Uncategorized
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GOP hypocrisy on politicizing the military
On Saturday, the Washington Times broke the news that Senate Democrats had distributed a memo suggesting holding town hall meetings on military bases. Such meetings are prohibited. But as I pointed out, President Bush holds obviously partisan events on military bases all the time. Rather than conceding this point, the Times simply asserted that the
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Bush denies linking Iraq and 9/11
I missed this, but on Monday, President Bush again denied linking Iraq and 9/11: Mr. President, at the beginning of your talk today you mentioned that you understand why Americans have had their confidence shaken by the events in Iraq. And I’d like to ask you about events that occurred three years ago that might
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Ben Domenech blogging at the Post
Ben Domenech is the new “Red America” blogger at WashingtonPost.com. He was apparently hired to balance the allegedly liberal slant of Dan Froomkin. I have a little history with Domenech. As a reader reminded me by email, I debunked a false quotation he published in a defense of President Bush’s false “trifecta” story on Spinsanity
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Our so-called recovery
Over at TNR’s The Plank, Noam Scheiber quotes from a Fred Barnes article: One issue that needs to be developed is the economy, according to Blunt. “People take a strong economy for granted. We have to show that this didn’t just happen,” but is the result of Republican policies like tax cuts. Republican candidates will
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Rothenberg: Allen on the wane
Stuart Rothenberg explains why he thinks George Allen’s presidential prospects are in decline: [T]he Virginia Senator’s White House prospects have been steadily eroding since my first column on this topic one year ago. The reason: President Bush’s reputation has nosedived. Allen is perfectly positioned as heir to the Ronald Reagan-George W. Bush legacy. The only
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Revisiting the AP story on Bush’s straw men
This weekend, I praised the Associated Press story on how President Bush repeatedly attacks straw men. But yesterday I realized that it raises an important question — how did the AP handle those straw men attacks in real time? The answer is not encouraging. Just like newspapers that credulously report or ignore misleading claims that
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Krugman: The deficit wasn’t caused by domestic spending
In his column today, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes an underappreciated point — conservative moaning about Bush’s big spending ways fail to take into account the fact that the deficit is largely driven by tax cuts and defense spending, not discretionary programs: Well, it’s safe for conservatives to criticize Mr. Bush for presiding
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AP on Bush’s attacks on straw men
The Associated Press has produced one of the best rhetoric-busting stories on President Bush in a long time — an analysis of his obsession with attacking absurd straw men rather than engaging the arguments of his opponents: “Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another
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Wash. Times: Bush’s military speeches aren’t political
Time for another entry in the history of the nation’s most hacktastic newspaper, the Washington Times, whose inspired brand of “journalism” kept us busy at Spinsanity for years. Their latest offense comes in an article disclosing a private memo distributed to Senate Democrats, which calls for senators to hold town halls at military bases. As
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New ideas and the gridlock zone
The estimable Jon Chait has a Los Angeles Times column criticizing the GOP claim that they are the party of ideas and Democrats are the party of the status quo. Here’s the key passage: All this was based on a deep confusion between cause and effect. Republicans were pushing new ideas because they had political