Todd's Mischief Blog

I don't think there was any question about which topic would dominate the Sunday shows this week. Pretty much every show was devoted to discussion of the Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare and trying to make some sense of Chief Justice Roberts' decision. While the blog-o-sphere and talk radio are lamenting that the bill is upheld, I think it is good to pause for a moment and take note that the liberals in Washington and the MSM appear like they've taken the loss. Case in point: on ABC This Week, CBS Face the Nation, and NBC Meet the Press, their respective guests, White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi all read from the same script refusing to acknowledge the High Court's determination that the ObamaCare mandate does constitute a tax. Even in the face of this legally set definition, all three vehemently insist that the tax is merely a "penalty," and one directed at the 1%, I might...

This week's edition of the Sunday Spin Cycle is going to be brief, not only because I have other time obligations, but because all the Sunday shows were in virtual lock-step today. With the exception of CBS Sunday Morning , which did an episode inexplicably devoted entirely to islands, all the shows focused on the debt limit and the Paul Ryan Plan vs. the Simpson-Bowles Plan. In a nutshell, Washington is poised for another budget battle when it comes to spending limits. The Democrat argument is that if Republicans would agree to raise the debt limit, then the debt wouldn't matter. The Republican argument is that spending limits wouldn't need to be raised if spending could be brought under control, and the debt absolutely matters. The Democrat counter-argument is, "La-la-la-la!" Moving on to budget plans: if you are a Democrat, then Simpson-Bowles = Good while Ryan Plan = Bad. If you are a Republican...well, you can figure it out. Here's the nasty little secret...

Sunday once again, and that means cleaning up the messes that don’t clean up after themselves. This is Weak (with George Snuffleupagus) amazingly gave me cause to agree with Barney Frank. In defending Obama’s non-statement on gay marriage, Barney said that marriage should be a states’ rights issue. Unfortunately, I suspect that Barney’s love of the tenth amendment is a matter of convenience. He pointed at the introduction by Republicans in the 2000s of a proposed federal marriage amendment as if to say, “they started it.” But the gay community has been looking for opportunity to make a run around the legislative process since the Civil Rights era by putting the matter before the Supreme Court as a 14th Amendment. Sorry, Barney. No sale. Frank was a double-whammy today, as he was also brought on to talk about the economy and the role of the Dodd-Frank legislation. He instead, in a typically childish display, chose to shout down Marsha Blackburn and accuse her of interrupting him until t...

It's Sunday again, and you know what that means. Time to clean up the mess left by the morning talk shows yet again. So, as I pause between loads of my own laundry, let me see if I can clear away a few of the loads left by the media. CBS Sunday Morning started the conversation with a piece on skyrocketing college tuition rates. This is a topic that conservatives need to be interested in as well as liberals. It’s not enough to simply say, “Not everyone should go to college.” The majority of employers use a bachelor’s degree as a weeding tool for their job applicants. That needs to change, but until it does, it doesn’t win any political points to tell a large swathe of Americans to scale-down their ambitions. Of course, CBS’s look was expectedly limited. They point out the extreme rise in tuition rates and simply scratch their heads. The point is, this problem is comprehensible, but not by the left. Conservatives need to get in on the conversation, otherwise it will be wholly owned b...

Laundry day again! And you know what that means. To be honest, all the Sunday shows blurred together this week. Maybe because they all covered identical topics (moreso than usual) or maybe because I'm sick. Of course, it could be because I am typing on a Kindle (hence the delay, sorry). My lappy took a refreshing drink courtesy of my four year old girl. Still, I have thoughts to share.   Agency Scandals Yawn! The spin here was so dizzying as to make one nauseous. The takeaway is that this issue is so unimportant to the American people that all four major networks devoted a large chunk of their Sunday shows-- Meet the dePressed even interviewing David Axelrod--to tell us just how little we care. Glad they cleared that up.   0bama v. Romney Clearly the White House is struggling to find a meme against Mitt, to the point it raised comments among all the lefties. Is Romney a spineless flip-flopper or a right wing hard-liner? Seems the White House aims to unify the two contradic...

I do two things every Sunday: I wash laundry, and I watch the morning news shows. The laundry makes everything is fresh and clean. the The Sunday shows just leave a mess behind. CBS Sunday Mourning could have done my little heart good with an exposé on the many problems with the FDA approval process. Unfortunately, they highlighted the wrong problems. Instead of focusing in on the sluggish approval processes that keep life changing and saving devices from patients in need of them, they zeroed in on 0.2% of people who receive a faulty FDA-approved implant. The voice of reason in the segment cautioned that a zero-risk system would lead to no medical progress, a far worse proposition. But CBS gave the final word to the brother of a man whose defibrillator implant failed—a man who, of course, thinks one failure is too many. Sadly, the final call was for a decidedly faulty government agency to do more. Bah! On the flipside of progress, CBS did do a fair examination of a potential new sour...

There are two things I do every Sunday: I wash the laundry, and I watch the morning news shows. The former is necessary, but I don’t know why I subject myself to the latter. Still, like so much dirty laundry, the news on Sunday leaves much to clean up. CBS Sunday Morning took note of a trend among GOP presidential candidates; they all rail against the failures European socialism on the campaign trail. But how does the rhetoric square with reality over there? Well, CBS found that if you cherry-pick your data, things are just fine across the pond. In fact, in <i>Northern</i> Europe, unemployment is lower than the US national average. So much for the pesky fact that the EU reported 10.1% unemployment in January. But why get bogged down in lots of boring numbers when you can simply choose to miss the point? That’s ultimately the route CBS took when they praised all the freebies Europe bestows upon its citizens—you know, the ones which are driving the Eurozone’s debt and that D...