This one, by way of our friends at Think Progress, would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. Apparently, the White House is a little sensitive about the fact that Bush routinely takes time off and recently broke the record for most vacation days for a president (Reagan took 335 days off; Bush sailed past […]
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: respected government official gets demoted for being objective, while another official gets promoted for sticking to the Bush script. It’s happened yet again. The Bush administration is replacing the director of a small but critical branch of the Justice Department, months after he complained that senior political officials […]
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: * Gov. George Pataki (R-N.Y.) is not seeking re-election, so he’s starting to tout his would-be Republican successors. Yesterday, Pataki praised Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue as someone who would make “an excellent candidate” […]
I realize that the Bush gang has a stronger affinity for message development than, well, anyone. These guys live and breathe political propaganda. I only wish they’d leave gravestones alone. For Bush’s message machine, there is no “Afghanistan war”; there’s “Operation Enduring Freedom.” It’s not the “Iraq war”; it’s “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” If you develop […]
Fox News ran an interesting item yesterday on the decline in the number of applicants to the U.S. military academies. The stunning part was to see Fox News go to great lengths to avoid the real cause for the drop. (Thanks to reader D.S. for the tip.) Obviously, this is a real problem. All four […]
It seems hard to believe, but it’s starting to seem as if Arnold Schwarzenegger is about as scandal prone as the president. A month ago, it was a controversy surrounding Schwarzenegger’s decision to take millions from an industry to represent their interests and then vetoing a bill in order to help the same industry. Two […]
When TV preacher Pat Robertson goes on national television every day to spew nonsense, he does so on a network owned and operated by ABC/Disney. In light of this week’s events, some are beginning to suggest that arrangement end. If only it were that simple. “Robertson’s vitriol is not appropriate for children, or for anyone […]
I can just imagine Karl Rove turning on the cable news stations yesterday, hoping to gauge how well his week-long offensive in defense of the war in Iraq is going, and finding that the only thing anyone wants to talk about is a crazed TV preacher — and close Bush/Rove ally — who’s created an […]
For reasonable people, this should be an easy one, but for the Bush gang it may have been a tough call — do you blast an ally who happens to be stark raving mad or do you tacitly support a foreign leader you’ve hated for years. In this case, we have TV preacher Pat Robertson […]
One of the many areas for concern with the new Iraqi constitution, when there’s an Iraqi constitution, is how the law will respect the rights of women. Fears that women will be second-class citizens are clearly justified, given what we’ve seen in recent days. Under a deal brokered Friday by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, […]