Month: June 2005
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Entertainment Weekly fact-checks Tom Cruise
As I’ve written many times, the plague of modern political journalism is reporters’ unwillingness to aggressively fact-check the claims made by politicians (see All the President’s Spin for more). So it’s a little depressing to see Entertainment Weekly doing a better job of fact-checking Tom Cruise than the political press does with President Bush (via
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What are Judy Keen and Kathy Kiely talking about?
This is what passes for polling analysis in the mainstream media — from USA Today: Bush’s supporters say his determination helped him win a second term. A Los Angeles Times poll taken a year ago found that 56% of voters said Bush was “too ideological and stubborn.” But on Election Day, surveys of voters found
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What is Mike Pence talking about?
The Indiana Republican offers a strange definition of “fiscal discipline” in a defense of President Bush’s private accounts plan in USA Today: The American people now see a very clear choice before them: The president’s bold vision for [Social Security] reform based on fiscal discipline and choice, and the Democrat vision for reform based on
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Iraq ass-covering watch: Paul Wolfowitz
Is someone trying to rebuild their shattered reputation? Here’s Paul Wolfowitz disavowing some of the extremes of the Bush administration’s pre-war rhetoric in a new Mark Bowden piece in the Atlantic (key passage in bold): [BOWDEN] “You were one of those who was most emphatic prior to going into Iraq that Saddam had stockpiles of
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The inanity of a Lou Dobbs online poll
Tonight’s online poll from CNN’s fearmonger of outsourcing asks whether Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean is brash, bold, outrageous, or effective. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Not only are online polls unscientific, but these choices make no sense. Dean could be any possible combination of those four adjectives; they’re not mutually exclusive.
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Third party speculation watch: James Fallows
During an interview on “On Point” last night about his Atlantic Monthly article predicting a future economic crisis, James Fallows was the latest commentator to endorse the third party meme that’s rocketing around the press (Real Audio – go to 38:00 in the clip): I feel something different from what I’ve ever felt before in
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Bill Clinton’s My Life: Way too long
Just how long is Bill Clinton’s painfully undisciplined autobiography? It took a voice actor 51.5 hours to read the whole thing: Mr. Clinton was honored in absentia on Friday night at the Audies, the Audiobook Publishers Association’s version of the Oscars. He had been nominated for his reading of a 6.5-hour abridged version of his
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Bush phasing out phaseout?
Has the real world has finally triumphed over the reality-creating machine that is the Bush administration? As I predicted, Bush can’t move the numbers on private accounts. His endless Social Security road show is doing nothing to improve public support for his dramatically unpopular plan. Still, for unknown reasons he has refused to want to
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WSJ screws up Casey myth
Time for more fun with the Wall Street Journal. Today the WSJ criticizes Senator Sam Brownback’s hold on Julie Finley’s nomination to be ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (subscription required): Last time we checked, it required a coalition to sustain a political majority, and Ms. Finley is being nominated for
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David Mayhew on political parties (1974 edition)
Sometimes, it’s worth taking a step back and realizing just how much our politics have changed in the last few decades. Here’s a famous quote from David Mayhew, the eminent political scientist, in his 1974 classic Congress : The Electoral Connection: The fact is that no theoretical treatment of the United States Congress that posits