“Swift-hosing” sounds so much more intriguing than the garden variety but vicious oppo dirty tricks it actually is. Nonetheless, Fred Thompson is the first candidate (“candidate”?) to make something of the fire fighters’ union attack on Rudy Giuliani (original video here):
July 13, 2007 — Likely Republican presidential candidate Fred
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In the ArenaUncategorized
In which George W. Bush’s veracity, and plans for Iraq, are examined.
Poor Mike Hayden. As luck would have it, the CIA director’s weekly briefing to the president took place this morning. One imagines Bush was holding the front page of the Washington Post and scowling when Hayden walked (sheepishly?) into the Oval Office. You see, according to Bob Woodward, when Hayden spoke to the Iraq Study Group last …
Shhhhh: We’re meeting at Ft. Reno Park at 7:15. Bring your own weenies.
(Swamphusband will play rock and roll and hold forth on the case for public financing. Also: Iraq.)
In the ArenaUncategorized
Well, here’s the White House interim report on Iraq. So far as I can tell, it’s a pretty straightforward assessment of where Petraeus and Crocker see the situation right now–obviously a best case view, but without the lies and oversimplification that mark the President’s descriptions of the situation in Iraq. The military situation is …
Dahlia Lithwick has a great run down on Sara Taylor’s non-testimony, and reminds us all that our Comp 101 professors were right when they preached the evils of the passive voice:
The problem I’m having in mustering any sympathy for poor Sara Taylor today is that she was no more “put” in this uncomfortable position than Kyle Sampson was
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The McCain campaign has entered that phase when any small piece of negative speculation will stick and every misstep will be magnified. For instance, the NYT reports that yesterday’s conference call with donors by McCain was done from the Senate cloakroom. This is itself is not illegal, but it edges into the gray area of the law that …
The NYT’s politics blog with photographic evidence of “joke” deleted from the remarks the President delivered today upon the reopening of the press briefing room:
Ha, ha.
Of course it’s a joke. Why eject when you can just ignore?
Please click through to learn more about this “Confucian sex symbol”:
From the moment he landed in Nanjing, a fawning press covered his every move, marveling repeatedly at how spry he remains at age 84. When [he] lands elsewhere, he has to worry he’ll be summoned to testify about knowledge of war crimes…During the event at Nanjing
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In the ArenaUncategorized
I think Ruth Marcus was a little tough on Barack Obama here. It was absolutely courageous for Obama to challenge–no, he mildly disagreed with–the teachers on merit pay. The anti-professional, anti-progress militancy of the teachers unions continue to astound me. If they want to be “treated as the professionals they are” in the …
Lengthy behind-the-scenes analysis here. Sorry for the lack of David Vitter. For what it’s worth, more than one McCain aide I talked to yesterday mentioned him, usually in the context of, “The only person happy with us today is David Vitter.”
The charge that McCain had become a “panderer” irked Weaver and other aides to distraction —
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Over at the LA Times, Paul Richter (full disclosure: he’s my spouse, or as we think of him around here, Mr. Swamp) and Peter Nicholas notice that the Republican Senators are not the only GOP politicians who are getting more and more uncomfortable being aligned with President Bush on the surge:
As President Bush struggles to maintain
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