KRUGMAN: Checking the Facts, in Advance

By Paul Krugman, Published October 12, 2004 in The New York Times

It's not hard to predict what President Bush, who sounds increasingly desperate, will say tomorrow. Here are eight lies or distortions you'll hear, and the truth about each:

Jobs Mr. Bush will talk about the 1.7 million jobs created since the summer of 2003, and will say that the economy is "strong and getting stronger." That's like boasting about getting a D on your final exam, when you flunked the midterm and needed at least a C to pass the course.

Mr. Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in payroll employment. That's worse than it sounds because the economy needs around 1.6 million new jobs each year just to keep up with population growth. The past year's job gains, while better news than earlier job losses, barely met this requirement, and they did little to close the huge gap between the number of jobs the country needs and the number actually available.

...

Mr. Bush's statements, on the other hand, are fundamentally dishonest. He is insisting that black is white, and that failure is success. Journalists who play it safe by spending equal time exposing his lies and parsing Mr. Kerry's choice of words are betraying their readers.

-That's like boasting about getting a D on your final exam, when you flunked the midterm and needed at least a C to pass the course.

I like that

After all, Krugman does teach at Princeton.

on that pernicious notion of "balance" which has served the Right so well and hobbled the liberal (if there is such a thing) media. Giving over half a bulletin to reproducing blatant lies and propaganda as if they were gospel truth makes them sound as if they were true.

call them that. Today people would rather hear the beautiful lies than the ugly truth of the Bush mis-administration.

... for any "analyst" claiming to cover the debate.

see them getting the word out as well.