Month: September 2008
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What is Tom Brokaw talking about?
In case you missed it, Tom Brokaw asked this puzzling question Sunday on Meet the Press of Colorado Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall: MR. BROKAW: Congressman Udall, we’ve been checking the statistics in the Denver area. I’m quite familiar with it. In the second quarter of 2008, one in every 95 households in the Denver
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Zev Chafets reads minds
An alert reader spots some mind-reading in a LA Times op-ed by Zev Chafets on criticism of John McCain by Rush Limbaugh. Chafets claims (without evidence) that “Limbaugh never had any intention of breaking with his party”: If John McCain is elected president, he will have a lot of people to thank. Improbably, first on
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Blankley likens media to Nazi propagandists
In a loathsome Washington Times column attacking reporters’ treatment of Barack Obama, Tony Blankley likens the mainstream media to the official Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and to “Goebbels’ disciples”: The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight out propagandists for the Obama campaign. While they have been liberal and blinkered in
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Why I don’t (usually) comment on debates
Here’s what I wrote back in June 2007 about why I don’t (usually) comment on the substance of debates — it still applies in the general election: I frequently don’t have anything interesting or new to say about debates, which are over-analyzed to the point of absurdity. There’s usually not a lot of substance to
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LA Times nonsense on post-debate poll
The only thing worse than newspapers failing to report on other polls is the way they (mis)interpret their own findings. The Los Angeles Times is currently running a story titled “Obama slightly widens lead after debate, poll finds” (via Yglesias). The basis for this claim is a 1% increase in Obama’s support and a 2%
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Thomas Friedman exaggerates bailout cost
Matthew Yglesias rightly objected to the people who rounded up the $700 billion tab for the financial bailout to “nearly $1 trillion” — a description that is technically true but glosses over a difference of $300 billion. He didn’t follow up, but it’s worth noting that Thomas Friedman (in one of his trademark fake letters
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The AP reads the minds of Obama and McCain
A reader points out that the Associated Press has acquired the ability to read the minds of both John McCain and Barack Obama: McCain hoped voters would believe that he rose above politics to wade into successful, nitty-gritty dealmaking at a time of urgent crisis, but he risked being seen instead as either overly impulsive
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Vice presidential geography – Quayle & Palin
A compare and contrast exercise for the reader… Sarah Palin on the geographic position of Alaska: [I]t’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right
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The Palin “task from God” myth
During his interview with Sarah Palin, ABC’s Charlie Gibson misquoted one of her past statements, claiming that she said “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” However, Palin actually asked her congregation to “pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right.
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Are convention bounces permanent?
UNC’s Jim Stimson on the evaporating GOP bounce and the state of the race (posted on Sunday): I wrote in Tides of Consent that convention “bounces” were permanent effects, persisting through election day unless counteracted by some later events. The Palin bounce of 2008 appears to contradict this conclusion. It appears that Obama was ahead