Welcome, make yourself at home

My, my, it’s amazing what links from Salon and Tapped will do for one’s traffic. I’m already having my busiest day ever — on a Saturday, no less — and the day’s only half over. Welcome one and all. This is an exceedingly rare weekend post, I’m afraid, but I hope you’ll swing by again […]

Polls, polls, and more polls

As I am wont to do, I thought I’d wrap up the week with some poll numbers. Some recent state-by-state data is available, and since that’s the way the presidential race will be decided, I wanted to share. California (55 electoral votes) LA Times (2/18-22) — Kerry 53, Bush 40 Field Poll (2/18-22) — Kerry […]

How was the White House involved with withholding Medicare information from Congress?

That the Bush administration withheld cost information from Congress about its Medicare scheme is no longer controversial. Questions remain, however, as to who in the administration was directing the effort to conceal the truth. Medicare’s top actuary, Richard Foster, knew the administration’s cost estimates were entirely wrong, but was told to keep the information secret […]

If you though Bush went to great lengths to avoid military service…

Dick Cheney, conservative war hawk and former Defense Secretary, had the opportunity to serve in the military during the war in Vietnam, but carefully avoided it. As he famously explained, “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” I did not know, however, the lengths Cheney was willing to go to in order […]

Bush’s campaign is helping improve the manufacturing sector — in Burma

Remember, in 1992, when James Carville discovered that a number of Bush-Quayle campaign materials were being made in Brazil? There was a fun scene about it in the documentary, “The War Room.” As luck would have it, history is repeating itself, and this time, it’s worse. Not only are some Bush-Cheney materials made overseas, but […]

So much for the Hoover comparison

Herbert Hoover’s name is supposed to conjure up images of the stock market crash, the Great Depression, and massive unemployment. With this in mind, the fact that George W. Bush has the worst record on job creation of any president since Hoover should make for a devastating political comparison. Alas, it appears that it’s an […]

Not-So-Happy Anniversary

Just about every major news outlet in the world is noting that today is the one-year anniversary of the U.S. launching an invasion of Iraq. I don’t have any unique insight to add, but I wanted to point out a few items you might want to check out. First, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank and […]

Congressional Republicans’ commitment to fiscal responsibility (or lack thereof)

It’s hard to even think, better yet write, about the Republicans’ approach to crafting a “budget.” But TNR’s Noam Scheiber had a good observation yesterday about the process that I wanted to pass along. Scheiber noticed this graph in a Washington Post article: The House budget resolution orders $13 billion in entitlement-spending cuts, significantly more […]

Good news about the most important television program — ever

Putting a rest to rumors that one of the bigger networks will lure Jon Stewart away, Comedy Central announced yesterday that it had renewed the contract for Stewart and “The Daily Show” through 2008. “A lot of people like to get out when their show’s still going well,” Stewart said. “This gives me the opportunity […]

The latest in the GOP’s attacks on an independent federal judiciary

As if the Republicans’ new-found obsession with court-stripping and overturning Supreme Court rulings by two-thirds vote isn’t radical enough for you, Reps. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) have launched a new round in the GOP assault on an independent federal judiciary. It’s called the “Reaffirmation of American Independence Resolution” Goodlatte and Feeney are […]