Uncategorized
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More White House suggestions of zero benefits
In the New York Times this morning, the White House
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Senior scare tactics not a strawman
Thomas Lang, one of the indefatigable CJR Daily bloggers, claims in a new post that this passage from an AP report is mistaken: President Bush, on a campaign-style road trip to pressure recalcitrant Democrats and reluctant Republicans on a Social Security, warned Friday against “scare tactics” in the burgeoning debate. The president decried the kind
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“A Suicidal Selection”
The always insightful Jonathan Chait makes the definitive, devastating case against Howard Dean becoming chairman of the DNC: The conventional rap against Dean as DNC chairman is essentially the same as the conventional rap against him as presidential candidate a year ago. Namely, he reinforces all the party’s weaknesses. Democrats need to appeal to culturally
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More fine print – the “benefit offset”
The Washington Post fills in more details on how private accounts are not a free lunch. Note: The Post has corrected the story linked above, so I deleted the quote from the original version that was here before and added the new one below, which explains how the “benefit offset” works. Somehow, this didn’t make
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Bush budget trickery goes down the memory hole
A prize to Andrew Sullivan, who wrote this while blogging the SOTU, in which Bush claimed that his upcoming budget “stays on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009”: FISCAL SANITY? I’m having trouble believing this president on that particular issue. 2009? I thought the goal was 2008. And why not balance the
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The AP fact-checks Bush so I don’t have to
Calvin Woodward explains the (misleading) free lunch implications of the SOTU: The devil was in the missing details Wednesday night when President Bush showcased his Social Security plan and claimed advances on jobs and against terrorism that don’t tell the full story. Bush explained in detail how, under his proposal, younger workers would be able
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Hillary’s abortion speech
In case you missed it, Will Saletan’s take on Hillary Clinton’s abortion speech is an absolute must-read. I’m pro-choice, but the way most pro-choice politicians talk about the issue makes me nuts. It ends up sounding pro-abortion because of the way that the abortion rights lobby has pulled the party to the left on the
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New specifics on the phase-in scam
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities nails the phase-in scam I wrote about before, which was described by a “senior administration official” in a briefing today: The senior official said the borrowing costs over the first ten years — 2006- 2015 — would be $664 billion without interest costs, and $754 billion when interest
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Kaus on Kerry
Sometimes Mickey Kaus’ more-cynical-than-thou attitude drives me nuts, but I have to agree with his take on John Kerry’s insufferable performance on “Meet the Press”: Patriot of the Week Award goes to Sen. John Kerry for appearing on Meet the Press and being just as petty, negative, solipsistic (“I laid out four steps”), self-serving, inarticulate
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Frist’s inappropriate metaphor
Call me crazy, but I don’t think heart surgeons should be saying things like