corrente

I think the blogosphere might have suffered a little from "not invented here" syndrome on this one—and Froomkin called his shot.

Long story short: Bush has a brutally obvious "tell": When He's letting loose with a real whopper, He says "of course." Froomkin noticed that after Debate 2, and challenged the blogosphere to check it out for Debate 3. If anyone did, I missed it. And heck, it was a Friday, whine...

Anyhow, Bush is still doing it. Quoting Froomkin's entire post:

In last Friday's column, I encouraged you to perk up your ears every time President Bush says "of course," because in adversarial settings Bush seems to use that phrase whenever he's about to say something that supporters might find obvious -- but that his critics might consider a whopper.

Love the balance! OK, OK, snarking is a deeply embedded reflex...

Here's every instance of "of course" from last night:

• "Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden."
• "Of course we're meeting our obligation to our veterans, and the veterans know that.
• Regarding his Social Security plans: "And we're of course going to have to consider the costs."
  

And here are the instances from last Friday:

• "Of course, we're going to find Osama bin Laden. We've already 75 percent of his people. And we're on the hunt for him."
• "Of course, I listen to our generals. That's what a president does."
• "[O]f course we've been involved with Iran. . . . Of course, we're paying attention to these. It's a great question about Iran."
• "And of course he's going to raise your taxes."

(via WaPo)

Of course, there is an equally compelling, though different "tell" you can use to tell if Bush is lying.... That would be the one where His lips move....