Politics

THE MARKETING OF THE OPPOSITION….As a corollary to the post below, I watched James Carville trying desperately (and failing) to land a blow on Crossfire yesterday when his guest made the point that the dividend tax cut went mostly to seniors. I imagine the right response would be something like this: You mean seniors like […]

THE MARKETING OF THE PRESIDENT….I’ve been thinking about the presentation of Bush’s economic plan yesterday, and the more I think about it the more I admire it. Mind you, this is strictly from the point of view of a competitor admiring another competitor’s marketing coup. Think about what Bush had to work with: he’s proposing […]

NORTH KOREA UPDATE….Via OxBlog, I learn that the Bushies have apparently changed their tune about their refusal to negotiate with North Korea: In a key policy shift, the United States said on Tuesday it was willing to talk to North Korea before Pyongyang ends its nuclear programs but stuck to its refusal to give the […]

IT’S A FEATURE, NOT A BUG….A friend of my mother’s decided to get a cat the other day, so she went down to our local shelter and picked one out. This was the first time she had owned a cat, and the next day she called my mother and told her worriedly that she thought […]

WORDS MATTER….The LA Times ran a story today about David Frum’s new book. Here’s an excerpt about Bush advisor Karen Hughes: It was Hughes who laid down various rules for speech writers, Frum says: Parents would be referred to as “moms and dads”; “tax cuts” would be called “tax relief,” to come across as “a […]

MORE ON BUSH-ONOMICS….There’s a PR problem with the Bush plan too. A PR problem for the Democrats, that is. Here is RealClear Politics’ take on the issue: “THEY’VE TAKEN STEROIDS”: That’s how one GOP aide described the White House’s $674 billion economic stimulus plan…. By contrast, the Dems $136 billion proposal looks positively paltry….If the […]

MORE FUN WITH POLLING….Daniel Drezner points to a Zogby poll showing that John Edwards has “surged” into second place with support from 9% of likely Democratic voters. But considering that the poll has a statistical error of ?5%, says Drezner, Zogby’s breathless prose probably means that “some public relations flack had way too many lattes […]

BUSH STIMULUS PLAN UNVEILED!….WELL, I’M STIMULATED, ANYWAY….So the Bushies ran their “stimulus” plan up the flagpole last week, presumably to gauge reaction and fine tune it before going public with the real thing. So what happened? They made it even worse. Here’s what they came up with: Proposal 10-Year Cost End dividend tax $364 billion […]

AND YOU THINK OUR SCHOOLS ARE BAD?….Saudi Arabia is apparently planning some educational reforms: Education Minister Dr. Muhammad Al-Rasheed has said that the Saudi school syllabus has ?several defects? and his ministry is making every effort to address and eliminate them. Hopefully the “defects” he’s planning to address include stuff like this: Following a lesson […]

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE….Rush, responding to a caller: You’ve got to get over 2000. It’s 2002 now. I know that conservatives like to look to the past, but this is ridiculous.