How to read the news

With scrutiny. Sometimes it’s deceiving, and sometimes….just humorous. Take, for instance, this New York Times article with the headline “McCain and Obama Turn Fire on Each Other.”

Oh, really? Then why the big photo of Hillary Clinton shaking hands at a rally? And where is that headline news in the first two paragraphs of the story?

Here it is, in the third.

In early appearances on Wednesday, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama both turned their fire on the opposition party, perhaps signaling a new dynamic in the presidential race.

“Fire”? After the Potomac primaries of Tuesday, I heard Sen. Obama honor and encourage praise for Sen. John McCain’s heroic military service to his country. And then he went on to disagree with McCain’s party principles. That’s what elections are about. And later I heard Sen. McCain credit Sen. Obama for the strong campaign he has run. Of course, he went on to disagree with him as well.

Responding to a question about Mr. Obama’s campaign so far, Mr. McCain said that the Illinois Democrat’s speeches have been “singularly lacking in specifics” and noted that Mr. Obama was recently rated the most liberal Senator by National Journal.

“I respect him and the campaign that he has run,” Mr. McCain said of Mr. Obama, after a question about his decision to focus on Mr. Obama and his message of hope in his victory speech on Tuesday night. “But there is going to come a time when we have to get into specifics, and I’ve not observed every speech that he’s given, obviously, but they are singularly lacking in specifics.”

To point out that Obama’s campaign as been “lacking in specifics” is hardly fire. It’s actually pretty restrained, as political battles go.

What other ‘hot rhetoric’ did the two candidates allegedly exchange?

“We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control,” Mr. Obama said. “The fallout from the housing crisis that’s cost jobs and wiped out savings was not an inevitable part of the business cycle, it was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington.”

That wasn’t aimed specifically at McCain, though he’s a senator in Washington. And so is Obama. And Obama’s party, the Democrats, have controlled Congress in a long stretch of inaction and disarray.

But McCain has been called a maverick and Obama is blazing trails as a renegade, so they want to be exempted from the Washington quagmire.

Mr. Obama opened his campaign for next week’s Wisconsin primary inside a General Motors plant in Janesville, one day after General Motors Corp. posted a $38 billion loss, the largest ever for a U.S. auto company. He criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed during the Clinton administration, and offered a series of plans to inject more jobs into the economy.

“You know, in the years after her husband signed N.A.F.T.A, Senator Clinton would go around talking about how great it was and how many benefits it would bring,” Mr. Obama said. “Now that she’s running for president, she says we need a time-out on trade. No one knows when this time-out will end. Maybe after the election.”

Now it looks like Obama is actually aiming some of his fire at Clinton.

Along with Washington and McCain.

“It’s a Washington where politicians like John McCain and Hillary Clinton voted for a war in Iraq that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged — a war that is costing us thousands of precious lives and billions of dollars a week,” Mr. Obama said.

His opponent was out there trying to counter this attack. 

Mrs. Clinton, speaking before an enthusiastic crowd on Wednesday morning in McAllen, Texas, also struck economic themes, saying she offered solutions for voters’ financial struggles while Mr. Obama offered “rhetoric.”

So….this is a firefight between…whom?

The New York Democrat blasted her Democratic rival for the nomination for having “a plan that fails to provide universal health care, fails to address the housing crisis, and fails to immediately start creating good-paying jobs.”

Which leads one to wonder, how did they get that headline?