David Gregory Out as Host of Meet the Press

Image from source, Politics USA

I started watching Meet the Press (and often one or two of the other Sunday shows, Face the Nation, This Week and FOX "News" Sunday) some time during the George W. Bush administration. Oh, I'd caught it a few times in my life, but not regularly. I thoroughly despised the entire Dubya cabal, and will even cop to having a moderate case of Bush Derangement Syndrome for a little while. So, I was more politically plugged in, and this is one way to do that.

Unfortunately, these shows are also really horrible, in many ways. Awful. Almost every guest (with rare exceptions) is thoroughly rehearsed in their side's talking points, and will steer the argument back to them at all costs. In fact, they'll often go to talking points that don't even relate to the question. Which side is worse about distortion, spinning and even lying probably depends upon your political leanings. But there is no doubt who gets more coverage: Republicans. In study after study, the GOP gets more guests by a mile, regardless of who holds the White House or Congress.

Distressingly, it's the old, (pasty) white, male variety of Republican that gets the most opportunity to

Good luck, dude. You're going to need it

sling their spin, notably John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who appear to be joined at the hip. If the green room had a bridal suite, it would be occupied by those two. If it's Sunday, it's the John and Lindsey Show. It's tired, oh so tired.

David Gregory is not the worst host of this type of show. Chris Wallace is worse. But David Gregory is an odd figure, as these things go: nobody seems to like him. Conservatives think Gregory is a liberal hack. Liberals, conversely think, Are you freaking insane? He's a conservative hack! They may be both right. But I'd rather just say, "hack." His questioning style is very surfacy, and geared toward making his own news, with "gotcha" questions. He very often seemingly frames his questions from the perspective of the opposition's talking points. He's smug. He's smarmy. And I'm not sorry to see him go. As I'm sure everyone is saying about this story, he's no Tim Russert.

You know who else isn't Tim Russert? Chuck Todd. His interviewing style may prove to be better than Gregory's. But otherwise, he seems to be almost exactly the same sort of figure: not liked very well by either side. I suppose an argument could be made that such a quality is a good thing, but probably not if you're looking for ratings.

[Excerpt]
 
David Gregory Is Officially Fired as Chuck Todd Takes Over NBC’s Meet The Press

The axe finally fell today as David Gregory confirmed that he is out at Meet The Press, and is leaving NBC. Chuck Todd will be the new host of the Sunday morning staple.

David Gregory got the boot fast. This was a literal don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. According to CNN, “The sources confirmed widespread speculation that David Gregory, the moderator of the iconic Sunday morning public affairs program for the past six years, will be replaced by Todd. One of the sources said the transition will be swift — so swift that Gregory will not even host “Meet the Press” this weekend. . .”

 

Read more at: Politics USA

CBO Report on ObamaCare Continues to be Misconstrued

Over the last couple of weeks, I'll admit to being a little less engaged than usual. I have paid a little less attention to the changing of the news cycle, having my attention pulled in other directions here at home. Even so, I caught that the CBO report on ObamaCare was initially (gleefully) reported by conservatives as a JOB KILLER!!! And almost immediately, the author of the thing said, no, Right Wing World had gotten it wrong. Again.

But here we were on Sunday morning, with the political shows all acting like the original storyline was the correct one. David Gregory used it in one of his "balanced" setups, as though the wrong conclusion was as equally likely as the real, intended one. Chris Wallace on FOX "News" Sunday lead with it, painting it as conclusively true, by the way he phrased it. I didn't have the stomach for the other networks' offerings.

But it looks like CNN may have gotten it right.

[Excerpt]

CNN breaks mold and tells truth about CBO report


 
It is a forgone conclusion that Fox News would misrepresent the latest CBO report. Sadly even Chuck Todd at MSNBC was less than clear in interpreting the report. He was more concerned with how it would be interpreted. He should have been more concerned with his free press journalistic duty. Inform the population objectively. . .

Read more at: DailyKos

Ted Cruz, Translated for Sane People

Ugh. Image from source, Huffington Post

Yesterday, as I watched the Sunday political talk shows (remote at the ready for zapping through them), I was rolling my eyes so hard, I thought they'd pop out of my head. Republican after Republican bent and twisted their responses to questions to make the "defund Obamacare" portion of the budget bill to be a "compromise," and to make it out that it was President Obama and Harry Reid who want the government to shut down. It's extortion by the GOP, and they're honestly trying to sell it as a reasonable request, and that Democrats are the reckless ones.

Worse than them all though, was Sen. Ted Cruz on Meet the Press. Though David Gregory was uncharacteristically semi-aggressive with his questioning, there remains the problem of Gregory giving Cruz the plum spot on the show, right at the top, with no sparring partner. And then Cruz was the absolute picture of your typical "dance a little sidestep" bob-and-weave politician, that is oh-so-typical on these Sunday shows. Wasn't Cruz supposed to be different, tea baggers?

Mercifully, someone at HuffPo has condensed and translated Cruz's responses into something much easier to follow.

[Excerpt]

Ted Cruz Was On Meet The Press And Struggled With Brevity, So Here's The Short Version

As Cruz has demonstrated troubles with prolixity -- and because these troubles make everyone's life a little harder -- I am going to boil his answers in a Sunday "Meet the Press" interview down into their simplest form so that for once, Ted Cruz doesn't have to be such a long-winded pain in the ass of John Boehner or anyone else. . .

It's good, read more at: Huffington Post

In Case You Missed It: Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press

I was on vacation during this past week's Meet the Press, so I missed it. This would not be a tragedy on most weeks. But I'm glad I caught the recording on my DVR, because it was a rare week where I didn't want to paste David Gregory. And, it included Rachel Maddow as a panelist, going up against smarmy Ralph Reed (Jack Abramoff crony) and proud homophobe Jim DeMint (late of Congress, current of The Heritage Foundation). And despite my mild anger that such horrible people get to appear on network TV "for balance" about gay rights, this was--for me--Must See TV­™.

Now, I think Rachel did a great job, and I'll admit she sometimes gets a bit flustered when she goes head-to-head outside of her own venue. This has an obvious cause, that she finds so much wrong with what her opponent is saying, she can have difficulty winnowing her response down to a pithy soundbite. But she's getting better at that, and this was probably her best performance in this kind of setting. I loved her point about the conservative tactic boiling down to basically the right to discriminate. Because that is the only real effect of their anti-gay campaign; they don't make less of us, they just discriminate against us.


Oddly enough, this very same clip is running around the right-wing blogosphere, as an example of how Rachel Maddow got her clock cleaned by Reed and DeMint. There are also the de rigueur "Mad Cow" and "she looks like a dude" jokes, because that's as deep (and original) as conservative humor gets. Anyway, it's an example of how the right-left divide can be almost uncrossable. I can't watch this and see anyone but Maddow as the winner. Oh, and Reed and DeMint make my skin crawl.

Benghazi-gate Begins to Fizzle

Did you happen to notice that the Benghazi story has mostly been a FOX "News"/Right Wing World thing, until the last few days? That's because ABC News "found" an email that seemed to show multiple rewrites of talking points for Susan Rice to use on the Sunday talk shows, five days after the Benghazi attack. I still don't get the OCD focus on that Sunday, but that's neither here nor there. The ABC email turned this simmering conservative outrage story into a mainstream story. Oddly, a story that was obsessing over the minutiae of talking points. Not preventing future attacks, or fixing problems, but forensically piecing together why the lady said what she said to David Gregory.

Well, guess what? The email didn't say what they said it said. Like, at all. So this big "scandal" was over bupkis. We're back exactly where we were on Benghazi. The question is, will it completely fizzle out in favor of the new IRS/Tea Party and the Justice Department/AP potential scandals? We shall see.

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Why are Lindsey Graham and John McCain on EVERY SUNDAY?

I watched--as I often do--a couple of the Sunday shows this weekend. My usual picks are Meet the Press with David Gregory and FOX "News" Sunday with Chris Wallace. Not because I like them, or think they're the best (heavens, no), probably mostly out of habit. FNS I only watch to see what they're up to, but MTP is just as likely to be from a rightward cant on any given Sunday. It has been shown through several studies that no matter which party is in control of the White House or either house of Congress, the Sunday shows tip rightward in their choice of guests.

It's no wonder, when you consider which of these guys apparently live to be on TV. Lindsey Graham and John McCain--seemingly closer than some married couples--will show up on any of these shows on any given week. Sometimes on multiple shows on the same day. It doesn't matter what the topic is, it doesn't matter if they've been absolutely wrong on many previous occasions. It doesn't matter that either is likely to sputter "BENGHAZI!!!" an any moment, regardless of what question they were asked. There they are, the failed presidential candidate who picked a moron running mate, and the fading Southern belle gentleman, every damned week.

I miss Tim Russert as infuriating as he himself could be. I even miss Tony Snow, who could snark without the vaguely creepy vibe Wallace always exudes. I'd appreciate it if Gregory, Wallace, Bob Schieffer and the rest would stop booking lobbyists and hate group leaders for their point/counterpoints. I'd like to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of one of the studios, and Peggy Noonan laughed off the stage for her loopy delivery. But mostly, I want to stop seeing McCain and his little buddy every single week.

John McCain Doesn't Understand Own Conspiracy Theory

This blog post from Rachel Maddow's MaddowBlog asks the same question I've been asking about the Benghazi attack on September 11 of last year. That being, what is being covered up? If you listen any day, almost any time, on FOX "News," you'll hear that there is a Benghazi coverup. Oddly, right-wing world is very, very concerned about what Susan Rice had to say five days later on the Sunday political shows. Why they're focused like a laser on that day, that spokesperson, those facts is something of a mystery, but to them, that is the crux of everything. [Story continues below]

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To me, it's especially odd that it's Lindsey Graham and John McCain squawking about it the most--unironically--on those same Sunday shows. It would be an easy project to comb through the records of Meet the Press, Face the Nation and FOX "News" Sunday to find misstatements and outright falsehoods from both McCain and Graham on topics smaller and larger than Benghazi.  And yet there is John McCain, still going on about a conspiracy theory, a cover up. But the oddest part is that McCain cannot articulate what the cover up even was. When pressed, he sputters about the four dead Americans. Nobody is happy about four dead Americans, and to allege that you can't be both sad and disinterested in conspiracy theories about Benghazi is just stupid.

[Excerpt]

McCain lost in a fog of partisan rage

Looking back at the tragic and deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last fall, we know quite a bit about what happened. We also know, thanks to an independent investigation, that "Republican charges of a cover-up" were "pure fiction."

But as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) argued yesterday, he can't be bothered with facts -- he has a partisan vendetta to pursue. . .

Read more at: MaddowBlog

Joe Scarborough Admits GOP Won House Through Gerrymandering

Image from source, Think Progress.

Well, the fact is obvious, but it's nice to hear a prominent Republican admitting it.

[Excerpt]
 
Joe Scarborough: Republicans Only Kept House Majority Because Of Gerrymandering

MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough admitted on Sunday that Republicans only kept their majority in the House of Representatives as a result of gerrymandering, noting that the GOP received less votes than Democrats in the 2012 election. Scarborough argued that Republicans must prevent radical ultra-conservative voices from dominating the party’s message and pointed out that the GOP is already losing electoral ground among voters who view it as too extreme and out of touch with middle class Americans. . .

Read more at: Think Progress

Solve Your Grover Norquist Problem with Norquil! (Rocky Mountain Mike)

I got almost zero useful information out of this Sunday's Meet the Press, except for the part where Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said, "Who is Grover Norquist?" Not that she didn't know, but who is he in the scheme of politics? Nobody, really. Just a goofy guy with a Muppet's name (and a voice to match) who somehow has snowed the GOP into signing his "no new taxes" pledge for 20 years now.

The GOP seems to finally be tiring of Grover. And now, Rocky Mountain Mike of The Stephanie Miller Show has the answer for them. Norquil!

Cory Booker Incident Highlights Problem of False Equivalence

Cool guy. Bad day. Image from The Nation.

Mayor of Newark managed to step in it pretty big on Meet the Press on Sunday (in a discussion in an episode I watched, and didn't manage to notice). Cory Booker's problem--besides going against President Obama's message when he is an Obama surrogate--was a classic on: false equivalence. It's one of the most infuriating issues in politics and in modern news-info-tainment. "They all do it." "They're just alike." "Both sides of the aisle are guilty."

 Mama might have told you that there are two sides to every story, but she should have been more precise. Both sides are not always equal. Rachel Maddow is not merely the flip side of Sean Hannity. Creationism isn't as scientifically valid as Evolution. And the Jeremiah Wright "issue" is not the equivalent to Mitt Romney's history at Bain Capital.

[Excerpt]

Et Tu, Cory Booker? The Pathology of False Equivalence

There is a disease spreading across our political punditry, and the beloved mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, seems to have contracted it. On Sunday’s Meet The Press, Booker disavowed the new ad campaign attacking Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, and in doing so, compared the Obama team’s decision to air the ads to the right-wing invocation of Reverend Wright to take down the president. Booker released a retraction video hours later, but the incident indicates just how advanced the sickness of false equivalence is in our national dialogue. The plague has now infected a normally sharp public official unlikely to confuse a thinly veiled racist play against the first African-American president with an examination of the economic track record of his challenger. . .

Read more at: The Nation

Cenk Uygur: "CNN -- Change Everything"

Image found at GoHarrison.com

I've been a fan of Cenk Uygur ever since the first time I saw a Young Turks clip. Unfortunately, with no liberal radio in Las Vegas, no Current TV on Cox Cable, and a day job when he was on MSNBC, I've always had to seek out clips, or online streams. So my fandom has been tempered by practicality. Still, it has been rare when I've seen anything by Uygar that I didn't agree with. This critique of CNN is no exception.

I'd extend the critique to Face the Nation, This Week, FOX "News" Sunday (which barely counts) and especially Meet the Press. David Gregory in particular is guilty of doing the "he said, she said," "two equal sides to every story" simplistic interviews and reporting. It's all horse race and controversy. Rarely if ever do the Sunday political shows do anything more than that. The round-table discussion groups occasionally have someone burst through with a concise truth, but it is almost always met with a counterpoint that dilutes it

[Excerpt]


Friendly Advice to CNN -- Change Everything 

CNN just had their lowest ratings in a decade. They are in disastrous shape. When I was on MSNBC, we would beat them with a stick. Even after "pro-CNN" stories like revolutions in Egypt and Libya, Japanese nuclear meltdowns and the killing of Osama bin Laden (CNN does much better when major news or international stories break out), we still beat them. Now they're doing so poorly I might even catch them on Current. . .

Read more at: Huffington Post

Rick Santorum Lied on Meet the Press

Politicians lie, yeah, I get it. It's true of--really--all of them. The ones we like, and the ones we don't. For instance, for political expediency, President Obama pretends to be "evolving" on the issue of same-sex marriage, even though most of us suspect he's either indifferent, or is actually for it.  That's the political expedience lie, and they literally all do it. We shrug our shoulders.

But, when they lie about obvious things; things we just flat-out know are brazen lies? It's pretty irritating, even though they may all do that too. It's even more irritating when hosts of news programs just let the lies fly. "We're going to have to leave it there," is such a cliche, but that's usually where Wolf Blitzer, John King, George Stephanopoulos and Chris Wallace leave it.
[Story continues below]

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David Gregory may be most guilty of all. With his insipid "Trends and Takeaways" segment on NBC's Meet the Press, Gregory is all about the surface of things, and the horse race. He loves polls and percentages, and indulges in the occasional "gotcha" question. But he rarely asks followup questions of any weight. Until Sunday. Rick Santorum tried to put the news cycle onto his campaign's talking points, but Gregory wasn't having it. For what I hope is the first step in a trend, I commend Gregory for his tenacity. Oh, and Santorum (don't Google me!) is a weasel.

[Excerpt]

Rick Santorum Tells Two Whoppers

Rick Santorum tried yet again to pretend on Meet the Press today that he doesn't talk about social issues, and in response he got a swift dressing down from moderator David Gregory. But that didn't stop Santorum from telling an even bigger whopper, claiming no proof exists that he wants to impose his own values on other Americans. . .

Read more at: The Advocate

FOX "News" Sunday's Chris Wallace Whines About White House Shut Out

Want some cheese with that whine?
Image from source, Huffington Post

Awwwww!!! Poor little Chris Wallace, the vaguely creepy host of FOX "News" Sunday, was shut out by the Obama Administration when it tried to get Hillary Clinton or Bob Gates to talk about Libya on the program. Frankly, I wonder why any prominent Democrats would ever appear on the frightfully skewed channel. Every program--even their allegedly "hard news" programs--is infused with the primary goal of making liberals look bad. Why help them out?

Oh, and the whining Wallace also stated that his program regularly beats two out of the three other Sunday morning political programs. I'd very much like to see the data that backs up this dubious claim. I suppose if you add up all the reairings of F"N"S, and put it against the single airing of ABC's This Week, and CNN's State of the Union, he might be right. But the truth is, Wallace's show regularly trails CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, as well as This Week.


[Excerpt]


Fox News' Chris Wallace Slams White House For Blocking Access To Clinton, Gates


Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the talk show rounds on Sunday, appearing on ABC, CBS and NBC to discuss Libya. However, they did not go on Fox News--something which made Chris Wallace, host of "Fox News Sunday," very unhappy--and he let his viewers know it. . .


Read more at: Huffington Post

"Anonymous" Targets the Koch Brothers

Image found at The Green Market

The Koch Brothers--billionaire tycoons who fund many and sundry conservative movements, including the Tea Party--have had a spotlight shone on them of late, as their hand in the Wisconsin labor protests has come to light. Especially after a Buffalo blogger totally punked Governor Scott Walker, posing as David Koch in a twenty minute phone call. The minor ripples this has made in mainstream news coverage is most perplexing. Were the political parties and policies on the other political foot, FOX "News" would have blown this up into the new, new Black Panther Party at least, in the amount of squawking they'd do about it.

The punk'ing wiggled its way into Meet the Press with David Gregory's interview with Walker on Sunday morning, but Walker shrugged it off, and Gregory is not known for tenaciously forcing an issue. Once, twice, still not gonna answer? We're going to have to leave it there. . . But not everyone is ready to let the Koch Brothers lurch off back into the shadows where they'd rather be. The entity known as "Anonymous"--which I'll confess I only heard of about since about a week or two ago--is now focusing in on the Kochs. Good.

[Excerpt]

‘Anonymous’ targets the brothers Koch, claiming attempts ‘to usurp American Democracy’



The decentralized protest group "Anonymous" has a new target: no, it's not a middle eastern dictator, a major bank or even a bit player in the military-industrial complex.



It's none other than tea party financiers Charles and David Koch, who were being targeted, an open letter stated, for their attempts "to usurp American Democracy. . ."

Read more at: Raw Story

ABC's This Week Covers "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

As I usually do on Sunday mornings--though much less enthusiastically than I used to--I watched some of the Sunday political shows. Meet the Press with David Gregory was frustrating as usual, because I've never liked Gregory's interviewing style. FOX "News" Sunday was, as always, a train wreck, this time foisting both Dana Perino and Liz Cheney on their viewing audience.  By far the most interesting of the shows I watched was This Week with Christianne Amanpour, with much of the show taken up with a discussion on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

The discussion was interesting, but did nothing to convince me that there is any study needed, any implementation necessary or phasing in of a policy change called for. This is rather binary: either end the policy or don't. The "military readiness" claim is malarkey. Gay people exist in virtually every walk of life, and coexist quite well with others. This "homosexual panic" that homophobes like the two on the panel, Lt. Col. Bob McGuinness and Elaine Donnelly (who looks like her entire body is clenched) seem to think straight soldiers suffer from is ridiculous.  The argument is basically saying that the gays themselves aren't the problem, it's the straights who will somehow lose the ability to fight if there is a gay person in their ranks. Ludicrous. Anyway, General Wesley Clark and the rest of the "good guys" on the panel presented themselves well.

I'm liking Amampour's show more and more each time I watch it. Her level of intelligence is obvious, and her approach to political news and commentary is several notches above Gregory's or (obviously) Chris Wallace's.

Sunday Update III: Meet the Press: Boehner and Perkins

Image from MediaBistro

Ugh. I finally caught up to Meet the Press with David Gregory on its MSNBC replay.  The first subject was the BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Since we are at 100+ days of this story, and there isn't much new going on, I decided to get showered up and ready for my day. But I got back in time to see John Boner Boehner weigh in on this and other issues. Boehner looks particularly orange this morning, kinda droopy and leathery.  His mouth twitch thing--that goes oddly unmentioned--is being used as punctuation today, for virtually every comma and period in his speech.  He sounded borderline drunk at first, but brushed off the slurring like a pro.  Mostly, he evaded questions he didn't want to answer, and steered his responses to his bullet-pointed talking points.  Worthless. But kudos to Gregory for hammering at him more than usual, even if it is in the effort to get Gregory himself into the news cycle.

Boehner's prattle took up half of the program, leaving the second half to the "round" table. First the economy. Since I'm convinced that nobody seems to have a handle on that, I don't care. I mean seriously, the Republicans are proposing more of the same crap that got us into this mess, and the Democrats are too timid to push hard for the things that might fix it.  Rep. Mike Pence (R-IL) asks, "Where are the jobs?" The actual response is: Big Business (aided and abetted by Republicans and, yes, some Democrats) sent them overseas.  And now that big layoffs and cuts in payroll have happened, and many big businesses are doing better, they're in no hurry to bring the workforce back. They're going to push the current employees to do more for less in less time, for as long as they possibly can.

Pence is talking out his ass, saying there has been no effort by Democrats to be bipartisan.  Hah! This is easily disproven by a two minute Google search.  Harold Ford does what he always does, hewing ever so close to the middle while trying to seem liberal.  Andrea Mitchell. . .made little impression on this panel.

Though the Proposition 8/same-sex marriage issue was teased by Gregory, unless I blinked and missed it, it didn't come up.  Okay, I'm done with this tedium, on to some other things!

Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press with David Gregory

Round tables on Sunday morning political talk shows can be tedious and frustrating. Basically, you gather an even number of pundits/politicians/political operatives--ideally ideologically balanced, but not always--and fire the week's hot political topics at them one-by-one.  Unfortunately, the political knowledge that can be gained by this format is outweighed by politics-as-usual.

Most of the guests on shows like this have a political agenda, and to various degrees have their talking points, hyper-partisan points of view, and focus-tested (thanks, Frank Luntz) verbiage usage.  I'll give you an example.

Republicans are married to a fiscal policy of tax cuts, and reductions in spending. That's their rhetoric, and whether it matches up to political reality or not, they have not shown that this recipe works.  EVER.  "Trickle Down" economics was ridiculed in the waning days of the Reagan Administration, but it is being embraced with gusto by Republicans these days.  On the other hand, economic stimulus (minus the watering down and tax cuts thrown to gain dubious Republican support) does boost the economy.  Unemployment insurance and other "entitlements" as Republicans call them, are some of the best stimulus the economy can get.  People who get these benefits tend to spend them right away, stimulating the economy immediately.

In that example, the second theory can be shown to work in practice, and by logical thinking. The first one (trickle down) can't be shown to work as far as I know. It's wishful thinking.  What do corporations making huge profits really do when they get tax cuts, and thus more profits? Why, they do anything they can to make their profits even bigger, they don't just start hiring tons of new people with all that extra money.  If there's one thing the BP disaster shows us, it is what the culmination of laissez-faire capitalism leads to: Profits above all else, no contingency plans for accidents, no spending on hypothetical future disasters, bogus response plans, shortcuts, dirty deals with government regulators, registering wells in foreign countries for additional tax breaks, more lobbying for further reduced regulations.

But on these Sunday shows, you'll hear the same failed policy ideas trotted out by Ed Gillespie. And David Gregory (or one of the other hosts) set them up, using their own verbiage, and presenting every issue as though both sides are equally weighted.  That's why I love Rachel Maddow.  Sure, you might find her as partisan as Gillespie, and she is. But unlike him, Rachel is not afraid to point out Democrats' failures. She doesn't wear kid gloves around the foibles of the left, and she has a great way of framing an issue that isn't chock-full of "Words that Work" or scripted talking points.  I loved when she said that the Republican mantra of fiscal responsibility was historically "nifty but novel."  In other words, Republicans haven't shown that they deliver what they promise in this area. Brava, Rachel!  Now, if she could just replace Gregory.

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Rand Paul's Very Bad Week Capped by Standing Up Meet the Press

Rand Paul's week has seen a huge high (winning the Republican nomination for Senator from Kentucky), and a steady stream of lows (capped by a lousy performance on The Rachel Maddow Show).  By the time the Sunday shows rolled around--where Paul would have been a featured guest on Meet the Press--Paul had finally put the brakes on. He cancelled his MTP interview, probably hoping that would staunch the bleeding.

He probably didn't count on David Gregory getting some digs in. I didn't really expect it either, since the show is a shadow of its former self after losing Tim Russert.  As these things go, it was pretty good TV.
Side note: Gregory (and other NBC/MSNBC hosts) really should learn to pronounce Rachel Maddow's name. It rhymes with "shadow."



Clip found at: AmericaBlog

Sigh. . .Sunday Political Babble, Again

I started my Sunday as I do most weeks. I woke up a little later than I meant to, got up, put on coffee, and then started the DVR recording of Meet the Press with David Gregory. His first interview was with General David Petraeus, and it didn't bother me too much. My coffee hadn't kicked in yet, and Petraeus' waffling on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" seemed a little tortured, but whatever.

Then, 2012 Presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty, who is probably happy that President Obama broke the "weird name" barrier in 2008. Pawlenty is more pleasant than a lot of prominent Republicans, but he's also like Chatty Kathy talking points doll. And he sticks to them pretty hard. He lost what few points he had with me when he said that our rights as Americans come from God, not the government. I know that is a loose paraphrase of the Declaration of Independence (not a legally binding document, btw), but it skeeves me out in 2010.

Next up was a he said/he said panel of partisans mixed with a couple of journalist-pundits. Their names (except for sing-songy Peggy Noonan) are unimportant. But their babble was aggravating, to be sure. Here are the things that bugged me:

1) Right-wing partisan saying that there was no effort at "real" bipartisanship from Democrats.
- Bull pucky. The health care bills have been watered down and conservatived up the hoo-ha to try and get Republican votes. Nada. This talking point is BS.

2) President Obama is far-left, and governs as an ultra-liberal.
- Hahaha! MOUNTAINS of bull pucky! This is where my understanding of the tea baggers breaks down too. Obama isn't a communist, marxist, socialist, radical! He's upset liberals and progressives because he's been to milquetoasty.

3) Obama should have come in--with a rather large win in the 2008 election--by governing from the middle, even if it did irritate his "base."
- He did! Haven't you been paying attention, Miss Noonan???

4) To be bipartisan, Obama should scrap health care reform, and start again.
- Sure! That's exactly what Bush would do in the same position, right? Cave, and let the other guys have a shot? Riiiggght.

It went on like that. Me yelling at the teevee, and host David Gregory frickin' refusing to ask follow-ups or correct the record. It was ridiculous. And the thing I followed it up with? FOX "News" Sunday with Chris Wallace, with the lead interview being with Senate Minority Leader Mitch (Shelley the Constipated Turtle) McConnell. He's a deck of talking points cards, shuffled in a different order each week--and he does seem to turn up every week somewhere. And McConnell's denial of obstructionism with an all-time record of filibusters is flat-out dishonesty. You lie, Mitch McConnell!

The Meet the Press Duel Between Schock & Maddow

Image from source, SFGate

Confession time: I'm running this bit because a) I am a well-known Rachel Maddow fan, and b) the picture included in this excerpt of Aaron Schock is probably the only known beefcake shot of a U.S. Congressman. Because Scott Brown is a Senator. Still, it's a short list either way.

Now, it should be pointed out that Maddow kicked a little patootie in this bit. But it should also be noted that the right-wing blogosphere sees the clip in a 180-degree light, thinking Aaron Schock won. As Rachel is wont to say, bull pucky.

[Excerpt]

Rachel Maddow embarrassed Rep. Aaron Schock on Meet The Press

The Internet is abuzz with accounts of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's confrontation of Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill) on NBC News' Meet The Press (MTP), Sunday.

Rachel Maddow, in pointing out that Rep. Aaron Schock criticized Democrats for economic stimulus spending programs, then shows up for ribbon cuttings of facilities funded by those same programs, embarrassed the neophyte GOP congressman from Illinois. . .

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