Howl on! Or - fighting the BIG LIE
Russert knows the issue is fake. He also knows that he can't say so
Have we mentioned "The Daily Howler" before? I don't know, but they are doing a hell of a job of watching the media and the campaign and today's column is an incredibly good debunking of that really, really big Bush lie about Kerry voing against funding for our troops.
What Bush neglects to say in all this is that at one point in that debate over the $87 billion he threatened to veto it! The whle $87 billion - unless it was presented in just the orm he wanted. Kerry was never against the $67 billion for the troops. He was against the way we weregiving $20 billion to Iraq reconstruction. He thought it would be mismanaged and guess what - Kerry lost that vote and the money ihas been terribly mismanaged. Of the $20 billion appropriated 10 months ago, the Bush folks have spent only $450 million - and that failure to rebuild Iraq is one of the reasons 98 percent of the population wants us out of there.
here's amore detailed explanatin from an earlier Howler:
Does Kerry’s statement show he’s a flipper? Rather plainly, no, it does not. After all, the solon voted on two different $87 billion bills—one of which was “paid for” through a tax increase, and one of which was not. Indeed, how transparently fake is the Bush camp’s charge that these two different votes make Kerry a flipper? As Kerry himself has often noted, Bush said, during debate on the bills, that he would veto the first of these bills—the one for which Kerry voted. In other words, Bush supported one bill and opposed the other—just exactly like Kerry did. Not only is Kerry not a flipper, Bush’s campaign is slamming him for supporting one bill and not the other—exactly the thing their guy did!
Why the hell does the press let the president get away with this crap? ARe they ignorant? Or partisan?
Anyway - if I knew of the Howler I had forgotten about it until Krugman reminded me of it in his column this morning which is also good.
