For the most part, I have stopped watching Meet the Press altogether. To begin with, David Gregory is pure mediocracy in motion, the embodiment of an establishment press that is too self-interested to ever ask truly relevant questions. Rather Gregory feigns “journalism” with the initial gotcha question, but then never follows it up with anything challenging. The end result is not journalism but a friendly medium for politicians to safely repeat their party lines. Gregory becomes nothing more than a megaphone for the political class, perpetuating the farce that has become our political culture. If Cronkite was the “most trusted man on television” — who Meet the Press is now hypocritically celebrating — then how should we describe the likes of Gregory and company?
For example, on today’s show Gregory let Senator McConnell get away, completely unchallenged, with a few of the most idiotic statements I have heard in a long time. On health care, McConnell was able to argue that Americans had the best health care in the world, regardless of statistics and expert opinion, because Americans think they have the best health care in the world.
MR. GREGORY: And this is what he wrote along with another expert last fall, saying: “It’s a myth that America has the best health care in the world. The United States is number one only in one sense, the amount we shell out for health care. We have the most expensive system in the world per capita, but we lag many developed countries on virtually every health statistic you can name”; life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity, death rate from prostate cancer, heart attack recovery. That’s the best system in the world?
SEN. McCONNELL: That’s one expert. If you look at the surveys and ask the American people what they think, they don’t think quality is a problem. They think cost is a problem and access is a problem.
Of course, Senator, we have the best health care system in the world. Just ask the millions of Americans who have never left the country and have been brainwashed for the past 50 years to believe that we are, without a doubt, the Leaders of the Free World. To even suggest that someone else somewhere else could do something better than us would be blasphemous. And please, never contradict the polls.
He even took the chance to take a stab at the Canadian system:
. . . I had a friend of mine in Florida who called up recently and said he’d just lost a friend of his in Canada because the government decided he was too old for a certain kind of procedure, and apparently he didn’t have the money or the ability to get down to the United States for quality health care. I don’t think that’s the direction the American people want us to go, David.
If that story was in fact true, how would it be any different from what happens every day in the U.S. under our private system? The private insurance companies, as part of their whole business model, regularly deny their customers coverage on a strictly cost/benefit rationale, making even insured Americans unable to afford the American quality heath care. And as you guessed it, Gregory let it slide.
When asked about the American solider recently captured by the Taliban, McConnell had this to say,
It’s regretful that this soldier has been captured, but it illustrates, again, the nature of the enemy, that they would try to coerce an American soldier into saying bad things about his country or to, or to suggest that we ought to stop the effort in Afghanistan.
How would the senator describe the purpose behind our enhanced interrogation techniques? It must be different when the Leaders of the Free World coerce you into saying things against your interests. At least in terms of quality.
Grave Error 
Are you f’n kidding me?
You are actually going to try to justify their actions?
They’ve been torturing, maiming, beheading, slaughtering people across the globe for decades.
Reciprocity is the foundation of all human interaction … time to reciprocate at the highest technological level available, put the last punctuation on these scenarios.
Other than oil, what purpose do these countries serve to the rest of the world …
Sum: empty set [!]. Time for cleansing.
Afghanistan does not have oil. It does have poppies, but more importantly it has a huge terrain where we can unload our massive military budget, all in the name of “good intentions” and national security.
Another useless world commodity: drugs …
Again, what reason for these countries to continue?
None …. ?
But thanks for evading the point and the tacit equivocation. They play the dirt, and too many Americans buy into the bullshit and forget the facts: yes, we paid and made bin Laden and a large part of his ilk and file …
BUT, the sorry hypocrite/liar/puke/scumbag/seed of damnation didn’t mind taking the money, the munitions, the armaments, the rockets, the mortars, the grenades …. until he stopped getting paid … then it was “white devil, white devil” time … give me a break.
More lies please, I’ve not lost all sense yet.
You like the Taliban? Hmmmm, you think it’s okay to let them run loose? I wonder if your bride would want to live under that sort of “religious authority” …
She’s just a bit of property, in the Taliban philosophy.
Have you bothered to pay attention to Pakistan lately? Turned on a radio? A t.v.? You obviously have intarwebs ….
They promulgate the ideology of blind acceptance or death; another way to say it: totalitarian tyranny. Right now, they are vieing for control of another needless nation, nuk-u-lar armed to the teeth … Pak-ee-stahn.
Watch for the pretty lights in the sky …
Speaking of idiots, I haven’t seen any of the media cretins mentioning the Maobama administration pressuring the free and democratic government of Honduras, to reinstate the tyrant, Manuel Selayas.
Hmmmmm, isn’t that curious?
The good Chairman doesn’t like a free and democratic nation defending its own constitution … yet on the other hand, will do/say nothing about the Iranian zealots murdering their own for wanting freedom and equality … because that would be “meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation” …
I had a good and trusted friend once, his name being Journalism, have you seen him about? He seems a long time absent, and no manner of communication from him comes.
Give him my best, should he again, this way pass.
The only interesting thing that I have read has been this piece.
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“Military coup” … what did they do, there is no information out there, that they did anything but follow orders from the Honduran Congress?
If Zelaya wasn’t trying to overstay his limited term, where is that coming from, who is promoting that as the reason?
Why is Zelaya being painted as a dictator? Is that propaganda, or is there more information that isn’t being reported?
Harper doesn’t strike me as one of the big media players, what are their credentials?
Does every major outlet pay into killing journalism?