Lincolnite

The LJS endorsement of Chris Beutler, Democrat, was the most surprising thing I have seen since noticing the sun rising in the East the other morning. Shocked. Just shocked.

They must have a liberal bias for thinking the democrat was the better candidate!

I should have placed a bet on how soon you’d come to their aid, Neal. I knew it wouldn’t take long. I salute you for being a company man, I will say that.

Nope, no liberal bias at all. Any person who’s been reading the stories about each candidate would be a fool to think their endorsement would go any other way.

Ken’s been on the council for how many years????  Has he accomplished much of anything to write home about?
Chris may be the better choice this time around.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a candidate who would be 100% truthful, not promise what he/she couldn’t do and do wht they did promise.  I know, we’re not in there, but we can hope, right?

Fletch is right on about the LJS and Beutler.  They’ve served as the communications branch of his campaign ever since he declared his candidacy.

I’m starting to doubt whether you guys are just playing characters for satire purposes or if you actually believe the ad-hominem nonsense you write.

Apparently, in Fletch and Dave’s fantasy world, the only way a newspaper can not be biased is if they write only positive coverage of a Republican, only negative stories about a Democrat, and endorse the Republican.

Do you remember their coverage of Beutler ON ELECTION DAY? I’m curious as to how many pairs of pants you guys would have stained if they would have run Svoboda stories with that kind of timing.

What a convenient world you must live in, Fletch, where you can ignore reality by dismissing a freelancer as a “good company man.”

Freelancer or not, you take money from them (unless you work for free) and appear in their paper. And I have yet to ever see you say a thing that could not be construed as the comments of a company man. I’ve been an employee, and I could still find some things to fairly criticize an employer about. My remark was meant as a compliment, so I am sorry if that threw you off.

And again, I did not mention bias, and I am not mentioning bias now. You’re the one who keeps bringing it up.

Look back a few weeks ago to my posts where I gave credit where credit was due to the stories the LJS wrote about Beutler being overpaid. It’s all here on the site in the archives.

However, they did at least as large a hatchet job, if not larger, on Ken than they did on Chris prior to the primary, and since then, they’ve been that dead horse and dug up more again.

I’m not a Ken fan or a Ken apologist. I am a pro-business, smaller government kind of voter. This time around, I think that’s Ken and not Chris. Chris is a career politician who is only available for this job due to term limits, or I am sure he’d still be at the pe**s of the plains “legislating.”

You can call me names and label me all you want. I am smart enough to know that the LJS has endorsed “R’s” sometimes, and I am a guy that routinely casts a vote for a “D” when I think he or she is the best person for a job. Quit assuming that the depth of my opinion is what Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity wants me to think. I am quite capable of thinking these things out on my own and voting based on those thoughts.

To make Lincoln work and to get out of the financial pickle the city is currently in, we need to increase the tax base since there are not a ton of places to cut costs. We need more income, and income that can come in at a faster rate than the increases in costs. That means an equal number of taxpayers, all paying in more money (does anyone here really want that? REALLY?); OR it means a larger number of taxpayers that are paying in the same amount of money we pay now. I’m not even screaming for cuts here.

To get more taxpayers, there have to be employers to pay those people, and places for those people to live or build homes affordably, and places for them to shop and spend their paychecks. That’s the situation Lincoln is in, today, in 2007. We need more income taxes and more sales taxes to work right here in Lincoln. I want the guy to win who can do that. Period.

If that means I live in a convenient world, then so be it.

Hey Fletch, if you don’t want me to assume certain things about you, don’t live up to them. Easy enough. But come on, if you don’t want people thinking that you’re making a bias accusation, please rethink posts like your first one before you hit “Submit.”

When previously making the LJS bias argument, you had to make up facts about their opinion page. Color me embarrassed for jumping to the conclusion that you were going down the same path.

That’s nice that there’s more nuance to your world than what you let on, but please don’t pretend that your knee-jerk criticisms of the paper’s predictability shed any light on those.

Should I just start randomly posting comments critical of the LJS? And please don’t pretend that your “company man” line was anything more than a back-handed compliment at best.

“I salute you for being a company man, I will say that.” Where’s the evil intent there, exactly? Seriously, I apologize for trying to say a nice thing about you or about the paper.

How about: ‘I commend you for always being there to have the back of the folks at the LJS if they aren’t here to comment themselves.’ Would that have seemed less back-handed?

Since you love the bias argument so much, how about you provide the burden of proof this time? Look at all the endorsements made by the paper in the last 10 years in races where people were not running unopposed, and let me know how evenly split they were. If you can prove to me that it was an even 50/50 split down the middle, or reasonably close, I will gladly eat my words and banish myself from Lincolnite forever.

I really don’t even care that “they” endorsed Chris. Maybe “they” just do it to look smart since they know he’ll win based on the primary. Maybe “they” flip a coin. I don’t care. My point was that in this particular election cycle, it was hardly a surprise. Why try to read into anything beyond that?

I’m not a hardline party guy. In posts just this week, I have stated that I’d like to see Bruning run against Chuck even though it will rankle the R party, and I said I’d rather keep Ben than keep Chuck. Last I checked, he’s the D guy, right?

I think you’ll also see that I jump into these feedbacks on a wide array of topics that are non political (pizza, gas stations, Friday Fives, etc.). I come here in the spirit of community and throwing out different viewpoints and some humor. Sarcasm is something I gladly throw in at no extra charge. I’d like to think that something I say will put a grin on someone’s face. That’s my intent. Maybe this ain’t the right blog for that approach, but it’s the best Lincoln blog that I’ve seen. Maybe I should just read and stop commenting.

Please don’t think that any comment about the LJS is a potshot at you.

Who’s asking you to leave Lincolnite? I’m certainly not, and it’s not even my call to make. I don’t think Mr Wilson would make comments possible if he didn’t want people to discuss stuff.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t operate on the Fox News Principle that being unbiased means there’s a 50/50 split in how the news is presented. Finding if the LJS endorsed Democrats 50% of the time and Republicans 50% of the time is irrelevant. If there were consistently a bunch of brain-dead zombies registered as Democrats, I wouldn’t cry out “bias” if the LJS endorsed the Republican every time. If they’re endorsing the person they think is the better candidate, I don’t care what party they’re from. That’s not bias.

Don’t you worry, I don’t take your uninformed knee-jerk comments toward the LJS as personal attacks. I don’t have to be personally affected to stand up for someone.

And for the record, your rephrased compliment was much nicer. Thanks. 😊

I guess I will presume that it was much nicer than “your uninformed knee-jerk comments.” Go ahead and look through all my posts and see if I called you names or personally attacked you. No? I thought not.

Nope, but like I said, I don’t have to be personally attacked to stand up for someone.

That’s very big of you. Maybe you can learn to make a point sometime without name calling. Try it, it’s fun.

Oh Fletch, if you want to come off as the unemotional debater, you could do a little better to hide your hurt feelings.

Please don’t bother pretending like you haven’t lived up to those mean things I wrote. I realize we’re a long way down the page, but you’re going to have to post a lot more comments if you want to keep running from what you’ve said.

And I guess I’d prefer someone who says what they’re thinking, rather than someone who makes clear implications and then hides behind “Hey, I never actually said what you’re accusing me of…”

Who’s running from what I said? Not me. In fact, I’ve quoted myself liberally and reminded you of posts I made on other threads. And why on Earth would something you said hurt my feelings? What are we, 12?

I’m saying that a point can be made without resorting to name calling and insults. If you’d prefer it that way, I could do the same thing many times over. It’s easy - the lowest common denominator. Anyone can do that. And then Mr. W. will just come in and blow the whistle anyway, so what’s the point? I stand by every word I’ve said today and ever - that’s how I roll.

For someone that makes his living criticizing or mocking or parodying or whatever you call it to others, you sure get your back riled up easily. There, I insulted you. Now we can be even.

I don’t know why the stuff would hurt your feelings. That’s for you to answer.

But I think it’s funny how you write like you’re this straight-talkin’ dude who stands by his word, but then you act like your posts up there aren’t meant to be insulting toward the Journal Star’s writers and editors.

Tell me that, when you say that the Journal Star’s news coverage makes it obvious that they would endorse Chris Beutler, and that they keep digging up stuff to beat the Svoboda dead horse, you’re not implying there is a political motivation to their presentation of news.

Tell me how you’re not implying that. And then repeat that part about how you stand by what you’ve said.

To me, making that accusation based on nothing more than circumstantial evidence is far more irresponsible and offensive than telling someone they’re making ignorant knee-jerk comments, but that’s just me.

But hey, if you want to pretend you’re not insulting anyone, that’s fine.

I think there is political motivation. I didn’t say it was bias. In this particular election cycle, and this one alone, they’ve clearly done more to make one candidate look bad moreso than they have the other one. And it wasn’t just on the editorial page. The job is to sell papers and generate advertising - so who cares? It’s not like I read it and let it set the tone for my whole day or my life.

As a subscriber, what would you have me do? Cancel? Boycott advertisers? Stop advertising? It’s hardly worth the trouble. I’ve said before, and I will say it again, that I think Deena Winter does a good job of reporting and keeping things pretty much newsy and no hint of editorializing, but the paper as a whole seems to be in favor of a Beutler victory, and has given that impression long before the official endorsement today. You may not see it that way, and the next person may not see it that way, but as a daily reader, that’s how I see it.

Is it not fair to say it out loud and have a conversation? I give props to the LJS at times, and criticize it at other times. It’s not contempt or hate or insinuating that any soul in that building is a bad person. I could list many more critisms of the paper that are more bothersome than bias. 

It makes no difference to me who “they” endorse, or how many fine Lincolnites who accept a paycheck from LJS vote for whom. The point I made is that it wasn’t a shock. It was expected, by me, and me alone, as a reader. If that, and sarcasm, were not conveyed in my first post of the day, then I don’t know how else to word it.

After everything I have read in the paper, I would have legimately been stunned, and would have voiced such stunned-edness here on this fine page, had they endorsed Ken.

I really don’t care. Maybe when Chris wins he can cancel the contract with Ray’s Lawn Care and we can get a city auditor to be sure no candidates for city office are paid more than they should be. Any employee who has an outside contract deserves the scrutiny. They are my dollars and your dollars paying the way. I’d like to see the city run better than it is. I don’t really care who has to win to make that happen.

If you read my remarks as insults, I apologize for that. Apparently sarcasm isn’t conveyed in print for all readers. I’m done now.

I’m not really sure why you think I’m trying to get you to do something. And nobody said it was unfair for you to speak your mind, but you apparently think it’s unfair for me to disagree with you.

And yeah, I do think accusing the employees of a newspaper of being unable to do their jobs is a pretty big insult (that job being to fairly report the news).

If you weren’t done, I’d like to know where you draw the line between being biased and having a political motivation to manipulate news coverage.

Who’s “the Yalie” and who’s “the Husker”?  Using those descriptions it, itself, quite biased.  Perhaps I should point out that Chris Beutler is a graduate of the UNL College of Law, while Ken Svoboda attended UNL as an undergrad but dropped out to work for his dad’s business.  Beutler may have that Ivy Leage education, but he’s also got the stronger credentials as a Husker as well.

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