Antidote for bullshit

Krugman hits the bullseye, then splits his own arrow.

[W]hen the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looked at the report, it made an interesting catch. It turns out that Treasury’s hypothetical families got all their gains from the so-called middle-class provisions of the Bush tax cuts: the Child Tax Credit, the reduced tax bracket for lower incomes and marriage penalty relief.

These all happen to be provisions that Mr. Obama proposes leaving in place. In other words, the Bush administration itself implicitly defines the middle class as consisting of people making too little to end up paying additional taxes under the Obama plan.

Of course, all the evidence in the world won’t stop Republicans from claiming, as they always do, that Democrats are going to impose a crippling tax burden on ordinary hard-working Americans. But it just ain’t so.

"It just ain't so" is the safe characterization of virtually anything the Bushists, including John McCain, say about social class, income, and taxes.

Kit Seelye and Patrick Healy, in the same allegedly liberal newspaper, of course give the he-said-she-said battle of press operations with no attempt at proportion or lie-catching.