Sunday Morning Bobblehead Fail (please, just make it stop!)

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I stopped watching the Sunday Morning bobbleheads years ago. Why should I ruin a perfectly good Sunday morning watching incompetent infotainment actors pretending to be journalists? But I have relatives staying with me this weekend, and they insisted.

After sitting through the interminable torture of the Sunday Morning bobbleheads and their repetition of GOPropaganda talking points like the loyal little stenographers they are, all I can say is: "New Rule: cancel all the Sunday Morning bobblehead shows" — please, just make it stop!

I swear, American's I.Q. will increase a good 10 points after the first couple of weeks in the absence of these preening infotainment actors pretending to be journalists.

Who set me off in particular was Savannah Guthrie, who was sitting in as host of NBC's Meet The Press Gregory this week. I remember Savannah from when she was a TV news reporter for KVOA here in Tucson. I didn't think much of her then, and I think even less of her now. This morning she was the perfect little parrot for the GOPropanda talking point, "Why won't the president just sit down and negotiate with the Republicans?" (squawk!)

It's not just Savannah. I have heard the insufferable Wolf Blitzer and Candy Crowley at CNN parrot the same GOPropanda talking point all week.

Do you know who is the only infotainment actor pretending to be a journalist who answered this GOPropaganda talking point correctly? CNN's Fareed Zakaria.

After an introduction regarding the peaceful transfer of power in American elections, Fareed answers How to solve the crisis in Washington:

[This] is what is at stake in Washington this week. The debate going on there
is not trivial, not transitory – and not about Obamacare. Whatever you
think about the Affordable Care Act, it is a law that was passed by the
House of Representatives and the Senate, then signed by the president,
and then validated by the Supreme Court as constitutional. This does not
mean it cannot be repealed. Of course it can be repealed, as can most
laws. But to do so, it would need another piece of legislation – one
that says quite simply “The Affordable Care Act is hereby repealed in
its entirety” – that passes the House and Senate and is then signed into
law by the president.

But what cannot be allowed to stand is the notion that if a group of
legislators cannot convince a majority in both houses and the president
to agree with them, they will shut down the government or threaten to
default until they can get their way. That is extortion, not democracy.

I would be happy to see President Barack Obama compromise on the
budget, taxes, spending – even health care. But he cannot compromise on
the principle that the rules of democracy must be respected, whatever
the outcome. If Democrats had threatened to shut down the government to
force the repeal of the Bush tax cuts or defund the Iraq War, I would
have hoped Bush would have also been uncompromising.

So, how to solve the crisis? Many have wondered when the grown-ups in
the Republican Party will force the House minority to call off this
campaign. But that misunderstands the changed nature of American
government. There are no more “grown-ups” in Washington, in the sense of
a powerful political establishment that can get younger members of
Congress in line. There are, instead, 535 political entrepreneurs, each
seeking reelection and worried only about his or her fate.

Consider what happened with immigration reform, when almost the
entire Republican establishment wanted to make a deal with the Democrats
and yet a minority of House members once again were able to derail
things. John Boehner is not leading his party, he is being led by its
most passionate and radical wing. This crisis can only end when members
of that wing understand that what they are doing is anti-democratic and
harmful to the country.

Meanwhile, there is a way to turn this crisis into an opportunity. The
debt ceiling is an absurd anachronism that should not anyway exist. Only
a handful of countries around the world have anything like it. And the
president cannot actually make sense of it.

Brookings Institution scholar Henry Aaron points out
that were Congress to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, the president
would have to choose between two congressional mandates on him. First,
Congress passes spending and taxation levels for the year, which the
president must faithfully execute. But then it does not raise the debt
ceiling. So either the president must ignore the congressional action
requiring him to spend and tax at the levels they have set, or he has to
ignore the fact that they did not raise the debt ceiling. Were this to
happen, the president should declare that he is going to obey the more
substantive law – actually asking him to spend money and levy taxes –
and ignore the procedural one. He would then borrow the money he needed
to, to enforce Congress’ will.

Were Obama to do this, it would solve the current crisis, and also
end the prospect that the crux of America’s financial power – its
sovereign debt and the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency –
could ever again be held hostage through thoroughly undemocratic
parliamentary games.

Finance aside, America’s global influence derives in large measure
from the strength of its democracy. If American politicians start
playing fast and loose with the rules, doing whatever it takes to get
the results that they want, what does that say to people in Russia,
Egypt, Iran, and Venezuela who get pious lectures on the rules of
democracy? It tells them that something is deeply wrong with the
American system these days.

Truer words were never spoken.To negotiate with economic terrorists and to capitulate to their extortionary hostage demands would mean the end of our democracy.

Too bad the Sunday Morning bobbleheads are just too damn ignorant to get it. Or if they do, they are carelessly willing to lie and to deceive the American public — to what end?