Anatomy of a Lie

I'm not sure which is more disturbing-- that these things happen every day, or that no one cares.

The story goes something like this: a progressive group had Paul Begala speak at a function. Paul Begala says this:

"Well guess what, bin Laden didn't get the memo. He wants to fight us here as well as we saw in London last week. And so, the- their theory is, "we can't really do everything to protect our country because we have to cut taxes for the rich." And so, it... they want to kill us- particularly this city and New York and some other places. I was driving past the pentagon when that plane hit. I had friends on that plane, this is deadly serious to me- they want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit."

Awkward, sure. The pronouns get pretty mixed up toward the end, since he's obviously referring to two different groups here-- the terrorists and the administration. The terrorists attack, the administration fails to protect. Quite simple, really. Just careless.

But what's this? Both Matt Drudge and the Washington Times (to name just two) decided to gin up the quote to make it more likely to outrage flag-waving imbeciles. To wit (from the WT):

Democratic strategist Paul Begala says Republicans want to kill him and his children to preserve tax cuts for the rich. . . .

Republicans, he added, "want to kill us."

Of course, all Begala said was that terrorists attacked us, and this administration didn't stop the attacks. But that doesn't win over the brainwashed right-wing....