Yep. They're waking up. First
this story by Dana Milbank on WaPo about W's phony jobs and deficit predictions. Choice graf:
President Bush last week caused a stir when he declined to endorse a projection, made by his own Council of Economic Advisers, that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year. But that forecast, derided as wildly optimistic, was one of the more modest predictions the administration has made about the economy over the past three years.
Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for fiscal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit for this year is on course to be $521 billion.
These are not isolated cases. Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create, but economists and politicians disagree about why.
Next an NPR account on Morning Edition this, uh, morning, about the sinister Office of Special Plans, which was the stovepipe from Chalabi to Cheney to push phony intel on WMD before the war.