Free Kool Aid

For the record, I am pissed today. Today I propose that instead of calling it the So Called Liberal Media, we begin to call it the So Called Media. No liberal, no conservative. I spent much of Sunday watching the talking heads jibber jabber away and noticed that as usual there was a running theme. Rice-a-palooza and Social Security. On CBS (that bastion of liberal media bias) Face the Nation, Rick Santorum seemed to me to get way more time than Dick Durbin to sell the Social Security scam. Bob Scheiffer continues to forget the tough questions surrounding the “debate” including but not limited to:

A) Why should we trust ANY prediction that goes out past 10 years let alone 50? Just look at the recent Medicare Drug Bill prediction.

B) If you believe the actuaries bleak economic outlook of 1.9% economic growth, how can you still believe that stocks will grow 6.5%?

C) If you believe stocks can perform that well in THAT economic environment, then why not believe that revenue streams will solve Social Security if a more realistic output of 3% growth is assumed.

D) Regardless of demographics, taxes are tied to wages, so revenue streams are tied to wages, so why shouldn’t social security benefits be tied (or indexed) to wages? The answer to this question is the same reason the "Demographic Challenge" in entitlement programs doesn't exist now nor will it ever. The 2 people per retiree argument is misleading unless you also tell people that wages and thus tax revenues are much higher today than they ever were in FDRs time.

E) If a legislation like Social Security (which has actually been rather successful) is outdated, what say you about the Constitution? The Electoral College? Or take your pick of anything the 1st say 50 congresses passed into law.


Then I switched to the Chris Matthews, which got a hard on when Norah O’Donnell enlightened him to the fact that Karl Rove watches weekly. No doubt to make sure his Kool Aid is being served up by the panelists.

Amazingly enough Meet the Press had 2 good debates, Rangel trashing Grassley, and Buchanan beating on Natan Sharansky which led me to think that pat’s conservative foreign policy of fighting terror by not militarizing the middle east not only has merit but is something I can agree with him on. Meanwhile Natan Sharansky’s view (one that is shared with Bush and co.) is so myopic that he can’t see that sanctioning dictatorships hasn’t put a dent in Castro’s Cuba.

This brings me to the common denominator. Rice-a-palooza. 5,789 countries in 4 days, amazing for someone who has their own jet and can make their own travel schedule. Not to mention meeting with a bunch of guys eager to mend ties with the US only to be pooped on when Rice dismissed the EU3 /Iran nuke talks. Amazingly, everyone was analyzing this and describing that trying to reach for some substance that came from this whirlwind tour of the world financed by my tax dollars.

Nobody, but not one single body, discussed the memos. You know THESE MEMOS. The memos that say that there were 55 warnings of attacks by Al-Quaeda. The same memos that the right accused Dick Clarke of lying about just to sell his book. The same memos that say that Condi Rice knew about the 9/11 attacks well ahead of time and the same memos that could have helped avoid 9/11. The same memos that were released to the National Archives last week.Just in time, some would say, for the Sunday Morning Jibber Jab Squad to grab this by the horns and point it towards Condi’s recently internationally kissed ass.

Does anyone still believe there is a liberal media? Depending on your idea of bias, the existence or lack thereof in this instance is irrelevant. Instead, what we have today is a media that can be described by a word much more difficult to swallow.

Incompetence.