From my Twitter feed: -Today’s New York Times story on David Axelrod features the standard tropes of the blame-the-staff genre of political news –Bush nostalgia begins even as downturn that started during his presidency continues -Steve Smith, a Congressional expert at Washington University in St. Louis, has a new paper on procedural conflict in the

read more

The quantitative masterminds at the Wall Street Journal editorial board are at it again. Back in 2007, I showed how they cooked up a bogus graphic purporting to demonstrate that “Lower corporate tax rates with fewer loopholes can lead to more, not less, tax revenue from business”: Today, the Journal denounces the 2007 law that

read more

Updating my previous posts on the history of reconciliation, here is a Sunlight Foundation infographic that is by far the most usable to date (via Matthew Yglesias) — click the image for a larger version: If you want to get wonky, Ezra Klein has posted the most recent Congressional Research Service report on the use

read more

Politico’s Ben Smith obtained an internal fundraising presentation explaining the current fundraising tactics of the RNC: The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said. The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in

read more

Nate Silver has written a post arguing that comparisons between Obama, FDR, and LBJ are unfair because FDR and LBJ had larger Congressional majorities when they passed their major legislative accomplishments: When F.D.R. took over the Presidency in 1933, the Democrats controlled 64 percent of the Senate seats and 73 percent (!) of the House

read more

I’m almost always disappointed in Charles M. Blow’s “visual op-ed” column in the New York Times, which typically marries a simplistic premise to a lousy bar chart. But Saturday’s column was even worse than usual. Blow wrote a whole column based on the premise that Mo’Nique is likely to win an Oscar for her role

read more

From my Twitter feed: –Previous votes on reconciliation by Senate Republicans -Media Matters catches the Washington Post repeating the “death panel” myth without debunking it -Ignore the latest edition of the useless Natl. Journal rankings — see my previous posts here, here, and here –Via Michael Crowley, US training of Afghan legal officials includes showing

read more

As predicted, Clive Crook is blaming Obama for his political problems (rather than his staff as in the meme from a few weeks ago) without mentioning the fact that any president would struggle in the current economic and political context. Expect more of this if health care doesn’t pass and/or as the Democrats’ midterm polling

read more