Brendan Nyhan

Month: February 2006

  • Scary Democrat pictures

    Howard Kaloogian, a conservative candidate for Duke Cunningham’s open Congressional seat in California, has sent a fundraising email (PDF) to Human Events readers that includes a classic scare picture of prominent Democrats:

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  • Bush admin. says port dissent aids terrorists

    Via Americablog, the Bush administration is again playing the “dissent aids terrorists” card: Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England portrayed the United Arab Emirates, of which the Emirate of Dubai is a part, as a vital ally in the war on terror. He noted that more U.S. warships reside there than anywhere in the world outside

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  • Pundit contempt for democracy

    This Eric Alterman quote infuriates me: I don’t mind if politicians want to exploit public ignorance in the service of a good cause. In other words, Alterman — who complains constantly about the dissembling of the Bush administration — thinks deception in the service of a “good cause” is fine. Andrew Sullivan also endorsed misleading

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  • Man bites dog: Administration calls for centrism

    Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, called on Iraq’s politicians to “govern from the center, not the ideological extremes,” in a Los Angeles Times op-ed on Feb. 12, and called again for elected leaders in Iraq to “govern from the center” during an interview with the public radio show “The World” that aired last

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  • Supply and demand: Duke undergrad edition

    Who says the Durham economy doesn’t benefit from having Duke here? This ad, from today’s Duke Chronicle, would make Adam Smith proud:

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  • Davidson students’ mock election ads

    Pat Sellers, a political science professor at Davidson College, is running an innovative election simulation in which two teams of students are battling in a mock campus-wide election. One team created a female Republican played by a post office employee, and the other decided to run a fictionalized version of “Saved by the Bell” character

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  • Brendan’s Bushism of the day

    Many of the so-called “Bushisms” on Slate are misleading, but this quote from the AP is real and actually made me laugh: I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company. Update

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  • Molly Ivins’ partisan streak ends

    Ken Waight of the valuable Lying in Ponds website, which codes the partisan content of pundit columns, notes a landmark: Dreams really do come true. After analyzing 270 achingly predictable Molly Ivins columns over the past three years here at Lying in Ponds, I was shocked last week when it finally happened. Number 271, entitled

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  • KidsPost on Cheney’s accident

    Via Wonkette, here’s the Washington Post children’s section KidsPost explaining Dick Cheney’s PR dilemma to the tykes: Imagine this: You’re playing baseball with your brother when you accidentally hit him in the eye with the ball. You go inside, and the sitter gets ice for your brother’s eye. Your mom is at work, but you

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  • Bush’s Crichton consultation in the NYT

    President Bush’s consultation with anti-global warming nut/writer Michael Crichton, which I criticized earlier this week, was picked up in the New York Times today: In his new book about Mr. Bush, “Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush,” Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year

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