You just can’t please some people

You know all the grief we’re catching from the Obamaphiles. Now this e-mail:

Dear Brad,

Please write an editorial ASAP, listing your facts that prove your assertion that Obama is smarter (such as his grades, etc) than Palin even though Palin is much more qualified, more experienced, more smarter and more capable than the scripted, Hitler and Chavez like, Obama.

If the editorial appears during the weekday, please E-mail a copy because this month we have dropped the daily delivery because my wife and I was continually to be very upset with liberal slant of the McClatchy papers.

Sheesh. Tell you what, my friend — buy the danged paper and watch for it, OK?

What do you say to somebody who needs me to prove Barack Obama is brighter than Sarah Palin, then expects me to give him a heads-up when I do so because he won’t buy the paper, and for the most bogus of reasons? I mean, really — what do you say?

As long as I’ve got out my foolishness-bashing club, and since this guy irrelevantly brought up the name of the corporation that owns this newspaper, I should say something about this comment on a previous post and others I’ve seen like it:

Just imagine what would happen if The State(less) endorsed Obama
instead of McSame: huge loss of advertising money, huge cancellation of
subscriptions. Just the way it is. For shame, but money before civics
is the way of capitalism. (duh, last 30 years of deregulation…)

You want to know what a presidential endorsement based on the newspaper’s business considerations would look like? Like nothing. As I’ve told y’all before, the only time Tony Ridder ever tried to influence Knight-Ridder editorial pages was back in January 2005, when he tried to persuade us NOT to endorse in presidential elections. On one level, his position was defensible (from my point of view), in that he believes local and state endorsements to be of much greater value. But it was also based in the fact that as a business entity, presidential endorsements can’t help you, and can only hurt. Note the high number of people whose very first response to a presidential endorsement — either way — is to say they’re canceling their subscription, or WOULD have canceled it had we gone the other way.

People read presidential endorsements NOT to help themselves decide. They’re already inundated in information about the candidates. They read them to decide what they think of the newspaper, and whether they’ll attach importance to all of the endorsements we do on the candidates they DON’T know so much about. As a businessman, Tony Ridder didn’t like that kind of exposure. He’s not alone in that.

41 thoughts on “You just can’t please some people

  1. Capital A

    My problem with your endorsement is not the political aspects, but the flawed logic and anachronistic “reasoning” behind it. After reading your offering, I came away with the sense that the editors at The State are very much out of touch and every bit the cultural dinosaurs that conservative and some liberal critics on this very blog have painted you consistently as being.
    You seem to cling to worn out, stereotypical, “safe” choices; there is no bravery or progressiveness in this particular stance, when very obviously there is a cultural shift occuring in this country that is not represented in your choice. You seem behind the times, as it were, and I guess I am beginning to agree with those who think your industry is not long for this world, at least in its present state.
    The sons of Murrow, you aren’t, which is regrettable for your future as a business, because connecting yourself with forward-thinking is the only way to stall your impending extinction. You’re not leading the dog, you’re not even the tail wagging the dog; you are now the newspaper which lines the cage of the dog.

  2. Capital A

    I’m not following your logic and am unfortunately missing the joke. Palin attends five community colleges over the span of six years… I hope she is smarter than somebody, anybody.
    I think Palin and Obama should be admired for their opportunism, if nothing else. They were given inches and they took ells, to paraphrase an old saying. I think how far both have come and will go is directly tied to their abilities, with Palin’s time in the spotlight severely waning after November 4.
    Her nomination is yet another embarrassment to the presidential election system (I’m looking at you Florida and Ohio!), and we will all have a very difficult time explaining to posterity how she ever received serious consideration.

  3. Gary Karr

    Outside the issue of who’s smarter, isn’t smart potentially overrated as a sole judging factor for voting? After all, Richard Nixon was widely considered “smart.”

  4. Doug Ross

    Here’s what noted intellectual Sarah Palin had to say about Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ conviction on bribery charges
    (read it and weep for the example she sets for all community college graduates):
    “”Ted Stevens, you know, a sad day for Alaska yesterday when he was found guilty of seven felonies,” Palin said. “But — and now he needs to do the right thing, and the right thing is — as he’s proclaiming his innocence and proclaiming, too, that he will go through the appellate process, OK, then he needs to step aside and allow our state to elect someone who will be supportive of those ideals of America: the free enterprise, the missions that we’re on, to win the war, those things that have got to take place in order to progress this country. Ted Stevens has got to play a very statesmanlike role in this now.”

    This is undoubtedly the dumbest person ever to run for Vice President.
    A heartbeat away… thump-thump… thump-thump… maybe that’s a commercial Obama should run. Clips of Palin talking with a beating heart in the background.

  5. Lee Muller

    Sarah Palin is certainly more able and willing than Obama or Biden to discuss any issue in a forthright, sincere and thoughtful manner.
    Obama and Biden spend their time dodging anyone who will ask them a direct question about their agenda to punish middle income workers, entrepreneurs and investors in order to give handouts to tens of millions who have less ability, less ambition, and less desire to work for personal prosperity.

  6. pg

    Brad, it may be getting harder to please some. While I have disagreed with your philosphy often, and while I am sometimes perplexed by your logic when discussing politics, I do not dismiss you as a lame brain because you definitely are a bright individual. I have visited your blog from time to time, and even posted on it with a couple different noms de plume (if Clemmens can do it, so can I) but it seems like some of your long winded posters really ought to have a blog all to themselves. So here is a thought: How about enforcing a maximum number of words per post, similar to the way you guys limit the length of letters to the editor? Just don’t enforce it on me, as all my posts typically are very informative and make exceptionally good sense.

  7. Lee Muller

    Should we be restricted to two-syllable words, and short sentences, too.
    Those of us who post links to longer documentation, find that the whiners don’t click on those and read them, either.

  8. p.m.

    Careful what you say, Doug.
    In the 2004 presidential election, porn star Marilyn Chambers ran for Vice President on the Personal Choice Party ticket, a quasi-libertarian party. She got 946 votes.
    Wikipedia posts a long list of party nominees for vice-president and unsuccessful seekers of the VP nod from some party somewhere.
    Not to besmirch the porn star I pointed out, I’m sure there’s someone on those lists somewhere who’s less smart than Palin. 🙂

  9. jfx

    I’m going to go on record and state that Sarah Palin is smarter than Lee Muller. You betcha.
    Lee, the reason none of us “whiners” ever follow your links to longer “documentation” is because all you do is sling fear and smear propaganda. Your schtick is a simple, looping two-step:
    1. Obama is Bad.
    2. Obama’s supporters are Bad.
    There’s a whole world of nuance and possibility out there between the black and white polarities of your simple ideology. You know, you could become curious enough about this complex universe to try finding some of that nuance for yourself.
    OR you could continue to sit at home and clean your guns until the Time Of Revelation is finally at hand.
    Your call.

  10. James D McCallister

    Lee wrote:
    >Should we be restricted to two-syllable words, and short sentences, too. (sic–should be a question mark here)
    Yes, Lee, for people like you, Brainiac? Monosyllabic discourse probably best, or perhaps a series of grunts and clicks and hand gestures.

  11. pg

    Lee, my criticism wasn’t directed at you personally, as I actually agree with you on some points. Or at least I think I do, and I am not part of the black helicopter crowd. I say “I think I do,” because frequently I simply don’t understand what you say, and that may be attributed more to my lack of cognitive skills than to your lack of communicative skills. (Here, to pacify you to some extent, I am trying to craft a complex sentence, although I do so at the risk of being grammatically incorrect.) My point is simply that a position can be better made when it is done in a pithy and concise manner, if for no other reason that the folks will actually read it if it is not laboriously long.

  12. Ish Beverly

    Brad, I agree you did the right thing with the McCain endorsement. It is already paying off even if economics were not the reason for the endorsement. A family member signed up today for a full subscription to The State.

  13. murraywood

    It may be hard to find proof that Gov. Palin is ‘more smarter’ than than Sen Obama – have the Senator’s college transcripts been provided? I hope they are not as hard to find as his birth certificate seems to be.

  14. Lee Muller

    And how many lines does a James McAlister get for sputtering childish insults, because he is angry that he has no factual defense of whatever it is he believes or whomever it is he wants to be his leader?
    I don’t mean to pick on him. None of the Obama followers has ever been able to name a single thing he has accomplished that is worthy of respect or praise. They mostly attack those who deliver the facts of his sordid associations and shady financial backing.
    One common trait of Obama, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Farakan, and the Obama posters on blogs everywhere is their intense anger at the world, their feelings of victimhood and wanting to use the government to “get even”.
    The other day, a crowd at an Obama rally shouted, “Stone her!” at the mention of Sarah Palin.

  15. Capital A

    A look at Obama’s birth certificate may be found here:
    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/06/obama-birth.html
    Before Lee et al start with the aspersions concerning the veracity of this document, let’s approach this logically. Many of you believe the wingnut websites which Lee perpetually urges us to traffic, so why not allow that maybe, just maybe this accredited newspaper has made your argument moot?
    Now, on to your next excuse… The death throes of the Republican party as it currently exists is a pathetic and shameful event to witness.
    PS
    Sarah Palin is not the dumbest VP ever as you may have forgotten Dan Quayle. Why is it that Republicans in the executive office since Reagan have been degenerate in elocution and presentation skills?

  16. Randy E

    Letting Sarah be Sarah may not be such a good thing.” It’s a grim binary choice, but apparently it came down to whether to make Palin look like a scripted robot or an unscripted ignoramus – McCain campaign adviser who prepped Palin for the debate.
    We may as well be debating the existence of UFOs and the tooth fairy.

  17. Capital A

    The other day, a crowd at an Obama rally shouted, “Stone her!” at the mention of Sarah Palin.
    Posted by: Lee Muller | Oct 28, 2008 6:36:26 PM
    The other day I saw a manticore having noon tea in a rose garden with a leprechaun and an ice dragon.
    Lee, please provide links for the nonsense you are spouting…

  18. James D McCallister

    He can’t. He’s a flake, one that goes so far as to refuse to spell my name correctly. “McAlister” is, like, a completely different surname, duder. Word.
    And what makes me an Obama supporter? I was personally insulting you, Lee, which as I now realize is an insult to Brad, who I remember starting this blog hoping it wouldn’t degenerate into this sort of nonsense.

  19. James D McCallister

    All right, forget all these insults, here’s an insight I had today:
    Listening to McCain live on CNN, introducing and praising Tom Ridge. I could hear moderates from here to Hershey (site of the rally) grumbling, yeah, and ya shoulda picked him instead listening to Rove/Schmidt and going with the Alaskan sop to the endtimes crowd… LOL…
    McCain also praising Mr. Palin and his dogsled exploits. “You think HE’LL be afraid of anyone in Washington?” Big cheers, but , um, I didn’t know the first spouses held official policymaking positions…
    Palin’s the main reason McCain will lose, that and abandoning everything he might once have embodied for this Rovian, scorched earth method. Sad. At least Cindy, like what’s her name, Kerry’s wife, has a ton of money. His retirement will be comfortable.

  20. Lee Muller

    Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass:”
    Sarah Palin hung in effigy.
    Secret Service investigating.
    http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-palineffigy29-2008oct29,0,1328064.story
    Shouts of “Stone her!” from Obama supporters:
    http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/12/pds-mobsters-in-philly-lets-stone-her-old-school/
    It was also reported by Helen McCaffery, who was present at the Obama rally, and wrote about it in the the Philadelphia Inquirer.
    Excert from her article:
    Instead of engaging Palin on the issues, critics attacked attributes that are specifically female. It is Hillary’s pantsuit drama to the power of 10. Palin’s hair, her voice, her motherhood, and her personal hygiene were substituted for substance. That’s when it was nice.
    The hatred escalated to performers advocating Palin be “gang raped,” to suggestions that her husband had had sex with their young daughters, and reports that her Down syndrome child really was that of her teenage daughter. One columnist even called for her to submit to DNA testing to prove her virtue. Smells a little like Salem to me. I was present at an Obama rally at which the mention of Palin’s name drew shouts of “stone her.”
    —- a whole gallery of Democrat goons who have attacked GOP headquarters and worse —
    http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/12/crush-the-obamedia-narrative-look-whos-gripped-by-insane-rage/

  21. jfx

    ————
    One common trait of Obama, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Farakan, and the Obama posters on blogs everywhere is their intense anger at the world, their feelings of victimhood and wanting to use the government to “get even”.
    -Lee Muller
    ————
    Riiiiiiiight. If there’s one phrase that has defined the Obama campaign, it’s “intense anger”. Riiiiiiiiight.
    Like those intensely angry 100,000+ (nearly all white) Coloradoans at that huge Obama rally the other day. Never seen such a massive wave of hate-mongering. All those angry, America-hating liberals, standing there…..politely….listening….and occasionally cheering and applauding….
    Yeah! Angry Coloradoan socialists!
    I think most Obama supporters probably want to “use the government” to get back to doing important things like, ummm, fighting the right war. Cowboy George “used the government” to “get Saddam”. OK, mission accomplished. At extraordinary price. Now, can we please “use the government” to get back on track and “get Bin Laden”? I think I’ve heard Obama make exactly that pitch.
    You are right about the feelings of “victimhood”, though. Many people on the left, in the center, and even on the center-right feel horribly victimized by Bush/Cheney. Those two cheeky oil barons sold America down an ideological river! We’ve got a massive army bogged down in the wrong war in the heart of a foreign culture on the other side of the world, and here at home the economy’s in the crapper! And McCain cozied up to those two oafs to pander to the “base”! The Audacity of Shameless.
    Many of us are going to use the ballot box to “get even”. And then we’ll “use the government” to fix this mess.

  22. Brad Warthen

    You want to hear sad? The McCains don’t really do retirement. Grandfather McCain chased the Japanese all the way across the Pacific, attended the surrender, went home that day and died during his welcome home party. After leaving his post as CINCPAC, the second admiral McCain’s health quickly declined, although he lived another nine years.
    I worry about John McCain in retirement.

  23. wtf

    Lee, blogs are not news, they are gossip and rumors perpetrated so you watch the writer on tv or read their ad sponsored website. Blogs are opinions, not facts.
    Just citing Malkin totally disqualifies any point you may have been trying to make.
    Here’s proof that Obama is smarter than Palin. (I can’t believe I actually have to say that.)
    Prior to politics, Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review. Don’t know what that is? Ok.
    Harvard = the best academic school in the nation and possibly the world. Only the smartest kids go to Harvard, unless you’re a Kennedy or Bush (Yale) and have a building or endowment named afer you.
    Law Review = (from wikipedia) “The Review is one of the most cited law reviews in the United States and considered by many to be the most prestigious. The Harvard Law Review Association, in conjunction with the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal, publishes The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, the most widely followed authority for legal citation formats in the United States.”
    So to recap, as a student Obama was the president of the most widely referred authority of the rule of law in the United States. Attorneys everywhere from Maine to Oregon & even Alaska all depend on this publication for keeping themselves up to date with the ever changing rules of law.
    Palin while attending five different schools in five years, did not accomplish anything academically or noteworthy.
    So to recap…before politics…
    Obama = most prestigious law editor in the country
    Palin = no lasting endeavors.
    There you go Lee. Be sure to tell all of your fellow Rushbies that you were the first to see it with your own eyes, that Obama is indeed smarter than Palin. It’s ok. That shortness of breath you feel is reality coming back to you.
    But of course, reality has a very liberal bias. (THANKS MR. COLBERT!!)

  24. david

    Wow Lee! Getting lectured to about “nuance” by a left wing zip tie like like jfx is quite a coup. You must be doing something right. He told me that I was obsessed with something or other on Sunday night. I figure that’s a good thing if he doesn’t like it.
    Brad, I made the point in another post that it wasn’t very likely that anyone reads your endorsements to help them decide which way to vote.
    I don’t know whether they read them to determine what they think of the newspaper or not, (frankly sounds kind of bogus to me). But if they do, might it not be that your declining circulation and subscription rates and lackluster ad revenues give a fairly clear indication of what’s on readers’ minds?
    David

  25. Norm Ivey

    -Capital A,
    Was the “noon tea” you reference ice tea? ‘Cause if it wasn’t, I think you’re probably just making the whole thing up.

  26. jfx

    David, don’t get me wrong. I consider Lee to be doing a huge public service. Every time the Lee Mullers of cyberspace drop another desperate Fear Bomb into a blog post, more independents and moderate conservatives shift a little further left. I give Michelle Malkin and all those kind folks over at Townhall.com tremendous credit for helping turn Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada blue.

  27. p.m.

    McCallister, I can spell your name correctly.
    Duder?
    Geez. You are the vernacular.
    And, Brad, if you hadn’t used what’s left of your op-ed “section” to pretend you were endorsing McCain while you were butt-kissing Obama, I’d believe you felt sorry for McCain should he be forced to retire.
    But you aren’t really that transparent, are you?

  28. Lee Muller

    Those are TRUTH BOMBS that I am dropping, jfx, and it is the truth of which you are so afraid.
    No one expects you to read them or anything else factual, but thank you for serving yourself up as a punching bag, an opportunity to post the facts for more open-minded people.

  29. Randy E

    Brad, you worry about MCCAIN in retirement!?!?
    What about my mother who is retiring next year with what’s left from her 401k from the deregulated banking system?!?!?
    What about Joe the homeless man who lost his job and his house because of a deregulated system of credit default swaps that collapsed Wall Street?!?!!?
    What about the millions of people in poverty that McCain didn’t mention in the primaries and completely ignores now!?!?!?
    Poor McCain, maybe he can spend retirement counting his houses and cars (or paying back taxes owed) and reflecting on how he sold out his principles for an endorsement from Falwell and Hagee.

  30. Steve Gordy

    Lee, you are certainly intelligent, but “open-minded” is not one of your salient characteristics.

  31. Lee Muller

    Obama never wrote a law review article.
    There is no evidence that Obama ever edited a law review article.
    Obama is the only person placed on Harvard Law Review for social reasons, not by his academic achievements.
    How laughable that those who refuse to digest new facts call the messenger “closed-minded”! That sort of projection of defects is the first reflex of the Democrat defense mechanism.
    My blog posts ARE news, especially to the typical uninformed Democrat. And I am citing the news reported in real newspapers, the AP and Reuters, which your local newspaper withholds from you.
    The refusal of Democrats to read the news, or engage in a discussion of the news, especially facts which challenge their calcified world view, is the what keeps their intellectual growth arrested, and makes them gullible followers of charlatans like Obama.

  32. Lee Muller

    Come out and say it, McCallister – exactly what conspiracy theory do you believe about Sept 11?
    The only conspiracies I saw was Saddam training the hijackers, and Jamie Gorelick and the Democrats trying to cover for themselves and Clinton letting the terrorists operate freely.
    If you liked that, you’ll love what Obama and his terrorist buddies have in store for you. Don’t think the Obama sign in your yard will spare you.

  33. Ish Beverly

    Brad was worried about someone or something if Obama lost the election. He should be worried about Obama if Obama wins the election. Obama is not going to be able to pay for all those votes he has bought. And those mentally disabled Obama supporters can get really mean.

  34. Lee Muller

    If Obama loses, his supporters will torch the cities run by black mayors.
    If Obama loses, he will torch the Constitution.
    One night of rioting is no big deal.
    A decade to clean up the Obama mess is a big deal.

  35. JCH

    It’s distressing that certain people who so strongly believe in their point of view – and who are committed enough to write a letter to the local newspaper – are also not learned enough to formulate a grammatically correct sentence with appropriate punctuation. I blame our education system, which by the looks of it has failed miserably.

  36. Lee Muller

    That’s it, JCH, focus on typing and spelling errors.
    Take your mind off the facts of Obama’s fascist, racist agenda.

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