Uncategorized
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Fox News & correlation vs. causation
Eric Alterman is the latest pundit to make the unproven claim that Fox News reduces the information levels of its viewers: I've got a new “Think Again,” called “Modest and Respectful No More,” here, and the reason I idiotically went to New Hampshire in the first place, a Creative Coalition panel on the debates I
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When crazy candidates attack
I just came across an incredible campaign anecdote while working on my dissertation. Check out this excerpt from a Washington Post story on the 1978 US Senate race in Maine: Three independents are challenging Hathaway and Cohen, but only one of them, former state senator Hayes Gahagan, was expected to attract many votes. The campaign
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Daniel Henninger: Democratic theorist
In the spirit of James Taranto’s “Great Orators of the Democratic Party” theme, here’s some inspirational rhetoric on democracy from the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger: People tend to regard the idea of “democratic” politics with high reverence, when in practice it consists most of the time of the right of any citizen to describe
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Ailes smears Democratic candidates
Via Josh Marshall, Fox News head Roger Ailes suggested that Democratic presidential candidates dodging his network’s debate are going to be afraid of Al Qaeda: And he had some choice words for Democratic candidates who have decided not to debate on Fox. “The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda,” said Mr. Ailes.
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Maureen Dowd: Mind-reader
Once again, Maureen Dowd is allowed to pretend she’s omniscient in the pages of the New York Times (faux mind-reading in italics): When Hillary admitted that she had not read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting to authorize the president to go to war, Senator Obama had a clear shot. The woman who always does
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Which general is Fred Thompson like?
Recently, bloggers have been comparing the movement to draft Fred Thompson to the Wesley Clark boomlet in ’04. For instance, TNR’s Jason Zengerle writes that “the highpoint of his campaign will be the day he gets in the race, because once he’s a serious candidate–and not just the fevered daydream of a dissatisfied base–voters will
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Yglesias sours on debate pap
Matthew Yglesias is asymptotically approaching my position on debate commentary (short version: it’s a pointless exercise that forces you to act like a McLaughlin Group panelist). After the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire, he suggested that debates don’t actually change anyone’s mind and disavowed “going meta or just doing amateur theater criticism”: I’m trying
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Kaus: Bush’s immigration bill is like Iraq
I’m not a huge fan of the “counter-intuitive” style that Slate’s Mickey Kaus usually practices, but this LA Times op-ed about similarities between President Bush’s approach to the issues of Iraq and immigration is surprisingly convincing: Mainstream editorialists like to praise President Bush’s immigration initiative as an expression of his pragmatic, bipartisan, “compassionate conservative” side,
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Zakaria and DeLong on the GOP
Brad DeLong quotes Fareed Zakaria’s depressing review of the state of the GOP presidential race: The presidential campaign could have provided the opportunity for a national discussion of the new world we live in. So far, on the Republican side, it has turned into an exercise in chest-thumping. Whipping up hysteria requires magnifying the foe.
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Pete DuPont bangs the supply-side drum
There appears to be some sort of unwritten rule that the Wall Street Journal has to publish supply-side nonsense like this every week or two: So what are the facts? Did the tax rate reductions of the Bush administration spur or diminish economic growth? Grow or diminish federal tax revenues? Were they good or bad