Month: January 2007
-
McCain’s numbers dropping
Back in June 2005, I argued that John McCain’s high favorability ratings were doomed to decline: McCain spiked upward in popularity at the time he made his run in the 2000 presidential primaries, and has barely declined since — even though he has generally been a strong defender of President Bush. The reason, I think,
-
Jon Chait on Alan Reynolds, think tank hack
The New Republic’s Jon Chait has done it again, launching one of his signature hack takedowns against the Cato Institute’s Alan Reynolds, a pseudo-expert who is challenging the top academic economists studying income inequality in a transparent attempt to muddy the waters. But what makes Chait’s piece particularly excellent is his deconstruction of the PR
-
No suicide by agent who checked in Atta
One of the incidents that led to me quitting blogging for The American Prospect was a dispute over a post on Atrios that used a suicide to score cheap political points. But it turns out that there was no suicide. To review, here’s a quick summary of the controversy from my Time.com column: Last Wednesday,
-
Hotline analysis of national House vote
The subscription-only Hotline has a useful analysis of cumulative national and state-by-state vote totals by party for the House: We all know ’06 was bad for the GOP. But the breadth of the Dem victory shows up starkly in a new Hotline analysis of the cumulative nat’l vote for House candidates. — Dems won 54.1%
-
Juvenile Democratic candidate narratives
Try to believe Newsweek pays Howard Fineman to write drivel like this (via Kevin Drum): You knew Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in high school. At least I did. They were candidates in the student senate election. She was the worthy but puffed-up Miss Perfect, all poodle skirts and multicolored binders clutched to her chest.
-
Revisiting Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
I want to briefly revisit the subject of Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. A few weeks ago, I criticized a New York Times article that presented a misleading characterization of Carter’s use of the term “apartheid” in the title. In that post, I didn’t comment directly the propriety of Carter’s use of
-
Halloween comes late: Schumer in his boxers
It’s a good thing the snow here delayed delivery of my New York Times, or I would started my day with this mental image: Mr. Delahunt, a six-term congressman, is the least prominent of the four [members of Congress who live together] but perhaps the funniest. More to the point, he is the only one
-
Headline of the year
From the Associated Press, my nominee for headline of the year: Escaped Chimp Gets Snack, Cleans Bathroom (AP) LITTLE ROCK, Ark. An escaped chimpanzee at the Little Rock Zoo raided a kitchen cupboard and did a little cleaning with a toilet brush before sedatives knocked her out on top of a refrigerator. The 120-pound primate,
-
Clive Crook gets tax cut costs wrong
Writing in the Atlantic, Clive Crook claims that “All of the administration’s tax cuts account for only about a quarter of the deterioration in the ten-year projected budget balance since 2001. The rest is outlays—on defense, and on everything else.” But that’s not right — according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Bush’s
-
Happy vs. serious John Edwards
The email template for messages to supporters from the John Edwards campaign includes a picture of the candidate at the top. What’s funny is that they have been changing the picture depending on the tone of the message — here’s happy John after he announced he was running: And here’s serious John criticizing President Bush’s