On December 4, 2008, at NYC's
Symphony Space,
NPR's
Intelligence Squared program conducted an
Oxford-
style debate. As their future debate schedules in
Australia,
England, and
America show, the propositions of such debates are routinely phrased strongly to provoke debate, and this was no exception. The motion that was put forward was: "
Resolved, that Bush 43 is the worst President of the last 50 years."
[mp3, 23 MB, 50 min.] What lifts this above the
reams of media and multimedia already spent on this issue is that, moderated by ABC's
John Donvan, this premise was debated — under formal debate guidelines — by
Jacob Weisberg,
Sir Simon Jenkins,
Bill Kristol, and ...
Karl Rove.
[more inside]
posted by WCityMike
on Jan 6, 2009 -
28 comments
Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results --
...more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors. ...
posted by amberglow
on Apr 23, 2007 -
66 comments
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.
So much for Karl Rove's claim that it's wrong to think of U.S. voters as [
uninformed and gullible.] Or "There are practitioners of politics who hold that voters are dumb, ill-informed and
easily misled, that voters can be manipulated by a
clever ad or smart line," Rove said. Previously discussed
here. Thank you
Fox News.
Remember the
2003 study (PDF) by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy (PIPA)? It found that "Fox News viewers were "significantly
more likely to have misperceptions" about the Iraq war than all other media consumers."
Also the study found that "[t]hose who receive most of their news from Fox News are
more likely than average to have misperceptions." For instance, of the "three key misperceptions" -- which the study listed as "the beliefs that ... links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found, that WMD have been found in Iraq and that world public opinion approved of the US going to war with Iraq."
posted by ArunK
on Aug 6, 2006 -
97 comments
Former GOP senior strategist Kevin Phillips wrote the political Bible of the New Right,
The Emerging Republican Majority. He coined the term "Sun Belt." He voted for Reagan twice and still considers himself a staunch Republican. But now Phillips, the author of a new book called
American Theocracy, is warning that the party of George Bush and Karl Rove ("W brand Republicans," in the phrase of GOP pollster Jan van Lohuizen) has become "
God's own party" -- the champion of a convergence of "petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex." Phillips also cautions that the W-brand party's "
sense of how to win elections comes out of a CIA manual, not out of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution." [Phillips was also discussed
here.]
posted by digaman
on Apr 2, 2006 -
27 comments
Insulating Bush Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews
posted by Postroad
on Mar 30, 2006 -
47 comments
Why outing Plame mattered. If you wonder what's really at stake behind all the media buzz around the Fitzgerald indictments, read this lengthy and cogent analysis by
Stratfor's no-nonsense George Friedman. "Rove and Libby had top security clearances and were senior White House officials. It was their sworn duty, undertaken when they accepted their security clearance, to build a 'bodyguard of lies' -- in Churchill's phrase -- around the truth concerning U.S. intelligence capabilities... The minimal story -- that they talked about Plame with a reporter -- is the end of the matter."
posted by digaman
on Oct 18, 2005 -
89 comments
Attorney General Is Closely Linked to Inquiry Figures Karl Rove, President Bush (news - web sites)'s top political adviser, whose possible role in the case has raised questions, was a paid consultant to three of Mr. Ashcroft's campaigns in Missouri, twice for governor and for United States senator, in the 1980's and 1990's, an associate of Mr. Rove said on Wednesday. Jack Oliver, the deputy finance chairman of Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, was the director of Mr. Ashcroft's 1994 Senate campaign, and later worked as Mr. Ashcroft's deputy chief of staff. No wonder
69% of Americans think that an
independent counsel should conduct the investigation.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly
on Oct 2, 2003 -
48 comments
A SERIES OF ADS "Consider the following scenario: a series of TV ads begin to appear nightly immediately after the Republican convention is over next year. They will be negative ads. They will promote no Democratic candidate. They will therefore not be under the tight restrictions of the Federal Election Commission.
Each ad will begin with a video clip of President Bush's "Bring 'em on!" challenge. Then the screen will shift rapidly to the burned-out remains of a building or a Humvee. Underneath will be these words: a date, a location, and a death count.
Then a black screen with white print will announce: America needs a new policy.
There will be an ID of some kind: "Citizens for a Lasting Peace" or "Mothers to Stop the Bloodshed."
There will be no bodies on screen. There will be only bombed-out buildings and equipment.
Each ad will last no longer than 15 seconds.
There will be a new ad every night
posted by troutfishing
on Sep 2, 2003 -
49 comments
