The Carpetbagger Report

As Hillary Clinton wraps up a 17-month, historic, nearly-successful presidential campaign, the inevitable “what went wrong?” question is still very much on the minds of the political world. I’ve seen more than a few lists, detailing various mistakes and misjudgments, but surprisingly enough, they’re all pretty similar, and point to a near-consensus about missteps that […]

It’s pretty obvious the McCain campaign is worried about Democratic arguments that McCain offers a third Bush term. With each passing day, the campaign goes to greater lengths to thread the needle — not denouncing Bush, but creating some distance from Mr. 25%, too. Yesterday, McCain’s top policy adviser went so far as to label […]

First up from The God Machine this week is a story about the latest efforts from some religious activists to oppose school lessons on modern biology. One of the great ironies of creationists, which often goes overlooked, is that their efforts follow an evolutionary model closely — descent with modification. They attack evolutionary biology from […]

Guest Post by Morbo I’m not a huge fan of McDonald’s. It’s corporate fast food, unhealthy and not all that tasty. But I may have to run out for a Big Mac this weekend simply because the Rev. Donald Wildmon doesn’t want me to. Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, has been on a […]

Guest Post by Morbo Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab became obsessed with searching for a great white whale. These days, some right-wingers are obsessing over the “great whitey tape.” Ahab’s search led him to a bad end, and I suspect the right wingers’ will as well. If you’re just joining us, the “great whitey tape” (GWT) […]

Guest Post by Morbo I’ve seen a lot of old television footage of Robert F. Kennedy over the past few days. He was assassinated 40 years ago. RFK was shot on June 5, 1968, and died the next day. I was a kid when this happened. Since I barely remember Bobby, I decided a few […]

Today’s edition of quick hits. * Uh oh, Part I: “Oil prices shot up nearly $11 a barrel and settled Friday at a record $138.54 – driven by geopolitical jitters, a dollar decline stemming from a weak jobs report and a forecast that oil would hit $150 by July 4. Friday’s spike in the July […]

Yesterday’s report from the Senate Intelligence Committee on the White House’s deliberate deceptions before the U.S. invasion of Iraq was not exactly blockbuster news. That doesn’t come as a surprise — Bush and his team lied about Iraq? Deliberately shoveling talking points that they knew to be false at the time? You don’t say. But […]

BeliefNet described Mark DeMoss as arguably “the most prominent public relations executive in the evangelical world.” That’s an entirely fair description. We are, after all, talking about someone whose client list includes Focus on the Family, Franklin Graham, and Campus Crusade for Christ, in addition to having served as Jerry Falwell’s chief of staff. And […]

For a while, political observers were starting to wonder about the McCain campaign’s media team. They were creating plenty of videos and TV ads, but they tended to be odd and unpersuasive. (In March, the campaign’s first general-election video made an odd connection between McCain and Churchill, while interspersing images from the Hubble telescope. As […]