Poll Day

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you know it’s time for Poll Day. If you’re new, welcome; we do this every Friday afternoon. It’s my weekly round-up of statewide presidential polls released over the last seven days. Arizona (10 electoral votes) KAET — Bush 47, Kerry 35, Nader 2 Comment: We can […]

The lesson for the day: Stalling sometimes works

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), to his credit, bucked GOP pressure and initiated a congressional investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal a couple of months ago. Almost immediately, Rumsfeld and the Pentagon seemed to decide on a strategy to get them out their mess — stall and see if the storm […]

Cheney is still making things up as he goes along

Has there ever been a high-ranking White House official as hopelessly, uncontrollably dishonest as Dick “Go F— Yourself” Cheney? Nixon, maybe, but I maintain that the scales tip in Cheney’s favor. I read Cheney’s speech to the D-Day Museum in New Orleans yesterday and initially deleted my post about it. His mendacity was just overwhelming; […]

Focus on the Personal Intimidation

Several major bloggers, including Ted Barlow, Jesse Taylor, and Atrios, noted yesterday that Focus on the Family, one of the religious right’s biggest powerhouses, sent out an alert to its (very large) membership this week that included Michael Moore’s home address. I wanted to note that this is not only true, it’s scary. Here’s the […]

The ‘K Street Project’ isn’t working anymore

DC’s lobbying industry is practically another branch of the government. Lobbyists, who tend to reside on the city’s infamous K Street, shape legislation, dictate policies, influence the legislative calendar, and raise critical campaign contributions for their allies. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, Newt Gingrich helped implement the “K Street Project” — a […]

Another month of disappointing job numbers

We’ve been hearing all week that June’s employment numbers were going to be impressive, bolstering the White House’s arguments about Bush’s stewardship of the economy and hurting John Kerry’s chances of using Bush’s job numbers against him in the campaign. Instead, today we have bad news for the economy, bad news for workers, bad news […]

Kerry’s ‘Sister Souljah moment’

If you blinked, you missed it. The “Sister Souljah moment” that campaign watchers demand happened this week, but no one seems to have noticed. In June 1992, Bill Clinton spoke to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH gathering. One of the speakers at the event was a rap artist named Sister Souljah who had made national headlines for […]

Bush’s willingness to manipulate churches knows no bounds — The reaction

Yesterday, the Washington Post had a great scoop about the latest Bush scheme to rope churches into his campaign. The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their […]

Still digging into the Moon mystery

Everyone loves a mystery. It’s been weeks, but no one is willing to admit to having reserved a Senate office building room for a bizarre coronation ceremony for Sun Myung Moon in March. As the LA Times put it last week: [T]here is someone left in Washington with a sense of embarrassment over Moon’s antics: […]

The EPA’s unconvincing spin on dirty air report

There wouldn’t appear to be many ways to spin this lede. Ninety-nine million Americans…are breathing unhealthful air that can cause respiratory problems and even premature death, according to assessments released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency. To put it mildly, it’s discouraging news. The EPA identified 243 counties with dangerously high soot pollution. One might […]