The best lies money can buy

[gratuitous]

1. It's a feature, not a bug

"The Times write-up focuses on the ad's efficacy, and I suppose it's possible uninformed voters who are easily swayed by nonsense, policy gibberish, and outright falsehoods will find it compelling."

Yeah, and . . . ?

Of course, if the New York Times was still in the business of committing journalism, they might spare a moment or two with the actual content of the ad, rather than its truthiness. That sort of analysis, however, is no longer the purview of the Fourth Estate, which can't be bothered with such esoteric minutiae as "facts" or "reality." Instead, we get the stylings of outfits like Politifact, which deemed the biggest political lie of 2011 to be the charge by Democrats that Republicans were ending Medicare when Republican proposals were only designed to . . . well, end Medicare. Politifact decided it was a lie, though, because the Republicans would maintain a program called Medicare (which was basically an empty shell). So for Politifact, the truth was that the Republicans were going to end Medicare as we know it, but they weren't actually proposing to do away with Medicare.

So Rove's ad is a pack of lies from the get-go, but that doesn't inspire a sense of obligation on the part of the Times to say or do anything about it.