The Daily Show Not having sufficiently debased itself by endorsing Joe Lieberman, The New Republic has now hired a new TV critic, Lee Siegel. His (her?) first target: Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show — a show that regular readers know I regularly cite: To be honest, I was never a huge fan of Stewart’s humor, […]

Does Bad Data Explain the Unusual Recovery? From last week’s Economist (subscription required): DESPITE the welcome leap in American employment in March (see article), America’s job market has been surprisingly weak in the past couple of years—surprising, at least, to economists. Some have explained this by pointing to rapidly rising productivity figures. Perhaps firms have […]

Bush to Discuss Iraq The White House just announced that Bush will hold a press conference on Tuesday evening to discuss Iraq. That gives reporters 24 hours to come up with some good questions. Here’s my suggestion to get the ball rolling: 1. “Is the occupation of Iraq going about as you expected it, or […]

Good Analogy Here’s what a CBSMarketwatch article about this week’s upcoming CPI release said regarding the potential danger for inflation that it may or may not show: WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) — Imagine coming across an apartment building where half of the residents are shouting fire and throwing their possessions from their windows and the other half […]

Analysis of the Falluja Ceasefire I found some interesting analysis of the ceasefire (now in its second day) that was agreed to in Falluja. The website DEBKA, an independent web-based newspaper based in Jerusalem devoted to security issues in the Middle East (and writing from the perspective of the Israeli right) argues that the US […]

Huh? Roger Ailes finds this statement in Clifford May’s 4/8/04 column in National Review Online: President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor. Roger clearly documents that the Roosevelt actually issued an executive order on December 18, 1941 appointing a commission […]

Connect the Dots Max Sawicky connects the dots in the August 6th, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing. Definitely take a look. AB UPDATE: Viq Digby, this transcript of Bush being interviewed over the PDB. At one point Bush says “And you might recall the hijacking that was referred to in the PDB. It was not a […]

End Corporate Taxation! Via the Salt Lake Tribune: Nearly two-thirds of the companies operating in the United States reported owing no taxes from 1996 through 2000, according to a recent government study. Foreign companies doing business here were more likely than American-based ones to claim they owed no taxes, according to the report filed this […]

More Navel Gazing I just came across a site, BlogRunner, that archives weblogs and compiles statistics about them, statistics that, at least in my case, the proprieter is not even aware of. For example, here are the bloggers I link to, the bloggers who link to me, and the sites I link to most often: […]

This post may someday be historical, but it’s unlikely to be historic During her Thursday testimony, Rice used the word “historic” once and used the word “historical” almost ten times. For example, this exchange with Chairman Kean (full transcript here), on the historical nature of information about planes-as-weapons: KEAN: I’ve got a question now I’d […]