Month: May 2005
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Never trust the Center for American Progress
The intellectual hooligans at the Center for American Progress are up to old tricks. Here’s how they present President Bush’s Social Security plan in today’s edition of their Progress Report newsletter: LEG ONE – SOCIAL SECURITY: The first leg of retirement security is Social Security. President Bush’s new plan to privatize Social Security will mean
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Loose cannon watch: Howard Dean
Here’s the DNC chairman displaying some of his trademark subtlety and discretion: Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Party, said yesterday that the US House majority leader, Tom DeLay, ”ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence,” referring to allegations of unethical conduct against the Republican leader. Dean’s remark,
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George Allen’s ugly history on racial issues
I’ve done some additional digging, and it turns out that George Allen, the Virginia senator who is being touted as the GOP presidential frontrunner for 2008, has more ugly racial history than I first thought. First, there’s the noose he hung from a tree in his law office, which suggests an approving attitude toward lynchings.
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Conflict of interest watch: Ron Brownstein
The personal lives of journalists are none of my business — except when they involve the public figures whom the journalists cover. A case in point is NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who frequently comments on matters involving the Federal Reserve without disclosing that her husband is Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. It’s inappropriate. So I was dismayed
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Novak: GOP insiders predict Hillary vs. Allen in 2008
From his syndicated column: Members of the inner circle of high-ranking House Republicans privately agree that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is an absolute lock for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and will not be easy to defeat in the general election. The same lawmakers believe the Republican race to oppose Clinton is
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Another bad filibuster poll question
A couple of weeks ago I pointed out, via James Taranto, that the Washington Post used this terrible question to measure public support for the nuclear option (last link is PDF): Would you support or oppose changing Senate rules to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees? The Post didn’t provide
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Missing white women and marginal viewers
Via Kevin Drum, here’s Douglas MacKinnon on how cable news focuses on missing young, white women like the “runaway bride”: Note to the news media — with an emphasis on the cable networks: Enough is enough. Your continual focus on, and reporting of, missing, young, attractive white women not only demeans your profession but is
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Bruce Bartlett: Reality-based conservative
Kudos to Bruce Bartlett for making the obvious but politically difficult case for fiscal sanity — see his New York Times op-ed and, via Andrew Sullivan, this National Review Online column. Here is the key passage from the NYT piece: After an initial effort at restraining Medicare spending – squelched by President Bill Clinton’s veto
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Limbaugh up to old tricks
Mickey Kaus catches Rush Limbaugh mashing together two Ken Starr soundbites to accuse CBS of distortion, when in fact it’s Limbaugh who’s distorting Starr’s position on the nuclear option (he opposes it). As Kaus writes, “When people on the left do that, people on the right call it ‘Dowdification,’ no?” Well, yes, but somehow I
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CBPP: Bush’s plan fails on solvency
A preliminary Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of President Bush’s proposals for Social Security shows that the combination of private accounts and progressive indexing would close only 30 percent of the 75-year actuarial deficit, move the date of trust fund exhaustion forward by 11 years, and add trillions to the national debt. Here’s