Get ready for a blizzard of meaningless propaganda. President Bush will hold a two-day economic conference [in Washington] Dec. 15-16 with his advisers and a few hundred business leaders, as he contemplates an ambitious second-term agenda of overhauling taxes and Social Security while cutting a ballooning deficit in half. Administration officials have already announced that […]
When Dems controlled Washington (House, Senate, White House) in ’93 and ’94, the GOP was very effective in exploiting divisions within the caucus to stymie parts of the Clinton agenda. With Social Security privatization on the horizon, and some skeptical Republicans out there, it’s time for Dems to do the same thing. As John Harwood […]
It’s a shame Dana Milbank’s piece on Bush’s foreign policy speech in Canada was buried on page A32 today, because it’s definitely worth reading. The president hadn’t delivered any substantive foreign policy remarks since the election. While no one really expected a change in direction, in a speech in Nova Scotia yesterday, Bush articulated a […]
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting piece today about Bush’s likely trouble in forcing a “tax reform” bill through Congress, since several key Republicans seem skeptical about the idea. A quote from one Republican in particular jumped out at me. If President Bush wants to overhaul the tax code before leaving office, he may […]
Before the war, the Bush administration insisted that Iraq’s oil money would be key to a post-Saddam future. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, on March 27, 2003, said, “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” Donald Rumsfeld told Fortune Magazine in the fall of 2002 that […]
The standard Republican line, which Dems no longer bother to refute, is that we don’t need more gun laws, we just need to enforce the ones already on the books. Indeed, as Bush personally explains on the website for Project Safe Neighborhoods, “If you use a gun illegally, you will do hard time.” Now the […]
To hear the religious right tell it, Christians are victims in American society. Their voices are squelched and their ideas are ridiculed. Christians, the movement argues, are in desperate need to defense from forces of secular hostility. With this in mind, where is the religious right on the UCC advertising story? In theory, shouldn’t Dobson, […]
Considering that Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s soon-to-be attorney general, was in the middle of the Plame Game scandal, it’s somewhat reassuring to hear that he won’t have any role in the ongoing investigation. Alberto R. Gonzales agreed on Wednesday to remove himself from oversight of the politically charged investigation into the disclosure of a C.I.A. officer’s […]
Yes, we should have done this a long time ago, but a) it’s better late than never; b) it’s proof that Dems are starting to understand how to play this game; and c) it’s the latest sign that Harrry Reid is going to make a fine Senate Minority Leader. In one of his first moves […]
It was bad enough to learn that Bush is boosting federal funding for abstinence-only programs that don’t work, but it’s so much worse that the programs getting our tax dollars are giving students outrageously incorrect information. Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion […]