Month: October 2007
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Symposium on politics and propaganda
This event might be interesting if you’re interested in the state of public debate today — I hope someone points out the damage that Luntz, Lakoff, and Westen are doing to contemporary discourse: On Wednesday, November 7, a major public conference will feature philanthropist George Soros; political consultants Frank Luntz, George Lakoff, and Drew Westen;
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Pete DuPont: Supply-sider
The Wall Street Journal’s Pete DuPont offers more supply-side nonsense that even Bush administration economists reject: Tax rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends. Those reductions have raised federal tax receipts by $785
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The WSJ mocks torture
I know the Wall Street Journal has a blithe attitude about torture, a word it often puts in scare quotes, but did their editorial complaining about the attorney general nominee’s treatment in Congress really need to be headlined “Torturing Mukasey”?
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Bad idea watch: Franken wants fines for lying
I’m not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, but he is absolutely right about this Al Franken quote: Al Franken, the liberal former Air America host who is now running for the Senate in Minnesota, is already slipping into the role of potential legislative censor of his old industry. “You shouldn’t
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Huckabee wrong on SCHIP crowdout
In a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee mischaracterizes the effects of the SCHIP children’s health insurance bill that President Bush vetoed, saying that he opposes “moving two million children from private insurance to government insurance”: I was not criticizing President Bush’s veto as a matter of
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Obama: Still no issues
Given my previous complaints about Barack Obama’s reluctance to go negative, I’m happy to see him start taking on Hillary, but the grounds on which he chose to do so is bizarre. You don’t take down a frontrunner by talking about what exactly she said about Social Security to some voter in Iowa — it’s
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Fun with wire photos
Someone at the New York Times was amusing themselves with this juxtaposition of photos of Charlie Rangel and Dick Cheney:
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Chris Dodd has white hair!
You have to love ads with the punchline that Chris Dodd is old. It even has a bad 80s sitcom feel!
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The epistemology of candidate evaluation
Matthew Yglesias argues for rejecting the politics of “character,” “leadership,” and all the other unknowable quantities of political candidates: At the end of the day, it’s not about finding the candidate who “really” has the best views. Instead, insofar as the issues matter to you (and, obviously, there are considerations beyond “the issues” in play)
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Polarization watch: Bush countdown clocks
You know the country is deeply divided when more than 100,000 people buy clocks counting down the seconds until the president leaves office: As Campaign ’08 rages on and Hillary, Rudy, Barack and Mitt buttons dot the political landscape, a deeply unpopular President Bush is proving that he may be going but he’s clearly not