Archive » Kos

The left side of the blogosphere has gone into full-blown spin mode regarding the effects of President Bush’s Social Security indexing proposal.
Here’s Josh Marshall:
let’s state specifically what this to-some-sexy-sounding proposal offers: steep benefit cuts for all but the lowest income Americans and meager increases in benefits for them. It’s hard to see how there’s anything [...]

You’ve no doubt heard about this terrible story of a downed helicopter in Iraq carrying American, Fijian, and Bulgarian civilian security workers who were protecting U.S. diplomats in the area:
Eleven people, including six Americans working for a North Carolina private security firm, were killed Thursday when a commercial helicopter was shot down by missile fire [...]

Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler’s column about the Post’s coverage of the Schiavo memo is surprisingly good.
Before I get to the meat of the column, here are two tidbits that I haven’t seen elsewhere:
- The March 19 Post article by Mike Allen and Manuel Roig-Franzia that claimed the memo was circulated by Republican party leaders [...]

Former Senator Bob Kerrey is considering running for mayor of New York City, the New York Times reports.
Wes Clark is seriously considering running for president in ‘08, a Daily Kos correspondent reports (via MyDD).
PoliPundit says Republicans will probably pick up a seat or two in the U.S. Senate next fall. One of the most vulnerable [...]

One thing is clear from those who are cackling over news that Sen. Mel Martinez’s legal counsel, Brian Darling, is the author of the so-called GOP/Schiavo Talking Points Memo: Your reading comprehension level is lower than my 17-month-old son’s. And he’s just started reading picture books.
Giddy e-mailers are demanding that conservative bloggers, including myself, “retract” [...]

A year ago today, left-wing blogger and Democratic strategist Markos Moulitsos Zuniga of the Daily Kos cheered the brutal murders of four American civilian contractors in Fallujah–all of them war veterans with distinguished records, three of them fathers–with the following infamous words:
“Screw them.”
(Scroll down in the comments section. It’s there.)
Initially, Democrat advertisers condemned Kos’s atrocious [...]

Washington Governor Christine Gregoire recently said she has received death threats as a result of talk radio–an allegation that some of Daily Kos’s readers find plausible.
Gregoire was apparently referring to a threat against her and her family made by a mentally ill man in Yakima County, Wash. But as former KVI talk show host [...]

The New York Times reports today that the Bush Administration wants to raise veterans’ co-payments for prescription drugs to $15 from a ridiculously low $7 and impose an annual enrollment fee of $250. Does anyone doubt that Democrats are going to talk incessantly about these “cuts“? But here’s one thing I bet they won’t mention: [...]

With the exception of Sullivan, the top bloggers on the left side of the blogosphere have decided to mark this historic day by hiding under their bedcovers.
As of 1:45pm EST today,
Talking Points Memo is silent on the Iraqi elections.

Atrios is silent on the Iraqi elections.
Crooked Timber is silent on the Iraqi elections.
And Daily Kos has [...]

Education Secretary Rod Paige broke his silence about the Armstrong Williams flap yesterday, insisting that the Department of Education’s payments to Williams were geared “exclusively toward the production and airtime of advertisements in which I described the law and encouraged viewers and listeners” to seek more details.
Exclusively?
The contract signed by Williams wasn’t just about advertising. [...]

In response to an e-mail from Truth Laid Bear ’s N.Z. Bear, the New York Times ran a correction earlier this week. Apparently, the Times had confused the number of unique visitors at Daily Kos with the number of visits. The correction read as follows:
An article on Oct. 28 about Internet sites that criticize mainstream [...]

You know everyone’s gonna have one–the winners/losers list. Might as well get started. Feel free to add.
Winners: Swift Boat Vets
Losers: Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Matthews, Mary Mapes, insert every other Swift Vet-hating media elitist here

Winner: Hillary Clinton
Loser: Terry McAuliffe
Winner: Zell Miller
Loser: Tom Daschle
Winner: Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
Loser: Florida election lawyers
Winner: Ron Silver
Loser: P. Diddy
Winner: Blogosphere
Loser: [...]

Daily Kos discusses a Families USA report asking whether families have better health care today than they did four years ago. The report cites all kinds of grim statistics, such as rising health insurance premiums and an increase in the number of Americans without insurance.
My health insurance is much less generous than it was four [...]

In the LA Times, former blogger Billmon writes that bloggers have sold out. His thesis is that “[a]s blogs commercialize, they are tied ever closer to the mainstream media and its increasingly frivolous news agenda.”
I was particularly interested in his argument that “a charmed circle of bloggers” is gaining “larger audiences and greater influence,” [...]