The national media watch group
It goes to show you how limited the debate over warmaking is when politicians whose records are mostly pro-war can be portrayed as war skeptics. That's what is happening with Barack Obama's new cabinet picks: Sen. John Kerry for secretary of State and former Sen. Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary.
The criticism of Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital doesn't appear to be leaving the headlines. And thus some political reporters are, as Jamison Foser notes, drawing an unusual comparison: Romney is being Swift Boated. The latest example comes from Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (7/17/12): In a sense, Romney deserves the Swift Boating he's now getting from the Obama campaign and the president himself. In case you missed the 2004 campaign: The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was formed to cast doubt on John Kerry's Vietnam War record. TV commercials were cooked up to expose Kerry as a fraud [...]
The New YorkTimes has a piece today (3/7/11) about thedebate over U.S. military intervention in Libya. The paper reports that there are persistent voices–in Congress and even inside the administration–arguing that Mr. Obama is moving too slowly. Reporters David Sanger and Thom Shanker contend that there is too much concern about perceptions, and that the White House is too squeamish because of Iraq. And who are those persistent voices? The most vocal camp, led by senators John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president, and Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent and another hawk on Libyan intervention, say the central [...]
Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's enthusiasm for Dick Cheney is not a new thing. Appearing on MSNBC back in 2004, Meacham praised the Republican National Convention speeches of Cheney and Sen. Zell Miller: If I taught at the Kennedy School, I would take these two speeches as ur-text of partisan rhetoric. I think it was a brilliant tactical night, one of the most brilliant in the age of television. These were two concise, rather devastating rhetorical hits at John Kerry. And there was just–they did not miss a base. They did not miss anything that they could hit. The remarkable thing [...]
Senator John Kerry's post to the SaveTheInternet.com blog (6/16/09) looks at the fact that "nine of the most popular 10 phones are locked in a deal with one of these big wireless carriers," and how this corporatization limits the new medium: Here's the issue I think we need to wrestle with: Wireless service providers are largely deciding what phone you can use. We don't see that happening in similar markets. Your broadband provider doesn't decide what kind of computer you can connect to at the end of your DSL or cable wire. And 40 years ago, the FCC ruled in [...]
