Reality bites

These propositions are items in a political programme disguised as statements of fact; and the utopian inhabits a dreamworld of such 'facts', remote from the world of reality where quite contrary facts may be observed. The realist has no difficulty in perceiving that these utopian propositions are not facts bu t aspirations, and belong to the optative not to the indicative mood; and he goes on to show that, considered as aspirations, they are not a priori propositions, but are rooted in the world of reality in a way which the utopian altogether fails to understand.
E. H. Carr, The Twenty Year's Crisis

...is to:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Ron Suskin, New York Times, Without a Doubt, October 17, 2004.

as...

It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq. If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war.
Rich Lowry, What Went Right, National Review, May 9th, 2005.

is to:

More than 200 Iraqis, most of them policemen or soldiers, have been killed in the last eight days in one of the most lethal stretches of violence since the invasion two years ago.
Richard A. Oppel Jr., Insurgents Kill 26 More Iraqis; Tentative Deal on Completing Cabinet Is Reported. May 7th, 2005.