Jabbing from Old Media to New

Newport Daily News columnist Joe Baker used his space, yesterday, to respond to my post last week about his spreading of sunshine for the Democrats. Actually, he appears to have been more interested in addressing Anchor Rising commenter Tim:

"The Newport Daily News did the world a favor when they decided to strictly limit their online product and made Joe 'Pravda' Baker inaccessible to the greater population," wrote someone identified only as "Tim."

Tim obviously did his homework. I began writing my column in 1991. Pravda, a newspaper espousing the Communist party line in Russia, went under in 1991. A coincidence? I think not.

Tim goes on: "Baker is an embarrassing party line hack for the Democrats."

Again, Tim shows an astounding ability to get right to the point. His apparent theory is that I have a political philosophy different from his, which — and I am going to go out on a limb here — is more Republican-leaning than Democratic. (Would that make him "an embarrassing party line hack" for Republicans?) In my 20 years of writing this column, I have tried never to sink to the depths of name calling. But can I ignore the wisdom of astute observers and philosophers like "Tim" any longer?

With regard to my points, Baker responds to the lesser. He disputes my recollection that economists were predicting that the recovery would have begun before this year, and inasmuch as searches for that sort of rolling information — who predicted what when — tend to be more time consuming than my schedule will allow, I'll declare it a wash. Suffice to say that my memory of this long recession entails a continuing series of adjusted predictions from economists continually pushing expectations back, especially with regard to employment.

On healthcare, which constituted the great bulk of my post, he takes up only a point that I said to "put aside": "As Katz himself says, much of the bill's provisions will be delayed, which I think strengthens my argument that people will not feel the pain predicted by opponents — if it does materialize — for quite some time."

Well, Baker's cheering of Obama's policies didn't contain that "if" or note that the Democrats have rigged the policies to explode after a few election seasons. He just said, "as the reality of the program sinks in and nobody sees the dire consequences predicted by its opponents," anger would fade. And he still hasn't shared with his readers my more significant points that companies have already revised predicted profits down to the tune of billions of dollars, based on the legislation, and that hospitals expect to be bled by the legislation, as well.

Unfortunately, Baker also conspicuously avoided mentioning the name of the blog, much less the URL at which my arguments could be found. Perhaps that sort of citation is just a new media thing.