BrendanNyhan FL Sen. candidate Marco Rubio backtracks on support for supply-side myth, admits "The tax cuts don’t pay for themselves" http://j.mp/cVEq15- BrendanNyhan Meanwhile, Fox's Stuart Varney pushes myth that "When you lower rates on the rich, you actually bring in more money" http://j.mp/aEFE27
- BrendanNyhan A Visual History of Senate Polarization from 1967 to 2010 by NYU grad student Adam Bonica http://j.mp/9EkPJ3
- BrendanNyhan I'm not surprised Palin screens her FB comments; I'm surprised it's the only part of her image that she's so careful with http://j.mp/b9cWHh
The Facebook posts Palin doesn't want you to see. - By John Dickerson - Slate Magazine The comments on Sarah Palin's Facebook page offer a relatively unbroken chain of adulation, applause, and approval: "Tell it LIKE IS MRS. PALIN." "God Bless you Sarah!! Thanks for all you do!!" "Palin 2012!!!!" No matter the topic of her posting—an endorse - BrendanNyhan Yet more analysis blaming Obama's policies for his political standing while barely mentioning economy http://j.mp/9yhp0Z http://j.mp/bzA9MvAn Honest Question For Wehner Fallacy Advocates | The New Republic The New Republic covers politics, culture, and the arts with a focus on national politics, foreign policy, Congress, Capitol Hill, the 2010 midterm elections, literature, and more.
- BrendanNyhan It's great @kausmickey supports the NYC mosque, but low Web standards aren't a defense of wife's-uncle's-ex-group-website-link WS smear
- BrendanNyhan Also, low Web standards are irrelevant to what the threshold *should* be, @kausmickey. Is != ought. If you were the target, you would agree.
- BrendanNyhan Blaming McCain loss on finan. crisis probably wrong; economy was already bad http://j.mp/bmwgth See pre-crisis forecasts http://j.mp/dC6dx5The Bush Economy Won The Election For Obama | The New Republic The New Republic covers politics, culture, and the arts with a focus on national politics, foreign policy, Congress, Capitol Hill, the 2010 midterm elections, literature, and more.The fundamentals work: Obama 53% - Brendan Nyhan For months I've been emphasizing the role of the political fundamentals in determining presidential election outcomes. Last night that approach was again vindicated. The median forecast from leading election models was that Barack Obama would receive 52% of the two-party...
- BrendanNyhan Video interviews with prominent political scientists about American politics http://j.mp/9W23IO
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August 04, 2010
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About Me
I am the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Duke University and have served as a RWJ Scholar in Health Policy Research and a faculty member in the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. I also tweet at @BrendanNyhan, contribute to The Upshot at The New York Times, and am a co-organizer of Bright Line Watch. Previously, I served as a media critic for Columbia Journalism Review, co-edited Spinsanity, a non-partisan watchdog of political spin, and co-authored All the President's Spin. For more, see my Dartmouth website.
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Sorry to get all geeky, but logic and mathematical theorems pay a lot of attention to quantifiers: ∃ means “there exists” or "for some" or "at least one" and ∀ means “for all." or "always".
Suppose Rubio had asserted that a particular triangle was a right triangle. Then, Think Progress misrepresented Rubio's comment as saying that all triangles are inevitably right triangles. Finally, suppose that based on their misrepresentation, Think Progress called Rubio's comment "absurd." That would be an unfair criticism.
That's just what Think Progress did. They falsely claimed that Rubio had said, "tax cuts inevitably pay for themselves" (emhasis added). However, their link showed Rubio claiming that one particular tax cut would pay for itself.
Maybe the folks at Think Progress aren't smart enough to understand the difference between ∃ and ∀. Maybe they're using spin to make a Republican look bad. But, I would have expected better of Brendan on both logic and spin.
Posted by: David in Cal | August 04, 2010 at 11:36 AM
John Dickerson seems to feel that racist baiting shows good manners. He classifies as "Polite Disagreement" a comment that begins:
"Sarah, perception is everything! I learned that in the military. All you have to do is disassociate yourself from those Tea Partiers that are indeed racist..."
IMHO being tarred as a racist today is as devastating being tarred as a Communist during the McCarthy era. Calling Tea Partiers racists today is no more polite than calling liberals communists was in 1952.
Posted by: David in Cal | August 04, 2010 at 11:51 AM