Washington Post Dana Milbank (3/19/11) skewers the Republicans for their “emergency meeting” to defund NPR:
This particular emergency involved the lower end of the FM radio dial. Republicans, in an urgent budget-cutting maneuver, were voting to cut off funding for National Public Radio. All $5 million of it—or one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the federal budget.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office ran the numbers and calculated the impact this emergency measure would have on government spending: “No effect.”
One of the rules of corporate media balance is that if you criticize Republicans, you have to find an example of similar buffoonery on the other side. Milbank finds that in an effort to end the nine-year-old Afghan War, which nearly two-thirds of Americans now say is not worth fighting:
Democrats would have been in a good position to point out the Republicans’ lack of seriousness, except they were engaged in their own trivial pursuit. On Thursday, the same day the Republicans were doing battle with Diane Rehm, the House was also debating a bill by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) ordering full withdrawal from Afghanistan by year’s end.
Milbank explains: “Neither a vindictive slap at public broadcasting nor a pell-mell pullout from Afghanistan would be good policy,”though in the end he gives the Democrats more credit for opposing majority opinion on the war:
In the end, the Democrats proved somewhat more adult in restraining impulses. Party leaders opposed Kucinich’s Afghanistan pullout plan as irresponsible, and most Democrats voted against it.
Well, thank goodness someone in Washington is being a grown up.
The desire to not debate the Afghan War seems to be a popular one at the Post.Today Fred Hiatt (3/21/11) cheers the fact that David Petraeus’ Congressional appearances on the Afghan War were free of rancor—unlike his 2007 testimony on the Iraq War:
At a time when our political system is said to be incapable of rising above poisonous partisanship to promote the national interest, Gen. David Petraeus’ visit to Capitol Hill last week was instructive.
Hiatt adds:
Obama’s escalation, when 73 percent of Americans want substantial numbers of troops brought home, would seem to open fertile ground to Republicans. But from their leaders on down, they haven’t sought to plow there. In this instance at least, politics really has stopped at the water’s edge.
For the Post, it seems, democracy is supposed to stop at the water’s edge.
Peter, to me, democracy is about more than doing what 73, or 50.1, percent, of the citizenry want. Recall that the overwhelming majority of Americans supported this war in the beginning, and it was just as immoral and illegal then as it is today, wasn’t it?
As for it being “fertile ground” for Republican opposition, Hiatt’s engaging in what corpress types are past masters at – ignoring history in the service of making a specious observation.
Some folks might call that lying.
It’s bad enough when journalists like Milbank feel compelled to make false equivalencies (ie; funding what is basically a radio station vs engaging in an occupational war that has killed 10s of thousands of civilians, ravaged an already decimated country, and cost us 10s of BILLIONS of dollars), but Jesus, can’t they even have SOME sense of scale/proportionality, both MORAL and ECONOMIC?? Also, is it ‘good’ when our Congress is in near unanimity about illegal, immoral wars?? Is that REALLY to be celebrated? Are we REALLY to feel good about legislation against wars being defeated??
Yeah, it’s a good thing the ‘adults are in charge’ – – – just don’t let them near your kids because morally they’re pedophiles.