I get that Los Angeles Times blogger and former Bush aide Andrew Malcolm is nothing more than a shill for the Republican Party, fueled by blind hatred of Democrats. He's made that abundantly clear. What's harder to understand is his passionate commitment to dishonest and nonsensical arguments. There are, after all, plenty of critical things a conservative could say about progressives that aren't distortions or falsehoods -- but Malcolm seems to take weird pleasure in coming up with ever-more-convoluted false claims.

Today, for example, Malcolm writes about a new Gallup poll -- and when Malcolm writes about polling, the question isn't whether he'll distort it, but how creatively. Here's Malcolm:

The new national survey finds that within only five days of Republicans taking majority control of the House of Representatives on Jan. 4, Americans' approval of the bicameral body's job shot up more than 50%, from its record low of 13% to 20%.

Nope. The Gallup poll doesn't find that approval of Congress jumped to 20 percent “within only five days” of the GOP's takeover of the House. It shows that it jumped to 20 percent at some point between early December and early January -- but because public opinion is not frozen in place between Gallup polls, we don't know when the increase occurred. It could have occurred in late December, before the Republicans took control. For all Malcolm knows, approval of Congress could have dropped in the days immediately after the GOP took over.

Malcolm:

In December, when so much of the media coverage portrayed the lame-duck Democratic Congress and President Obama as being incredibly productive, popular job approval of that institution plummeted to an historic low 13%.

Malcolm's suggestion that public opinion of Congress dropped amid media coverage of the productive lame-duck session is nonsense. He's referring to a poll conducted from December 10-12 -- before Congress passed the legislation that won it praise for productivity. Andrew Malcolm knows that, assuming he read the Gallup analysis to which he linked, so I can only assume that he's intentionally lying to his readers. Here's Gallup:

Americans' 13% approval of Congress last month was recorded shortly after President Obama and congressional Republican leaders came to agreement on a plan to extend tax cuts put in place under George W. Bush, but before Congress passed that plan and several other major bills. The record-low rating was mainly the result of a drop in approval among Democrats, who may have either disagreed with the compromise plan or been unhappy about the enhanced role Republicans were playing in the legislative process.

Malcolm:

Not surprisingly, in the latest Gallup data, approval of the new 112th Congress improved significantly among Republicans, from a mere 7% up to 22%. But here's an intriguing point: Among Democrats, approval of the new half-Republican Congress also jumped, from 16% all the way up to 24%.

Combined with Malcolm's previous suggestion that the poor December numbers came after that month's flurry of legislative accomplishments, this suggests that approval of Congress among Democrats increased as a result of Republicans taking control of the House. More likely: It increased as a result of a flurry of legislative accomplishments, from the tax deal to repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

More Malcolm:

Using harsh political rhetoric, Obama called hard-bargaining Republican congressional leaders “hostage-takers” for striking a tough legislative deal with him that avoided January….

...increases in withholding taxes, among other things. As one result, his approval improved to slightly closer to 50% and the Republicans' approval soared. Perhaps there's some kind of political lesson to draw from that.

The poll Malcolm is referring to showed that approval of Congress increased -- not that “the Republicans' approval soared.” Malcolm made that part up. Perhaps there's some kind of lesson to draw from that.