Bob Novak -- a douchebag for honesty.

Following a link from Atrios, we find Bob Novak doing what Bob Novak does best: lying. In this CNN transcipt, we find Novakula misrepresenting what Howard Dean said at a Cornell presentation:

NOVAK: Since he was elected Democratic national chairman, he has been -- they've been keeping him out of the national spotlight. No major television interviews on national networks are scheduled for the next couple weeks, I'm told, and maybe the reason is that they've got to really get Howard under control.

He spoke at Cornell University last week, and the only paper that covered this was "The Cornell Daily" student paper, and he said, yes, Social Security has a big problem. Over the years it's going to lose about 80 percent of the benefits. That, Judy, is not the Democratic line. The Democratic line is there is no problem.

Now, let's go to the article in the Cornell Daily Sun to see what Dean actually said:

Dean pointed out that, while he would not endorse this, if Social Security were left alone for 30 years, its benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now. He acknowledged that while there were indeed problems with the program, turning to Wall Street was not the answer.

Oops. The difference between "reduced by 80 per cent" and "reduced to 80 per cent". Ah, well, Novak can perhaps be forgiven. He is, after all, a Republican and, as we've seen in this blog, Republicans are not well known for their mathematical acumen.

UPDATE: DailyKos is covering this as well, with a link to Media Matters.