McCain's mendacity, vol. 3

In which even former admirers question the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde transformation.

McCain's mendacity

Pants on fire. Pass it along.

Love him or hate him President Bush did not lie...more than 935 times prior to the invasion of Iraq

Genius Jim Vicevich has the first part of this headline posted on his website, in a semi-permanent manner (have I mentioned that he's too scared to host comments, and that the lack of original content on his site is a reflection of his thought process? And how important is Jim's show if, when he's on vacation for a week, it's replaced by Computer Talk with Tab?), we can thank the Center for Public Integrity and Fund for Independence in Journalism for what comes after the ellipses.

As they say in the press, "fool me 935 times, shame on you; fool me 936 times, shame on us."

Fool me 47 times, shame on me

Pardon me, but could we get a new fourth estate, this one doesn't seem to be working.

In my brief training, and experience in a newsroom (as a stringer for the late, lamented Hartford Times), I was urged to be skeptical, to question every assertion, to get three sources, and to understand that there are two sides to every story.

Wouldn't you think that the Pentagon which gave us a staged statue toppling, a staged "mission accomplished" speech, a staged "heroine" in Jessica Lynch, a staged fallen hero with Pat Tilman, and years of "progress" in Iraq, would be looked upon with skepticism by the press.

And yet they seem to have been fooled again by the latest Pentagon spectacle - an Iranian motorboat "attack."

As always, dangerously delusional

He relies on his generals, unless they disagree with him. He defers to his advisors, unless they diverge in their observation of reality. He trusts the intelligence, until it reports something different than his gut.

But anything his jesus whispers to him, he believes.

And the Vietnam metaphor just keeps getting scarier.

And he's trying to sell Iran's "evil" nature as if it were a used car that had been through a flood.

Once again, he's described an "evildoing" nation in words that could frame his own administration:

"Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home."

With just a few word changes it could read.

"The US is today the world's leading state sponsor of death and destruction. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home."

Not gonna answer hypotheticals, unless they're my hypotheticals

In a news conference this morning, the former Governor of Texas discussed the National Intelligence Estimate just released which states clearly that Iran does not have the ability to produce nookyoolur weapons, and that it had suspended it's ambition to enrich uranium.

Of course, the former gov reads the report in exactly the opposite way that the rest of us do. A month ago he was using "Iran" and "World War III" in the same sentence. Now it looks like he may have been mistaken, again.

Not that he would ever admit to a mistake. No, he thinks the NIE actually bolsters the argument that Iran is a danger. "They had the program," he insisted, though it appears they abandoned it in 2003. "They might restart it," he reasoned. As if it was a 67 Cadillac in need of nothing more than a new set of piston rings.

And he answered the hard-hitting question by the White House press corps in that amusing, rehearsed way, as if he were adressing a class of third graders, "See, he had a nookyoolur program, and he stopped, but he could start again. And you know, he could be dangerous if he did. Because nookyoolur bombs can explode and hurt freedom loving folks."

This all goes under the heading, "if pigs had wings..."

Words as weapons, and the damage they do to the stupid among us

Connecticut's PT Barnum is said to have said, "There's a sucker born every minute." When you read the news as framed by the Bush administration, and regurgitated by the American press, you might think it's true. Ironically, the circus great probably never said those words, which were likely attributed to him by a rival hoping to discredit Barnum. Every time the curtain opens on a run of the Broadway musical "Barnum" the cast sings, "There's a sucker born every minute." No chance anyone will ever believe old Barnum innocent.

As for the newspapers, one of it's most famous "pundits," HL Mencken once said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

And as Glenn Greenwald points out, we the people, and the American press, have been bedazzled by an administration willing to twist words to their own good. Lately it's the claim that all insurgents in Iraq are al Qaida, and that Iran is now the enemy to be feared the most. This of course at a time where the vice president plays a rhetorical game claiming not to be "an entity of the executive branch."

So what's the American public to do?

Crawl in its well-upholstered hole and believe the unbelievable.