Month: June 2009
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Political games with fiscal stimulus lags
There’s more than a little irony in Republicans asking “WHERE ARE THE JOBS?” just a few months after the stimulus bill was enacted (via Paul Krugman). Remember, President Bush’s 2001 tax cut was sold as a recession-fighter, but payroll jobs declined steadily until mid-2003 (partly as a result of the economic shock associated with the
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Today Show interviews fake teleprompter
The Today Show story mocking Barack Obama’s teleprompter use really jumps the shark at the end: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Nothing says action like a news correspondent reading the emails she is laboriously typing into the computer (“We … are … getting … some … feedback …
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Inhofe latest to suggest Obama is disloyal
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is the latest conservative to smear President Obama as sympathetic to terrorists or disloyal to the United States, a claim that builds on the misperception that Obama is a Muslim. As Think Progress points out, Inhofe called Obama’s statements in his Cairo speech “un-American” and suggested he might be on the
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Obama’s hollow bipartisan rhetoric
President Obama is once again suggesting that he’s seeking a bipartisan compromise on a major policy issue: Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, recalled how Mr. Obama made a personal pledge of bipartisanship when he and Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the committee’s Democratic chairman, joined the president
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The slippery slope of MA state holidays
A proposal to eliminate Bunker Hill Day and Evacuation Day in Massachusetts prompted this hilariously absurd slippery slope argment from one state legislator: Many Suffolk County lawmakers, who represent Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop and Boston, disagree. Senator Jack Hart, a Democrat from South Boston, warned last month of setting a precedent. “If we eliminate these holidays
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Gaming the US News rankings
An administrator describes the tactics Clemson is using to try to game the US News rankings — it’s as corrupt and depressing as you might expect.
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Smears of Barack Obama’s loyalty 2006-
December 2006: Columnist Debbie Schlussel notes that Obama’s father was a Muslim and asks “Where will his loyalties be?” February 2008: Radio talk show host Bill Cunningham calls Obama “this Manchurian candidate” but says “I do not believe Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist or a Manchurian candidate.” April 2008: During an apperance on Glenn
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Margin of error alert: The Pelosi/Cheney poll
Drudge, ABC’s Jonathan Karl (guest-writing Mike Allen’s Playbook at Politico), FoxNews.com, and National Review’s Jim Geraghty all claim that a new Gallup poll shows that Dick Cheney is more popular than Nancy Pelosi: DRUDGE: “GALLUP: Cheney more popular than Pelosi!” KARL: “Liz will like this: Gallup puts former Vice President Cheney’s popularity slightly above Nancy
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Marshall’s Khmer Rouge analogy
Josh Marshall, who recently derided the failed GOP movement to call the Democrats the “Democrat Socialist” party, engaged in some absurd labeling of his own in a post mockingly titled “Khmer Rush Strikes Again.” The title compares Rush Limbaugh and his GOP supporters to the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime that killed more than one million
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The threat of political meddling in GM
President Obama and his economic team are obviously deeply ambivalent about their decisions to acquire control of major corporations like GM. They have repeatedly insisted that they will limit their involvement in management decisions and seek to liquidate the government’s stakes in these companies as soon as possible. For instance, here’s what President Obama said