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Bush Campaign Lies

Monday, February 23, 2004

Ground Rules 

The Second College Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary provides the following definitions of the noun lie:

  1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; falsehood.
  2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression
It would be an ambitious project to catalog and thoroughly debunk all the lies coming from America's conservatives these days --- Al Franken has provided merely a Whitman's sampler of them in his exquisite book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right --- and frankly, I don't have that kind of time (though if there are any liberals out there, like perhaps the nice folks at the Center for American Progress, who want to attempt to lure me away from my current job, I'm ready to listen). So I thought that instead, I would focus my efforts specifically on lies emanating from the Bush campaign in their effort to slime Bush into office in 2004.

Now, I don't mean to throw around the term 'lie' too lightly. It is my goal to make sure that every instance of Bush campaign 'lying' which I post here adheres to one or both of the aforementioned definitions. If I can't document that a given statement meets this standard, then I won't discuss it here.

I expect that even with my mission narrowed in this manner, I'll still find I have more than enough material to work with. After all, all of the Bush campaign literature, commercials, web site content and statements from campaign officials are fair game; not just statements from the Shrub himself. And to be honest, the impetus for this project came from the fact that I did a quick search through the blogosphere one day when I was staying home from work to look after my sick son, and there were already two such lies getting prominent coverage.

So, go ahead and give me a shout if you know of a story which should be included here, but don't get upset if your suggestions aren't published right away, or ever. A lot of submissions won't meet the high bar I've set.

And many more, I'm sure, will meet the standard described above; I'll just be too darn busy to include them.

7:00 PM
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