Uncategorized
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Jim Webb’s Facebook hijinks
How does he have the time? In addition to giving the Democratic response to the State of the Union, James Webb and his staff are keeping his Facebook page updated, including these amusing changes noted by William Beutler at Blog P.I.: But my favorite is this change, which Beutler flagged back in October: PS No
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Hillary and the discourse of fakeness
Bob Somerby has a very important post today on the pathological news coverage of Hillary Clinton that is already taking shape. It’s true that lots of people (myself included) sometimes feel like she is disciplined or calculating in her public appearances. But that’s no excuse for reporting that frames her every move as spin. So
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Krauthammer distorts Edwards quote
A warning to anyone considering hiring Charles Krauthammer to give a speech — you can’t trust him with the facts. For example, check out his misleading paraphrase of a comment by John Edwards during the last presidential election: As John Edwards put it most starkly and egregiously in 2004: If John Kerry becomes president, Christopher
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How unpopular is George W. Bush?
Really, really unpopular: According to a CBS News poll conducted Thursday through Sunday, 28 percent of Americans approve of the way the president is handling his job, and more than twice as many, 64 percent, disapprove. It is the lowest approval rating the president has received in a CBS News poll, though it is statistically
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Marketing Charles Krauthammer
A strange ad ran on my site advertising Charles Krauthammer’s speeches: Do people book five-figure speeches from Google ads? Is the market for inside-the-Beltway neoconservativism drying up? PS If you do book Krauthammer, make sure to ask for his favorite appeasement anecdote! He’s great at customizing it for the foreign policy situation of the moment…
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Carl Cannon on presidential lies
National Journal’s Carl Cannon has written a useful piece on presidential lies for The Atlantic. The distinction he makes between personal falsehoods and “governing lies” is especially important (it echoes a point we made in All the President’s Spin): Some falsehoods — like many campaign lies — are relatively harmless; they may soil an opponent’s
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Hyping Hillary’s chances in 2008
We knew it was coming. Hillary & Co. are hyping her prospects as a presidential candidate, facts be damned. Here’s what she says in the announcement on her website: I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine. After nearly $70 million spent against
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Hyping a third-party run by Hagel
There may be a new subject of the unending hype about a third-party presidential candidate. Hotline on Call reports that Republican Senator Chuck “Hagel was a guest on C-SPAN’s ‘Newsmakers’ and the network’s P.R. dept. is trumpeting Hagel’s non-answer to the question of whether he’d run for the WH as an indie”: [T]he non-answer to
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McCain’s numbers dropping
Back in June 2005, I argued that John McCain’s high favorability ratings were doomed to decline: McCain spiked upward in popularity at the time he made his run in the 2000 presidential primaries, and has barely declined since — even though he has generally been a strong defender of President Bush. The reason, I think,
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Jon Chait on Alan Reynolds, think tank hack
The New Republic’s Jon Chait has done it again, launching one of his signature hack takedowns against the Cato Institute’s Alan Reynolds, a pseudo-expert who is challenging the top academic economists studying income inequality in a transparent attempt to muddy the waters. But what makes Chait’s piece particularly excellent is his deconstruction of the PR