In This Land

Shed
Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that President Obama's auto bailouts cost jobs and money, but he defended the move by observing that the negative effects were distributed fairly throughout the industry.


"GM and Chrysler, they had to make some tough decisions," Biden told Ohio voters. "They shed some dealerships. They closed plants -- two in my own state. Auto workers lost their jobs -- a heck of a lot of them. Bondholders, bondholders -- the so-called big guys -- they lost money, too. But everybody was in on the deal."


Biden defended the fallout of the bailouts by saying that, "In the president's sense of a distressed company, he says everybodys in on the deal."


Obama often touts the auto bailouts as a signature achievement, but these comments from Biden underscore a weakness in that argument. In 2010, the New York Times reported that "President Obama’s auto task force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships without adequately considering the jobs that would be lost or having a firm idea of the cost savings that would be achieved, an audit of the process has concluded . . . tens of thousands of jobs were lost as a result."


The vice president's comments play into Mitt Romney's hands. (Washington Examiner, 5/17/2012)


Is Joe Biden a secret weapon of the RNC? We are starting to think so!


Typical
The killing of Trayvon Martin here two and a half months ago has been cast as the latest test of race relations and equal justice in America. But it was also a test of a small city police department that does not even have a homicide unit and typically deals with three or four murder cases a year. (NYT, 5/16/2012)


We would have thought that the big news in the Trayvon Martin case yesterday was the disclosure report of the injuries suffered by George Zimmerman. The report would appear to corroborate Zimmerman's account. The Times ignores that and runs their usual "police mistakes" story which we get just about every time there is a racial incident.


Framed
Years ago, RedStateVT would regularly read - and disagree with - New York Times Op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd. Our thinking then and now was that you have to understand how the other side views the world. It helps you to frame your own opinions in a more educated way. After a while, however, we just stopped reading Dowd. Her screeds against the Bush family lost all journalistic value and integrity. Week after week Dowd would simply attack the Bushes as elitist patricians. (A label that she would never put on the Kennedy clan, by the way.) Dowd's personal  vitriol continued, notwithstanding the graciousness that George and Barbara Bush displayed toward her. So the realization set in that this person is no longer a journalist and they have nothing of value to add to the discussion. We stopped reading her. 


Which brings us to Chris Matthews. RedStateVT has watched Matthews on several occasions of late and concludes that he has gone the way of Dowd. In truth, he has been heading down this road for a while. His attacks on Sarah Palin, his Obama "leg tingle" and now his criticisms of Romney all combine to disqualify him from  the debate. A recent example was his contention that Romney "doesn't want to talk about his religion." Well, Chris, what is it that you want to know? And by the way, what is this sudden interest in a politician's religious views? We do not recall you expressing an interest in Mormonism when Harry Reid became Senate majority leader. We don't recall much interest on your part when it was disclosed that Obama sat in a church listening to a radical black preacher. No, you have now crossed over to Dowd-land. You have nothing to add to the political debate.