CBS is Today's Idiot

CBS Evening News had a real knee slapper on the “fiscal cliff” last night, which they explained thusly: “The government needed to borrow money to pay its debts, and the Republican Congress gave permission, but it came with a price tag; a $1 trillion spending cut and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the first of the coming year.”

There are so many things wrong with that statement that it’s hard to decide where to start. Let’s start with pointing out that “the government” that needed to borrow money and Congress that “gave permission” are not two separate entities as the statement implies, they are the same thing.

The spending cap deal did not cause the ending of the Bush tax cuts, they were already scheduled to end two years ago, and the deal actually extended them for two years, which was a self serving move by everybody involved to put off dealing with them until after the election.

CBS is apparently unaware that the Democrats have had control of the Senate since 2006, and still do have control of it, so it was not then and is not now a “Republican Congress.” In any case, it was not Congress that imposed the spending cap deal, it was a deal negotiated between Congress and the White House and was agreed to by the President before either house of Congress passed it.

Not to mention that the government needed to borrow that money because of spending mandated by Congress, so the whole argument about borrowing is a bit insane. Congress passes bills authorizing programs that cost money, does not provide income with which to execute those programs, and then tries to deny permission to borrow the money, apparently expecting the programs which it created and approved to be executed with money pulled out of someone’s backside.

So, in slanting the story to make Republicans look bad and the current administration look good, CBS managed merely to make itself look idiotic. Almost as idiotic as the anchor grandstanding in the middle of a storm and managing only in getting himself eliminated from the program when the power failed.