Partisanship is good

Calls for bipartisanship, especially coming from the left, are essentially calls on the right to agree to raise taxes and spending.

It's very important today, just as it was in prior days, for the GOP to be as partisan as possible.

Media bias - in action

You hear Fox News accusing the "media" of liberal bias and you might think, geesh, of all people, Fox News should not complain??!!!!....

Well, not so fast.

Unlike most other outlets (save for Wall Street Journal and a few newspapers), Fox News doesn't really make it a secret that their opinion writers and contributors are right-wing oriented individuals. Indeed, one only needs to hear the names Krauthammer and Hannity to realize whose side they are on.
In the mean time, most other media brands advertise themselves as "politically center", "unbiased" sources of information. There is NBC, of course, but even it is more insistent on its "unbiased" nature than Fox.

The network shouting "unbiased" louder than all, however, is CNN; Americans have been led to believe that it's safe to ignore NBC and FoxNews - CNN has got 'em.

Today is November 5th, 2012 - one day before the elections - one would expect CNN to be crystal clear about it's "center" status, and make no overt gestures towards any of the candidates? Let's see..  below is a screenshot of their home page:



Click on the "Poor's fate ..." headline and we get to an article featuring side-by-side comparison of Obama and Romney. Sounds good so far... until you go into details where you find the devil. Here is the excerpt about Obama:

Obama: The president points to his record of helping the poor weather the economic downturn. His $787 billion stimulus program included several expansions to existing anti-poverty programs, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps and the Child Tax Credit.

These provisions, along with expanded unemployment benefits and the Making Work Pay tax credit, kept 6.9 million people above the poverty line in 2010 and lessened poverty for 32 million more, according to a post on Obama's campaign website, citing data compiled by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Also, his Affordable Care Act increases Medicaid coverage to all adults with incomes up to 133% of the poverty line, which could add nearly 16 million more people to the rolls by 2019 than otherwise would have been eligible. The federal government would pay 100% of the cost of the expanded coverage initially, eventually phasing down to 90%. A Supreme Court ruling allowed states to decide whether to opt into the expansion.

Obama also says he expanded the Head Start initiative so it would reach an additional 64,000 children. And he doubled funding for Pell Grants for low-income college students and raised the maximum award.

The president has been repeatedly attacked by conservatives for hiking government spending on the poor, with onetime GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich labeling him "the food stamp president."

You guessed it.... green text - positive, red text - negative; Obama get's 4-1. Now let's go to Romney:

Romney: Republicans, on the other hand, say that throwing money at the safety net fosters government dependency. Instead, Romney and Ryan believe that economic growth fosters upward mobility.

"...You should have the opportunity in America to rise, to escape from poverty, and to achieve whatever your God-given talents and hard work enable you to achieve," Ryan said in a recent speech in Ohio.

One of the key components of the Romney-Ryan plan is turning Medicaid and food stamps into block grants that the states would administer. This would limit the federal government's liability while giving states more freedom to tailor the program to their residents' needs. Romney also believes Medicaid spending should be capped and increased each year by inflation plus 1%.

Turning Medicaid, as well as worker retraining programs, into block grants could save more than $100 billion, according to Romney. His plan to cap total federal spending at 20% of gross domestic product would also cut funding for safety net programs.

Critics, however, say millions will see their lifelines disappear under Romney's budget proposal. And if Medicaid is turned into a block grant as outlined in the Ryan budget, 34% of its funding would be slashed by 2022, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Food stamps, meanwhile, would be cut by more than 17%.

Romney has run into trouble on the campaign trail when discussing the poor. In September, a videotape showed the candidate making derisive remarks about the 47% of Americans who don't pay taxes and feel entitled to health care, food and housing. He said he can never convince them to take personal responsibility.

And in February, Romney told CNN that he's "not concerned about the very poor" because they have a "very ample safety net." He did say that if the safety net needs repairs, he'll fix it.

The first two paragraphs are in black text; that's because CNN merely cited GOP claims, without any specifics. Then, two paragraphs of positive coverage follows, with numbers that would appeal to the fiscally responsible among the voters. And then, three paragraphs of negative information, for a final score of 2-3.

No more comments needed really....