Matthew Yglesias (8/3/10) has a good takedown of senators John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn's (R.-Ok.) list of supposedly wasteful stimulus projects that generated an "exclusive" on ABC's Good Morning America (8/3/10): Jon Chait observes that McCain and Coburn also seem to have decided that anything relating to animals is necessarily waste. Hence a small grant to fund research on cocaine addiction and relapse is turned into "Monkeys Getting High for Science." Hardy-har-har. There's a case to be made that the government has no role to play in funding scientific research, but it's a mighty bad case. If you think [...]
Jun
15
2010
The Real Ed Henry
By 7 Comments
NPR's Brooke Gladstone (On the Media, 6/11/10) interviewed CNN's Ed Henry about thesquirt-gun party at the vice president's mansion that Henry giddily tweeted about: BROOKE GLADSTONE: If these events don't influence coverage, why do you think the White House throws them? Do they just want to shoot you with a super-soaker? ED HENRY: Maybe they wanna actually get to know us as people sometimes. And Glenn Greenwald (Salon, 2/15/10) comments: Marc Ambinder disclosed that it was the DNC that paid for the party.But Ed Henry thinks that they do that because Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden and the other White [...]
Jun
09
2010
Political Eras Are Getting Shorter and Shorter
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Three weeks ago, under the headline "Activists Seize Control of Politics," Politico (5/19/10) was reporting that U.S. politics may have changed forever: The 2010 electorate has swallowed an emetic–disgorging in a series of retching convulsions officeholders in both parties who seem to embody conventional Washington politics. The anti-establishment, anti-incumbent fevers on display Tuesday are not new…. What's now clear, in a way that wasn't before, is that these results reflect a genuine national phenomenon, not simply isolated spasms in response to single issues or local circumstances…. This is a stark and potentially durable change in politics. The old structures that [...]
Jun
04
2010
Jon Meacham's Left-Right Blame Game
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In his editor's note in the current edition of Newsweek, Jon Meacham surveys the failures of the past decade or so and comes to a completely unsurprising conclusion: the right and leftbothfailed. From the financial sector to the Roman Catholic Church, it has been a bad couple of years for–to borrow a phrase from a BP chieftain–"big, important" players in global life. Going only a bit further back in the decade, the occupation of Iraq and the response to Katrina seem to mark the beginning of an era in which apparently competent institutions have all too often proved incompetent. The [...]
May
20
2010
At the NYT, Some Pols Mislead, Others Imagine
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The New York Times is being criticized for selective editing in its reporting on Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's misleading accounts of his military record–the paper posted on its website a clip of a speech where the Democratic Senate candidate makes his most direct claim to have served in Vietnam, but it edited that clip to leave out a nearby passage where he accurately depicts himself as serving "during the Vietnam War." The Times rejected the criticism in a response to Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent: The New York Times in its reporting uncovered Mr. Blumenthal's long and well established [...]
May
19
2010
Citizens Revolting… Over the Deficit?
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The Washington Post has a story today (5/19/10)that leads with this: With voters up in arms over the mounting federal debt, congressional Democrats are growing increasingly queasy about adding to the nation's tab,with some arguing that additional spending to prop up the economy and help the unemployed should be paid for or abandoned. The headline–"Democrats Queasy About Deficit Spending"–seems true enough, in the sense that reporter Lori Montgomery quotes some Democrats saying as much. But are voters really "up in arms" over the debt? That's not borne out by polls of voters' concerns. If you check the recent surveys at [...]
Apr
27
2010
What Would the Tea Party Look Like if It Were British, and Totally Different?
By 4 Comments
As a U.S. political columnist, the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum ("Britain's Spot of Tea Party," 4/27/10) might be excused for calling the Liberal Democratic Party "Britain's historically insignificant third party"; historically speaking, it was actually one of Britain's two major parties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It's Applebaum's misunderstanding of the politics of her own country that's harder to forgive. Applebaum's column asks, "What would the Tea Party movement look like if it were British"–and the answer is, like the Liberal Democrats, as embodied by candidate Nick Clegg. Presumably it's not his support for immigration or his [...]
Apr
20
2010
Newsweek Makes a Mess of Texas
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The cover of Newsweek (4/26/10) proclaims: "Don't Mess With Texas: What Governor Rick Perry's Hard-Right Creed Tells Us About America." I can't say I learned much about America, but I guess I learned something about Newsweek: They really like Rick Perry. The story, by Evan Thomas and Arian Campo-Flores, beginswith the observation, "The myth of the once and future king is as old as Camelot, as ancient as the Bible."Perry, it seems,is a living example of such a"redeemer": In Texas, his name is Rick Perry. Raised in a ranch house with no running water in the West Texas town of [...]
Apr
15
2010
NYT and 'Politically Potent' GOP Tax Myths
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The New York Times' Jackie Calmes has a report today (4/15/10) about the brewing fight over the Bush tax cuts, which were passed for limited time period and will phase out if Congress does not pass legislation to extend them. The Obama White House will ask lawmakers to renew most of the tax cuts, but let those for wealthy taxpayers expire. This obviously does not sit well with Republicans, and they have a plan, which the Times describes in the third paragraph of the story: For all of the talk from President Obama and his party of ending the Bush [...]
Apr
07
2010
Corporate Media Love to Be Hated by Sarah Palin
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New York Times media reporter David Carr wrote the other day (4/5/10) about Sarah Palin's wide-ranging appeal: Ms. Palin still gets a session in the media spanking machine every time she does anything, but the disapproval seems to further cement the support of her loyalists. Ms. Palin may or may not be qualified to represent America around the world, but she certainly represents vast swaths of the American public and has a lucrative new career to show for it. If we donâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t see why, then maybe we deserve the "lamestream media" label she likes to give us. Mark Halperin of [...]
Apr
07
2010
Action Alert: Tasini Campaign Not Fit to Print?
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FAIR has a new action alert out about the New York Times' snubbing the U.S. Senate candidate Jonathan Tasini. While the paper has given intensive coverage to numerous New Yorkers who thought about challenging appointed incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand–but in the end decided not to run–the Times has ignored Gillibrand's most prominent actual rival in the Democratic primary, aside from one rather snarky profile that appeared in January. Click here to send a message to the Times–which you can post a copy of in the comments thread below.
