How To Read Your Newspaper (Between the Lines)

By Al Benson Jr.


Years ago some conservative commentator made the statement that “the best way to read the newspaper is between the lines.” He was trying to say a couple things. One of them was that often what the media writers leave out is more important than what they tell us.

He was also saying that, if you know how the read the papers, when you see an article, you can often tell by the way it’s written what is actually being said--and you can often tell when the truth is being obfuscated. You can often tell when a certain “spin” is being put on the event in question.

I’ll use a recent AP article about Obama’s “health care” plan to illustrate this. Anyone who has followed national events recently has to have watched the Obama/Pelosi/Reid dog and pony show as this dynamic trio went through every political gyration possible to get this health care “reform” package passed into law. Despite the best laid plans and efforts of mice, socialists, and others, they haven’t been able to get it done when they wanted it done (Christmas Eve). They were going to give us all a nice little Marxist health care plan for our Christmas present (to them). Like Christmas dinner, the plan was a real turkey and it’s had lots of opposition, most of it from the American people who, thanks to Obama’s unceasing efforts, are finally beginning to recognize blatant socialism when they see it, much to Obama’s chagrin.

The public detested his health care plan. Congress, with its large contingent of socialists, mostly loved it and Congress went blithely along totally ignoring the protests of the public. After all, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way. Really hard to pay attention to what your constituents want when you already know what’s best for them and you are going to make sure it’s shoved down their throats whether they want it or not.

Well, then came the special election in Massachusetts to fill the seat left vacant by the senator who never learned to drive straight across a bridge. The seat was supposed to be quietly taken over by a socialist clone, Comrade Martha Coakley. So sure was everyone that Comrade Coakley would be a shoo-in that she hardly bothered campaigning until an opponent, Scott Brown, had already stolen several marches on her. Polls showed him taking the lead in the race and all of a sudden Coakley realized she’d better quit sitting on her thumbs and do some campaigning. By then it was too late. She blew it. Brown won by a 52-47 percent margin--and Brown is, supposedly, a foe of Obama’s health care scam. He claims he’ll vote against it. I hope he does, but we’ll see. At any rate, all of a sudden, with the results of this election, a lot of Democrats are realizing that if they continue to support Obama’s health scam, they might not be returned to office in this year’s mid-term elections. So now the health care scam may not have all those votes needed to force it down our throats. So now, we have headlines like “Obama regroups on health care.”
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An AP article that appeared here in Louisiana on 1/21 noted that: “…Obama and congressional allies (read “allies”  as socialists) signaled Wednesday they may try to scale back his sweeping health care overhaul in an effort to at least keep parts of it alive.” Translation: At this point Obama realizes the public will not buy his entire Marxist health plan. There’s no way. So what he will do is to drop (for now) a few of the really nasty points that raised public ire and he will try to save as much of the rest as he can. In other words, we won’t get an entire Marxist health plan right now--we will get a partial Marxist health plan if he can swing it. Of course the newspaper doesn’t quite say it that way, but that’s what it amounts to.

The article continued: “The goal of trying to cover nearly all Americans would be put off further into the future.” Translation: Since this was one of the most objectionable parts of the plan, what they want to do is to put it off until the public furor dies down and people have forgotten about it. At some point down the road, when they feel the public has sufficiently gone back to sleep, they will try to sneak it in, possibly as some sort of amendment or rider, or something.

Supposedly, Obama urged Congress not to try to jam the bill through but to scale his proposals back to “those elements of the package that people agree on.” What elements? A great many of the comments I’ve seen, written and otherwise, don’t agree on much of anything in this plan except that they don’t want it! The socialists and One Worlders all want it. Most other folks would just as soon it died a quick and peaceful death. And, of course, the people that handed it to Obama as part of the agenda he was supposed to get enacted for them in his first year in office all want it. Makes you wonder if they might not be just a little ticked at him because he hasn’t delivered on this particular goodie for them, and of course, if there is a monkey wrench in the health care gears with elections coming up, there might also be one in the cap and trade gears.

I don’t pretend to know if this man from Massachusetts will in any way help to bring Obama’s Marxism to a screeching halt at this point or not. At this point he seems to be a burr under the Marxist saddle. Let’s hope he stays there and that they don’t find a way to financially remove (bribe or blackmail) him. After all, they’ve done that with senators from Louisiana to Nebraska.

But, for right now, the health care scam seems to be sidetracked. But we still have to watch it and to continue to let our elected representatives know that if they continue to support it we will not forget their efforts next November. And we should not forget to thank the Lord that He has, for now, thrown the Massachusetts monkey wrench into Obama’s health care gears. May he remain there until the gears loose their teeth and refuse to function.