As has become a Friday tradition here, I’d like to wrap up the week with some state-by-state polling data. All of these results come from polls conducted or released in the last 7 days. I should warn you in advance, some of these results aren’t encouraging for those of us anxious to see Kerry win […]
Bush has no more reliable ally in the country than the House Republican caucus. But when it comes to spending money on transportation projects back home, even it’s willing to stand up to the president. A massive highway and mass transit appropriations bill has been working its way through Congress for several months. This is […]
As I mentioned last week, I’ve started a new tradition here at The Carpetbagger Report where I share some of my favorite email correspondence from the week. Yes, I’ve stolen this idea from Eric Alterman. (Note to Eric: please don’t sue me.) This week’s featured email comes from Carpetbagger regular Joe Fitzpatrick, who argued very […]
Bush administration officials, particularly in the wake of Richard Clarke’s revelations, have been insisting that the counterterrorism apparatus they inherited from the Clinton administration was inadequate. Bush, the argument goes, took terrorism seriously, but Clinton didn’t leave him much to work with. This entire approach has been proven baseless (and, in fact, the opposite of […]
And I thought Howard Dean had a good Q4 in 2003. John Kerry’s campaign stunned the political world today by announcing that it has raised a jaw-dropping $50 million in the first three months of 2004. More than half — $26.7 million — was raised online. This is extraordinary. It’s a testament to new-found party […]
I mentioned yesterday that the House Ways and Means Committee had convened a hearing on the cover-up surrounding the actual cost of Bush’s Medicare plan. Dems were hoping to hear testimony from Doug Badger, Bush’s senior health policy adviser whom Medicare actuary Richard Foster believes was in on the fix, and Tom Scully, the official […]
It seemed like a fairly big deal at the time. Facing lingering questions about the nature of the prewar threat from Iraq, President Bush on Friday appointed a bipartisan commission to “figure out why” apparent intelligence failures regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities occurred. “We’re also determined to make sure that American intelligence is as accurate […]
The U.S. Labor Department reported today that the economy added 308,000 jobs last month, the strongest job growth since before Bush took office. That’s undoubtedly good news. But before Michael Gerson starts writing Bush’s second inaugural, I thought I’d put today’s jobs numbers in a political perspective: Number of months Bush promised we’d see job […]
We haven’t had many Plame Game details in a while, but the New York Times moves the ball forward in a big way today. The investigation is no longer just about which White House officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent, but also looking into who may have lied to cover up […]
Maybe they’re trying to lull the bad guys into a false sense of security. Otherwise, there’s no logical explanation for this. The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations to save $12 […]