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Hrm hrm hrm… this Newsweek Poll is missing something:
After burning through all but 2 million of 22 million dollars raised and the culmination of a failed campaign with the public guillotining of the longtime senior campaign managers and fifty staffers, the political obituary has been written for the once-heralded media darling. In the past week, the media has attempted to retrace the dance steps it took in 2000 with the upstart Senator branded as the brazenly honest maverick. From Salon to the Washington Post, the question posed is what caused the derailment of the famed Straight Talk Express and the once certain McCain presidential bid?
McCain entered the 2000 Republican nomination process as a fresh face championing a noteworthy cause, but quickly became fodder for the Bush election team. Cornered in South Carolina, McCain quickly flip-flopped on the Confederate Flag issue while Bush’s force made dubious push polls asking primary voters if they would still support McCain if he had an illegitimate black child (his family adopted a daughter from Bangladesh). He got caught putting lip stick on the pig as media driven arguments with Falwell and Robinson escalated and as Bush openly questioned McCain’s service to his country. The latter was the most anathema of tactics considering McCain’s stay at the Hanoi Hilton while Bush went AWOL after learning to fly antiquated planes. McCain, hobbled by a ruthless Bush campaign speared by Rove, saw the nomination elude him to the Bush’s tactic of appealing to the Republican base.
WASHINGTON - President Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term that Bush said was excessive.
Bush’s move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case. That meant Libby was likely to have to report to prison soon and put new pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby’s allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
As I was reading my daily liberal periodical, I came across an article about Hillary Clinton’s latest fundraiser / block party in downtown DC. While the article was rather mundane, a particular snippet caught my attention:
The elements for a youthful event were all there: a juggler, face-painting (a custom Hillary heart design was available), blow-up Uncle Sam dolls, the vendor selling Red Bull and, of course, the “United We Stand” moon bounce.
I’ll be live blogging Ron Paul on the Daily Show tonight. The phenomena continues…..
11:04 - Wolf Blitzer is a troll. And he used to work for AIPAC and wrote a book about how Jonathan Pollard was falsely convicted.
11:05 - Chris Dodd, who made you? Only Joe Lieberman’s existence could make you look worthwhile.
This is a repost of a previous entry to include graphs courtesy of Daily Background and minor adjustments to figures and syntax.
The 2006 mid-term elections were hailed as an ushering in of a new era turned against the Bush administration and politics as usual, and statistically speaking, the 110th Congress is the most diverse in US history. Yet there remains a serious disparity between the demographics of the United States population and the demographics in the Congress, which will be explored below.
The 2006 mid-term elections were hailed as an ushering in of a new era turned against the Bush administration and politics as usual, and statistically speaking, the 110th Congress is the most diverse in US history. Yet there remains a serious disparity between the demographics of the United States population and the demographics in the Congress, which will be explored below.
Over Representation
Males - As of the 2006 congress, 83.7% of the Congress is male, while the percentage of males of the voting age population (18 plus) is only 48.4. If this is further evaluated to include the over-representation of white males, the figure is even more staggering: 36.3% of the voting age population are white males, yet there are 79 White Male senators making up the Senate (79%).
After the second Republican debate, we had the pleasure of reading a plethora of reviews of who did and didn’t do well. And none managed to do it as biased as Time, who put all the front runners (McCain, Guiliani, Romney) as their top 3 performers of the debate and classified Ron Paul as unelectable because he looks like Mr. Magoo. Check out the pictures below and notice the lack of mentioning of foreign policy or anything else worthwhile for the candidates, unless of course you consider comparisons to cartoon characters an objective part of political reporting:
