LIAR

tons of rhetoric, abominably bereft in fact:

... on Thursday night, when he promised to improve benefits for the poor while limiting them for everyone else,

Eric Martin deconstructs Tierney's silly column [Total Information Awareness: President Bush: A Man In Tights?]

In reality, the President's plan did not call for improving benefits for the poor, it just maintained what they would be getting if Social Security were left untouched. In the parlance of the day, somehow, that is transformed into an improvement. Under that rationale, I guess I get a raise every time I get a paycheck. Who knew? And the show continues. Tierney was duplicitously lauding a plan that has been described by some, especially Bush himself, as affecting social security benefits thusly: A slight benefit reduction for middle income and upper income earners, but with the lowest income earners benefits' left untouched - or "improved" if you will. In doing so, Bush was trying to portray himself as a compassionate conservative, and someone who cares for the poorest Americans - a dubious contention that could be shredded with even the most cursory examination of the changes to the tax code that have occurred over the past four years. But it will likely have its desired effect - at least in the hopelessly sycophantic corporate media.

[update: Josh Marshall weighs in]