AlsanBlog

One might think that a fact checker for a major newspaper organization would apply a certain level of objectivity to his work, but evidently not, if you’re Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post. In a recent column, Kessler reviews the Romney ad that criticized Obama’s infamous “You didn’t build that” speech, concluding that the ad took Obama’s comments out of context to make it appear that Obama was attacking individual initiative when, according to Kessler, he wasn’t.

As seen in the first part of the statement quoted by Kessler, Obama mocked successful Americans who think they are “just so smart” and “worked harder than everybody else,” implying that they really aren’t smart and really don’t work harder. Although Romney’s ad did not include these statements, Obama clearly did attack individual initiative and success and the ad was hardly deceptive. Kessler’s conclusion seems more based on a bias rather than the facts.

Not content with his biased “fact checking,” Kessler then devotes half of the column in an attempt to rehabilitate Obama. Oddly enough, he thinks to do this by showing that Obama’s comments were not original, but had essentially been made previously by Elizabeth Warren and even Franklin Roosevelt. Evidently, Kessler believes that repetition somehow makes an attack not an attack.

Kessler concludes by saying that the real debate is whether the wealthy should pay more in taxes. Of course, no one really disputes that the wealthy should pay more in taxes, but liberals seem to believe that simply by saying the wealthy should pay more automatically justifies progressive tax rates rather than a flat rate. In fact, there is nothing automatic about it.

In this week’s Washington Post, Warren Brown starts his car review (that’s correct, car review) with six paragraphs attacking and insulting none other than Mitt Romney.  Evidently the Post has freed its writers to attack Romney at any time and in any place, no matter how obscure the topic or the writer.  What’s next?  A six-paragraph attack on Romney to begin an obituary?  Brown’s ridiculously placed attack seems just another sign of liberal desperation.

Slate magazine writers are now hard at work devising pretexts for government to punish those who exercise their right to free speech.  Slate has always been marching in lockstep to Obama’s vision of centralized authoritarian government, so Matthew Yglesias’s suggestion for banning Chick-fil-A shouldn’t be surprising, but it still is.  This sort of disregard for the law and the rule of law (even from the goose-steppers) never fails to amaze.  If Yglesias ever lost his job, he could easily find another working for Hugo Chavez.