washington post – Page 3

Open-government types upset that Barack Obama isn’t one.

On Monday afternoon, open-government advocates assembled in a congressional hearing room to ponder what had become of the Obama administration’s lofty vows of transparency.

“It’s been a really tough slog,” said Anne Weismann of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “The lack of effective leadership in the White House, in the executive branch, has really made it difficult to have more significant progress.”

Well, elections have consequences.

(pause)

You idjits.

Washington Post: 9 million Obama voters now Romney’s?

Not that they say that, of course.

Two weeks of Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll interviews find 84 percent of likely voters who supported Obama in 2008 support him this year, while 13 percent say they are switching to Romney and 3 percent are backing others or haven’t made up their mind yet.

Now, let’s just assume for the moment that we have 100% turnout from 2008 and that every voter then is a likely voter now (God knows that happens a lot, particularly with the state polls these days). 69.46 million people voted for Obama; 59.93 for McCain. Assuming that Obama gets 84% of that total then he’ll be effectively handing over 9.03 million votes to Romney, 2.08 million to third-party votes, and be at 58.34 million votes… or less than McCain’s totals.

(pause)

Well all right, then.

Continue reading Washington Post: 9 million Obama voters now Romney’s?

#rsrh Let me do a (rare, at least for me) fisk of the Washington Post.

I normally don’t do this sort of thing, but what the heck.

So. Biden thinks that he’s been helpful! The WaPo lists the ways.

In nearly four years as vice president, Biden has been the chief monitor of the economic recovery efforts, coordinating federal projects with mayors and governors.

…What economic recovery? Continue reading #rsrh Let me do a (rare, at least for me) fisk of the Washington Post.

#rsrh Did Glenn Kessler report this WaPo article as an in-kind contribution to OfA?

Because if he didn’t, he should have*. “True but false.” Apparently, the RNC is not permitted to make the verifiable point that since January 2009 women have been losing most of the jobs. Because that sort of thing is bourgeois truth, which apparently may not be permitted to interfere with revolutionary truth (I don’t remember who first came up with that bon mot, sorry). Or possibly Kessler simply finds it intolerable that the RNC would want to push back on the Democrats’ War on Women rhetoric – hey, where’s the Fact Checker post on that? Don’t see it here.

Well, at least we know now that the Washington Post’s The Fact Checker – not to mention, Glenn Kessler – is actually thoroughly in the bag for the Democrats. Campaigns, take note.

Via… Oh, this one is going to go around, brothers and sisters. Take your pick.

Moe Lane

*Yes, yes, I’m sure that there’s a loophole, or something. There usually is.

#rsrh You know, somebody encouraged this poor woman…

…with a rotten life and bad prospects to go out there and keep trying to recruit more people to vote for the man whose party largely put her in her position.

Over the past three years, [Earline] Coe could have easily become one of those on the other end of the line — a no, a hang-up, a “refused.”

After working for Obama in the last election, Coe lost her job as a retail manager. She got another job, then lost that, too, as the recession deepened. Recently, her unemployment benefits ran out. Her husband’s job as a postal worker could be tenuous.

Whoever did that to that poor woman should be ashamed of him- or herself. Continue reading #rsrh You know, somebody encouraged this poor woman…

Geez, the WaPo misrepresents the GOP primary AGAIN.

This is not really about Perry. This is about quality control at the Washington Post.

This is getting exasperating. Now we apparently have Michael Gerson of the Washington Post making stuff up:

It is now a familiar pattern — the scandal of sanity. Rick Perry is criticized for supporting discounted higher education for the children of undocumented workers, as though the ignorance of the innocent is an obviously superior policy option.

[snip]

There is room for debate on all these issues.

[snip]

But these are not the arguments we’ve seen. Instead, candidates are accused of political heresy. Then they apologize — some eagerly, others reluctantly. Movement conservatives have created a box of orthodoxy so small that even the most conservative candidates must engage in undignified contortions just to fit.

Continue reading Geez, the WaPo misrepresents the GOP primary AGAIN.

Is Jen Rubin using Andrew Ferguson to sneak an anti-Perry sneer in?

Now, normally I don’t like to do this sort of thing when it comes to people who will be eventually on my side when it comes to an election. Truly, I do not. But while I was reading this Jen Rubin Washington Post article targeting the latest anti-Romney… excuse me, I meant to type out “Newt Gingrich,” there… I was struck by something in these two paragraphs:

Andy Ferguson, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard and arguably the most dazzling writer on the right, has been a one-man killing machine. In a series of pieces on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Jon Huntsman, he has systematically done in (or helped to do in) more Republican candidates than Think Progress, the New York Times and George Soros ever could.

In some cases, the effort was an intentional dissection of the candidate’s foibles. He wrote of the liberal elites’ favorite Republican: “Huntsman seems to have missed something big in the landslides of 2010. The reason for his Rip Van Winkle aura, to use still another metaphor, is that Huntsman spent most of the Obama administration out of the country.” His kickoff suffered from “hoary rhetoric [and] the overpackaging that can’t quite obscure the obvious lack of anything fresh to say.” At other times, Ferguson has simply caught the candidates unaware, letting them sink themselves (Daniels’s “social truce” and Barbour’s musing about the civil rights movement in Yazoo City).

Continue reading Is Jen Rubin using Andrew Ferguson to sneak an anti-Perry sneer in?

The Washington Post has a macaca on its back.

I swear to God, it’s like the paper remembers that one, perfect high that it got from torpedoing then-Senator George Allen’s re-election run in 2006, and has been chasing the dragon ever since:

2009: You all remember the McDonnell/Deeds gubernatorial contest, yes? You also remember how the WaPo went so all-in on pushing an absurd story that Jim Geraghty started calling it the Washington Bob McDonnell’s Thesis.
2011: The Rick Perry nonsense with regard to the name of a ranch that his family rented hunting rights to. Notice how that didn’t blow up after all?

Continue reading The Washington Post has a macaca on its back.

On the Washington Post’s embarrassing attempt at a Perry hit piece.

Background: there was a ranch in Texas with an unfortunate name*. Gov. Rick Perry’s father rented the hunting rights of the camp; when the family discovered that there was a rock on the premises with the aforementioned unfortunate name on it, they first painted over, then turned over, the rock**. Almost thirty years pass. In the meantime, Rick Perry switches parties; takes over the hunting rights; watches as the Texas legislature handles the problem of unfortunate names; gets elected Governor; and eventually stops using the property. The Washington Post, apparently looking to replicate the same magic in 2011 that caused them in 2009 to be rechristened The Washington Bob McDonnell’s Thesis, begins the process of trying to blow this story up.

Contra Jim Geraghty, who is wearily tired of junk like this, I submit that it would be fairly simple to counter the WaPo’s rather naked and fairly sad agitprop; and it involves using Gov. McDonnell’s strategy of calling in any paper that’s interested to a media availability. Once there, Gov. Perry should simply patiently explain the circumstances of the ranch, over and over and over and over again, until the other papers realize that the WaPo’s being gonzo partisan crazy again and go find something else to report about. Continue reading On the Washington Post’s embarrassing attempt at a Perry hit piece.

3 thoughts on this WaPo education bubble piece.

In no particular order:

So yes, Zuckerberg [you know: the guy who invented ~~the Mafia Wars platform~~ Facebook] was wasting his parents’ money and his own time. Why pay to be at Harvard if that’s what you’re going to do? Why not take a class on Dostoyevsky or the history of Christianity or astronomy or ancient history? You are surrounded by some of the most learned people in the world, and you are holed up in your dorm room typing code. – Frankly, if my kids end up at Harvard I’d rather that they stayed in their rooms, wrote code, and avoid as much as possible the actual ‘intellectual’ life there, given that said life mostly consists of finding new and exciting ways to blame the ills of the world on Dead White Guys. And America.
In the college transaction, most parents think they’re buying their kids a credential, a better job and a ticket, economically speaking at least, to the American dream. Most college professors and administrators (the good ones, anyway) see their role as producing liberally educated, well-rounded individuals with an appreciation for certain kinds of knowledge. – So, basically, neither side is accomplishing its goal.
Employers may decide that there are better ways to get high school students ready for careers. What if they returned to the idea of apprenticeship, not just for shoemakers and plumbers but for white-collar jobs? – Heh. What if we returned to the idea of not making a white-collar job an ideal? Let me put it this way: I have some grad school. My wife has a PhD (in something useful; which is to say, not in liberal arts). We’re, false modesty be darned, intelligent, educated people. And I plan to talk up the joys of being an electrician or a plumber to my kids. You know why? Because somebody will always be willing to pay for a smart, competent electrician or plumber. And when I say ‘always’ I explicitly mean ‘even in post-apocalyptic scenarios.’ Not that I expect things to get that bad.

I think that covers it.

Moe Lane

Via Instapundit.