Some random thoughts in advance of tonight’s debate, in no particular order: * I will, for those of you who are interested, be ignoring my usual “no posting on weekends” rule tomorrow to offer some rants about tonight’s debate. I will not, however, offer live-blogging, the idea of which I find completely overwhelming. * I’ve […]
If you’re a Carpetbagger regular, you know the drill. If you’re new, welcome; we do this every Friday. It’s time for my round-up of statewide presidential polls released over the last seven days — a little something I call “Poll Day.” Also this week, we have the 10th installment of the Zogby Interactive/Wall Street Journal […]
The Washington Post had a good item today about one of my favorite topics: Bush’s unprecedented avoidance of people who disagree with him. It’s a solid article, but I think it left out an important detail. Several Bush advisers said the president may well pay a price for his decision to remain isolated from tough […]
We already know that the Bush White House approved a CIA plan, at some point this year, to aid candidates favored by the administration in upcoming Iraqi elections, assuming such elections ever take place. (Bush aides later insisted that the plan had been scrapped, but skepticism abounds.) But while that plan was kept secret for […]
I know these kinds of reactions are predictable, but they’re necessary. If the Dem Majority Leader had been rebuked by the House Ethics Committee three times in six days for a variety of sordid scandals, you better believe the GOP and the various sympathetic groups would go apoplectic until he or she was gone. House […]
I have to give Lynne Cheney, the vice president’s wife and director of the National Endowment for the Humanities during the Reagan and H.W. Bush years, credit for keeping a relatively low profile. I expected otherwise four years ago. Cheney has been a successful conservative activist for years — long before her husband was even […]
One of the primary, but utterly useless, arguments from the Bush campaign lately is that John Kerry, more than 30 years ago, told a college newspaper that troops should be sent around the world at the directive of the United Nations. Kerry had just returned from Vietnam and he was angry. He certainly doesn’t believe […]
To complement the abysmal job numbers released this morning, I’d like to point out that the irreplaceable Center on Budget and Policy Priorities had a few interesting observations about the 2004 fiscal year, which just wrapped up with a deficit of $415 billion. A few highlights: * The 2004 deficit marks the fourth consecutive year […]
Researchers at Cornel recently discovered that Bush’s poll numbers trend upwards every time the government issues another terrorist warning. But I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that as soon as John Kerry starts to pull ahead, federal officials announce that America’s schools need to be prepared for a possible terrorist attack. The FBI and the […]
Bush’s week from hell just got a little worse. Companies added 96,000 jobs to their payrolls in September, fewer than economists forecast for the last employment report before Election Day, highlighting a modest pace of hiring that has become an issue in President Bush’s bid for another term. […] Job growth was held down by […]