Man, if you had any doubts about the integrity of the Bush presidency, just check out his blog.

Everybody is going to do some spinning of their news, but his blog is just one gross distortion after another. His people just have no integrity whatsoever, do they?

Today's swill:

A piece titled "Return of power brightens Iraqis" summarizes a USA Today piece as a gleefull story about the lights coming on in Iraq, saying how great things are now compared to pre-war Iraq.

What a crock! I guess they assume their readers are all lemmings and won't actually follow the link.

The actual story paints a much bleaker picture, with people pissed as hell that we threw the country into darkness for six straight months, and relieved that it's finally back on. The Bush blog segues into the story this way:

Written from Baghdad, a piece in today’s USA Today captures the people’s excitement as the lights come back on and the positive effects their newfound power is having on Iraq’s burgeoning economy.

But conveniently leaves out passages from the piece like this:

The lack of electricity has angered Iraqis and created problems for the U.S.-led coalition.

As for the blog spin that Iraqis are rejoicing about being better off than before, that's just pure bull. The piece actually quotes megawatt figures in question:

Power output reached 4,461 megawatts this week, exceeding the prewar level of 4,107 megawatts in February. A year ago it was 4,867 megawatts. But electricity demand is down now because many factories and businesses are closed.

So they're ahead of the period where both countries were preparing for war, but still not up to levels before it all began. All in all, pretty close, but hardly any great improvement.

And of course, the little downside: the power matters less because the economy has ground to a halt. Factories are not running, businesses shut down . . . That sounds promising.

Those Bushies. Liars, liars, liars. Yes, things apparently are starting to improve a bit--from the fire back up to the frying pan, perhaps--but this rosy picture of the country back on its feet and people dancing in the streets . . . Why don't they just level with people and admit how long it's going to take, and how damn slow and painful it's going to be.

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On a smaller front, here's the opening of his latest post:

Markets React to Jobless Claims

CBS Marketwatch is reporting that U.S. stock indexes have surged to new yearly highs after a fall in jobless claims released this morning suggest a strengthening economic recovery and better than expected third-quarter growth.

Here's the actual sentence from CBS Marketwatch: "The major U.S. stock indexes surged to new yearly highs after a fall in initial unemployment claims suggested the economic recovery may no longer be jobless and Yahoo's better than expected third-quarter report emboldened buyers."

If you know anything about the stock market, you know that earnings reports from key companies like Yahoo move the markets in big ways. That may well have had the great impact. (And the next sentence added a third reason (though it was also related to the economy).

Reminds me of the movie quote-ads, that will take a statement like, ". . . in a truly dreadful year, this is perhaps the best movie of the summer so far," and run an ad with a banner head saying, "Roger Ebert raves, 'best movie of the summer!'

At least they didn't completely distort this one. It was half true. But only half. I guess that's above average in the World of Immorality where the conservatives reside.

New New Hampshire poll out from American Research Group.

Almost no changes from last month, except Wes Clark, who inched or leapt up from 2 to 5%, depending whether you count percentage gain. It's great percentage gain, but he'll have to move up faster than that if he wants to catch the leaders

Howard Dean maintains his lead of exactly ten points on Kerry (the only place in the world Kerry has some strength). They each slipped slightly. The numbers (with September/August in parenthesis):

• Dean 29 (31/28)
• Kerry 19 (21/21)
• Lieberman 6 (5/4)
• Gephardt 6 (8/10)
• Clark 5 (2/1)
• Edwards 3 (2/2)

 The most interesting finding (directly from the ARG site):

Awareness of Wesley Clark has increased to 90% from 47% in August, but over half of likely Democratic primary voters aware of Clark say they do not know enough about him to form an opinion.

Seems like a direct communique to Clark, though he doesn't appear to be recieving that message.

Major props to the Dean campaign for reporting those results on their blog without a whiff of spin. Matter of fact, nearly their entire post came verbatim off the ARG site, including the good and the (arguably) bad. Those guys can be so damn refreshing sometimes. No wonder they're so far out in front.

And compare their approach to the propoganda from hell on the new Bush blog. (See the next post for the latest distortions.)

Update: AP now has a story up on this here.