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Friday, October 8, 2010

Milkin' the cow


Blame the Democrats, not Republicans
GEORGE PICKETT; Olympia • Published in The Olympian, October 08, 2010
237 Comments
I am getting really tired of listening to the revisionist history being spouted by our president. Supposedly the Republicans "drove the car into the ditch." However, the Democrats assumed the mantle of power on Jan. 3, 2007 after sweeping both the House and Senate.

When the Democrats took over, the Dow was near 13,000, GDP growth was 3.5 percent, unemployment was 4.6 percent and the deficit $164 billion. Comparing that with the present situation makes me yearn for the good old days of Republican control.
The president’s rhetoric indicates that not only do we have a huge deficit economically, but there is a gigantic deficit in integrity. I guess it’s just Chicago politics as usual.


I wonder if there is any journalistic integrity left in Olympia. The above letter, full of lies and half lies, was run two days ago in The Olympian. In the classic milking of the cow style, the editors saw fit to leave this piece of human waste in the online edition for multiple days to squeeze a few more hits to hustle the advertisers and further inflame the political divide.

A letter to the editor is meant to be an opinion piece, but if the opinion of the letter writer was "the Publisher is a pedophile because I know he visited an elementary school", I'd think that said letter would never make publication. The above letter ranks in that quality, but since it just creates inflammatory rhetoric from both sides, I guess it's OK for The Olympian's staff to make as much hay as possible.

Let's start with "However, the Democrats assumed the mantle of power on Jan. 3, 2007 after sweeping both the House and Senate." This statement is false. In January of 2007, the Senate was made up of 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans and two independents - one leaning to the Dems, one kissing Bush's cheek (Lieberman). This awarded Vice President Dick Cheney the deciding vote for the remaining two years of the Bush Administration. However, since this is a letter to the editor, we need not be factual or accurate. I'm preparing my next LTE based on my opinion of a former blog and why it was tossed by the editors.

As to the stock market, GDP and unemployment in January of 2007, any attempt to blame the September 2008 crash on the Democrats, falls right back in the truth that the Senate was controlled by the GOP. Any child with a calculator knows that you can't spend billions of dollars on war operations without taxation to pay for it. This is a proven historical fact and has been spoken by every credible economist alive.

No media has to publish every letter to the editor and I'll submit that plenty get the circular file treatment at The Olympian. This letter was an opportunity to fire up the community and get a few people a little more pissed off at each other. A look at the comments demonstrates a volume of policy violations and ignorance on the side of moderation because, after all, this shit sells advertising - or does it?

I've seen prosecutors ripped because of DUIs (as if they are different because of their jobs). I've seen council person's private lives and careers become part of "news" stories, regardless of the significance of such information on the story. Recently, a comment was deleted when a reader quizzed the possibility of disclosure of employment, if an Olympian employee was charged with a crime - similar to the harassing phone calls case. Translation: it's OK to out other people, but don't even consider talking about the home team.

The LTE was titillating and accomplished something The Olympian doesn't see much of - reader participation, but it was still a piece of human excrement. Or is it "Olympian politics as usual"?

1 comment:

Anon_the_Great said...

and on and on drooled Sondrak and her socks. I skimmed a couple of pages of comments before I realized there would not be enough hot water in the world to clean me if I continued to read.