The Freeze Is Coming! The Freeze Is Coming!!

Really? People made all these plans on Monday for something that WON'T happen next year? Must everything include such drama?  I'm not faulting or criticizing those on Social Security, who no doubt could use more money, but am knocking the mindset that produces stories like this.

An analysis of whether the formula written into law that leads to this kind of freeze would be helpful. How about a little comparison to workers who also won't get a pay raise in the coming year?

Senior citizens brace for Social Security freeze (AP) 
 
AP - Seniors prepared to cut back on everything from food to charitable donations to whiskey as word spread Monday that they will have to wait until at least 2012 to see their Social Security checks increase.

Hit job

OK, after about a month off, I'm back, happily employed in the news biz and working with a great bunch of people, a mix of old newspaper hands, web pros and others.

Time to get back to editing talk.

First up this morning is this headline:

Obama Is in the Jaws of Political Death: Can He Survive?

Let me see. His poll numbers are down but not as low as Ronald Reagan's at this point. The House may indeed turn over to Republican control. Maybe even the Senate. Political death?

Then there's the story. Seriously, what reporter regularly refers to "elites" as if he were in a political science class?  Then this:

The misery afflicting the country has no political affiliation. Listen to the voices from this striking TV ad for Rob Portman, the Republican former Congressman and Bush budget director who is running for Senate from Ohio. One woman at a Dayton career fair says starkly, "There are no jobs." A man announces plaintively and with obvious frustration, "I've been looking for a job now for 13 months." Events like this job fair are becoming the grim iconic gatherings of our time, the breadlines for the Obama years.  

This "has no political affiliation" but then consists of quotes from a Republican commercial??

There may well be a good story to be done that assesses the competence of the Obama administration. This isn't it.
No editor should have let this story see the light of day.