A long time ago (that is, back in the late 1970s), I worked as a telephone
solicitor for the Los Angeles Times in Redondo Beach, California. My job was to contact residents via reverse
telephone directories and ask them to subscribe to the paper. (I also worked as a free-lance photographer for the L.A. Herald-Examiner.)
Quite often, I would get turned down with this reason: "The Times is
too liberal." To be quite honest, I
agreed with them (although I couldn't say so).
This was the time that the paper was under the leadership of Otis
Chandler.
The Los Angeles Times wasn't always a liberal paper; it was a conservative
paper under Harry Chandler. But as time went
on, the newspaper got progressively more liberal in its editorial stances. They would endorse an occasional Republican,
but most often they would endorse Democrats for various offices.
The Chandler family eventually sold the Times to the Tribune Publishing
Company of Chicago.
Well, guess who is currently in the White House and is also from
Chicago? You got it! Barack Obama.
I opened the October 21 edition of the Los Angeles Times and found that
they have endorsed for re-election Barack Obama, formerly of Chicago.
The sub-heading of the endorsement reads as
follows:
"The nation has been well served by his leadership. And Romney has shown he is the wrong
choice."
Say what?! On what basis is Romney
"the wrong choice"?
While they note that the country is "deeply in the red" (thanks
to the irresponsible spending of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid troika, but they don't
mention that), they feel that Romney's proposals to cut taxes on middle-income
people would further drive up costs on the middle class. They seem to think that taxing "the
rich" is a responsible policy and borrowing more money from China is the
prudent thing to do.
Hello, Earth to the Times! Taxes
were cut in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and the government actually received
more revenue as a result of the economic boom that took place. This was the same policy that President John
F. Kennedy advocated back in the 1960s.
He said, "A rising tide lifts all ships."
The editorial accuses Republicans of "obstructionism" (although
Obama had a free hand during the first two years of his administration),
accusing Obama of being a socialist (the record speaks for itself along with
his associations with radicals like Bill Ayres) and challenged his legitimacy
of his birthplace (the "birther" thing was pursued by people on the
fringe, not by mainstream Republicans) among other things.
The Times cites ridiculous things in their endorsement, too numerous to go
into here. They ignore the fact that
Obama set out to "fundamentally transform" (his words) the
country. That is why the "Great Recession"
is still with us. They ignore that, too.
The Times is "troubled" that "we still don't know what
[Romney's] principles are." Yet,
they fail to mention that Obama has not even stated what he plans to do in a second
term. But, that doesn't seem to bother
them.
It also doesn’t seem to bother the Times that Obama picks and chooses what
laws he enforces and not enforces. It
doesn’t bother them that Obama rules by edict and by-passes Congress when he
finds it convenient.
Obama's foreign policy is in shambles. He projects weakness, not strength. He has alienated allies like Israel. But that's okay, according to the Times.
It shouldn't be a surprise, the Times is just another fellow-traveler in
Obama's leftism.
The Los Angeles Times, owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Publishing Company,
has jettisoned the remaining bit of credibility it had.
To use a line Ronald Reagan used at the 1980 GOP National Convention, can
anyone honestly say, "keep up the good work" and "let's have
four more years of this" in relation to Barack Obama?
Not hardly. Theirs is a dumb and
dishonest endorsement.
