Month: April 2005
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Another WSJ lesson in how to deceive with statistics
Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial on the tax code, which concludes that “[t]he U.S. tax system is already ‘progressive’ enough,” uses a common trick: talking about the rising tax share paid by upper income Americans without once mentioning the rising pre-tax income share that they receive. Here’s how the Journal frames it: The authors found
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Brownstein falls for centrist third party fantasy
The centrist/Internet third party meme appears to be catching on. Sadly, the latest victim is Ron Brownstein, one of the best political journalists working today. He begins the column by quoting Joe Trippi, the Johnny Appleseed of this stupid idea: MoveOn, and groups like it on the left and right, chisel at the power of
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Mau-mauing the press on “nuclear option”
Josh Marshall has been all over the Republican effort to pretend that the phrase “nuclear option” is a Democratic talking point. The latest offender is that scourage of stray cats, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: “I don’t think it’s radical to ask senators to vote,” Dr. Frist said. “Now if Senator Reid continues to obstruct
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Time on Ann Coulter: the Waterloo of political journalism?
After working on Spinsanity for more than three years, I’ve seen a lot of bad political journalism. But John Cloud’s article about Ann Coulter in Time still shocked me (note: it’s not online yet for non-subscribers, unfortunately). It manages to bring together everything that’s wrong with contemporary political coverage: the obsession with being counter-intuitive; the
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In the Hotline
My post on Tom DeLay’s beef with Internet research made the Hotline, the bible of political insiders (subscription required): DeLay’s appearance on Tony Snow‘s radio show — as reported by the AP — yields this much-quoted line: “We’ve got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That’s
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Man bites dog: Senator listens to other senator, changes mind
It’s sad that this is a notable occurrence: A surprise last-minute defection by an Ohio Republican forced the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to postpone a vote that had been scheduled for Tuesday on the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. …Until the defection, by Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio,
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What is Tom DeLay talking about? (Internet research edition)
Tom DeLay attacking Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy: “We’ve got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That’s just outrageous,” DeLay told Fox News Radio. “And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly
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9/11 brings Macromedia and Adobe together
Just when you thought people had stopped relating Sept. 11 to dumb s—: “After 9/11, we both realised that being enemies didn’t make sense,” Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen said in a conference call on Monday, referring to his discussions with Macromedia’s then-CEO Rob Burgess. “We were not longer competing.” Heartwarming. Luckily, the reporter for ZDNet
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Why is Hillary running for re-election in ’06?
Here’s an obvious question that no one seems to be asking: why the hell is Hillary Clinton running for re-election in 2006? Why not move straight into a presidential campaign? As we all know, running for the presidency from the Senate is a crippling burden, as John Kerry showed in painful detail (and Bob Dole
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All the President’s Spin stats
Amazon.com’s All the President’s Spin page now features a list of the most frequently used words in the book and some fun text statistics. Unsurprisingly, the book is rated as requiring a college education to read. But on the other hand, we offer 6,498 words per dollar (22,742 used) — what a deal! PS Should