Brendan Nyhan

Month: May 2007

  • You know you’re in the Bay Area when…

    …someone has a personalized license plate that says “Oust GW.”

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  • Michael Moore’s “Sicko” PR stunt

    Shockingly enough, Michael Moore has managed to stir up controversy in order to promote his new film “Sicko,” but as usual he’s playing dumb (PDF): Well, going quietly to Cannes, I guess, was not to be. For some strange reason, on May 2nd the Bush administration initiated an action against me over how I obtained

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  • Wedding break

    I’m out west for a wedding; more next week…

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  • Supply-side nonsense from Jerry Bowyer

    Time to pick up more intellectual garbage from Jerry Bowyer, a National Review Online financial “expert” who can’t reason his way out of a paper bag (see here, here, and here). In his latest effort, Bowyer once again claims that the Laffer curve has been vindicated and that tax cuts increase revenue, a claim that

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  • Dartmouth blog panel excerpt

    For those who are interested, here’s a clip from the Dartmouth panel where we discuss blog fact-checking (posted with permission of the Rockefeller Center): Other posts about the panel: –Dartmouth panel report (4/19) –Misleading report on Dartmouth blog panel (4/21) –My disembodied voice at Dartmouth panel (4/24)

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  • Phony “experts”: Joe Klein & Ben Stein

    It’s amazing what so-called experts are allowed to publish in the country’s top publications, as Brad DeLong has noted in two important posts. First, Joe Klein, a columnist for Time, wrote this about the role of experience in the 2008 election: [I]t’s entirely possible that “experience” may be more of a disadvantage than an advantage

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  • Extreme Makeover: Palestinian Auth. edition

    As we showed in All the President’s Spin, the White House has a borderline Pavlovian response to every problem — more spin and PR mumbo jumbo. It’s the political equivalent of “more cowbell”. But I’m still shocked that they spent $1 million to do a visual makeover of the Palestinian Authority (Atlantic subscription required): The

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  • Bush: “I don’t want to pass [Iraq] off”

    According to NBC’s Tim Russert, President Bush made what might be his least credible claim ever in a meeting with Republican members of Congress about Iraq (video starts at 08:07 in this clip): RUSSERT: The president responded, “I don’t want to pass this off to another president. I don’t want to pass this off, particularly,

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  • Jon Chait vs. the netroots III

    The final exchange between Jon Chait and his netroots critics has been posted (see also Chait’s article and part I and II). Much of the carping by his netroots critics is tedious and/or nonsensical — particularly the posturing by Matt Stoller (with Chris Bowers), who was last seen claiming that conservatives “hate democracy.” However, Chait’s

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  • Misleading poll on Bush knowledge of 9/11?

    Rasmussen Reports is touting a poll allegedly showing that many Democrats think President Bush and the CIA knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance: Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know,

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