Month: July 2006
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Bush vs. his economists III
President Bush claimed yesterday that recent revenue growth proves that cutting taxes reduces the deficit: Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit. You might remember those debates. You endured that rhetoric hour after hour on the floor of the Senate and the House. Today’s numbers show that
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The latest WSJ tax/income sophistry
Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial page trumpets the “the gusher of revenues flowing into the Treasury in the wake of the 2003 tax cuts” and claims that “millions of Americans [are] moving into higher tax brackets”: This would all seem to be good news, but some folks are never happy. The same crowd that
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How dangerous is it to be president?
Reading an academic article yesterday, I came across an interesting statistic that I hadn’t thought about before: 4 of our 43 presidents have been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), a rate of almost ten percent. And it turns out that fifteen presidents have been the subject of assassination attempts. So just how dangerous is being
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Washington Times reporter bashes Bush
Washington Times national reporter Eric Pfeiffer has written a piece for The New Republic Online that describes President Bush as “a failed oilman before becoming governor of Texas,” says the President “has accumulated a disastrous environmental record,” states that Bush “has aligned himself closely with big business,” and claims that the White House “tolerates little
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Wash. Times: McCain is GOP frontrunner
The Washington Times is an awful journalistic institution, but it’s a pretty reliable source of intelligence on GOP infighting. So their recent story touting John McCain as the frontrunner for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination is a big deal: Some top Republicans at odds with Sen. John McCain on core conservative issues say privately that
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Reviewing the political fundamentals
An overview of the political landscape: Polls 2006 generic ballot: Time (6/27-6/29) — 35% Republican, 47% Democrat USA Today/Gallup (6/23-6/25) — 38% R, 54% D ABC/Washington Post (6/22-6/25) — 39% R, 52% D Diageo/Hotline (6/21-6/25) — 36% R, 41% D Pew (6/14-6/19) — 39% R, 51% D Congress job rating: Time (6/27-6/29) — 31% approve,
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Coulter’s (alleged) plagiarism: Not the issue
I have a hard time getting worked up about the Ann Coulter plagiarism investigation. It’s a relatively minor offense compared with her long record of factual deception and hateful rhetoric, yet it’s the only thing that could get her column killed in the bizarro world of journalistic “ethics.” Update 7/7 5:23 PM: Here’s the full
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Playing “the treason card” since 9/11
Writing behind the Times Select firewall, Paul Krugman describes the assault on dissent since 9/11: But an almost equally important aspect of the project has been the attempt to create a political environment in which nobody dares to criticize the administration or reveal inconvenient facts about its actions. And that attempt has relied, from the
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Drudge on NK missile: “aimed at Hawaii”
Drudge headline: “REPORT: FAILED N. KOREAN MISSILE AIMED AT HAWAII.” The headline of the story Drudge linked to: “N. Korea missile aimed at area off Hawaii.” In the non-reality-based community, that’s apparently close enough. Update 7/7 5:26 PM: Drudge’s headline for the link, which is now small and black rather than giant and red, now
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When Affirmative Action Was White
At last night’s final banquet of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which prepares academically promising college juniors from historically underrepresented groups for graduate school in political science, Ira Katznelson of Columbia University (who is the president of the American Political Science Association) gave a fascinating talk about Southern politics that touched on something really important