CT Blue

It’s alright. You can stop trying now. For years and years you’ve been trying to placate the crazy folks on the right, but nothing seems to work. Years ago you actually handed over editorial page space to a slew of local right wingers (non-insane need not have applied) in order to prove that you really were fair and balanced, and not the left wing rag that can be perceived only in their fevered minds. Alas, as anyone could have told you, that didn’t work. So accept it, either become the Fox News of New London, or give up on making the right wing happy, and please stop subjecting us to verbal assaults from people who live in fantasy worlds, and while you’re at it, spare us the columns from people who insist that only people who think like them are true Americans. (Note to readers: do not follow the link if you value logical thinking.)

Here’s a hint on one way to weed out the right wing chaff from the right wing wheat (note to readers:there may not be any right wing wheat): shut your mind to anyone who uses the word “socialist” to refer to Obama. That way your mind will be in the same condition as the aspiring columnist’s, but we, at least, will be spared the stupidity. The word actually has a definition, and it is demonstrably the case that Obama is not a socialist. That’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact. You can take it from me, as a person who wishes Obama was as close to being a socialist as were FDR, JFK and LBJ. And may I ask, would you have printed a column from me had I dared to apply the word “fascist” to George W. Bush? Of course we socialists-lite can take some consolation from the fact that the constant application of the term to Obama has increased the favorability rating of the term in the years since it’s been thrown at Obama, but that still doesn’t excuse the Day’s willingness to inflict the ravings of a Fox propagandized ignoramus on the rest of us.

So don’t worry. Be happy. To the rest of us you’re still the same old New London Day, constantly seeking the middle ground, and usually locating it safely within the leftmost bounds of conventional Foxian thinking. Your editorial urging Obama to “compromise” is a great example. Besides being almost as oblivious of recent history as your right wing columnist, it plays directly into the Republican strategy. They have “compromised” by agreeing to maybe consider raising taxes on the rich, especially if they can do it by actually raising them on the rest of us. They have, in other words, offered nothing. In return, Obama should offer specific, preferably program destroying cuts to Social Security and Medicare. No need for them to propose where such cuts would take place; that would make it harder for them to campaign against them. But then, asking the Republicans to specify what they want is unfair, like asking Ryan to show us how he managed to alter the laws of arithmetic, and besides it would make life so difficult for the GOP:

Complicating matters for the GOP is the paradox that it’s easier, both politically and legislatively, to realize savings in Medicare by making the program more robust. Democrats are prepared to push those sorts of reforms in 2013 when the two sides set about seeking a broader package of entitlement and tax reforms. In contrast, the Republican aim in these budget negotiations is to forge ahead with proposals designed to weaken the program, not to reduce spending on Medicare per se.

(via TPMDC)

So, by all means, you say, Obama should walk into the trap in the name of compromise. Fortunately, and finally, he, if not the Day, has learned a little from recent history.