Sunday Morning Comin' Down

Sure, I'm suspicion of metaphors.  Who isn't?

But it was a morning for them.

For example, since I was busy doing much better things this morning, instead of watching the Sunday Morning atrocities on the teevee, I listened to them being rerun on the radio.  

On progressive radio.

Yeah, a number of progressive radio stations around the country do that on Sundays.  During the week it's the same 3-4 shows, or the "Best Of..." those same 3-4 shows, or the rebroadcast of earlier broadcasts of those same 3-4 shows.  But on the weekend, a number of progressive stations shell out actual money to rerun "Meet the Press."

Progressive stations pay money so their nine listeners can bask in the wisdom of a weakling like Chuck Todd bantering with the ridiculous David Brooks.  And steam-powered hack Mrs. Alan Greenspan.  And volatile, lying pit-viper Rick Santelli.

CHUCK TODD:   Joining me this morning for insight and analysis are David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, CNBC's Rick Santelli, and former Congresswoman Donna Edwards. Welcome to Sunday, it's Meet the Press.

So that's what I listened to with half an ear this morning on the stream from KTRC AM in Santa, all chirping out of the little radio app on my antique iPhone.

This was followed by a solid hour of dead air. No kidding. Instead of its scheduled programming, progressive KTRC AM in Santa Fe pumped out an hour of absolutely nothing.

And what was its scheduled program for that day and time? Well here's the punchline instead: it was the execrable "Both Sides Now" -- a "Both Sides!" show invented by Arianna Huffington and Mary Matalin and now hosted by the guy that destroyed Air America.

Like I said, I don't trust metaphors, but Jesus Christ on a crystal radio set, this is the best progressive radio can manage?  Reruns of Meet the Fucking Press?  Followed by either nothing whatsoever or Both Siderist dreck?

And speaking of Meet the Press, Rick Santelli explaining how health insurance is basically just like car insurance so quit worrying your silly little head about it provided America with one more proctologically close look at the way reptilian Conservative scumbags process reality:

RICK SANTELLI:  --selling you car insurance.

DONNA EDWARDS:  Look, twenty million--

RICK SANTELLI:  --how would that compare with the rates you get today? I think many agree, being on the plan till 26, good idea, preexisting conditions, they all have a cost. So you have to find a way to pay for it. But it doesn't mean that you're going to keep or change. Listen, cars have tires. You can reinvent the car, but it's still going to have tires. Those aspects are components of healthcare.

DONNA EDWARDS:  If I don't have healthcare I don't know what a car has to do with my healthcare

ANDREA MITCHELL:  I think that's a silly analogy.

But it was groveling collaborationist Chuck Todd who arguably provided the very lowest point of the weekend.

Because let's face it, Santelli really is nothing more than a Conservative scumbag reptile: that's what you get when you book him on your teevee show and that's what he delivers.

DAVID BROOKS:  Putin is a guy who murders journalists, who's destroyed the democratic process in his own country, and now suddenly he feels the freedom to try to do that in our country. I don't know-- It's not normal statecraft.

RICK SANTELLI:  --to see Russia is happy because Trump won on election night, I never saw you so unhappy. You picked sides, everybody picked sides.

CHUCK TODD:  Who picked sides?

ANDREA MITCHELL: That's not true, Rick.

CHUCK TODD:  Who picked sides, Rick?

ANDREA MITCHELL:  It's just not true.

DONNA EDWARDS:  It really is not. And this is actually--

ANDREA MITCHELL:  Let's get back to the facts here.

DONNA EDWARDS:  This is about the Russians interfering with our election --

RICK SANTELLI:  Here are the facts. We've been seeing entities-- we were hacking Merkel's phone. Everybody does it.

See? No surprises.

But Todd is supposed to be the "moderator" of this train-wreck.  However Todd is fundamentally a coward, who is in way over his head in a game where power has shifted radically away from where he thought it would be.  He is like unto a happy little field mouse whose clear blue sky is suddenly full of hungry predators sizing him up.

And so Chuck Todd tells the predators the lies they want to hear:

CHUCK TODD:  All I have to say is Democrats made a mistake when they didn't bring Republicans into this [the health care] process, and they owned it on their own, and it was a political problem. Republicans are going to make a mistake if they own this on their own. I mean, if this is a partisan effort on the other side, then we're going to continue to litigate.

RICK SANTELLI:   I think there's going to be a big compromise. I think you're going to be impressed.

CHUCK TODD:  Well, I think we all want to see compromise once somewhere.

So we're back to the "Obama didn't lead" nonsense.  A lie which Mr. Todd damn well knows is a lie but speaks anyway because these little, everyday betrayals -- these constant, numbing concessions to monsters -- is how talentless clods like Mr. Todd keep their jobs.

In case  you forgot, here is how the Great Healthcare Debate actually went down.  From Salon in February of 2010 before it lost its mind:

Fact-checking the GOP on healthcare reform

Senate Dems adopted 161 amendments and key GOP planks while soft-pedaling the public option. That's not compromise?

As the healthcare reform bill waddles toward reconciliation — a maneuver that would let the Senate pass certain budget-related provisions with “only” a majority vote — Republicans are complaining, louder than ever, about being excluded from Democrats’ efforts to craft legislation. And some in the media are buying it.

Newsweek gave voice to GOP grievances in a piece titled “How the GOP Sees It.” It begins with this John Boehner lament: “We’ve offered to work with the president all year. We’ve been shut out, shut out, and shut out.” Newsweek characterizes the minority party’s point of view this way: “Republicans want to help the president succeed, but he won’t let them.”

Almost no one is noting the extraordinary influence Republicans had on the healthcare reform bill crafted by the Senate, as it made its way through the committee process last year. The bill approved by Sen. Christopher Dodd’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, for instance, included 161 amendments authored by Republicans. Only 49 Republican amendments were rejected out of 210 considered.  Yet the bill got zero Republican votes when it passed out of the committee.

...

To recap: Senate Democrats have accepted at least 161 Republican amendments to their healthcare reform legislation, they’ve incorporated core GOP planks, and they’ve scuttled an aspect of the plan most popular with its base, the public option, because of opposition by Republicans as well as red state Democrats.

...

Mr. Todd also certainly knows that, from the very beginning, GOP leaders made it abundantly clear that they never had any intention of negotiating in good faith (from Media Matters):

GOP senators made clear they didn't intend to negotiate with Democrats in good faith. For instance, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) asserted during a July 17, 2009, conference call organized by the anti-health care reform group Conservatives for Patients Rights while discussing health care reform: "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Similarly, Minority Whip Jon Kyl (AZ) reportedly admitted on August 18, 2009, that "almost all Republicans" will oppose Democratic health care reform efforts, regardless of the compromises Democrats might make in attempting to win their support. And Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley during an August 2009 town hall meeting told the audience they "have every right to fear" the end-of-life counseling provision in the House bill, adding that the "government-run plan" could " could lead to "decide when to pull the plug on grandma." During an August 2009 interview, Grassley also admitted he wouldn't vote for his own bill if the GOP remained opposed. The Senate Finance Committee also held 31 "bipartisan meetings to discuss the development of a health care reform bill."

In fact there are all kinds of facts like these easily available on the internets to anyone with a keyboard and a conscience who is interested in what really happened these last eight years. but Chuck Todd doesn't have time for all of that!

Meanwhile, over on Face the Nation, America's Most Ghastly Elected Hypocrite is bitching that actually vetting cabinet nominees before appointing them is some wild Liberal sour grapes idea out of left field (h/t Crooks & Liars):

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared on CBS' Face the Nation to pooh-pooh the Office of General Ethics' complaint that the Senate was rushing President-elect Trump's cabinet nominations to vote before ethics investigations could be completed. Rather than dealing with the allegations by the non-partisan office, McConnell spins this as a totally partisan--and therefore, dismissable--complaint by the minority party. 

“All of these little procedural complaints are related to their frustration at having not only lost the White House but having lost the Senate. I understand that but we need to sort of grow up here and get past that.”

And then looky here at this letter from 2009 in which then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanding the exact opposite:

Mitch McConnell to Reid in 2009: nominee "financial disclosures must be complete... prior 2hearing being scheduled." pic.twitter.com/wxCfXTPS6g

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) January 8, 2017

There was a day when a "journalist" might have considered quoting McConnell owns words back to him and asking him what the fuck?

But, you know, golden years.