The Workday Liberal

Tony Snow has jumped into his new job as chief talking point justifier with some combative headlines in response to various news stories. These tidbits which you can find on the White House website are termed "setting the record straight". In each case that I have seen in which the "record" has been straightened, the truth of the matter is that the administration actually obfuscates the issue in question.

For example, May 11th (today) we have a record straightening titled: Setting the Record Straight: AP's Misleading Military Recruiting Article.

The title in question reads: "Army Guard, Reserve Fall Short Of April Recruiting Goals."

In order for this title to be misleading we ought to expect that Snowjob would prove that the Army Guard and Reserve had not fallen short of their recruiting goals, correct?

What we actually get are all kinds of facts and figures that seem to indicate that the military as a whole are meeting recruiting goals, that the guard in particular is meeting goals set for the entire year, and that recruiting has been great for quite some time. But what about the actual headline that needs to be rebutted. The headline that reads that the "Army Guard, Reserve Fall Short of Recruiting Goals"?

That part turns out, according to the same White House toady that says that he is setting the record straight to be true! Check this out as copied and pasted straight from the Whitehouse site: "The Army Reserve, Air National Guard, And Navy Reserve Fell Short Of Their April Goals Partially Because Of High Active-Duty Retention."

There it is, in black and white. The Guard did miss it's recruiting goals, the White House has corrected an already factual headline, and Tony Snow is the one who is being misleading here, not the A.P..

Here is another example of this administrations deception. Here is the title for the whitehouse.gov page in question: Setting the Record Straight: The ABA Finds Brett Kavanaugh Is "Indeed Qualified to Serve on the Federal Bench"

Reading that one would be led to believe that if the record needed straightening on this issue, then someone must have written that the ABA had said that Kavanaugh was not qualified to serve. Well one would be mistaken for using this apparently sound logical approach, because the title of the A.P. story that is being corrected actually reads thusly: "ABA Downgrades Rating For White House Aide From Well-Qualified To Qualified."

Now I'm sure there is a significant amount of the koolaid drinking population that would read this and furrow their brows in indignation that the A.P. had been wrong with their headline. But when the correction to the story states that the ABA finds Kavanaugh qualified, and the headline says that the ABA downgraded Kavanaughs rating from "well qualified to qualified"... you can see where a sane person would be left scratching their heads in bewilderment. The A.P. had it right and the record was not in need of straightening in this case.

I full well suspect that we will be seeing much more of this type of weasely obfuscation going forward. So I would like to thank Mr. Tony Snow for taking over the public face of the White House and going further down the path of deception rather than starting with an insistence on a bit more honesty and forthrightness from this administration. What did you expect?!