Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Last week I wrote two guests blogs that were essentially two sides of the same coin. “How We Are Manipulated #1” and “The Decline of Journalism” were akin in that in the former I was writing about the use of “False Equivalency” that has long been a propaganda tool, especially from the wealthy backers of the conservative movement and the bland acceptance of “False Equivalency” by our mainstream media. I receive “E mails” each week from “Media Matters for America” the organization that examines bias in the media. http://mediamatters.org/ . This organization often provides me with ideas for this blog and I think performs a yeoman service for the people in this country who wish to clear the mental fog of propaganda, supplied by people who want to destroy the democratic process, and that has bombarded us since the Age of Reagan. These people own the major media and/or use their media ownership to ensure that the truth about our country is not only hidden, but subsumed in a planned torrent of propaganda. In this piece I will continue my series by providing various quotations that serve as examples, or admonishment of the prevalence of “False Equivalency” memes in the media. Links will be supplied at the end of this blog.“Fox’s Chris Wallace Says President’s Shutdown Conduct, Not Congress’, Is “What’s Unprecedented.” During an October 6 interview with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said a president “refusing to negotiate” with Congress is “unprecedented”:
WALLACE: All right, you say the consequences would be bad, it would be irresponsible not to act. Despite these stakes, the president — the president — refuses to negotiate saying what Republicans are demanding has never happened before.
[…]
What’s unprecedented is not Congress tying strings. What’s unprecedented is the president refusing to negotiate. [Fox News, Fox News Sunday, 10/6/13]”
The legislative process as designed by the Constitution is such that Congress is charged with having to take a vote if they decide to change various laws and statutes. The Republican Party does not have the votes to repeal the affordable care act and so has chosen an unprecedented means to try to repeal the law. They have planned to do this for some time and the fact of it is presented in this link:
“A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?hp&_r=0 . A short excerpt:
“WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.”
We then present a quote from Candy Crowley, who is the CNN equivalent of NBC’s Chuck Todd. Having watched Ms. Crowley for years, in my opinion she is incapable of lucid political analysis, preferring always to cover the news in term of the “political horserace” and when she strays into analysis it is of the variety of what pundits talk to each other about inside the Beltway:
“CNN’S Candy Crowley: “Why Wouldn’t The President Come To The Negotiating Table?” On the October 6 edition of CNN’s State Of The Union, host Candy Crowley asked Treasury Secretary Jack Lew if failing to raise the debt ceiling “is as bad as you say it would be, why wouldn’t the president come to the negotiating table?” [CNN,State of the Union, 10/6/13]”
The problem with this question is that the President has made his position clear and that is that he is not negotiating with those he deems are holding this country’s economy hostage. You may, or may not agree with his position, but he certainly hasn’t hidden it from “Ace Political Reporters”. By asking her question in the manner she did, Candy is really making a Republican talking point, rather than cogently examining the situation. She might have acceptably said”
“Secretary Lew, the President has refused to bargain on this issue because his position is that the House has created a hostage situation. Why do you think his position is reasonable given that all sides agree that the financial dangers are critical? This would be an honest question because it references the President’s position fairly and doesn’t create a false equivalency in the question. Can you see the difference?
An even clearer example of the “False Equivalency” is from CNN’s Ashley Banfield:
CNN’s Banfield: “Which One Of You Two Parties Is Going To Let Go So That You Stop Tearing Us Apart?” On the October 8 edition of CNN’s Legal View, host Ashleigh Banfield likened America’s position during the debt crisis to “Solomon’s baby” and asked, “Which one of you two parties is going to let go so that you stop tearing us apart?” [CNN, Legal View, 10/8/13]
In Banfield’s use of this technique her point is really that both Parties are equally guilty of creating this crisis, which is not true and so because they are equally guilty they should negotiate the issue. The problem with this is that to negotiate this issue the Administration would be required to put alternatives on the table. By putting alternatives on the table that would me that the Administration would have lost the negotiation by offering something for nothing. The House has a responsibility to prevent economic disaster from happening to us, so their position nakedly is do what we want or we will hurt the country. This from my perspective is not only insanity, but is an abrogation of their oath of office. The distinction is lost on Ms. Banfield.
Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative “National Review” held forth without disagreement or clarification by his interviewer.
“On the October 6 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, National Review editor Rich Lowry suggested that: John Boehner Is Going To Hold Steady Until The President Negotiates — It’s “How These Kind Of Disputes Are Always Settled.” Republican demand of negotiating is a normal aspect of raising the debt ceiling:
Now, it’s true the hand of the House GOP leadership was forced by an element of its rank and file. This is not how they would have set up this fight, they would have gone to the debt limit right away. But now they’re in this fight, it’s inevitably going to segue into the debt limit and the caucus is united and they want to hold firm until Harry Reid and President Obama actually are willing to negotiate, which is how these kind of disputes are always settled. [NBC, Meet the Press, 10/6/13]”
Mr. Lowry’s unchallenged “False Equivalency” is that this unprecedented situation is just normal business, rather than an extraordinary Constitutional crisis. Meanwhile NBC Today’s morning host Savannah Guthrie had this to add on the current situation:
“GUTHRIE: If [Boehner] would, right now, put a clean budget resolution on the floor of the house there would be enough moderate Republicans and then Democrats to get to the two eighteen votes that they need. But the fact of the matter is Boehner is not going to do that right now and then have to do the same thing two weeks later on the debt ceiling.
So the Republican strategy right now seems to be, merge those two issues together and then if Boehner and the Republicans have to take a tough vote they can do it all once at the same time. But they want some kind of concession from the White House and this is where President Obama is getting on riskier territory. His position has been ‘I’m not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling and I’m not going to negotiate on reopening the government.’ And how long can that last? It’s really a case of who blinks first? [NBC, Today, 10/6/13]”
So in Guthrie’s estimation the President by refusing to make concessions to Boehner has gone into “risky territory”. The “False Equivalency” there is that this is just a normal inter party situation and that the President is being reckless by not caving in to the threat. Interestingly enough the mainstream print media has been editorially critical of the Republican position:
NY Times: The Extreme Right’s “Rigid Ideology Is Proving Toxic For The Most Basic Functioning Of Government.” A New York Times editorial explained that conservative groups like the Club For Growth are pressuring Republican lawmakers to vote to defund the ACA or face well-funded primary opponents. From the editorial:
Club for Growth and other extremist groups consider a record like his an unforgivable failure, and they are raising and spending millions to make sure that no Republicans will take similar positions in the next few weeks when the fiscal year ends and the debt limit expires.
If you’re wondering why so many House Republicans seem to believe they can force President Obama to accept a “defunding” of the health care reform law by threatening a government shutdown or a default, it’s because these groups have promised to inflict political pain on any Republican official who doesn’t go along. [The New York Times, 9/17/13]
Then we have this from men from the moderate Brookings Institution and the more right wing American Enterprise Institute, both hardly Liberal bastions:
Mann And Ornstein: “A Handful Of Republican Lawmakers Are Speaking Openly About Blackmail” To Defund ACA. The Brookings Institution’s Thomas E. Mann and the American Enterprise Institute’s Norman J. Ornstein explained in a Washington Post op-ed that GOP lawmakers’ obstruction has led to a Congress that fails to get anything done:
Of course, all of this reflects the fact that the House Republican majority is not being run by its leaders but by its most extreme faction, its role amplified by outside media and money. Among those who are less driven by rigid ideology, the threat of a well-financed primary challenge sharply deflates the number of those eligible for Profile in Courage awards — or willing to risk their congressional careers to get them. [The Washington Post, 8/29/13]
From Time magazine we have this:
“False Equivalency Amounts To Biased Journalism
Time: False Equivalency “Sounds Neutral, But It’s Actually Taking A Side.” On October 7, Time magazine’s James Poniewozik wrote of the coverage of the government shut down and debt ceiling negotiations, “So here, ‘Both sides got us into this mess’ sounds neutral, but it’s actually taking a side — or, at least, adopting the framing that one side is counting on using to a political end.” Poniewozik wrote:
[I]n a case like the fiscal crisis, false equivalence matters. It’s the difference between reporting an extraordinary event and an ordinary one, which in this case is crucial to how the story plays out politically. It’s a matter of whether “not changing current law” becomes redefined as “getting 100% of what you want.” If this is just one more case of those knuckleheads in Washington “digging in their heels,” “playing the blame game,” and so on, it normalizes the situation for the news audience: it sends the tacit message that it is entirely ordinary, every so often, to have a forced debt crisis that reasonable people resolve through “compromise” by renegotiating major pieces of U.S. law. [Time, 10/7/13]”
Finally “The Atlantic Monthly” sums it up:
“The Atlantic: Instead Of Resorting To False Equivalency, “The Press Should Recognize Reality.” On October 2, The Atlantic‘s James Fallows reacted to a Washington Post editorial that blamed House Republicans for the government shutdown — an opinion that seemed to reverse a previous editorial laying blame at the feet of both sides, writing, “I don’t know what can account for this change, but it is a welcome one.” Fallows wrote:
[T]he point here is not, “the press should criticize Republicans.” It is that the press should recognize reality — and at moments when one party is behaving in extreme ways it should come out and say so, despite the powerful (and admirable-in-its-origins) aversion to seeming to take sides in political disputes. [The Atlantic, 10/2/13]”
The truth is that for this blog, my role has just been as a compiler and a quoter. This piece virtually wrote itself with the greatest assist coming from “Media Matters for America”. My aim was to present this issue by actual examples and by commentary from mainstream print media. In my opinion the greatest purveyor of propaganda in this country is the Broadcast media, who through a combination of incompetence, cowardice and venality has served to destroy our political system.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Sources used for this guest blog:
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/10/09/media-keeps-up-false-equivalency-reporting-on-g/196382
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/10/06/how-we-are-manipulated-1/#more-70559
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/10/05/the-decline-of-journalism/#more-70488
While Mike’s original comment used reporting of the government shutdown to illustrate false equivalency in reporting, he mentioned reporting on intelligent design as evolution in his response at 9:47 am. To that he could have added report involving 9/11 truthers, birthers, and climate change deniers.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/11/false-equivalence-balance-media
Thank God for The Guardian, America’s #1 Source of American News (even though it’s British)
Let me take this in a position that will be better understood by Democrats. Here is a part of an article on Gitmo. Now Obama could make a phone call and end the mistreatment described. He has approved this torture. He is the most responsible for what is happening there, more so than Republicans because of his postition as CiC. Still, IMO, it would be a mistake to think these things are happening in Gitmo only because of Obama. Congress members, Democrats and Republicans alike have worked tirelessly to prevent impeachment for torture sense the time of Bush. Leading members of both parties are totally on board with torture. That’s the big picture.
We don’t get to see the big picture in our nation because right wing sites such as Fox news and infowars propagandize the right and left wing sources such as the Daily Show and Rachel Maddow, etc. propagandize the left. Neither side understands the way they are propagandized for the benefit of the few.
“The US military secretly used a variety of tactics to break the resolve of the Guantánamo Bay hunger strikers, including placing them in solitary confinement if they continued to refuse food, newly declassified interviews with detainees reveal.
One prisoner also said that the last British resident held inside the camp, Shaker Aamer, had been targeted and humiliated by the authorities to the point where it became impossible for the 44-year-old to continue his protest.
The US military recently announced the end of the six-month mass hunger strike among detainees at Guantánamo Bay. But human rights groups, however, argue that such proclamations are disingenuous as at least 16 inmates are still strapped down and force-fed daily, and two are currently in hospital.
One detainee, 42-year-old Syrian national Abu Wa’el Dhiab, reported that the Extreme Reaction Force team, the camp’s military riot squad, would “storm” Aamer’s cell on average five times a day in an attempt to crush his resolve during the strike.
In letters recounting Aamer’s treatment, which have only just been declassified, Wa’el said: “They have deprived him of food, water and medicine. Then the riot squad uses the excuse of giving him water and food and medicine to storm his cell again.”
Wa’el, who like Aamer has spent 11 years inside the camp, added: “They took him to the clinic, tore his clothes off and left him with only his underwear for long hours, taunting him.”
Another inmate, Samir Mukbel, from Yemen, who has also been cleared for release, alleged that throwing the prisoners into isolation helped break the protest, which lasted more than 200 days and drew such international attention that President Barack Obama reiterated his intention to close the camp.
Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian detainee who has been cleared for release, corroborated the claim that solitary confinement was used to as a punishment for prisoners making political statements. Belbacha, 43, described how the authorities were punishing hunger strikers by confiscating their belongings. “My glasses, legal papers, toothbrush, toothpaste and all my other necessities have been taken.”
(The Guardian)
Dredd,
It’s out now. I had a comment on David’s post that was also in moderation for some unfathomable reason.
For those who find it strange that so many anti-Semites are such staunch supporters of Israel, this article helps explain it. Dominionists and end-of-days litereralists need Israel to exist because it is a key element for Armageddon to take place.
Excellent compilation. Once the law is broken, e.g. torture, it stops being about “sides” and to what extent those who break the law are aided and abetted by those who come after.
Absent consequences, we live what Mike writes.
Mike S,
A comment I made to Fred and Nick is censured.
Can someone free it from the clutches of Word Press?
My research on man vs ant for purposes of populating a planet is over. Now my controllers on Remulak are asking me to inquire of the self infliction of wounds and demise (death by suicide) that humans are inflicted with. Boehner or Boner is a case in point. In recess he is off in the corridor smoking. The whole population or a large portion indulges in this form of suicide. The suicidalists in the Republican Party want to bring down the nation in their lifetime, which will be short because of the “hat trick” which they are flirting with: heart disease, lung cancer, respiratory failure. Then there is the story of the three sisters who started smoking at age 13 and all died at age 63 of one of those three self inflicted diseases, so hence the doctors proclaimed that the “hat trick” had been achieved. I went to a hospital to study up on this and some of the doctors in each of those three fields of treatment were out on the doorstep smoking.
If some of you could impart some wisdom on this I would be obliged.
“what a pile of partisan manure. You should be ashamed of yourself for only calling out one party in that entire thread.”
Fred,
Thank you for your cogent comment. Honestly, I couldn’t have found a better illustration for the point I was making in my post. The problem with “false equivalency” is that it treats all ideas, no matter what their merit, evenhandedly.
Any honest observer has to conclude by the facts alone that Republican Party Congresspersons are responsible for this shutdown, following in concert a plan that was developed months ago. That there is no precedent for this in House history was referenced in case you missed it. http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19357-ignore-the-spin-this-debt-ceiling-crisis-is-not-politics-as-usual .
As I quoted from James Fallows in The Atlantic Monthly:
“[T]he point here is not, “the press should criticize Republicans.” It is that the press should recognize reality — and at moments when one party is behaving in extreme ways it should come out and say so, despite the powerful (and admirable-in-its-origins) aversion to seeming to take sides in political disputes.”
“False Equivalency” is a very dangerous way of doing business as can be seen in this example. When a school teaches biology by equating evolutionary theory, with intelligent design, they are failing in their job of teaching science. The failure is because whatever one thinks of evolution, it is backed up with years of scientific evidence and research. Intelligent design has no research to back it up, all it has are theories by its proponents, that have no basis in actual scientific investigation. If a science curriculum teaches them as equivalent theories they are dooming the students ability to learn and understand science.
Finally, you imply that I am the type of person to only “call out” one party. Fortunately, I have a long history on this blog and I have written much critical of the President, the Democratic Party and liberals/progressives in general. You can discover this by using the search function above and typing in “Mike Spindell”, if you are inclined to doubt my word.
I agree with rafflaw; and more generally. If Democrats cave on this, the debt ceiling and budget are “evergreen” threats that can be used in perpetuity to gut (or force) any law.
I am for single-payer socialized medicine and strongly disagree with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. But this is as good a time as any to take a stand, if we let them defund or suspend or gut a passed law until they have the votes to repeal it completely, they will use that power ad infinitum. We will not be ruled by a majority; we will not even be ruled by a majority of representatives, we will not be a democracy at all. We will be a fully fascist state, run by corporations and industry that opposes any barrier to their profit-no-matter-who-it-harms agenda.
Fred 1, October 12, 2013 at 7:59 am
what a pile of partisan manure. You should be ashamed of yourself for only calling out one party in that entire thread. You are no better than the people you complain about.
—————————-
nick spinelli 1, October 12, 2013 at 8:38 am
Fred, You just captured, in one sentence, our duopoly. Gallup has 60%, the highest ever, wanting a 3rd party. And, while I do agree this is a purely partisan piece, I’ll call it red meat instead of your metaphor. The guest bloggers have had better decorum of late. That’s a great way to change the tenor here, and this is my homage to their efforts. as you know Fred, one can go to a conservative blog and read the antithesis of this. Big, yawn. “Little boxes..”
==============================
Gentlemen.
Mike S quoted a NY Times article which pointed out that sour grape neoCons like Turtle McConnell and Mouse Meese planned to punish the people’s choice from the beginning of the Obama presidency.
The military NSA and imperialist journalists at media propaganda organs such as National Defense Magazine have been behind it for a long time:
(Deja Vu – Guns v. Butter Election Looms, quoting National Defense Magazine, Mar. 2010). That post (Deja Vu – Guns v. Butter Election Looms) was written the day following the passage of The Affordable Care Act.
It predicted that the next presidential election (2012) would be about repealing health care.
Turtle and Mouse hated the public’s choice and set about to make a failure of “the government”, which was encapsulated in their minds with their created bumper sticker term “ObamaCare” …
They are still as out of touch with reality as they were election “Victory Night” when Romney gave his (WTF??? concession) speech.
On the things where Obama is dead wrong, e.g. military NSA spying on all Americans, the neoCons join forces with him.
But anything that is for the public good, which they call socialism, is something they will NOT team up with Obama on.
They are reprobate, as much of the government is.
And as Nick pointed out the people, for the most part, are quite willing to drown all of the members of congress in a bathtub.
This is government by crisis. Their are people who benefit from that state of affairs and there are people who suffer under it. Check into that and the truth is revealed. Just in case people doubt this has happened before I offer a transcript from 2010: “”Q Mr. President, thank you. How do these negotiations affect negotiations or talks with Republicans about raising the debt limit? Because it would seem that they have a significant amount of leverage over the White House now, going in. Was there ever any attempt by the White House to include raising the debt limit as a part of this package?
THE PRESIDENT: When you say it would seem they’ll have a significant amount of leverage over the White House, what do you mean?
Q Just in the sense that they’ll say essentially we’re not going to raise the — we’re not going to agree to it unless the White House is able to or willing to agree to significant spending cuts across the board that probably go deeper and further than what you’re willing to do. I mean, what leverage would you have –
THE PRESIDENT: Look, here’s my expectation — and I’ll take John Boehner at his word — that nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse, that that would not be a good thing to happen. And so I think that there will be significant discussions about the debt limit vote. That’s something that nobody ever likes to vote on. But once John Boehner is sworn in as Speaker, then he’s going to have responsibilities to govern. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and be a bomb thrower.
And so my expectation is, is that we will have tough negotiations around the budget, but that ultimately we can arrive at a position that is keeping the government open, keeping Social Security checks going out, keeping veterans services being provided, but at the same time is prudent when it comes to taxpayer dollars.”
http://www.progressivepen.com/2011/08/obama-on-the-debt-limit-december-2010/
False Equivalence is a propaganda tool in itself. It does not have to be that way. Certainly it makes sense to say that Republican tea party members are doing some terrible things here. The problem is that “liberal” media is controlled by the govt. and when it talks about how unfair false equivalence is, it has an agenda. That agenda is propaganda for Democrats. It works.
I am going to link to an article from 2010 in another post down. You will notice almost the identical issue and language to the current shut down crisis. In fact, we are governed by crisis. Why is that? Who benefits? If you will look at who benefits carefully, the truth will become clear and you will see that the donor class who funds the one party with two names is always coming out ahead. If you look at who is harmed, it will always be the poor, the middle and working class. It is just as Ferguson pointed out in “Inside Job”. It takes two parties to create the mess we are in. The “liberal” press does not want Democrats to understand that. It’s how Democrats end up supporting a health plan written by the Heritage Foundation. It’s how they end up supporting brutal economic policies. It’s how they end up with supporting a guy that does this to people in Gitmo:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/oct/11/guantanamo-bay-hunger-strikes-video-animation
Democrats are hard pressed to deal with difficult contradictions in what they support. They need a “liberal” media to keep them from thinking clearly. Well, you’ve got that, in spades and this post is an example of how effective that propaganda really is.
Mike S,
You describe the players in the play quite well, noting that a lot of bucks and planning went into the production.
You mention false equivalency written into the script.
There are also other diversions and illusions.
They are trying to take focus off of the fact that the U.S.eh? vanished sometime back somewhere into the fog of war.
Remember these same script readers some time back were doing what The Daily Mail in England did during this contrived “government shutdown” B-grade play.
The Daily Mail said that the Guardian was aiding and abetting the enemy by printing the military NSA secret documents provided to them by whistleblower Ed Snowden.
Exactly what the script readers you mentioned in your post were doing recently.
The Guardian did not accept that criticism, rather, it sent requests to journalist editors around the world asking them if what the Guardian was doing with the military NSA paperwork was wrong.
In response, these journalists came out publicly in favor of whistleblowers and in favor of the publishing of the military NSA paperwork:
(The Citizen Journalist In America – 2, quoting Guardian). What you are doing Mike, and what bloggers are doing, is becoming citizen journalists.
The whistleblowers are citizen journalists who deserve praise from the corporate media, not condemnation.
That is how the world sees it, and that is how is was once upon a time in the West.
Excellent Mike….
I think congress is doing a great disservice to WE the people….. This time I can’t fault the president…..congress is acting as crisis management…. Not caretakers or defenders of the constitution……..
The mess has caused more problem for the GOP than democrats….. It’s sad when partisianshit becomes the name of the game……
Fred, You just captured, in one sentence, our duopoly. Gallup has 60%, the highest ever, wanting a 3rd party. And, while I do agree this is a purely partisan piece, I’ll call it red meat instead of your metaphor. The guest bloggers have had better decorum of late. That’s a great way to change the tenor here, and this is my homage to their efforts. as you know Fred, one can go to a conservative blog and read the antithesis of this. Big, yawn. “Little boxes..”
what a pile of partisan manure. You should be ashamed of yourself for only calling out one party in that entire thread. You are no better than the people you complain about.
Nice.
I cast it in these terms: Republican–The Party of Lincoln. RepubliCon–The Party of Ted Cruz.
Excellent article Mike. I saw a poll tonight that said 60 something % of people polled want ALL of Congress turned out of office. Now I’m not saying that I haven’t had the same thoughts or that there isn’t good reason to feel that way but, but, in a country where the low information middle rules (IMO) this is a direct result of the false equivalence between both parties relentlessly pushed by the media.
I just write the 26% BSC Republicans off and with them FOX, the propaganda arm of the Republican party, they are just there and so obvious it’s an embarassment. Similarly, ubiquitous graft among politicians and politics as a division of big business is a fundamental of the political landscape.
The answer to whatever question asked that makes up the bulk of that 60+% at this point and under these political conditions is just unexplainable without willful manipulation of the citizenry by the media.
One of the aspects of the false equivalence meme that I think is going on, but is generally ignored, is who really benefits, what value is there in having almost all politicians hated? That’s what the false equivalence meme does, it erases qualitative distinctions between the parties and their office holders. The winners IMO is the same corporations that owns the media.
Having voters think that no politician or party is worth support decreases turnout as well as making the politicians think that they need increasing amounts of corporate money to get elected. When your record or your plans no longer matter because ‘they’re all alike’ and the media through honest reporting doesn’t allow the distinctions to be seen then the race becomes purely about money. It yolks all politicians and aspiring politicians even more closely to the big money donors.
*
“The Professional Left” generally deals with the false equivalence meme as well as the other problems with the media’s political reporting and commentary in just about every podcast (Friday’s), not this week though, it’s all about the ACA from their personal pov.
http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/
(TPL did really nice discussions of the last couple of Breaking Bad episodes BTW, if you’re into such things. Very entertaining mini casts and still up to be listened to.)
Very interesting Mike. If Obama and the Dems give in, Social Security and Medicare will be next.