Tuesday, 22 June 2004

In other news, Reagan is still dead: I tend to agree with John Callender over at lies.com that catching Dick Cheney in a bold-faced lie is barely even newsworthy anymore, but nonetheless. From the Post's "In the Loop" column, by way of the DNC's Kicking Ass:

Borger: "Well, let's go to Mohamed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, 'pretty well confirmed.' "

Cheney: "No, I never said that."

Borger: "Okay."

Cheney: "Never said that."

Borger: "I think that is … "

Cheney: "Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down."

— "The Today Show," June 17, 2004.

Cheney: "Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that — it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue."

— "Meet the Press," December 9, 2001.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:08 pm. comments.

Tuesday, 22 June 2004

It's the Deficit, Stupid: The Washington Post's Sebastian Mallaby explains why a second term for Dubya would lead to an Argentina-style collapse of the U.S. economy.

This is not hyperbole. Bush's combination of tax-cutting and lavish spending is a fiscal timebomb: His tax cuts are not even defensible as a short-term stimulus (they allow the wealthy to accumulate more wealth with less effort, which if anything makes the economy worse), and his spending habits are, to paraphrase John McCain, an insult to drunken sailors.

There was a time when Republicans were the party of smaller government and of balanced-budget "contracts with America." Apparently that contract was only valid while the Democrats were in charge.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 8:39 am. comments.