Secrets and Lies: Bush doesn't know which way to go...

I've complained deeply about the air of secrecy that has surrounded the Bushling world. Perhaps I should prefer it to the lies spun on behalf of its various enterprises.

In the current time the president can't face reality in Iraq, so he spins happy tales that few are falling for, except perhaps for Hugh Hewitt.

Speaking of spinning happy tales, the Pentagon has hired the Lincoln Group to plant phony stories in Iraqi papers, as if the Iraqi press is all starry-eyed about the amazing progress the U.S. is making in their country. Oh, the great American tradition of a free press.

We shouldn't be surprised that the best Bush can do is propaganda. After all, he paid a columnist to push nuclear-family-style marriage. How 'bout them family values, America?

Not long before, the Bushlings hired Armstrong Williams to push the No Child Left Behind Act. We're getting educated, you bet.

Speaking of misspent Dept. of Education money, spending tax dollars to have right-wing heavy metal bands tour the country can't be what the founding fathers had in mind.

I can't really blame W. so much as the whole clan. Governor Jeb gave paid propaganda a spin too.

The propaganda doesn't fall far from the tree, it seems. G.H.W. Bush, also known as "41," paid the Rendon Group to soften the country up for war. It's no wonder W. kept the contract going.

It's hard to know where to place Judith Miller in all of this. People of goodwill want to think she wasn't a shill for, or worse yet, a tool of the Bushlings, but her wildly inaccurate WMD stories certainly served the false buildup to war. Now she's sorry, at least. That's rich, after a seven-figure severance package from the NYT. No, wait, she's rich.

Now even two-bit players like Newark, New Jersey, want the press to spread good news and aren't afraid to pay for it.

The funny thing is, no one is falling for it anymore, certainly not insider Lawrence Wilkerson. The administration that once famously bragged, "We create our own reality," had better heed the words of The Daily Show's Jon Stewart -- "Uh, not so much..." -- and gain a little humility. Fat chance, until history humbles them.