Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Via Howard Kurtz, I see that Fred Barnes needs a little fact-checking.
The second avoidable mistake [by Bush] involved the reluctance of Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to declare a mandatory evacuation of the city. Federal emergency officials urged Nagin to evacuate the city before Katrina hit. Bush personally called the mayor on the morning of the hurricane to press him to require all residents to leave. However, the president did not go public with a plea for an immediate and full evacuation.

Just for kicks, let's set a stop watch. Go. And stop. OK, it took me 30 seconds, not hurrying, to locate this Katrina timeline.

The timeline shows that Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation at 9:30 AM CDT on Sunday. Katrina made landfall at 7:00 AM CDT on Monday.

In this particular temporal universe, that would be "before" Katrina hit.

A simple mistake, I'm sure. It's not like Barnes is a professional wanker or anything.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Shorter Sebastian Mallaby: There are absolutely no negatives about, just completely and totally nothing wrong with Wal-Mart, and Democrats should just shut up about it.
I'm no economist, but wages and salaries are how the lower class and the middle class, you know, make their living. But hey, how about those corporate profits. Good to see those nice kids are doing well.

Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity
As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s.

And hey, NYT? Frank Luntz? Frank - coiner of the phrase "death tax" - Luntz? It's one thing to seek balance, and another to seek bullshit. Why did you choose the latter?