Today's Forecast: Mostly Conservative Letters, Followed by Partly-Conservative Op-Eds
First, commentary on some of today's articles:
TNJ ratchets up the noise about Attorney General Beau Biden, placing him squarely in its sights with a huge "exposé" on the number of cases where charges were dropped under his watch. The guy may very well be incompetent - he's young and has no experience as AG, plus his office may be in disarray due to his forced vacation in Iraq for most of his term -- but I wonder if TNJ would be paying this much attention to him if his name wasn't Biden. Online, TNJ's most unbalanced conservatives are going nuts over this one, although the more rational ones appear to be staying away. Liberal commenter BlueTEa, however, states the following:
How can anyone continue to complain about the NJ being too "liberal" when they present a story this way.
Buried in the text, are the facts that the AG's office has recently seen a doubling in the number of homicide cases taken to trial between 2007 to 2009. Also - that the number of murder cases closed by the AG offices in 2009 was 50 - double the 17 to 25 cases closed each year during the end of the Jane Brady years.
Moreover, the % of homicide cases dropped by Brady's team after indictment was 20% - compared to Biden's 16% over the past 3 years.
This story is told in a way to sell papers to teabaggers and wingnuts who only read the Headline and look at the pictures.
Well said.
A short AP wire article about Obama reinstating "pay-as-you-go" ends, as do most AP political articles that TNJ selects to print, with the Republican talking point on the subject. Although the bill that Obama signed requires that all spending increases include a corresponding spending cut, a process used during the Clinton years that resulted in surpluses, it also raises the debt ceiling -
to keep the U.S. out of default. But the article ends like this:
Republicans mocked Obama for signing the “paygo” bill behind closed doors. “With a simple stroke of his pen, President Obama now has the ability to continue his binge spending agenda to the tune of an additional $1.9 trillion, the largest one-time increase in our history,” Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said Friday. “Taxpayers will continue to foot the bill for the Democrats’ fiscal irresponsibility.”
The conservatives haven't commented at all on this story, probably because it didn't include any pictures or shiny objects to attract their attention.
An unusually liberal AP wire article that lays out the consequences of not overhauling health care attracts three online conservative comments, all agreeing with other that the current Democratic health care bills need to be thrown out. They all contend that all that's needed to overhaul the health care system is tort reform, no denial of pre-existing conditions, and allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines.
The Letters
Writer #1 questions why one party needs to "show deference" to the other party, and asks "Why should loyalty to the competition be expected?" I'm assuming what he really means is "Why should Republicans do anything the Democrats want? They'd be disloyal to their party if they did."
His solution? Eliminate the Democrats and move to a one-party system. Da, comrade.
Writer #2 protests a recent Wilmington law setting buffer zones around clinics offering abortion services, saying it infringes on free speech and "prevents anyone from approaching a desperate mother to offer help and explain alternatives." Apparently this jackass thinks women are too stupid to know that there are alternatives to abortion unless some sidewalk counselor like himself screams in their face. The liberals trounce the religious fanatics in the comments on this one, but then they're fighting with the unarmed.
Letter #3 is a love song to Republican Congressman Mike Castle, telling us he'd make a terrific senator.
Writer #4 complains about both parties, then offers this deep thought: "We all agree that unemployment is a very important issue that also affects a very skiddish (sic) stock market." (TNJ editors were apparently asleep at the wheel the day they got this one.)
The writer offers no solutions and finishes up with this tantalizing final sentence: "Politicians can’t do a statesman-like job if they are constantly looking over their shoulder at the next election." Uh... what? Is he proposing we do away with elections, and... what? Descend into anarchy? Maybe institute a monarchy? Establish a dictatorship? Yet another half-baked, meaningless letter using up ink on the editorial pages.
Writer #5 thanks TNJ for its lovely editorial promoting abstinence-only sex ed programs that appeared earlier in the week.
The Op-Eds
TNJ declares "a pox on both their houses" as it chastises Congress for not being able to pass a meaningful jobs bill. Our editor tells us that "(e)ven last year’s huge stimulus package tended to help government workers more than those in private industry." Presumably this was written with a straight face. But what really made me stop and go "HUH?"was this jaw-dropper: "More disturbing is the fact that this recession is taking its greatest toll on men." Um... precisely why is this more disturbing? There are still more men than women in the workforce, so it's understandable that more men than women have lost their jobs. Would this (male) editor have found it LESS disturbing if more women than men had lost jobs? I'm willing to bet a big fat "yes" on that one.
What's really hilarious about this editorial is that TNJ moans and cries about party partisanship, while totally ignoring the role it and other members of The Fourth Estate have played in fomenting the current discord and division between the parties.
TNJ darling George Will tells us that Democrats are trying to get as many people as possible dependent on government. His main gripe is that Democrats don't support government vouchers for private school education. Excuse me, George, but how does asking the government to pay for your private school tuition make you less dependent on government?
Dewayne Wickham takes the Obama administration to task for being proud that joblessness declined for whites and Hispanics in January and ignoring that it rose by three-tenths of 1% for blacks.
David Broder chides both parties for not being able to get along and says the public is fed up with them. Tell us something we don't know, David.
Economist Isabel Sawhill also restates the obvious, telling us that government needs to cut spending and balance the budget. She also believes in pay-as-you-go rules, but "
in a more serious way than the weakened form in which they were recently enacted." Sawhill is one of the more liberal members of The Brookings Institute, which TNJ doesn't tells us is a right-wing thinktank.
Stephen C. Fehr, staff writer for Stateline.org, which is a part of the Pew Center on the States, lays out the difficulties states are having in the current recession and predicts they'll probably get worse. The article is neutral, but conservative groups have targeted the Pew Charitable Trusts, which funds Stateline.org, for its funding of what they deem "liberal environmental causes."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment