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I still haven't made up my mind whether to direct an "open comment thread" on Tuesdays and Thursdays here, or just to forego any columns on these days altogether for the rest of the month.
But for today, I'd like to offer up this article from Katrina vanden Heuvel at the Washington Post. I think [...]
This week is being touted, in the political world, as a big week in the state of Iowa. There will be a nationally-televised Republican presidential candidate debate, and then a few days later the Ames Straw Poll will take place. The straw poll is (as always) being hyped in the media as the "first voting" in the upcoming presidential nominating contest. But the media should pay more attention to what is happening in Wisconsin this week, because rather than some "vote"-buying exercise (that always proves itself to be completely meaningless in the grand scheme of the presidential election process), Wisconsin could prove to be a much better weathervane in terms of predicting which way the political winds will be blowing, come next year.
With the conclusion of the debt ceiling "crisis," the media pivoted swiftly to their standard larger questions (to them, at any rate) about any political event these days: "Who won? Who lost?"
My apologies for the lack of a Thursday column. I really did want to write a column today, and was planning on next Tuesday being the first break here (see Program Note 3, at the beginning of Tuesday's column, for details). Unfortunately, I spent the day delving into the mysteries of Volvo braking [...]
This is unacceptable. This is beyond dysfunctional. This is, in fact, an outrage. So I'm giving Congress a grace period of precisely two days, to get their butts back to Washington to fix this problem immediately. If I don't have a bill on my desk by the end of this Friday, I will instruct my Attorney General to immediately put every member of Congress on the "no-fly" list. To be blunt, if they can't find the time to fund the F.A.A. and prefer to take weeks off on vacation instead, then they will not be allowed to use the F.A.A.'s services in the meantime. Period.
The easy answer to the question: "Who 'won' the debt ceiling debate?" is: nobody. The public sees everyone involved in a more negative light than when the whole manufactured crisis began. Hopefully, politicians will take note of this, but it is quite likely they will not, and this new standard of brinksmanship will become the norm, every time the debt ceiling debate arises. There's a comforting thought, after the past month, eh?
The House and Senate are getting ready to vote on the deal struck to avoid America defaulting on her debts. Nobody knows exactly the magnitude of what is being cut in detail yet, and the news media seem more interested in the eternal "who's up/who's down" horserace nonsense than in informing the public what exactly has been agreed to in this deal. This should come as no surprise, since it is (as always) ever so much more fun for "journalists" to blather on about "what it all means" seen through the political lens, instead of "what it all means" in terms of... well, what it actually is going to mean for America. Perhaps in a few days, when they get bored with the political aspects, we'll finally find out exactly what the cuts are going to cover.