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...When her public career is judged in its entirety, we believe Ayotte has demonstrated she has the intelligence, character and leadership skills necessary to become an outstanding member of the U.S. Senate.
Nashua Telegraph, November 21, 2010:
Political posturing hurting U.S. security
The Obama administration's efforts to scale back dangerous vestiges of the old Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union were undermined this week by the new partisan Cold War boiling up on Capitol Hill.
...If the Senate votes this year, the treaty needs the support of nine Republicans and all 58 Democrats to achieve the required two-thirds majority. When the new Congress meets beginning in January, the president will need 14 Republican votes, the likelihood of which prompted a White House official to conclude the treaty "could be delayed indefinitely."
It will be a sad day for America if Republican political greed trumps common sense and national security.
Adding: The Telegraph made a big deal in their endorsement over who would be more Rudman-like as a Senator. Would they like to revisit that assessment now?
(Sad and Completely Predictable, Pt. I)
Even if you can't stand Shea-Porter's politics, don't argue that she's anything less than genuine. She ran as an unknown in 2006 as an advocate for the middle class and has been true to that. She stands by her record and is honest with her answers, even when it's unpopular.
...The Rochester Democrat supports extending the Bush tax cuts for middle-class Americans and repealing them for the wealthy. Guinta supports extending the tax cuts for all Americans, including the richest 2 percent, adding an estimated $700 billion to the deficit.
The daughter of a World War II veteran, Shea-Porter has established herself as a tireless advocate of the state's veterans, an example of her impressive constituent services record.
Followers of Stephen have exploited [SB 500] irresponsibly, including one mail piece that depicts photos of Lynch and several sex offenders and calling the group "Team Lynch."
We've seen negative campaigning aplenty, but this attack by Cornerstone Action was particularly troubling and shameful.
...But of all of Stephen's claims, his allegation that Lynch is not a leader rings the most hollow. Lynch is a populist. It's hard to imagine a hand in this state he hasn't shaken in his nearly six years of leading New Hampshire.
There were many reasons for the Telegraph to endorse Lynch. But in my fantasy version, it was Cornerstone's disgusting act which was the deciding factor.
Monday, August 30, 2010 Horn needs to speak to Bass' real record
This is an open letter to 2nd Congressional District candidate Jennifer Horn:
Ms. Horn, although it may be counter to your nature, I believe you need to make some points about Charlie Bass - and fast.
Charlie is a longtime political insider. Moreover, he's a go-along-to-get-along Republican, who's comfortable and inclined to accommodate the left-leaning Democrats if he thinks it will benefit him personally.
He's demonstrated himself to be a big spender, despite his newfound campaign rhetoric. Just look at his record as a congressman.
Today, New Hampshire needs a bona fide conservative, who's pledged to stop the reckless spending by the left-wing Congress, as well as to stop the wealth-distribution agenda of the Obama administration in its tracks. Charlie Bass isn't that person; you are.
I ask you to make these points as strongly, as loudly, and as often as possible, because if you don't, Annie Kuster will.
Listen up, gays. Nobody's saying you can't drink water from a water fountain or go to school or ride on the bus. You should do all of those things, and more!
Just don't pretend it's called the same thing as when normal people drink water from water fountains, go to school, and ride on the bus.
I didn't think the Nashua Telegraph was capable of topping itself after its laughable endorsement of Jennifer Horn for the primary, but the world of politics is always full of surprises:
But we believe the state's junior senator has taken some important strides in recent years to work in a more bipartisan fashion - an approach that will be absolutely critical if this nation is going to have any chance of solving its most pressing problems.
If the Nashua Telegraph can't figure out how often the Sprinter has been part of filibusters to block bi-partisan legislation, how he ignored the many voices of his constituents on the issue of torture when he voted in favor of confirming Alberto Gonzales, how he has supported the President on Iraq every step of the way, how he doesn't believe human activity is connected to climate change, how he has pushed for the abolition of the Department of Education, the federal minimum wage, and the current tax code, how he crafted legislation that would have privatized Social Security, Bush's last, uni-partisan goal...
This smells of fear and Broderism Balance to me. So I'd like to congratulate the Union Leader for pushing the hard-right narrative so hard for so many years to make this endorsement from the Telegraph possible.
* Sarah Palin - an Alaskan Jennifer Horn. Enough said.
y'all understood that that was not a compliment, right?
Well, apparently not the Telegraph, which cites a "fresh face" and lack of experience as reasons to endorse Horn:
In any other year, a longtime state senator, a seasoned political operative or a former Green Beret turned lawyer would seem to have the advantage. But not this year.
Not in a year when a little-known hockey mom turned governor of Alaska has captured the attention of the nation as the GOP vice-presidential nominee.
Aren't newspapers supposed to be the last line of defense against cable news' infotainment priorities? Seriously, the gist of the endorsement is that Horn got lucky to have Palin on the ticket, so we should go with her because now it's vogue that anyone can be a vice-president, regardless of qualifications.
The John McCain (Near) Presidency: already doing damage to our nation by making our national and state discourse even stoopider than it already is. It's reminiscent of the Iraq war fever that drugged the press and swept the nation in 2002-2003, and it's starting to creep me out.
The answers to my Nashua Telegraph questionaire are up, you can see it here by typing in your address in Merrimack
In it, I mention information about our state budget, which i'm going to be discussing here on my website, continuing with the evolving discussion on the state budget a few weeks ago.
To kick off this restart of the discussion, here is an excel spreadsheet overview of the six major parts of the state budget from 2006 to 2009 and where the money for it according to the New Hampshire Legislative Budget Assistant's office.
I was wrong, the Nashua Telegraph has endorsed Obama:
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is the best choice for Democrats in the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8. He is the candidate with the greatest chance of reaching across the aisle - of resonating with moderate and independent voters needed to capture the general election - while maintaining the core principles of his party.
And he best represents what Democrats are looking for this year: a change from the status quo, a genuine and authentic voice for hope and healing during difficult and divisive times.
In weeks past, I was wary of a pro-Hillary slant in their primary coverage. However, following an editorial questioning Hillary's leadership this week citing "dirty tactics" being used by her campaign and surrogates, it looked as though my fears might be proven wrong - and they were.
Obama's interview with the Telegraph editorial board can be viewed here
I want to ask you a really tough question:
What New Hampshire newspaper has the worst website?
The difficulty here lies in how stiff the competition is. (Very)
The Union Leader and Concord Monitor have, in my opinion, fairly reasonable sites. No, the search function doesn't always work very well, but they're easy to navigate and offer lots of free content.
But after that, things get pretty ugly pretty quickly.
The Keene Sentinel wants you to pay for almost everything, including letters to the editor, so I don't even know much about the site. (Other than that paywalling a little local paper like that is dumb dumb dumb, so strike one against them.) But here's what else I know: Aside from AP headlines, they offer about as many sports headlines as news ones on their front page. And the layout is terrible - even the parts that aren't ads kind of look like them.
The Nashua Telegraph at least has free registration, but it's not exactly loaded with easy-to-identify interesting content. In fact, most of the articles linked on the front page are linked in something like a 6-point font, with just headlines, no descriptions.
The Valley News is an interesting case. It doesn't offer very many articles online, but the ones that are available are free and include summaries; as well, they list several print-only articles. It's not a lot of content, but they're completely up front about what is and is not available, so it's a user-friendly site.
So my question is, which is the worst? How do we weigh user-friendliness against content availability? How does a paper's circulation factor in - how much more should we expect of larger papers? What other factors would you include in your judgment?
In a future post I intend to ask about the quality of the political reporting itself, but at the moment, it's all about the websites.
