Uncategorized
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Dowd reads Obama’s mind on waffle
It’s time to break out the swami again. Maureen Dowd put her well-known psychic talents on display again today with this mind-reading of Barack Obama: He is frantic to get away from her because he can’t keep carbo-loading to relate to the common people. In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at
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Obama/Osama sign at South Carolina church
The myths that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that he is somehow associated with Osama bin Laden continue to spread: The sign in front of a small church in a small town is causing a big controversy in Jonesville, S.C. Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last
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Hillary, Obama, and McCain on WWE Raw
The New York Times reports that the presidential candidates all appeared on WWE Raw last night. The results, which are summarized in this YouTube clip from the WWE, were not pretty: The full, cringe-inducing videos of the candidates’ appearances are below the fold (via CQ’s Craig Crawford). Apparently, the way to a WWE fan’s heart
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The Rockridge Institute folds
Surprisingly, The Rockridge Institute, the think tank of George Lakoff, has shut down. I’m not sad to see them go — I’m no fan of Lakoff or Rockridge, which we criticized in the conclusion to All the President’s Spin — but I would have assumed that Lakoff’s status as the (false) prophet of framing would
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Autism pandering from Obama and McCain
Barack Obama, who has criticized the politicization of science under George W. Bush, is doing some politicizing of his own. Yesterday, he joined John McCain in pandering to the vocal and well-organized lobby of parents who believe the increase in autism diagnoses is caused by vaccines: “We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people
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The frustrating NYT Magazine “green issue”
Today’s New York Times Magazine is a “green issue” that is full of interesting and clever ideas for reducing carbon emissions, especially at the individual level. But the issue is ultimately frustrating to read because most of the ideas (which are often complicated and difficult to implement) will never come into wide use without better
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Gibson and McCain: Lousy economists
Can we all agree that ABC’s Charlie Gibson should stop pretending to understand economics? Here’s what he said at the latest Democratic primary debate: -“Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent and George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent and in each instance when the
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Russert & Marshall on Obama pledge myth
Last week Tim Russert debunked Bill Clinton’s misleading explanation of Hillary Clinton’s false claims about a trip to Bosnia with a gusto that has been missing for most of the Bush years. As Josh Marshall points out, that fact-checking gusto was also missing this week when Russert repeated the false claim that a picture of
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More high-tech politics: Progressive Clarity
A week ago I argued that the creation of the Analyst Institute, which describes itself as “Moneyball for progressive politics,” is an important indication that political organizations are finally starting to take measurement and experimental evaluation seriously. Here’s another sign — a group called Progressive Clarity is looking to hire two political methodologists to do
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Picking Chelsea Clinton pictures
I’m not one of those people who sees media bias in every picture choice by newspaper editors, but Chelsea Clinton has been getting a bad deal lately. First, Politico ran a story on her press aide, Philippe Reines, that included a picture of him standing behind her looking like a psycho: Then a critical Los