How about another example?  When 9/11 occurred, the White House pressured the EPA into downplaying the dangers of the air around Ground Zero.  Now we have a lot of brave and dedicated rescue workers, aid workers, and health workers with lung diseases.

3)  Bush lies by lying about Kerry.

I'm not talking about his hatchet men.  I'll just focus on Bush himself.

In the second debate, Bush said,

(Kerry just) said he's going to have a novel health care plan. You know what it is? The federal government is going to run it. 

According to factcheck.org, 97% of Americans would keep their same health care plan under Kerry's proposal.  Why?  Because it isn't a federal takeover of health care.  It is mainly a reworking of tax and business laws to make health care more easily widespread.  Some people would be added to Medicare/Medicaid, but it isn't most people.

Factcheck.org is fascinating.  They are non-partisan, yet oh so many of their fact-checks uncover distortions and lies by Bush and his cronies rather than Kerry.  You'll find out there why Kerry is more a middle-of-the-road Democrat, not "the most liberal Senator."  You'll find reference to a Bush ad where he quotes newspapers without letting the viewer in on the fact that the quotes are from the editorials, not the news pages.  And you'll find in-depth checkups from each of the debates.  Yes, Kerry has a share of facts to be checked, but you'll find that a) there aren't as many as Bush's, and b) they aren't as far from the truth, on average, as Bush's.  At least, I sure did.

Anyway, Bush's more recent favorite way of lying about Kerry is by lying about Kerry's statements.

Kerry was asked what it would take to make Americans feel safe again.  Kerry said:

''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,'' the article states as the Massachusetts senator's reply.

''As a former law enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.'' (end quote)

In other words, beat the terrorists down to where they're a minor, rather than a potentially major, threat.  And you keep fighting them, even when they're down, so they don't become a threat again.  How did Bush talk about Kerry's quote?

"Just this weekend, Senator Kerry talked of reducing terrorism to - quote - 'nuisance' - end quote - and compared it to prostitution and illegal gambling," Mr. Bush said. "See, I couldn't disagree more. Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying terrorists, and spreading freedom and liberty around the world."

Bush is implying that Kerry isn't taking terrorism seriously.  But Kerry isn't talking about what he'd do to get it to a nuisance.  He's always made it clear he'd go after terrorists hard.  No, he's talking about his goal for the future.  And is Bush's goal even remotely plausible?  "Defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying terrorists, and spreading freedom and liberty around the world?"  So far he's one for three.  He's on the offensive, all right:  he's all about being offensive.  But destroying terrorists?  He's caused more to be recruited than he's ever been able to kill.  Spreading freedom and liberty around the world?  The Middle East sure doesn't see it that way, and that's where Bush has been doing most of his spreading.

Another example is Bush saying in the first debate, "As well, help is on the way, but it's certainly hard to tell it when he voted against the $87-billion supplemental to provide equipment for our troops, and then said he actually did vote for it before he voted against it."

This has been a long-term lie.  There were two bills concerning the $87 billion supplemental.  One paid for it by rolling back Bush' tax break for the wealthy, and one just tacked it on to the national debt.  Kerry voted for the first, but not the second, based on the difference.  BUSH HIMSELF threatened a veto of the one that rolled back the tax break--so, in essence, Bush himself "voted against it before he voted for it."

Worst of all, even after this supplemental, Bush has done such a poor job that the troops still don't have the armor, ammo, and spare parts they need.  And this is a year later.

4)  Bush lies by misleading.

Boy, there's a million of these.  Here's one I bumped into while doing checking up on the debates:

Bush's ad says that Kerry's plan would cost $1.5 trillion.  However, there's no information to tell you that that cost is over ten years, and would make sure that more than half of the 45 million uninsured would be covered.  (From the same factcheck.org health care plan article linked above.)  Bush's plan?  Make minor changes around the margins.  The link is to Bush's health care plan page, and it contains lots of stuff not about health care:  promoting abstinence, promoting jobs and flex time (jobs are where most folks get their health care, but Bush's record on jobs is horrible), and fighting internet pornography.  It also contains information that sounds good, but isn't helpful:  health savings plans--but how can someone without insurance at all afford a health savings plan?  Allow small businesses to band together to buy health insurance--but they already do that.  Anyway, feel free to check it out.  But as Bush makes changes around the margins, it doesn't mean that things don't change.  Under Bush, 5 million more people are uninsured than when he took office.

Another one:  Bush still claims his tax cuts for the wealthy "mostly go to lower- and middle-income earners."  Not so, says factcheck.org.  And although the wealthy pay most of the income taxes, who else is going to?  The poor?  If Bill Gates makes $300 million in a year, that's the income of 12,000 people making $25,000 a year--and those people have to pay a much larger portion of their income just for rent, food, and other basics.

Well, I'd do more on this, but frankly, there's lots of other things I need to do.  So, just remember:  Bush is willing to lie about anything that isn't completely contradicted by the facts--and even then, he'll spin and spin and spin.  Apologies?  Never, we know that.  Honest talk about errors?  Nope.  In fact, after 9/11, we know he cowered in a school reading to kids after he knew that both Trade Center towers had been hit, and what did he do later?  Sold pictures of himself "looking Presidential" on 9/11 in Air Force One.
I'd say that's a pretty ugly little way of distorting the truth.  And a horrible way of milking a national tragedy.  Worse yet, we know that Bush has abused 9/11 in other ways, principally to get his Iraq war going so he could run for reelection as a "war President."

Kerry has taken the high road.  He's used all sorts of euphemisms, but he's never called Bush a liar.

I don't have such a compunction.  I'll call it like I see it:

#2:  Bush is a liar.

Oh, what about Kerry?  Well, as I mentioned before, factcheck.org went over the debates with a fine-toothed comb.  I personally saw that Kerry's errors and distortions were much smaller and less numerous than Bush's.  But you look it up, and make your own mind.

More importantly, we know that Kerry can be counted on to tell the truth in difficult circumstances--something utterly beyond Bush.  When no one was talking about the horrors being unleashed in Vietnam, Kerry took the stories of the veterans, and brought them to Congress in the "Winter Soldier" testimony.  Later, as a Senator, (gee, isn't Bush always implying Kerry did nothing as a Senator?) Kerry formed the Kerry Commission and uncovered everything about Iran-Contra, the Nicaraguan cocaine trade, Oliver North, and so on--including some important Democratic fundraisers, even though he was urged to let the matter drop.