SOMEONE IN the national media just woke up. Consider it an early Christmas present.
From Michael Grunwald of Time magazine:
Fiscal Cliff Fictions: Let’s All Agree to Pretend the GOP Isn’t Full of It
It’s really amazing to see political reporters dutifully passing along Republican complaints that President Obama’s opening offer in the fiscal cliff talks is just a recycled version of his old plan, when those same reporters spent the last year dutifully passing along Republican complaints that Obama had no plan. It’s even more amazing to see them pass along Republican outrage that Obama isn’t cutting Medicare enough, in the same matter-of-fact tone they used during the campaign to pass along Republican outrage that Obama was cutting Medicare.
This isn’t just cognitive dissonance. It’s irresponsible reporting. Mainstream media outlets don’t want to look partisan, so they ignore the BS hidden in plain sight, the hypocrisy and dishonesty that defines the modern Republican Party. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans insisted that anyone who said they wanted to cut Medicare was a demagogue, because I’m more than three weeks old.
Even a Beltway news channel, WUSA9, is running a fiscal cliff scheme countdown clock! It’s the ultimate theater of the absurd. Needless to say, I now no longer watch them for morning news.
In related news, Charles Pierce takes out after Politico, with a hilarious title that fits right in with the rest of this piece.
Obama should channel his Woodrow Wilson. Anticipating entry into WW1, his administration, along with congress, had tax rates on the wealthy up to around ninety percent. Obama has another presidents war to pay for, so he has every reason to ask for at least seventy percent. According to a very good Jill Lepore article in last weeks New Yorker, it was Andrew Mellon who first gave us supply side economics, in a direct assault on Wilson’s tax hikes.
The Roman Empire’s “bread and circuses” was amateur hour compared to what the current powers that be are forcing Americans to swallow. I’m beginning to root for the Mayan calendar.
With the demise of Twinkie’s is there any real reason to live? No Twinkie’s = end of the world as we know it; makes sense to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY
I see you and I raise you: http://youtu.be/bfDGMphAetI
Oopsie (f**king commercials) see you, raise you http://youtu.be/eFTLKWw542g
My Kingdom for an editor or preview button on TM.
We are already over the cliff.
The media often reports unquestioningly the BS coming out of both parties. If Grunwald is trying to say the media gives the GOP a pass and doesn’t give one to Democrats, that’s baloney. Grunwald is correct the GOP has been hugely inconsistent. That doesn’t make Democratic proposals any more realistic.