Lies, damn lies and statistics

Few people speak out of their asses more frequently than a Repuglican senator. And even among that lot, John Cornyn is renowned for his extended, deafening and incomprehensible solos upon the butt-trumpet.

Steve Benen at Political Animal caught Cornyn farting higher than his ass on CNN today. He was claiming that the deficit had more than tripled since the final year of the Daffy-Fudd administration. Not so, retorts Benen:

“The budget deficit Bush/Cheney left for Democrats to clean up was $1.3 trillion. It’s unclear exactly what this year’s shortfall will be, but it’s likely to be around $1.5 trillion. To suggest that the deficit has ‘more than tripled’ is to suggest that John Cornyn is strikingly bad at arithmetic.”

Meanwhile, the guy who had been in the Senate nearly as long as I’ve been alive, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, has died. He did a lot in that half-century, some good, some bad, but I’ll always remember him for his opposition to the Daffy-Fudd adventurism overseas. Writes Adam Clymer:

He denounced the 2002 Congressional resolution authorizing Mr. Bush to make war on Iraq. It “amounted to a complete evisceration of the Congressional prerogative to declare war,” he wrote in “Losing America,” “and an outrageous abdication of responsibility to hand such unfettered discretion to this callow and reckless president.

Truer words, etc.