Month: February 2005
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Dean cronyism at DFA
It’s amusing that Howard Dean, who furiously denounced the cronyism of the Bush administration, has installed his brother as placeholder chair of Democracy for America now that he’s DNC chair. Jim Dean has no obvious qualifications other than being Howard’s brother. Jim’s only function is to ensure that Howard retains control of the organization while
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Yoo on mandates
The Jane Meyer New Yorker article on the rendition of suspected terrorists mentioned below has another noteworthy passage in which former Bush Justice Department official John C. Yoo defends his legal advice to the President justifying the use of torture: Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N.
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The public vs. the spinners on Social Security
Is the public catching up to Social Security spin? In a Washington Post poll last week, the brouhaha about “private” versus “personal” accounts seemed not to matter: Americans seem not to change their views when the president’s plan is characterized as a “private” rather than a “personal” investment account — a change from earlier studies,
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What is waterboarding? (part II)
About a month ago, I pointed out that the Washington Post and other publications have published contradicting definitions of the interrogation tactic known as “waterboarding,” which is either strapping someone to a board and submerging them under water until they think they are about to drown, or placing a wet towel over their face and
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MoveOn.org nonsense on Social Security
MoveOn.org is back with its second misleading attack on President Bush’s proposal to create private accounts in Social Security (for part 1, see this post). The best part is that the group’s criticism of Bush’s plan ends up promoting the same confusion as the White House by suggesting that private accounts and calculating benefits using
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The 2009 bait and switch, contd.
In a briefing on the President’s budget last week, OMB director Josh Bolten played yet more games with the phony deficit reduction plan. Here’s Reuters: Joshua Bolten, the White House budget director, played down the impact of the private accounts on future budget deficits, saying it “is still consistent with the president’s goal to cut
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Why Super Bowl ads might not be such a bad deal
On Slate, Tim Noah claims that “buying commercial time on the Super Bowl is a waste of money!” His justification is that the cost per thousand viewers of the ads has tripled since 1970, a much greater increase than the price for ads on general network programming. As a result, it’s possible to reach up
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Martin O’Malley shames himself
Unacceptable – Baltimore mayor Martin O’Malley compares Bush’s budget to the 9/11 attacks: “Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America’s great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most,” O’Malley said. “Years later, we are given a
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The worst “Bushism” yet?
At Spinsanity, we showed how Slate’s “Bushisms” and “Kerryisms” columns twisted the two men’s words to reinforce pre-established storylines. Now Eugene Volokh, the UCLA law professor/blogger who is one of the chief critics of “Bushisms”, has nailed what might be the worst one yet: Slate’s quote of Bush (subsequently deleted): “Listen, the other day I
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What is Robert Samuelson talking about?
Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson, fresh from forgetting the history of Bush’s budget plans, is back with another masterpiece: The unspeakable truth — unspeakable because hardly anyone speaks it — is that benefit cuts are inevitable, because the baby boom’s retirement costs will force them. The combined spending of Social Security and Medicare, according