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Fox: CNBC not friendly enough to business
You just can’t make this stuff up. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are basing their new business news channel on the premise that the cheerleaders at CNBC aren’t friendly enough to corporations: No one has ever accused CNBC, the cable TV home of Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow and Maria Bartiromo, of being antibusiness. Until now.
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There was no golden age of civility
People often forget how nasty politics used to be, especially before the Progressive Era. Here’s part of amusingly vicious article from the May 6, 1896 edition of the New York Times that I came across in my research: Now that is bad press.
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Why don’t senators win the presidency?
The odds are good that the next president will be a senator, which raises an obvious but important question: why are Warren Harding and John F. Kennedy the only two presidents who won election as sitting senators? The most complete treatment I’ve seen of the subject is Barry Burden’s 2002 Political Science Quarterly article (PDF),
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White House rewrites history on warming
My friend Chris Mooney, the author of The Republican War on Science, has posted an excellent takedown of a misleading Bush administration statement on global warming: There was an absolutely incredible letter from the White House yesterday concerning Bush’s record on climate change. It is signed by Office of Science and Technology Policy director John
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Kids love the House Clerk’s website!
Continuing my series on the wacky cartoon mascots of government websites for children, here’s my latest find — “A. Bill” from the House Clerk’s website for kids: A. Bill is a little bland for my taste — he doesn’t even compare to my personal favorite, Thermy the Thermometer: More generally, do you think any kid
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Cheap pander of the day: Ted Strickland
Here’s a great example of legislative grandstanding. When he was a member of the House, Ted Strickland introduced a bill that “[p]rohibits the importation for sale of foreign-made flags of the United States of America.” It’s not a tax or a quota; he would ban the importation of flags. You will never see a less
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The perils of small sample sizes
National Journal regularly conducts an “insiders poll” of elite pundits and/or elected officials, who are offered anonymity in exchange for (hopefully) honest responses. The aggregate results are typically reported by party. The results are generally not widely reported outside the Beltway, but the most recent insiders poll has made an unusually big splash. Here’s the
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No Bush mandate for tax cuts
In a recent post, Kevin Drum strangely grants the premise that George W. Bush had a mandate for tax cuts in 2000: The first is George Bush’s tax proposal of 2000, and it was right in the sweet spot: detailed enough to demonstrate he was serious about it but not so detailed that it drew
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John McCain trots out Trent Lott
Back in 2005, John McCain praised discredited Jim Crow nostalgist Trent Lott, saying “of all the majority leaders we’ve had in the United States Senate, I believe that Trent Lott was the finest leader we’ve had.” (McCain also endorsed George Wallace, Jr., who spoke four times to a racist hate group.) Today, Lott returned the
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Democrats using sunsets on student loan bill
NPR reports that Democrats are already abusing phony sunset provisions to game Congressional budget rules, a tactic that Republicans repeatedly abused over the last six years: For the past few years, Democrats in Congress have not had much power in the minority. In that time, Republicans have used a budgeting technique called a “sunset” —