Uncategorized
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Fake comments
I just deleted about 35 spam comments that were posted to the blog last night, so I’m considering requiring TypeKey comment authentication. Any thoughts? I hate to impede the free flow of feedback, but I don’t want to spend my time policing the spammers either. Update 9/11: The spam comments keep coming, so I’ve turned
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Brown is out
Finally, after reports from The New Republic and Time about his weak/inflated resume, Michael Brown is out. Apparently Bush finally realized that “Brownie” isn’t doing “a heck of a job” after all. That said, though, this is clearly a case of too little, too late. Post-Katrina poll numbers (including the AP poll released today) have
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Liberal jargon watch: Matthew Yglesias
Like Eric Alterman, Matthew Yglesias is sarcastically conflating intention with (alleged) effect in the war in Iraq (and invoking Nuremberg and totalitarianism): “FREEDOM” WALK. The Pentagon’s planned “freedom walk” to commemorate September 11 on Sunday seems to involve precious little freedom, as Atrios notes. It also seems to have precious little to do with commemorating
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Tom DeLay is one classy guy
Here’s Tom DeLay’s classy response to Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to appoint Democrats to a Republican-dominated Katrina commission: When aides to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) attacked Pelosi’s response to the investigative commission, they illustrated it with an e-mailed photo of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury intersection, associated with the hippies of the 1960s. Because nothing says
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Illogic in action
From MoJo Blog via Atrios, yet another example of the administration’s MO of taking a crisis and claiming that it necessitates some pre-existing policy agenda (tax cuts, ANWR, Iraq, etc.): It’s an old business myth that the Chinese character for “crisis” combines the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” It doesn’t. But I’m not sure anyone’s
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More administration payola
Katrina has buried the latest news on the payola front — more third parties have been caught promoting Bush administration policies without disclosing that they’re receiving taxpayer dollars for doing so: In 2003 and 2004, Garcini’s nonprofit group, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Education Options (CREO), received two unsolicited grants, totaling $900,000, from the
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John Kerry is right
I’m not a big fan of John Kerry, but this prediction (from an email to supporters) is dead-on: How long will it be before [Republicans] start telling us that tax cuts for the wealthy can provide just the stimulus we need to get the Gulf Coast economy moving again? I’d say a week, maybe less.
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Fire Brown movement grows
Even top Republicans agree — Michael Brown must go: Senior House Republican officials said that, behind the scenes, some lawmakers were pressing the Bush administration to dismiss Michael D. Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “He’s been compromised,” said one top Republican lawmaker who works closely with the White House and did
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With us or against us demagoguery
Here’s yet another illustration of the ugly binary logic of the Bush administration, which deals almost exclusively in false dichotomies — with us or against us, stay the course or cut and run, etc. As I described below, approximately 1,000 firefighters from around the country are being used as community relations specialists and PR props
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“What didn’t go right?”
Via Andrew Sullivan, here’s Nancy Pelosi claiming that President Bush is even more clueless and out-of-touch than we thought: At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush’s choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had “absolutely no credentials.” She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire