis of the speech, which is all about whether it was a good idea (isn't lying or demonstrating ignorance relevant to that?). Of course, that could be because she only read the New York Times article on the interview, in which Richard w. Stevenson doesn't mention this little detail at all.
Why isn't this issue more important than the fact that Bush re-stated many opinions we've heard before? Somehow, it's just not 'news”.
If this is the Big Lie, it's working. If this is a sign of a lack of contact with reality, this news coverage isn't going to bring reality any closer.
Calpudit has new theories on the “Torn Document” at the heart of the did-GW-show-up mystery. Some of the commentators in that thread are sceptical, and I'm just confused.
Meanwhile, one has to wonder, if he did show up somewhere during the missing months, why isn't there a single witness to the event willing to come forward?
I found a useful bibliography of recent cryptographic articles on anonymity. Note that this is almost entirely about the tech stuff, not the legal/social side.
Bush with Russert. First it's an unequivocal promise to release everything. Then he seemingly takes it back by saying “We did so in 2000”.
MSNBC – Transcript for Feb. 8th. Russert: When allegations were made about John McCain or Wesley Clark on their military records, they opened up their entire files. Would you agree to do that?
President Bush: Yeah. Listen, these files I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me, and starting in the 1994 campaign for governor. And I can assure you in the year 2000 people were looking for those files as well. Probably you were. And absolutely. I mean, I
Russert: But would you allow pay stubs, tax records, anything to show that you were serving during that period?
President Bush: Yeah. If we still have them, but I you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records.
And I'm just telling you, I did my duty, and it's politics, you know, to kind of ascribe all kinds of motives to me. But I have been through it before. I'm used to it. What I don't like is when people say serving in the Guard is is may not be a true service.
Russert: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?
President Bush: Yes, absolutely.
We did so in 2000, by the way.
Does this mean the missing stuff gets released, or that we're in for a week more of Press Secretary stonewalling (“As the President said, we realeased all that in 2000”)? Or are the files well and truly 'sanitized'?
I am amazed that with all the realms of justified vitriol being poured on the Bush budget, no one has pointed out this budget revives the Washington Monument Ploy. Admittedly that's relatively traditional compared to:
The Washington Monument Ploy is an ancient device favored by executive branch budget makers. When required to meet some arduous budget number by producing cuts, the crafty bureaucrat proposes cuts to things that he knows Congress will never accept, such as closing the Washington Monument. Although this contributes nothing to good government, it does allow the executive branch to claim that the “budget-busting” comes from those irresponsible spenders in Congress.
How else to explain this?
Bush asks to cut decontamination research On the same day a poison-laced letter shuttered Senate offices, President Bush asked Congress to eliminate an $8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins.
Buried in documents justifying Bush's 2005 budget proposal released Monday is an Environmental Protection Agency acknowledgment that his proposed cut “represents complete elimination of homeland security building decontamination research.”
As far as I can tell, most of the stuff the Bush budget proposes to cut falls squarely in the Washington Monument category, except perhaps for the cuts that fall on the poorest Americans—there’s some chance that a Republican Congress might actually pass those.
Jotwell Blenderlaw