After reading Silly Rabbit/Trix's always enlightening Sunday Talk and noting the panel for Meet the Press, I commented:
Hmm.
1. Experiencing waterboarding; or
2. Being subjected to Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN), Republican Strategist Alex Castellanos, Ruth Marcus (Washington Post) and David Brooks (New York Times).
Very tough call.
Fortunately, I was not confronted with that choice, and instead, took my daughter to a morning show of Kung Fu Panda 2. (Brief critique -- Cute, but not nearly on the level of the brilliant original KFP, which I am not ashamed to admit that I saw three times.)
I could have predicted, though, that the MTP esteemed panel, would be presented by "wise man" David Gregory with an equally absurd choice: (a) acknowledging that we need to be "bold" by adopting, e.g., the Ryan Plan; or (b) "demagogueing" Medicare to win, e.g., NY-26.
Dave first turned to foaming-at-the-mouth Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, who "boldly" (and insanely falsely) proclaimed:
Did you know [Medicare's] $35 trillion in debt? Our economy's going broke and dragging Medicare along with it. In a little over three thousand days, CBO says your Medicare's going to end.”
Rather than correcting these outrageous falsehoods, Gregory turned to wolf-in-sheep's-clothing David Brooks, who unlike Castellanos, usually only spouts "moderate" lies. Brooks gravely intoned that:
this is a test of national character. Do the American people understand that Medicare is going to be bankrupt on its current trajectory.
Of course, no self-respecting MTP panel would be complete without validation of the right wing perspective by an "even-the-liberal" voice, in this case, torturer defender Ruth Marcus. Far from disagreeing with her fellow panelists, Marcus (one of the very serious wise women of DC) has a major "sad" that Dems were using an actual issue to win an actual election in NY-26:
GREGORY: So Ruth Marcus, what wins here? Bold leadership on Medicare and the argument that the Democrats won't do something courageous, or the Democrats who say, “Hey, those guys want to take away my Medicare?”
MARCUS: I regret to inform you that I think it's the latter. And I think when you were asking Senator McConnell if Medicare was the new third rail of American politics, I think the question was wrong in a sense because it's the old third rail of American politics.
GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MARCUS: This play has been run time after time. If you go back and look at the quotes from President Clinton back when he needed to win re-election [in 1996], they sound a lot like the quotes from Democrats today about “Don't let those Republicans take away your Medicare.” The difference is that the debt is bigger, the deficit is bigger, the gap is bigger, and the, the situation is more dire. But I think that, sadly, the lesson of New York 26 is "Mediscare" works.
This "dialogue" perfectly illustrates the litany of lies and false choices that are foisted upon us by the DC Media:
1."The when did you stop beating your wife" question: "Aren't Dems scaremongering Medicare?"
2. The uncorrected blatant falsehood:"CBO says Medicare ends in 3,000 days!"
3. The phony liberals, like Marcus (and the other "liberal" panelist, Harold Ford) who accept the austerity framing.
4. The absence of any representation of any real progressive.
Another reason to appreciate Po, Shih-Fu and the Furious Five.
As for MTP, if you watch it and you're not Furious, you're not paying attention.