Media villager stenography for GOPropaganda on the ‘fiscal cliff’

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The corporate mainstream media is a complete failure. If you are trying to make sense of the so-called "fiscal cliff" austerity crisis, good luck with that. You are not going to get it from media villager stenography for GOPropaganda. The villagers just take notes of whatever the Weeper of the House and the Septegenarian Ninja Turtle have to say, and never point out the ridiculousness of their statements.

Both Boehner and McConnell are whining today that President Obama has not named any spending cuts that he will support. What they are really whining about is that President Obama is not negotiating against himself.

It is these two yahoos who have refused to identify the specific spending cuts that they want (other than an amorphous desire to gut the "entitlement" social insurance programs of social security and Medicare, as well as Medicaid).

They want President Obama to go first in proposing to gut Democratic Party legacy programs. Not going to happen, boys. If Tea-Publicans want to gut social security and Medicare, they are going to have to go first in making specific proposals (that Democrats in Congress will reject). Mitch McConnell demands Democrats negotiate with themselves .

Steve Benen demonstrates how the media villager stenographers ought to be reporting this Kabuki theater negotiation strategy. The spending cuts Boehner chooses not to see:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made a rare floor appearance
this morning to demand answers from the White House as part of the
ongoing fiscal talks: "Where are the President's spending cuts?"

* * *

First, if the Republican leader wants to know where President Obama's
spending cuts are, he can start with the more than $1 trillion in
spending cuts Obama already accepted as part of the resolution to last year's debt-ceiling crisis.

Second, Obama's debt-reduction plan, like Obama's most recent budget plan, already includes additional spending cuts, on top of the cuts the president agreed to in 2011.

And third — this is the part Boehner really
doesn't seem to understand — Obama has no incentive to negotiate with
himself. The House Speaker is saying, in effect, "We're demanding
spending cuts, so Obama should propose some, and we'll let him know when
we're satisfied."

The White House has decided not to play this
game and for good reason. If Boehner wants more spending cuts, he can
propose more spending cuts. That's how negotiations are supposed to
work.

* * *

Under the [negotiation] rules Boehner drew up last year, Republicans are supposed
to tell the president, "Make us happy," and Obama is supposed to keep
offering conservative ideas in the hopes of guessing what they'll find
satisfactory.

The Speaker's comments today seemed to be an attempt
to bring the old rules back. The sooner GOP leaders realize the rules
have changed, the easier it will be to find a resolution to the current
impasse.

Funny how you never see or hear reported that President Obama has already agreed to spending cuts already enacted into law and has proposed additional spending cuts. Instead, all we ever get is media villager stenography about Boehner and McConnell whining that President Obama has not named any spending cuts that he will support. It is these two yahoos who have refused to identify the specific spending cuts that they want. Try reporting the facts for a change.

For a great piece on the complete failure of the corporate mainstream media, see Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post. How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign (snippet):

Post-mortems of contemporary election coverage typically include
regrets about horserace journalism, he-said-she-said stenography, and
the lack of enlightening stories about the issues.

But according to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein,
campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost
entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the
radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in
terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth.

I recommend you read Froomkin's full post.