John Sexton - Page 36

Bill Keller of the NY Times wrote an op-ed over the weekend which, while still taking some shots at the GOP, managed to lay some of the blame for “the large mess we are in” at the President’s feet. The

There’s a clip floating around which captures part of this but I think this extended version is better: Some context for this statement is helpful. On November 21, 2011 the bipartisan supercommittee–which had been created several months earlier in the

In 2009 Andrew was a featured speaker at a conference held here in California. I was one of a group of bloggers who were invited to a private chat with him. The video I shot that day–October 17, 2009–captured a

Bob Woodward appeared on Morning Joe today and defended his claim that the White House moved the goalposts on the sequestration deal: Axelrod claims the President has always had the same goals. That’s nice. It may even be true. But

A buyer and a seller are haggling over the price of a new, more fuel efficient car. They can’t quite agree on a price or the ratio of cash to trade-in-value but they are both motivated to make a deal.

Secretary Duncan’s statement about sequester on Sunday’s Face the Nation is about as accurate as Susan Rice’s explanation of the cause of the 9/11 attack on our Benghazi consulate. In both cases, their superiors at the White House, who sent

Bob Woodward doesn’t seem to appreciate the response his reporting has received from the White House. Here he compares the Commander in Chief, unfavorably, to several of his predecessors and concludes the President is behaving with a kind of “madness.”

John Nolte has a follow up on yesterday’s story about ABC and their edit of the First Lady’s comments about a shooting in Chicago. ABC says the inaccurate comments the First Lady made were edited out “for time.” If this

Unemployment in France shot up by 43,000 in January. That brings the total number of unemployed to 3.16 million, just shy of the 3.19 million record set in 1997. After he was elected, the administration of socialist President Francois Hollande

In response to Huffpo: Ben Smith, BuzzFeed ‘Government-Subservient’ Stenographers: BuzzFeed definitely made some mistakes but Glenn Greenwald’s outrage seems a bit over the top (as usual). Even Huff Post is backing off the outrage a bit: UPDATE: BuzzFeed wrote a

Howard Kurtz just posted a new video about conservative’s strange new respect for Bob Woodward, something he finds amusing. The hook is that Woodward’s piece claiming Obama had moved the goalposts on sequester has made even Sean Hannity into a

Charlie Spiering at the Examiner finds ABC has edited an interview with Michelle Obama to remove a portion where she misspoke about a recent shooting in Chicago. Here’s what Mrs. Obama said on Good Morning America according to a story

The President is doing his best to convince the public that $85B in cuts this year will be the equivalent of the apocalypse. Meanwhile, the Democratic Senate plan he has endorsed contains $110B in deficit reduction split evenly between cuts

In response to Ben AFLACK at the Oscar’s: I’m sure Ben is a gushing liberal like nearly everyone else in Hollywood but it doesn’t come through in Argo, which is one of the reasons I hoped it would win. The

Having recently confessed that, yes, the sequester was a White House proposal, progressives are now trying to downplay that admission in any way possible. Ideally, they’d like us all to ignore the fact that the White House has been lying

In response to Ace: The media and government fused to present an award to a movie about government/media fusion. Pretty much, except in the film we’re in on the joke and last night we were expected to be thrilled.

I saw Argo when it came out, one of four Best Picture nominated films I’ve seen so far. I thought it was excellent in part because it was tense and realistic but not deadly serious in the way most Oscar

In response to Ace: Back in 2007 a scientific journal published a paper suggesting that Lake Cheko may have been the impact site for whatever exploded over Tunguska in 1908. As the abstract explains “Its funnel-like bottom morphology and the

Wednesday I published a letter written by American tire CEO Maurice “The Grizz” Taylor to a French government official. Taylor’s letter, which was leaked to a newspaper, was a blunt assessment of the French work ethic. Among other things, he

Moody’s has decided to downgrade the UK bond rating from Aaa to Aa1. Moody’s justification for the downgrade includes three factors, the first of which is “sluggish” growth: 1. The continuing weakness in the UK’s medium-term growth outlook, with a

In response to Spending cuts first: I have the same concern, i.e. that the cuts that have been put in place will become the new “doc fix” if Democrats retake the House. They would leave it on the books to

In response to Obama Says 75% of the American People Agree With Him : John H. nailed this earlier but we might as well grab the Pew chart which is the key to parsing the President’s statement. (h/t Jim Geraghty)

Several outlets are noting Obama’s comments on Al Sharpton’s radio show, but the Free Beacon was kind enough to put it on You Tube: Is the President losing his short term memory? He talks as if we haven’t already had

Remember when the President couldn’t seem to go a single speech without mentioning tax breaks on private jets as a symbol of all that was wrong with out budgeting priorities. I hadn’t noticed that the White House had returned to

I’m not a lawyer and I try not to play one on the internet, but Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is definitely taking Citizens United hysteria too far: He’s comparing Citizens United,  a case involving money donated to political campaigns (by

Yesterday Ace posted a bit of this Red Altert Politics post at his site. The gist of it is that Obama only seems to have one playbook. He claims the current crisis was “manufactured” by Republicans and then blames them

Jesse Jackson Jr. entered a guilty plea in federal court Wednesday. He is now facing 4-5 years in prison for siphoning $750,000 from his campaign to purchase personal items including a significant amount of entertainment memorabilia. Jackson purchased the memorabilia

Last month Goodyear announced it would close a manufacturing plant in Amiens, France after five years spent haggling with a “communist-backed” union. French Minister of Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg then sent a letter to Titan industries encouraging the company to consider

If you haven’t been keeping up with the spat between the NY Times and Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, my initial post is here and a follow up is here. On Monday Margaret Sullivan, the Times’ public editor, weighed in

A story that appeared in Tuesday’s Telegraph suggests electricity prices in Britain are on the verge of skyrocketing over the next five years. The problem is that the government was in a rush to shut down “the dirtiest coal-fired stations”

So Ezra Klein has a new piece outlining Bowles-Simpson 2.0 which is a plan to replace the $1.2T sequester with $2.4 T in cuts and tax reform. One of Ezra’s big takeaways is “Simpson and Bowles have revised the tax

In 2010 a Swedish tabloid did an undercover expose on illegal guns circulating in the city of Malmö (Sweden’s 3rd largest city). The journalists involved decided to find out how easy it was to buy a gun illegally on the