Sunday, May 23, 2004

Truth Deficit

Clumsy Leadership in Times of Change
The Bushies would have you believe that Bicycle Bush is sporting battle scars because "it's been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose."

Daily Kos counters with a post on Crawford precipitation levels. (Here's a hint: It hasn't rained in over a week.) Says Kos: "So rain on the 13th and (barely) 14th was blamed for a Bush fall on the 22nd. As everything else, it wasn't Bush's fault. Nothing is Bush's fault."

And he's right, of course. The Bushies are congenitally predisposed to look for root causes and responsibilities that lie completely outside of their control. It's axiomatic that Bush can only be considered responsible for those things that reflect well upon him. All outcomes which demonstrate anything remotely unflattering must clearly have resulted from causes completely outside of Bush's control.

Of course, in the whole scheme of things, whether and why Bush fell off a bike doesn't really matter. And yet it's indicative of the Truth Deficit Bush has created that someone is even moved to fact check Bush's assertion on such an unimportant event. What's even more telling is that on something so trivial the Bushies are so easily proven to be dishonest.

And what's even more telling than that is the cover story doesn't even make sense. Rain makes the topsoil more loose? What kind of weird Texas soil becomes more loose when moisture is added? Sand? Clay? Loam? All of these tend to clump more when water is added? Loose gravel may become more slippery when moist, but that's about the only situation I can think of that could explain their explanation.

It's just strange that they need to lie about even the trivial things. It's scary that they're just so bad at it.