HIS OWN FACTS

(UPDATE: Well, Everyone in the world is reporting this more or less Drudge's way, so I suppose I shouldn't have singled out Drudge. It's still a huge distortion of what Clinton said, and the allegedly big divergence from President Obama's position reflects a position I could easily imagine Obama taking.)

Matt Drudge right now:





The link is to a story about Clinton's interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. Here's what Clinton actually said in that interview (emphasis added):

MARIA BARTIROMO: So does that mean extending the tax cuts?

PRES. BILL CLINTON: Well, I think what it means is they will have extend-- they will probably have to put everything off until early next year. That's probably the best thing to do right now. But the Republicans don't want to do that unless he agrees to extend the tax cuts permanently, including for upper income people.

And I don't think the president should do that. That's going to-- that's what they're fighting about. I don't have any problem with extending all of it now, including the current spending level. They're still pretty low, the government spending levels....

But-- the real issue is not whether they should be extended for another few months. The real issue is whether the price the Republican House will put on that extension is the permanent extension of the tax cuts, which I think is an error.

The Big Dog has been off message at times, but what he's saying in this interview is fine, and Drudge is just making trouble.

(UPDATE: And in Drudge's defense, I should note that the headline of the first CNBC link above feeds the deception to Drudge: "US Already in 'Recession,' Extend Tax Cuts: Bill Clinton.")

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Maybe I just feel charitable toward Clinton right now because he took a shot last night at a guy Roger Ailes has a huge mancrush on, Allen West:




At a fundraiser for Obama tonight, Bill Clinton was arguing the case for how much Obama's done in spite of criticism, and referenced Allen West's comments that almost 80 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus were Communists:

He's had to get all this done with a House of Representatives that had one of the Tea Party members claim that 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Caucus were members of the Communist Party and neither the presidential nominee nor any of the leaders rebuked him for saying that! This is not the 1950s. At least Joe McCarthy could skate on the fact that there were one or two living Communists walking around. Nobody's seen a Communist in over a decade!

Boom! Both sides do not do it!

Clinton drives me nuts sometimes, but in that clip he makes me want to stand up and cheer.

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ALSO: This.

Former President Bill Clinton on Monday accused Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the Republican Congress of having "adopted Europe's economic policies" of austerity.

Right -- Europe's problem right now is austerity, not the "socialism" of Mitt Romney's caricature. And it's Romney who's the European right now, not Obama. Nice to see Clinton trying to turn that back on Mitt.