Via Hesiod, we read "Racing pros revved up for GOP," in which Paul Newberry of the Associated Press portrays NASCAR drivers and fans as monolithically right wing. This is an odd thing to say about people who can't make a right turn, but Newberry's thesis seems to be that the fans are all southern white males, and the drivers are all rich southern white males, so they must all be Republicans. He gets former driver Richard Petty to make exactly... Read more
Slate's Timothy Noah offers "Ten ways to rationalize the publication of infidelity rumors" — particularly when no evidence substantiating those rumors exists. Noah lists as Excuse No. 1 pretending that: It's a press story. "Welcome to Reliable Sources, where we turn a critical lens on the media. I'm Howard Kurtz. Should the media report unsourced rumors about THAT WOMAN JOHN KERRY'S BEEN BANGING BEHIND TERESA'S BACK? How much coverage of a candidate's private life is too much? Here to discuss... Read more
Robert Novak was not pleased with President Bush's performance Sunday on Meet the Press. Novak seems to think it was unthinkable for Bush's handlers to allow him to face the mighty Tim Russert — "All week long in the capital, worried Republicans buzzed about George W. Bush's Sunday interview … " "Supporters of the president were surprised that he would ask to be questioned by Tim Russert." "How could Bush be put out to confront the most feared questioner in... Read more
It's been a rough stretch lately for President Bush. John Kerry is ahead of him in some polls. The Meet the Press session didn't go over any better than the State of the Union did. The Sept. 11 commission won't take "no" for an answer. The Valerie Plame investigation could lead to criminal charges for White House staff. And the embarrassing details of his sketchy history with the National Guard (and his even more dubious history with an apparently segregationist... Read more
Thursday's winning entry in the panicked interviewee category is Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), who is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves, on CNN's Paula Zahn Now. Buyer was intent on reciting a carefully rehearsed statement about how John Kerry "desecrated" his uniform by not continuing the Cold War arms race after the Cold War ended. ("John Kerry wanted to cut the military farther than Bill Clinton," Buyer said. He did not mention that Donald Rumsfeld wants to cut... Read more
Associated Press tax reporter Mary Dalrymple tells us that: … congressional investigators found that 27,000 defense contractors owed a total of $3 billion in unpaid taxes. Auditors at the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, studied taxes owed in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2002. The GAO report — available as a .pdf file here — is bluntly titled, "Some DOD Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System With Little Consequence." Dalrymple provides some of the highlights/lowlights:... Read more
"How many home runs did the quarterback shoot?" That's the sort of question 60 Minutes might ask if they began covering sports with the same contextless, ignorant approach they sometimes take on matters of religion. Amy Sullivan of Politicalaims has already commented on how 60 Minutes on Sunday confused evangelicals with fundamentalists, and thus totally distorted what Peter Gomes of Harvard had to say about the former by making it look like he was talking about the latter. Morley Safer... Read more
Here's former (and quasi-current) Bush administration official Victoria "Torie" Clarke in high dander on last night's Paula Zahn Now on CNN*: CLARKE: … You think about the kinds of issues this country is facing, this world is facing right now, that ought to be dealt with at a very serious, substantive level, it is not worth the taxpayers' time and money to have members of Congress messing around in that stuff [questions about the president's apparently unfulfilled National Guard duties].... Read more
Back in October, The New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller wrote a piece the paper headlined "Evangelicals Sway White House on Human Rights Issues Abroad." The article could just as accurately have been titled "White House Courts Evangelicals with Human Rights Issues Abroad." Bumiller describes the various human rights issues that are of particular concern to many American evangelical Christians — war in the Sudan, AIDS in Africa, sexual trafficking — and of the commitments they have received from President Bush's... Read more
This is bad news for Delaware. So is this. And this. This story has our newsroom scurrying around like … well, you know. But if this outbreak of avian flu is not contained, it could have serious, serious consequences for the poultry-dependent economy of lower Delaware. UPDATE: More bad news. The story notes that this is already hurting Delaware's "poultry industry." That's probably an even bigger problem — industrial chicken. (Welcome to The Meatrix.) Despite the effects of avian flu... Read more
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