It’s not often CNN drops its niceties on the air, so when it does, it’s noteworthy. CNN anchor Jack Cafferty, for example, expressed his disgust with what he’s seen as a widespread governmental failure in response to Hurricane Katrina. “I got to tell you something. We got five or six hundred letters before the show […]
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan hosted his first formal press briefing in a month today. I’ll give you one guess what the press corps wanted to discuss. There was, however, one exchange that stood out. Q: Scott, there’s already a line of discussion going on about the funding of projects prior to this, whether […]
I’m curious, can anyone think of a time the president was faced with an immediate crisis to which he rose to the occasion? Ever? When given an intelligence briefing that told him, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US,” Bush barely blinked and decided not to cut short his month-long vacation. When told on 9/11 […]
In the last post, I tried to summarize what we’ve learned this week about steps Bush took — or, in this case, didn’t take — in advance of the devastation of the Gulf Coast. Now let’s consider the president’s performance after disaster struck. I think it’s safe to say it’s been a less-than-inspiring show of […]
In the midst of the Hurricane Katrina crisis, there are two equally-important but completely independent ways of considering the president’s performance — what he did before the disaster and what he did after it. Let’s first look at the prior. The devastation that we’re seeing is not in any way unexpected. On Good Morning America […]
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * The White House actively recruited Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.) to take on Harry Reid last year, but Gibbons wasn’t interested — he has a different race in mind. Yesterday, Gibbons announced he […]
How bad are the conditions in New Orleans? This bad. “This is mass chaos,” said Sgt. Jason Defess, 27, a National Guard military policeman who had been stationed on a ramp outside the Superdome since Monday. “To tell you the truth, I’d rather be in Iraq,” where he was deployed for 14 months, until January. […]
Let’s see, in recent months, in trying to draw a comparison between Iraq and other historic military campaigns, the Bush gang has referenced Korea, the Revolutionary War, WWI, and the Civil War. Now, the president has settled on a new favorite: World War II. Invoking the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Bush on Tuesday […]
I can appreciate the fact that the Census Bureau’s report on poverty, released earlier this week, is an embarrassment for the Bush administration. After all, no administration has seen four consecutive years of increases in the poverty rate since the government began keeping track of the data, a feat this administration has managed to accomplish. […]
Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte had a really funny post yesterday about the right’s paranoia about “radical lesbian feminists” having taken over the Girl Scouts. What Amanda may not realize, however, is that this paranoid fantasy has been around for a while. The item that caught her attention came by way of Robert Knight and Concerned Women […]