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No buts about it, GOP goes medieval on rape; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; October 27, 2012.
According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.
You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.
Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.
I started to take apart this column, but changed my mind because it’s just more of the same from Mr. Prose. As in his previous columns, Mr. Prose didn’t try to sell his candidates based on their accomplishments. Instead, Mr. Prose presented nothing but name-calling and personal attacks, similar to what we’re getting from the “hope and change” Obama campaign.
If I were supporting President Obama, I’d stay away from calling other people liars. Below is a small sample of Mr. Obama’s “greatest hits.”
Mr. Obama told us his administration did not come up with “sequestration,” blaming Congress instead. Not true. The Washington Post (an Obama endorser) gave Mr. Obama “four Pinocchios” for this lie.
Mr. Obama told us Mitt Romney wanted to let the U.S. auto industry go under. Not true. You’ll find this refers to an op-ed piece by Mr. Romney (NY Times, 11/18/08). You won’t be surprised to learn the NYT entitled the piece, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” not Mr. Romney. In any case, read the piece and you’ll find at no point did Mr. Romney advocate letting the auto industry fail or anything close. Indeed, you’ll find Mr. Romney described “several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers” so they could succeed in the long-term, not fail. Ultimately, Mr. Obama also encouraged Chrysler and GM to file for bankruptcy for many of the same reasons Mr. Romney recommended bankruptcy in his op-ed piece months before. Where Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney disagreed was Mr. Romney opposed using taxpayer dollars in the bankruptcy process as a bailout. With taxpayer dollars to lean on, both companies could avoid some of the restructuring needed for their long-term survival.
Mr. Obama told us he wants to eliminate the tax incentive for sending U.S. jobs overseas. There is no such tax break and there never has been.
Mr. Obama now claims Obamacare didn’t take any money from Medicare. Not true. In both 2009 and 2010, Mr. Obama conceded Obamacare took funding (currently estimated to be $716 billion) from Medicare.
Mr. Obama occasionally claims his mother’s medical insurance provider wouldn’t pay for her cancer treatment. Not true. With the exception of the normal co-pays, deductibles, etc., her employer-based medical insurance paid for Ms. Dunham’s (maiden name) medical treatment. Mr. Obama got “three Pinocchios” for this lie.
Mr. Obama repeatedly tells us that, under Obamacare, if we like our current medical insurance and doctors, we will be able to keep them. Not true. Except for those on Medicare, most of us with medical insurance have it via our employer. Under Obamacare, an employer with more than 50 employees who doesn’t provide medical insurance in compliance with Obamacare requirements must “pay a $2,000 fine for each employee over 30 employees. … According to Kaiser Family Foundation, the average premium for employer based coverage is $5,429 for a single person and the employer pays $4,508 of that premium. The insurance by far is more expensive than the fine.” To remain competitive, it’s probably safe to assume most businesses will likely take the less expensive option. Oddly, an employer also pays a fine/tax if the healthcare insurance he provides is deemed too good.
Mr. Obama has been claiming Mr. Romney’s tax plan doesn’t add up and increases tax rates for middle-income earners. Not true. The people who wrote the studies Mr. Obama cites assert he misrepresents those studies.
For at least two weeks, Mr. Obama claimed the murders in Benghazi on 9/11/12 of our ambassador (J. Christopher Stevens) and three other Americans (Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith. Messrs. Doherty and Woods were former Navy SEALs. Mr. Smith was the information management officer.) had something to do with a protest gone awry about a video unflattering to Islam. Not true. Since I originally wrote about this topic, more and more info is coming to the surface. For example, we now know the Obama administration knew almost immediately the attack wasn’t a protest gone badly and was able to “follow what was happening in almost real-time.” Unless Libyans routinely take mortars, RPGs, and other weapons to their protests, who didn’t know this was an attack by terrorists? Further, were we to believe it was just a coincidence the attack took place on the anniversary of 9/11?
VP Joe Biden claimed “[Republicans] voted to extend tax cuts for the very wealthy, giving a $500 trillion tax cut to 120,000 families.” Not true. $500 trillion is over 31 times our current total debt, over 140 years of federal government spending at our current burn rate, and, according to Credit-Suisse, is more than twice the world’s total wealth as of 2011. Although the number is ridiculously wrong, it’s possible Mr. Biden was referring to an extension of the Bush-era income-tax rates, the same extension Democrats voted for and Mr. Obama signed in 2010 when Democrats held the majority in both the House and Senate.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
© 2004-2012 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.