corrente

From Krugman today...and if I could get one sentence from his keyboard (screw whether it's kerned New Times Roman or chiseled hieroglyphics) to the Kerry speechwriting staff, it would start like this:

via NYT

It's the dishonesty, stupid. The real issue in the National Guard story isn't what George W. Bush did three decades ago. It's the recent pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't, the White House's repeated claims that it had released all of the relevant documents when it hadn't.

It's the same pattern of dishonesty, this time involving personal matters that the public can easily understand, that some of us have long seen on policy issues, from global warming to the war in Iraq. On budget matters, which is where I came in, serious analysts now take administration dishonesty for granted.

It wasn't always that way. Three years ago, those of us who accused the administration of cooking the budget books were ourselves accused, by moderates as well as by Bush loyalists, of being "shrill." These days the coalition of the shrill has widened to include almost every independent budget expert.

Krugman's an economist so this is the particular aspect he looks at. But the same pattern of dishonesty pervades everything this administration does, from run National Parks to the space program to the military to defense of civil liberties (yeah, feel free to laugh about THAT one). Healthy Forests and Clear Skies, anyone?