Mad Cow Maddow

So I’m sitting at the local Waffle House, getting my weekly fix of grits, and I decide to read the local rag’s editorial section. It’s always the same old thing, Obama is bad and tax cuts are great. This time, it was Bill O’Reilly’s turn to prove how bad Obama was for real America and he took the opportunity to demonstrate this by beating on Rachel Maddow and David Letterman.

Panic on the Left

"”But let's get back to Letterman. Speaking with a far left MSNBC News commentator on his program, Dave listened as she put forth the preposterous theory that Fox News wants to frighten white Americans by reporting negatively about black Americans. "Scaring white people is good politics on the conservative side of the spectrum and always has been. The idea is that you sort of rile up the white base to be afraid of another, to be afraid of immigrants, or scary black people ..."

Now, in the past paranoid, dishonest rants like that would have been dismissed as fringe speak. But not anymore. Without a shred of evidence, a guest on the David Letterman show, (who by the way gets trounced in the ratings by FNC every night), defines an entire news organization as a racist enterprise. And Dave goes along with the program adding: " these people are continuing to fan this flame and ... that is cancer.”

In that I listen to The Rachel Maddow Show podcast, I couldn’t wait to hear how this played out on her show. So I listened to the podcast while I watered my parched flowers and walked a mile in my neighborhood sauna (aka Georgia). Rachel didn’t disappoint but the show started out with something more important to me than watching Bill and Rachel ratchet up their ratings. (That is how this works you know.)

I wrote about this subject months ago. In that it was at the bottom of a lengthy post, I’ll just quote myself here.

”Now, pay attention class. The evil Obama/Democrat plot to ruin America proposed a 825 billion dollar Federal stimulus package. The heroic Republicans and patriotic Tea Party/Town Hall Crashers beat it back to $787 billion.

Pay attention now. This is critical. If your House Representative was a Republican, they voted against it. Not a single Republican voted for it in the House. If your Senator was a Republican (unless you live in Maine or Pennsylvania), they voted against it. Without the Democrats, there wouldn’t even be $787 billion for the States to use.

825-787 = 38 billion dollars the States didn’t get as stimulus.

$38 billion divided by the 50 States would equal (all things being equal) $760 million. Per State. Go back to the beginning. What was your State’s education-budget shortfall ? $300 million ? $760 million would cover that. And then some.”

Now, watch as Rachel Maddow shows you how all this has played out.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The stimulus money kept the teachers employed -- the “saved” part of all those “jobs saved or created” -- and when it runs out, the teachers will get laid off. And the students will suffer. And so will the economy. In other words, nobody wins. Except the Republican politicians. Because they will blame it on the Democrats. That brings us back to Bill O’Reilly’s column.

”For 18 months, the United States has been governed from the left and things are not going well. I'm sorry if this analysis might frighten some folks but when you spend a half trillion dollars trying to stimulate the economy and create just 600,000 jobs, well, people are going to notice.”

Do you see how this works now? No jobs “saved” mentioned. It’s just another twist on Republicans destroying the government and then turning around and saying, “See? We told you government doesn’t work.”

Now, as to Rachel Maddow’s response to Bill O’Reilly, all I can say is “Ouch!”. There’s no point in trying to paint this as anything but entertaining. Even if it’s really entertaining (and it is) it detracts from the important. Teachers are losing the jobs. Kids are losing their teachers. And the American economy is still in trouble.

Don Brown
August 10, 2010

Share