Chicago Tribune Endorses President Obama...

[KharmaTrain]

Colonel McCormick must be rolling...

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-26/news/chi-obama-endorsement-chicago-tribune-20121026_1_president-obama-barack-obama-tax-cuts

Four years ago, when we endorsed Obama’s run for the White House, we said he would act with decisiveness and intellectual rigor. Ironically he has shown those attributes most where Americans might have expected them least. That is, in his handling of an unfamiliar realm: world affairs. He set and stuck to a withdrawal schedule for U.S. troops in Iraq. He ordered a surge in Afghanistan -- to the anguish of many of his political supporters -- that gave that nation time to mature and, by the close of 2014, likely will conclude a war launched four weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He approved the perilous mission that killed Osama bin Laden.

Obama, in sum, has been careful about projecting military power overseas. At home he has initiated, or agreed to, tax cuts to promote growth: investment tax credits, payroll tax cuts and extension of all the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. He proposes to reduce a corporate tax rate that everyone this side of far left agrees is a globally unfair hindrance for U.S. businesses.

<snip>

We have hammered the White House repeatedly for its failure to forge some path to a less indebted American citizenry. Yes, Republicans were obstructionists in Obama’s second two years. But before that Obama had two years with a Democratic Congress and he chose to focus on Obamacare, a program whose wisdom we have questioned and whose cost estimates have swiftly grown.

And Mitt Romney? He projects himself as a sure-handed chief executive, a proven leader who solves problems. He has, though, been astonishingly willing to bend his views to the politics of the moment: on abortion, on immigration, on gun laws and, most famously, on health care.

Discuss...

[TwilightGardener]

1. WHEN was health care reform ever to happen, if not the first two years?

There'd BE none if Obama had waited for the GOP to retake the House. I am grateful that my family will be able to benefit from the new law.

[KharmaTrain]

2. The Age Of Self Interest...

The benefits of Obamacare won't really be realized and recognized for at least 10 to 20 years when enough people benefit from its provisions. Unfortunately the way the bill is structured those who benefit aren't the most vocal or visual to our society and drowned out by the howls of the corporate hounds on the right.

Cheers...

[frazzled]

3. I was wondering if their 2008 endorsement was just ...

a one-time thing, literally, and if they would have the gall to ditch the home-town guy for Mitt this time. Clearly, they saw their asses would be grass if they abandoned Obama.

We actually subscribe to the Tribune. Why? We didn't for the first three years we lived here (beginning in 2004). And then we got offered a deal so cheap we said, okay, we'll try. It's a way to see the theater, music, and restaurant reviews over morning coffee. And they have a daily Sudoku. That's mainly what I use it for. Plus it gives me access to their web content. But Mr. Frazzled and I agreed that if they went back and endorsed Romney, we'd cancel. I bet lots of Chicago-area people were thinking the same.

Explanation: when we first started getting the Tribune, before Sam Zell bought it, they actually had some excellent reporting. And though it is a conservative paper, editorially, it's "honest" conservative (the term I heard Katrina van der Heuvel of The Nation express it at a debate with its publisher once.) It's pretty much a rag now. But what can I say.