lies.

From the Oregonian:

Let’s see a list of lies

Over and over again The Oregonian prints opinions from people who claim President Bush has continually lied to the public over the last few years. I’ve asked several of my very far left friends to name a few proven lies the president has made. Other than the overworked weapons of mass destruction question, none of them can come up with more examples.

Would The Oregonian please print a list of proven lies this president has made? With all those letters that have been printed, there must be a long list.

STEVE TENNENT Northwest Portland

I believe this is something of a meme, I believe I heard it on either a commercial or actual program for a conservative talk radio program.   Meaning the “Conservative Movement”, whatever that is, or perhaps better to say the 20-something percent of Bush supporters in this day and age– has gotten together and decided to say “What lies?  What lies?”  Politically charged conversations can be annoying at times — I have cringed in overhearing someone ostensibly on my side argue with someone ostensibly on the other side,  neither side coming out terribly well.  Sometimes a person’s mental filing cabinet is a little too disshelved at any particular moment.  (Worse is when somebody wants to make a political point in a completely apolitical situation or with people who would just as soon let that lie for a while — beware that trap.  Get a blog to rid yourself of your political wrenches.)

I will say about the matter of the “overworked weapons of mass destruction question”.  There is a degree to which I have moved forward, but if anyone finds themselves stuck back there, my one piece of advice is what you need there is a handful of precise and specific items.  Intellectually you will win the argument with that — intellectually you won’t if you are stuck in the vague line of “he said there are WMDs!!” — even if it does not particularly wash over to the “Hawk”.  Understand, our Oregonian letter writer probably has on his computer a file in his email box of Bill Clinton (the… um… 17th greatest president in American history) in 1999 running his gum about Hussein’s WMDs program.  Bully for him.

I am fairly positive that a quick search around the blogs will point me to something shouting and yelling about how the Liberal bloggers (or the “far left bloggers”) are not paying any attention to the Hsu fund-raising scandal with Hillary Clinton.  (Here for instance.  That’s the first item I find with a google search of “liberal blogger” and “Hsu”.)  I suppose it escapes my notice slightly, in part because it is what I expect from my not preferred Democratic presidential candidate, and I believe this is a recurring template of a scandal that you will see during a Hillary Clinton presidency.  I do not represent such a thing as “the liberal blogosphere” — sooner or later I am convinced I will end up on the conservative side of the American political line, in part by staying right where I am — but just for the sake of bemusement: there.  I just mentioned Hsu.  But I do have a There was a political cartoon I saw in a newspaper of a whole mass of reporters prying into Larry Craig’s bathroom stall, while a badly drawn Hillary Clinton smiles and walks away with a money bag marked “Hsu Campaign Contribution”, whistling all the way.  I find the message amusing, in its insinuation that … why in the world would we find an anti-gay gay Republican bathroom stall sex scandal more interesting than a campaign contribution scandal?

Then again, I think this is the same cartoonist who drew a cartoon of a sick South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson, with a bunch of donkeys huddled around his bed with flowers of “Get well soon”.  I knew the insinuation was supposed to be that the Democrats wanted him to get well again so they could keep their Senate majority, but the message falls flat in that there was nothing in the cartoon to suggest insincerity in Johnson’s colleagues in their desire for their colleague to… you know… GET WELL SOON.

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