The Obama team smartly changed course yesterday, and vowed to assemble complete information on the transition team’s contacts with Gov. Blagojevich. The President-elect promised to collect all data on contacts with “the governor’s office.” But wait, aren’t they missing something?
The SEIU has been identified as Blago’s idea of a go-between to connect him with Obama’s transition team. Shouldn’t the scope of the search be extended to the SEIU (and any other entity) which might have brought messages or helpful “suggestions” from Blago? After all, we know that Blago made contact with the SEIU. It stands to reason that the next step would be to examine whether that “SEIU official” noted in Blago’s criminal complaint spoke to anyone on the transition team about the Senate seat.
Now, the Democrats, including the Obama team, have every reason to try to steer clear of scrutiny of the SEIU. Voters might become curious as to why Democratic office holders would be taking cues from a labor union about whom to place in the U.S. Senate. Imagine if GE got to pick the next Connecticut Senator.
The reason SEIU has such sway is clear. It raises tons of money –over $29M for Obama and millions more for Congressional races. ( A tidy sum of $10,000 went to an awful lot of key House Democratic leaders.) So, after the Republicans return from their holiday recess, they might start pressing their Democratic friends and the new administration about just how much influence Big Labor has. Well — I suppose we’ll see that when “card check” legislation goes on the agenda for the next Congress.
What would you expect from a correspondent named Slackman? Diligence?
I agree with Slackman. We should not call them terrorist. I think murderers is better.
…eric trager really misses the institutional element of this ‘story’ that, i think, should be most concerting…
how does a story like this – with the easy and obvious points eric makes – survive serious editing by a serious editor? where is the challenge to the reporter’s assumptions, framing of the story, the sources and, indeed, the purpose of doing this particular story at this particular time….to with, it is hardly either ‘news’ or ‘analysis’ to publish that the arab ‘man in the street’ considers israel to be a ‘terrorist state’…
….the larger issue is not how gentlemanly or obnoxious a slackman is but the ‘high noon’ reality that the new york times is a not-particularly-well-edited ‘advocacy’ paper as opposed to a ‘newspaper’ which makes best professional efforts to craft insightful stories based on best available insights and facts from the best available sources for those insights and facts…
…dexter filkins and john burns are living & breathing examples of new york times reporters whose bylines, whether you like them or not, reflect a certain standard of professionalism which their colleagues seldom attain…
…but the institutional reality is that while slackman may not be a first-rate journalist we know for sure his editor is second rate….
mds is absolutely right. That’s why Debra Saunders on RealClearPolitics today is wrong — newspapers like the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle deserve to die because they have renounced their mission of providing news, and we should not mourn their passing.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/cutting_off_your_news_to_spite.html
Almost everything in the newspaper now is commentary disguised as news, from the Associated Press to the Miami Herald to the Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Tribune to the Rocky Mountain News. And please don’t say the Times also prints the “opposition” viewpoint on its editorial page. The problem is not only the editorial page, which is openly opinion. The problem is that they’re trying to pass of opinion as “news” on every page in the newspaper. They do it through only choosing to include stories that arise from their liberal elitist point of view, through signaling their disgust with events and people who challenge this world view (i.e. the Palin feeding frenzy), and through their choice of witnesses, as in the featured story. They do it in a million ways and it’s a total abdication of their responsibility to present their readers with unbiased information.
Hey Slackman! Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists.
Get it?
Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations – namely, because these groups have refused to renounce terrorism,
Or it could be that HizbALLAH murders 200+ US Marines in Beirut?
I agree with the guy’s reasoning. I mean we shouldn’t have called Nazis totalitarian thugs because in their view they were heroic patriots defending their home land. And Saddam Hussein wasn’t a brutal dictator because in the view of his supporters he was Saladin reborn. And Bin Laden is a freedom fighter. And so on. On top of that, calling people terrorists is counter productive and will offend them. The fact that these groups murder people is bad enough, but once you offend them they really become incorrigible. (You ever try dealing with a terrorist/freedom fighter after you have called him names?) On the other hand, if we just forego intellectual honesty and moral judgment, their true pacific colors will freely emerge.
The ‘T’ word, by this point, should be ‘Terrifying’. It is positively ‘terrifying’ that a New York Times correspondent can get away with being an Islamofacist apologist. Drawing a moral equivalence between the TERRORISTS and their victims not only exculpates the MURDERING TERRORIST FASCISTS, it places blame on a woman who is going about her daily routine, be that routine shopping, sleeping, or working in a hospital 10 hours a day, dedicating her time to saving lives. In Slackmoron’s view, his own death were he to have been in the Twin Towers or on a London Train, or reporting from Sderot, would be entirely justified so long as the “freedom fighter” that fired the rocket was doing so in the name of ‘liberation’. Liberation from what, you ask? Oh, that’s not important. The point is Slackoff and his ilk demand we draw a moral equivalency between Killer and killed so that his racism and condescension to Arabs aren’t viewed as such by his colleagues and fellow party goers. Slackman should rot in a Hamas prison. Oh wait, they don’t keep prisoners alive. Sorry Slackface.
2 points:
Calling Hamas and Hezballah terrorists really does effect peace prospects. To cease calling them terrorists would remove any hesitations to continue terror tactics and provide them with a significant victory in their chosen battlefield: the propaganda war.
Mr. Slackman has been called some nasty names here, but it behooves us to recognize his real character. He is the classic coward, unwilling to say that Hamas and Hezballah are not terrorists, but hiding behind others who thus claim.
I think everyone here misses the point. Trager defines terrorism as “non-state actors who target civilians for political ends”. First, Arabs/Muslims in general, and people in third world countries in particular, make no distinction between state actors and non-state actors when it comes to violence against civilians. Dead is dead. Second, Israel kills far more civilians than Hamas and Hezbollah combined and the excuse that the civlians are just collateral damge sound hollow to Arabs. When you choose to fight from 30,000 feet with one-ton bombs, there is no doubt you will kill civilians. Finally, when the U.S. State Department labels a group or person as a terrorist, by law, it means that our government can’t negoiate with them or aid them in any way. By the way, in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, Hezbollah killed 120 Israeli soldiers and 39 civilians while Israel killed 250 Hezbollah soldiers and 1000+ civilians. You do the math.
Its about time I found out where the corrections to all the words I knew were coming from.
All this time I thought it was centered in Topeka, Kansas.
Thank God I am now corrected (again) !
I heard a new word for journalists who have had too many falafels is called ” Ideeut ” pronounced like Peter Lorre said it.
folks,
the new chief for DHS is already prohibited from using the word terrorists or WoT!!!!! so slackman is crashing thru an open door.
When did the strategy of being an implacable foe of evil fall out of favor? Why must we always be nice, when blowing the bad guys straight to hell is A) more cost-effective, B) more effective, period, C) more just, and D) more fun? And no, Slackman is not a gentleman. A gentleman doesn’t make excuses for murderers.
Maybe the NYT should change its name to “The Democratic Party and Liberal Interest Group” Newsletter. Eric -thanks for using your knowledge to challenge the mainstream media.