Conventional Lies
Ivins, Molly
Small Favors Molly Ivins Conventional Lies Three days after the close of the Republican Convention, we lost seven Marines in Fallujah.To use Linda Ellerbee's line: Andsoit goes.Ifeel like the...
...I especially liked the inclusion of the Apache helicopter in the list of weapons opposed by Kerry...
...Stephen Colbert, correspondent for The Daily Show, the only news program to watch during the Republican Convention, found the theme like a homing pigeon: "unmitigated gall...
...For reasons never explained (except by Zell Miller at his worst), half the country and most of the rest of the world just sort of drifted away...
...And I really had to take a deep breath after Bush declared that he wants to "get government on your side...
...Almost every program he mentioned, saying he wanted to build them up, he has already cut, including job training...
...has not gained jobs under George Bush: The net job loss is 1.1 million jobs, according to the Bush Department of Labor...
...Kerry never said we need to have a "sensitive war...
...Kerry has never failed to "support our troops in combat...
...Bonus points if you can find Bush's references to our need for more sensitivity...
...When did anyone ever find evidence Saddam Hussein had dog to do with September 11...
...Then we have what can most kindly be called differences of interpretation...
...that's the one that kept crashing...
...I thought the saddest theme was about how September 11 had united us...
...Could George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have had anything to do with it...
...Kerry never said we need other countries' permission to go to war...
...Molly Ivins, co-author of "Bushwhacked," writes in this space every month...
...Even with alert bloggers to help, it was hard to catch all the lies...
...Where has he been for the last four years...
...Small Favors Molly Ivins Conventional Lies Three days after the close of the Republican Convention, we lost seven Marines in Fallujah.To use Linda Ellerbee's line: Andsoit goes.Ifeel like the janitorinthat photo of Madison Square Garden after the party, facing aseaofgarbage that needs tobecollected and thrown out...
...For example, did they tell us a lot of things that aren't true...
...The theme of the convention was "George Bush Makes Us Safer," as dubious a proposition as Britney Spears's virginity...
...When is a fact a fact to these people...
...Are they hunky-dory in Iraq, where it is an open question whether we've created more freedom or more terrorists...
...How could that have happened...
...And I am truly dazzled by "the noive of him" in claiming that No Child Left Behind, which is massively underfunded, has somehow mysteriously become a great success...
...Helpful hint to Cheney: Oratorically speaking, when the call-and-response segment of your speech consists of getting your audience to boo, you are probably not on a positive track...
...These folks are from another planet...
...In either case, none dare call it peace...
...They're living in an alternative reality...
...The U.S...
...Real imagination there...
...Republicans seemed to find it all a great mystery...
...Special bonus points for the novel charge by Cheney that Kerry wants to "show Al Qaeda our softer side...
...He supported a smaller package, as did then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney...
...The whole list of defense programs Kerry supposedly voted against mostly came out of one vote against a huge defense package in 1990...
...Are things peachy-keen in Afghanistan, where the only things that have fully recovered are the warlords and the opium trade...
...The convention was enough to convince me that John Edwards is right about "two Americas," except I don't think he's gone far enough...
Vol. 68 • October 2004 • No. 10
