Category: long story short

Brad DeLong is surprised that it took an allegedly criminal conspiracy run out of the White House casually commiting treason (and undermining the effort to rein in weapons of mass destruction and fight terrorism) in the name of a tactical political payback to make some principle Republicans consider abandoning their party. (Reasons Not to Be…

My fellow Democrats: When Arnold wins in California next week, there will be lots of talk by the national party that this was a successful plot by the Republican Right to subvert the will of the state’s Democratic majority. But really, that’s missing the point. Arnold didn’t need the recall to beat Gray Davis. In…

Talking Points Memo has a transcript up of today’s White House press conference. Here are a few highlights: QUESTION: Ambassador Wilson has said that he has information that Karl Rove condoned this leaking, and I’ve seen your comment that that’s absolutely false — McCLELLAN: It is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. (In the future will we hear…

When news breaks that calls into question some liberal or left-wing belief or assertion, the right-wing/libertarian sector of the blogosphere is all over it. Generally, the liberals and lefties have less relish for such stories and if they cover them they tend to minimize or debunk them as best they can, occasionally conceding one if…

I was reading the most recent primary comment thread at Kos and someone suggested ignoring the debates till some winnowing occurs, because ten is too many to keep track of. It does seem as though only declared candidates should be invited to the debates. Are they all declared now? I know the declaration is a…

Bringing nothing to read forced me to write. Some guy I hate, goading me on. A looming deadline. A tempting escapade. Anxiety, guilt, shame. Sex. Bodily functions. Unsatisfactory conclusion. Go to (1).

Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan made an interesting observation on the TV tonight. Instead of calling General Clark an outright flip-flopper, she hit a related but distinct theme, saying: never trust a man who tells you he’s on a journey. Her concern is that Clark doesn’t appear to have a fixed political philosophy. He’s learning and…

One of the conservative critiques you’ll be hearing about General Clark is that he’s awfully indecisive for a general, that he’s guilty of muddy thinking, and of course, that he’s flip-flopping. The Right takes flip-flopping very seriously. Bill Clinton was a draft-dodging, pot-smoking, super-slick flip-flopper. Gore was a big-fibbing, sweat-streaming, sore loser of a flip-flopper.…

Back in the 2000 primaries, one of Bush’s trademarks was his ability to deliver an entire speech without once accidentally making eye contact. These cautious, close manuscript readings came in striking contrast to Bill Clinton’s free-wheeling, sometimes seemingly improvised shtick. Around the time of the Republican convention, something changed. Bush began to look up from…

I was struck over the weekend by the enthusiasm the folks at Fox News have shown for a Hillary Clinton presidential bid in ’04. Even though (almost) all evidence points against a last-minute Hillary run, they look at her numbers in the primary polls and say, “C’mon now, you can do it! Believe in yourself!…

I love reading the right-wing punditry on the Democratic presidential primary race. There’s a lot of wishful thinking and projection mixed in with the gossip and rumormongering. There’s still a total obsession with Clintonisma, and Bill Safire’s column this morning in the Times follows in a long line of Hillary-obsessed predictions from the libertarian-neocon margin…

I stumbled on a very interesting dialogue in the comments section of a post on Hoder’s weblog called Bush benefits from terrorist attacks, like Sharon does, which itself pointed to Pat Buchanan’s handicapping of the upcoming presidential horserace election. Note, the comments on Hoder’s entry are posted reverse chronologically, so the oldest ones come last.…

I know a lot of my Dean-supporting friends think that saying “Wesley Clark would be a great vice president for Dean” will ward off the threat, but it ain’t that simple. No one runs for vice president. And it’s unseemly to pick one too soon. But there is a precedent for parading around a potential…

My sister, J, writes: Looks like DC is going to get smacked by the hurricane sometime after midnight on Thursday night. They say it would be better if it goes straight over us because there is usually less damage than there is to places that are on the outer edges of the storm (some analogy…

In Withering chads, filchyboy reminds me that the whole Recall hullabulloo is turning into a formal response to the 2000 Floriday debacle. The Supreme Court’s “use once and discard” label on their Bush v. Gore decision seems to be coming undone. How ironic if an unintended consequence of the shoehorning of W. into his father’s…

As anticipated by Adam Felbers, Digby at Hullabaloo, notes that Novak (a.k.a., “No Facts,” or as Digby terms him, “Novakula”) has asserted that Wesley Clark was in danger of being kicked out of the Army until he appealed to Clinton for his fourth star. I imagine the whole idea of his popularity (or lack thereof)…

Good discussion of David Brooks’ Republicans for Dean op-ed from the Times today over on Metafilter. One pithy sampling: That being said, most of Dean’s appeal to me is the prospect of seeing him mercilessly beat the crap out of Bush in the debate if we get to have one this time around. Dean isn’t…

Daniel Gross writes in Slate What Bush Learned From Enron – How to hide an $87 billion debt by pretending it’s off the books. Of course the point here is not so much that we shouldn’t spend the (now) necessary money in Iraq but that the full, or growing, pricetag was hidden off the books…

So does this ruling go to the U.S. Supreme Court next? I love it when they adjudicate our elections.

Interesting referrer at one of my sites today: True dirt on Howard Dean. Someone is looking for dirt on Dean, it seems to me. I hope they have a good opposition research team. I’m available! (The search only found me because I have links to a gardening blog called True Dirt and because lately I’ve…

Heard it here first. Halliburton is to Bush as Teapot Dome is to Harding. Pass it on.